WHAT TO DO WITH ELECTION OFFENCES.
THERE is a routine, often, in anomalies. The grossest irregularity has its red-tapery ; the rascality of London and of Paris, perhaps the most refined and poignant specimen of human wrongdoing, cannot escape from its common-place. The inborn want of ori- ginality which besets the average of mankind, shows itself under the head of crimes and offences ; and the most inventive amongst all--
What shall we say? We do not like to say rascals ; not because the word is actionable, but because the class positively includes many good fellows ; but we mean the vulgarer class of election agents and the lower style of intriguers at Parliamentary elections.
The latest numbers in the romance of real life within this series confirms what we say. The difficulty is to invent a new offence ; and the method of violating, defeating, or evading the law, has become so trite, that it ispositively tedious to trace the details of even the best contrived offences under this head. The W. B. case stands as the last for its originality and vivacious inventiveness of resource. As to the events of last session, they only prove that evasions of the statute against bribery, compromise, or any other offence that may vacate a Parliamentary seat, has become as much a matter of common-place copying as the most ordinary trade. Even the virtuous outcry is as tedious, from the constant re- currence of the same ideas. Virtue itself becomes vapid under the tendency of the trade to take the readiest mechanical forms. Thus Mr. James Wilson cannot ask a probable antagonist whether he is or is not to be opposed, but the virtuous opponent bursts forth into a course of eloquent disapprobation and of active oppo- sition conspicuous entirely for the triteness of the ideas and the utter want of reality in the substance. The disclosures at Berwick are equally remarkable, not for the deep tinge of the crime, but for the total want of invention on the part either of those who break the law or of those who vindicate it. The borough is in possession of Captain Charles William Gordon and Mr. Ralph Anstruther Earle, distinguished Conservatives. The party opposed to these gentlemen discovers that there has been gross bribery and corruption,—so gross, we are led to suppose from the language employed, that the law has been altogether violated, and the representation of the British constitution in that particular section of it totally vitiated ; the result forming an abuse which ought to be at once and radically prevented. This would imply the instant devellication of Earle and Gordon from the seats which they had so unwarrantably obtained ; but no ! " The Liberal party," as it is called,—which means a cer- tain set of persons near the borough or connected with it, or
speculating on the chances of a Parliamentary election,—resolves to strike a bargain with the opposite side ; and it is arranged that a Mr. Majoribanks shall be admitted to one of the seats which Mr. Earle is to vacate ; the two parties agreeing to use no other force against each other. Thus, Majoribanks will get his seat with comparatively little inconvenience to himself and his connections ; the Tory party will retain the half of the couple that they had already seated ; and, says a local society which has patriotically engaged itself in feretting out and exposing these corrupt practices, " while the body of the electors were entirely ignorant of this arrangement, there is every reason to believe, that not only Messrs. Gordon, Earle, Majoribanks, and their legal agents, but also the Secretaries to the Treasury, of both the late and present Administrations, were privy to the transaction." Let us for a moment contemplate what in strictly literal reason this charge amounts to. It is, that some of the persons named have been violating the law of the country—have been en- deavouring to vitiate the representation of Parliament—have, in the prosecution of these lawless purposes, deceived the country, and deliberately employed deceptive language for that purpose. A respect for the law of libel prevents our characterizing in plain language the conduct which is thus openly and deliberately im- puted to the gentlemen named, amongst whom are the Secretary to the Treasury of the present Government and the gentleman who filled that office under the late Government. There is, indeed, some reason to doubt whether the body of the electors were en- tirely ignorant of this arrangement ; and if the doubt is correct, the deliberate violation of the law, the paltry chaffering away of British rights for personal advantage, the systematic violation of the virtue respected by the Houyhnhms, are offences charged against persons whom we may take as representing the pro- fessional lawyers of the country, the electoral body in whose hands peculiarly and exclusively Parliament chooses to repose the trust of electing Members, chosen representatives of the two great parties in the State, and representatives of two great lead- ing Governments. Perhaps it is impossible to find stultification carried to a further pitch than this public exposure of inde- pendent politicians, high-minded gentlemen, and distinguished officials, all implicated in evasions, tricks, and illegal practices, which are diminished only in their meanness by their despicable common-place.
