votes paper-votes, and fraud fiction. They are gentlemen of station, education, wealth, -farmers, lawyers, squires, peers, capitalists, manufacturers, and members of parliament, and members of government. Yet were the fashion of the Middle Ages prevalent in these days, and public questions settled by public disputations, a fearless Abelard, or an admirable Crichton, might maintain victoriously, in a dialectical tournament, against all comers, that the crimes of these gentlemen,-learned, honourable, right honourable, and noble, though they be called, -surpass in criminality, the crimes committed by nine-tenths of the young creatures whom we condemn to fester in wickedness, in our prisons and our penal colonies.

The perjury suffrage has sprung up in the presence of many agitations for universal suffrage, or rather, as it ought to be called, manhood suffrage. In the last fifteen years, a great body of our population have, under different leaders and organizations, been agitating for the possession of the suffrage by every man of sane mind, and unstained by crime. They have had a thousand prisoners for their principles. They have sought the enfranchisement of every man, by means of declamations, demonstrastions, and clamour; and the working classes have, in the pursuit of their object, shown great zeal, and much endurance, and many men endowed with the gifts of popular eloquence. Meanwhile, undetected, unexposed, undenounced by these agitators for an infinitesmal portion of electoral power, a few scores of unscrupulous men have seized, by fraud and perjury, the dominancy of many most important seats. But practical efficiency is not the characteristic of the orators of the political tea-parties. While they have been eloquent about universal rights, and indulging in the quackeries of torch-light meetings, or land colonies, or labour banks, or mischievously shedding blood, or seditiously earning imprisonments, perjury has rushed to the poll, and returned the members.

The electioneering agent makes himself powerful in the constituency, and necessary to the wealthy candidate. His traffic in seats is notorious. By means of cliques, he does what the boroughmongers did. The parliamentary agents are as much boroughmongers as ever were the personages partially abolished by the Reform Act, and unquestionably they are boroughmongers of a worse description. Their cliques are called reform societies, or conservative societies. In some of these associations, there is ostensibly a great deal of discussion about the sentiments and characters, the opinions and eligibility of candidates. these are only the show-subjects of inquiry. The uninitiated members are amused before they are sold. The sum the candidate will spend upon the attorneys is the point upon which

But

his acceptance really turns. Woe be to the candidate who refuses to spend a single sixpence illegally. No matter how unanimously the society may have selected him, he never will be returned. Every engine of deception, calumny, fraud, and treachery, will do their worst against him. The candidate who buys the agent will buy the seat, and while he retains them by satisfying their rapacity, will enjoy his possession snugly and comfortably. Amusing and curious stories are told of the rapacity of these agents. Recently, at Cambridge, Mr. Manners Sutton was severely reprimanded by his constituents for inconsistency as a politician and unfaithfulness as a representative, in having voted for free trade in food. But the real meaning was, 'Down with the ready.' If the money had been all right, the tergiversation would have been all right. But the attorneys of the Cambridge Fens are nothing to the attorneys of the Kent Hills. Mr. David Salomons stood for Maidstone in 1841, unsuccessfully, and paid his expenses duly. But the Maidstone agents told him, 'We will be glad to have you, but nine years ago there was a Liberal candidate who stood, and did not pay his expenses, and we will have no Liberal candidate who will not pay his own expenses, and the old score of the Liberal of

nine years ago.

Seats are sold in divers ways. The agreement most preferred by candidates is to pay a certain sum per head for every voter. Sometimes the agreement between the candidate and the agent is for a certain sum, if successful, and a certain less sum, if unsuccessful. For large sums, the agent will guarantee a successful return. Candidates of experience regard nothing with greater dread than an appearance of generosity on the part of an agent. The candidate who has been once burnt' trembles when he hears the agent offering 'to do it as a friend.' The wise candidate prefers to agree to pay exact, even if large sums.

'An eminent tradesman, of the west end of London, tells the following anecdote:-He was asked by a friend if he knew a suitable candidate for a seat. On reflection, he thought he knew the very man.' Unfortunately for himself, this very man had some experience of electioneering tricks. After ascertaining all preliminaries about suitable principles and views, the gentleman asked how much money he would be expected to spend. The reply was-that it had been customary, hitherto, for the candidate to pay a third, and the constituency two-thirds, of the legal and proper expenses, but, if he chose, he might be returned purely and for nothing. 'But surely,' said the gentleman to the tradesman, 'you will expect a commission for the recommendation.' 'I have never thought of such a thing, and have not the least wish or expectation of such a thing, but I

will take as much commission as you like.' 'But if you will have nothing,' continued the other, the gentleman who introduces me to the constituency, your friend, will expect something.' He bid me offer to return you entirely free of expense.' The offer was too good. All could not be right. A panic of suspicion was roused by proceedings so irregular and unusual, and disinterested; and the gentleman lost being returned to Parliament purely, by rejecting the negotiation, in a fit of terror lest he should be ruined by sharpers.'

The agent is frequently a proprietor of the newspaper of his party, which circulates among the constituency. A curious illustration of the connection between a certain class of journalists and the electioneering agents, appeared in an advertisement in the London journals, just prior to the general election of last year. A company of attorneys announced to intending candidates that they had all the machinery requisite to carry out the election of an M.P., including registries, canvassing clerks, and writers of eminence.' If the editor be not a man of independence and talent, the agent will, as a proprietor, and attorney for proprietors, often be able to compel him to support a candidate of whom he does not approve. Really 'able editors,' of course, defy such dictation. An electioneering agent at Glasgow, during the general election, ousted Dr. Mackay from the editorship of the Glasgow Argus, for refusing to wheel round and attack Mr. John Macgregor, whose unrivalled claims the journal had always supported. The editor, like a man of spirit, spurned the dictation, published the affair, and, proving too strong for the agent, the candidate who paid him was defeated, and the newspaper is defunct. But the fact is well known, that the press is one of the engines at the command of the agents for electioneering purposes.

