The first session of this Parliament will be memorable for the exposure which has signalized it, of the rottenness of the Reform Act. Probably, more than five-sixths of the improper returns have escaped notice, been compromised, managed, hushed up. But the effluvia of about fifty cases has reached the public nostrils. Hence the attempts of Lord John Russell to construct sewer traps! These exposures have not taken place because the constitution provides any regular means for the detection of electoral criminalities. The tendencies of the law and practice are all the other way. The exposures have taken place because in the committees the guiltiest, if the richest, candidate, has a machinery provided for him, which gives him a chance of gaining the seat by an expenditure of money.

When Lord John Russell legislates against electoral criminalities, imposture is sure to receive an additional and ingenious illustration. While public indignation was fresh against the exposures, Sir John Hanmer introduced a bill which provided for inquiry on the spot, by commissioners paid by the Treasury. It gained favour with the House, and Lord John said it was so admirable, he would abandon his own, and adopt it. But he adopted it only to abandon it in its turn, and to introduce a third bill, entitled- A Bill to provide for Inquiry into the Existence of Corrupt Practices at Elections of Members to serve in Parliament, in certain cases.' This, in truth, is a bill to prevent inquiry in all future cases. The motive for incurring the risk, expense, and trouble, of the election committees has been the hope or prospect of the seat. Hence the exposures. Lord John Russell has provided against them in future, by two measures of this session, one of them already the law of the land. This is an Act on the subject of Recognizances. No electoral criminalities can be exposed, unless there be £2000 to back the evidence, and the petitioners enter into recognizances for the amount. There is an officer called the examiner of recognizances, whose duty it is to see that they are sufficient. A recognizance is a document in which a man declares himself, on oath before a magistrate, to be bound to pay a certain sum of money, if called upon in certain circumstances specified. Hitherto, the recognizances have been held to be sufficient, if the examiner certified the fact. But by the new Act, the member may contest the sufficiency of the recognizances before the committee, and increase the expenses and uncertainties of the struggle. This is another advantage given to the rich man, or the man backed by riches. This is an additional obstacle interposed to the exposure of electoral criminalities. To be armed with truth is nothing in this affair. Truth without two thousand pounds is nought. But truth, with two thousand, (unless every

technicality has met with the most scrupulous compliance, and the preliminary facts and forms connected with the money have come forth victorious from a contest, before the most expensive and uncertain tribunals in the world,) is now good for nothing towards the trial of a controverted election. What is this Act, but one for the hushing up of corrupt practices?

The bill, the third of the anti-bribery bills of the session, will assist the Act, in covering up and concealing the offences for whose exposure it professedly provides. This bill destroys the motive which has caused the exposures,-the prospect of the seat. When the corrupt practices are proved before the committee, it recommends the appointment of a select committee; and if this body report in favour of an inquiry on the spot, the petitioning candidate will not be seated, but the borough will be disfranchised. The corrupt practices will be proved to be customary, and then the petitioner has expended many thousands of pounds for the destruction of his influence in the constituency, and its electoral extinction, with all his hopes of ever representing it, or any borough similar to it. The collection of evidence, the backing it with £2000, the proving the sufficiency of the recognizances before the examiner, and then before. the committee, and then establishing the existence of the corrupt practices, by witnesses, whose evidence is disfranchising themselves without benefitting the petitioning candidate, vast expenses, anxieties, and uncertainties, which end, not in becoming an honourable gentleman with an affix to his name, but in being the object of the hatred and revenge of a corrupt and disfranchised constituency, the marked man of the election agents, -who is ever likely henceforth to be a petitioner against an undue return?

The effect of this bill must be, to make agents, candidates, and electors, enter into compacts against petitioning. None of them has anything to gain by it; they must all lose by it. This bill provides for inquiry by making hushing the interest of everybody.