Do we accuse either of the Secretaries of the Treasury, Captain Gordon and Mr. Earle, or Mr. Majoribanks, or the lawyers on either side, of being mean persons, or of being men whose words we would not take,—traitors to their country,—" no gentlemen," —disreputable, and to be repudiated ? By no means. Our infor- mation respecting most of the gentlemen mentioned is imperfect, but it leads us to believe that they are very excellent specimens of their country and their class. We are convinced that if there were any threat of an invasion, all; those men, without a single exception, would stand forward to pour out their hearts' blood. If there were the poetical impossibility of some mad Stuart re- vival, there is not a man named in this report who would not be found rallying round the throne with a loyalty so hearty that no one would be distinguishable from the other. They are English gentlemen and honest men, whom any man might be proud to include amongst his personal acquaintance. That is what we know of some, and what we are fairly, entitled to assume of others. Nevertheless, it is worth their deep consideration. The practices in which they have allowed themselves to be implicated deserve the censure which the faith in their personal qualities would make most of us withhold. The conduct all but proved against them by the local association merits reprobation and con- tempt, and it is only because it has become a routine abuse,—a custom which everybody sees through,—something so transparent and silly as to take in nobody, that we look upon the-men as standing distinct. We regard them with the same kind of half respect, half pity, with which Basil Hall looked upon his Chinese friend,—who avowed his superiority to the custom of breaking women's feet, and was in the habit of leaving his house when the painful and disgusting practice was carried out. Our chief surprise is that gentlemen so accomplished as we have reason to suppose many of these are, with a good sense trained in good schools, should consent to form figures in this constantly repeated picture of unelevated political corruption. Which of them would consent to be a supernumerary in some satirical piece at the Olympic or the Adelphi Theatre ? None. And yet we find them one and all consenting to play the part in the theatre of Berwick-upon-Tweed; with the additional ridicule, that, instead of enduring merely imaginary rebuffs and thumps, like the supernumerary on the stage, they get actually kicked about in the good town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Why do they con- sent to repeat this ridiculous and disgraceful drama ? They can scarcely do so under the idea that it is necessary to our "political system," since these particular performances, under the patronage of Parliamentary agents, although bearing a generic resemblance to the election scenes of Wilkes's time, or the election scene in Foot's farce of The Mayor of Garret, are not really old usages, and are not essentially parts of the British constitution. They do it, we imagine, under the force of three delusions, and perhaps a little reflection would transform them from being as- sistants in maintaining this melancholy farce into assistants in breaking down the system.
The first delusion under which each man labours in these Parlia- mentary scandals, as in most of the scandals of life, is, that in his particular case "the circumstances are peculiar "; exonerating him from the kind of censure which circumstances generically similar ought to entail upon any other man. Now" the circum- stances " are always " peculiar." Every man's own case has some special traits which may assist in excusing him morally, although they stamp the act of which he is convicted as a thing that ought not to be done, and that he will be injured by having done.
Secondly, they imagine, that, although they have been drawn into irregularities, the chances are that they will not be found out, and that will enjoy the illegally obtained advantage just as much as if it had been legally obtained. This is the gambler's calculation.
Thirdly, each man imagines that he is not strong enough to correct " the system," which is responsible' and not he. Now every man possesses the strength for correcting his part of the system ; so that we might almost invert the excuse, and say that, inasmuch as each man is answerable for maintaining that part of the system which he could break down, he participates the moral liability for the whole. In strict logic, in high morals, in an ele- vated view of political agencies, this last position is mathemati- cally true. We may say, that the Majoribttnkses, the Earles, the Parliamentary agents, and Secretaries to the Treasury are an- swerable, individually and personally, for that system to main- tain which any one of them lends even the most "official" of sig- natures, or the assent of a smile.
But we agree with those who are rapidly strengthening in the avowal of the opinion, that these abuses will not be cured while the patient, the tempter, and the doctor are all one and the same person,—while the object of offence, the victim, and the tribunal to adjudicate on the case, are all one and the same souse of Com- mons. There is a notion that if the House of Commons were to part with its jurisdiction in this behalf, and to leave the adju- dication upon irregularities and corrupt practices at elections to the ordinary judicial tribunals, it would surrender the political privileges of Parliament to the servants of the Crown. No blunder could be more superficial, or more complete. It is pre- cisely of the same nature with that grasping confusion of ideas which made old political chiefs retain in their own hands the right of trying and hanging those who transgressed their rights of property or power. Essentially there is no distinction between the case of the landowner in some parts of Europe, who still maintains the right of gallows, to accuse, try, convict, and hang any man trespassing on his estate, and the claim of the House of Commons to be accuser, judge, and executioner in its own case. Nay, the House of Commons is more absurd ; for the honourable pretension is to add to these characters of accuser, judge, and executioner, the capacities also of offender and con- vict.
Under our political system the judge is as independent as the House of Commons. Nay, we attain an increase of national in- dependence, by distinctly separating in all cases the jurisdictions for making the law and for executing the law. The House of Coin- mons would always obtain the most perfect control over the general administration of justice, political as well as social, be- cause it would possess the most powerful voice in the enactment of the laws, the most powerful influence in forcing its own drafts to be carried out in statutes, and above all in extreme resort the controlling power of the purse. The House, therefore, can always retain a potent voice in framing, amending, superintending, and vindicating the general laws. But it forfeits instead of re- taining its independence, if it subjects itself to the equivocal duty of executing those laws in detail. Then it becomes, by the circum- stances of the case, at ones accuser and accused, counsel and judge, jury and informer, spy, instigator, fence, and sanctuary- monger. The one cure for all these abuses which rue constantly making butts of respectable gentlemen, and dragging the House of Commons itself in the lowest mud of election squabbles, is to transfer the jurisdiction in cased of actual breach of the law to the ordinary tribunals of the law.
Previous page