By his connection with the publicans, the parliamentary agent strengthens the hold he derives from his registration proceedings upon the constituency and the candidate. He gives his I. O. U. to the publicans of the open houses. By hundreds of 'brandies,' and thousands of 'gins,' he keeps the electors together, whom he sells to the highest bidder. His screen, or blind, or cloak, -the reform society, or the conservative association, always meets in a tavern, and commonly one frequented by the different lodges, friendly societies, and clubs of the working classes. Through the publican, the lawyer learns every man's price. The lawyer and the publican have an equal interest in the moral destruction of the electors. They thrive by moral death,-like authentic vampires of souls, as they are! Liquid fire destroys men for them. They prepare the apotheosis of the lawgiver, by means of the fire-waters of the Evil Spirit.

Survey the powers now accumulated in the hands of the everbusy parliamentary agent. He is the lawyer who enforces the payment of their rents upon needy tenants. He is the man who wields the terrible coercions of seven-day leases, of distress warrants, of executions and ejectments. He is the executioner of the legal tortures by which the needy tenant is degraded into a voting machine. By his cunning, he has struck many righteous voters off the roll, and deterred many men, justly entitled, from lodging their claims, for fear of much cost and great trouble,-of annoyance and vexation in establishing them. His perjury voters overwhelm the roll. Prepared in these multifarious ways for the election, he is not merely indispensable to the wealthy candidate he has preferred, but, in the guise of his slave, he is his lord. When both parties have been criminal alike, and have abundant funds, the contested election is just a battle of crimes.

As the polling day approaches, voters are enveigled away to great distances, or forcibly abducted by fighting-men, until they promise their votes; or, if they refuse, they are kept cooped in the gardens of noble lords, or in taverns, or on river-islands, until the polling is over.

But the night prior to the polling-day is the dark time of electoral crime. The open houses are full. The market of consciences is at its height. The constituency is divided into wards, and in each the electioneering agent has his emissaries, who are flitting about mysteriously, and holding their secret interviews. Cunning-eyed myrmidons of the lawyers' offices enter the houses of honest men on this evening, the thresholds of which at any other time they would not dare to cross. The virtuous wife listens anxiously to the whispered inducements and the golden clinkings, which too often unman and debase the partner of her life. By other hearths, the base wife loudly joins the corrupter in the seduction. Many homes are without their men, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers. These are in the taverns: but there are hundreds of them who will be out all night. Large cellars and lofts are fitted up with every means of drunkenness, and in them the bribed voters are kept confined throughout the night, to be ready for the opening of the poll in the morning. The price some men put upon their consciences can on this night be estimated to a pound. Generally Radicals, they hate both the parties to whom they prostitute themselves, and where a Radical candidate stands, they will come to the committee-room, saying, 'The Whigs pay fifteen and the Tories pay twenty pounds, but we think you best for the nation, and will vote for you for ten pounds. Five pounds is thus the price of the conscience, Through holes in doors or in walls, the

In some

hands of persons unseen pass the bribery money. constituencies, there are some electors who make up their rents from bribes. During the night, they get paid for promises to break their promises, they receive bribes all round, and then vote for the party whose fighting men have kidnapped them, and locked them up, and carried them to the poll at the polling hour. It is a contest of boxes of gold. However, of all the demon scenes, the political agent is the life, and soul, and lord. Of these pandemoniums he is the hero. Of this hideous and monstrous creation of crime he is the king. Fraud has disfranchised for him. Law has entrapped for him. Perjury has enfranchised for him. Gold sparkles with a soul-destroying spell for him. Drunkenness prostrates reason for him. Violence wields brutal bludgeons for him. To help him, on hundreds of tables and in thousands of hands, the pleasant poisons gleam, many-hued, in crystal, amidst the fumes of tobacco, the music of debauchery, and the brawls of riot. As for the candidate, he is the automaton of the agent, going where told, speaking when told, and obediently blind, or dumb, or deaf. It is the hour of the genius of demoralization, and he reigns over all, and pervades all in this dismal midnight market of souls. For the time he is the anarch of the moral world,

• With havoc and ruin his game.'

Chaotic crime is creating the British lawmakers!

'But there are tribunals for the punishment of electoral criminalities,' it may be remarked, 'election committees, qui tau actions, etc.' Undoubtedly there are, but the electoral system has been well called, one vast lie,' and wherever you go into it, you find falseness, and always encounter, beyond the whitewash, rottenness. Of no part of the system is this more true, than of the processes for the punishment of electoral offences.

The committees which sit for the trial of controverted elections have just afforded one chance more for the man of the longest purse. They are machines for taming independent members. Terrified by the prospect of ruin, members of moderate fortune, who would not willingly ask a favour of any party chiefs, find themselves suddenly obliged to entreat them to use their influence to get a petition quashed. Colonel Thompson it was, we think, who once declared in the House, that he had been virtually thrown down at the door of the House of Commons, and robbed of two thousand pounds.' Mr. Reynolds, the member for Dublin, was returned by popular enthusiasm, without expense. But he has been compelled to ask the aid of the subscriptions of his party, to prevent his being ruined by a vexatious and iniquitous petition.

VOL. XXIV.

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