Public opinion is not healthy on the subject of electoral criminality. Such legislation as we have described, could not have been proposed, if the people regarded these iniquities as they appear in the light of the Bible. A bribe is a price paid for the power to oppress. The fruit of electoral bribery is oppressive taxation-taxation bearing lightly on the bribers and bribetakers, and heavily upon the industrious and the poor. The chief shape in which the unhealthiness of the public mind shows itself, is in an unwillingness to believe in the extent of the criminality. But attention to the subject would destroy all doubts. A gentleman, long a member of parliament, has de

clared the result of his knowledge to be, 'of the six hundred and fifty-eight members, there are not more than the odd fiftyeight who are returned purely.' The indisposition to receive painful convictions, which is the chief screen of evil and crime, and in some, a sign of sympathy with the criminalities, will induce many persons to regard this statement as an exaggeration. But ask the habitués of the political clubs of Pall Mall and St. James's street. They will reply, "The six hundred bribers are easily found, but who are the pure fifty-eight?'

Different, indeed, is our actual morality from the morality of the Bible, on the subject of bribery and corruption. Thanks to the temperance movement, drunkenness is regarded with an increasing, though not a sufficient abhorrence. Fraud, robbery, and murder, are regarded by public opinion with aversion and indignation, approaching the scriptural standard. But this is not the case with bribery. Who ever heard a sermon upon this national crime? In what volume of sermons is there one upon it? But, if the immense majority of the members of both houses of parliament are bribers, is it not true that nearly all our pulpit occupiers stand uncovered before them, conniving at their sin by silence? The moral atmosphere of the people is favourable to the electoral crimes of their rulers. There is a parliament of bribers, and a sacerdotal order of connivers.

In the inspired denunciations, oppression, hypocrisy, and bribery, go together. The demand of the righteous Samuel was, 'Whom have I oppressed? from whose hands have I taken a bribe?' The Psalmist prays, 'Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men, in whose hands is mischief, and whose right hand is full of bribes.' 'The upright man,' says Isaiah, 'despiseth the gain of oppressions, he shaketh his hands from the holding of bribes.' Amos, the prophet, cries, For I know your manifold transgressions, and your mighty sins; they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.' Eliphaz the Temanite, in the book of Job, declares, 'The congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.'

Why are these texts muzzled by the clergy? Is this the work done for advowsons, benefices, endowments, and royal gifts? But why do the religious teachers of the people see the bribe-taker carrying his soul to market, and let him pass unwarned? why do they speak of bribers as honourable, right honourable, and noble?

Most humbly do we submit, that a ministry faithful to the Bible and the people, ought to expound such texts as we have quoted, at every election time.

357

ART. IX. Catlin's Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, with his North American Indian Collection. With numerous Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1848.

THIS work realizes an object of much general importance, for which several centuries have furnished ample materials; and which Mr. Catlin's opportunities, turned to an excellent account through his honest zeal in a good cause, have enabled him to present with rare fidelity and force.

That object is, the characteristic portraiture of the North American Indian, when visiting our towns, and mingling familiarly with civilized men. Mr. Catlin had already drawn, with success, a full-length picture of the Indian in his native haunts; here he describes as fully the same poor child of Nature in the centre of refinement and wealth:-' When, with all his rudeness and wildness, he stands among his fellow-men to be scanned in the brilliant blaze of the levée, the dignified, the undaunted, and even courteous gentleman, he gains his strongest admirers, and the most fastidious willingly assign him a high place in the scale of human beings.'

Mr. Catlin's residence in Europe was devoted to the exhibition of a valuable collection of Indian curiosities and drawings. Spending several years in London, Paris, and elsewhere, for this purpose, he was eagerly sought by parties of Indians, also visiting Europe, as their friend and protector. He was their interpreter at the hospitable board, and the soirées of the nobility and crowned heads of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Belgium; and justly thinks it due to them, to record the scenes and anecdotes he had witnessed in those hospitable and friendly efforts of enlightened and religious people, to elicit the true native feelings of their benighted fellow-men.'

Such is Mr. Catlin's account of the object of his work, so far as respects the Native Indians seen at his rooms. He has, also, given a narrative of his own visit to Europe, with the incidents during several years' exhibitions of his Indian collection; and the testimony of the press in favour of that collection, and of his former book on his travels among the Indians.

The whole form a deeply interesting account of the impressions made on the public, by a laborious effort to enlighten the civilized world, respecting the history and character of its uncivilized brother, and to excite a warm sympathy in his hard fate.

Mr. Catlin's present volumes contain many curious things, of

which the following trait of the late Mr. Murray, the publisher, in regard to the first work, may be taken as a specimen :

'The Notes,' says Mr. Catlin, of my Eight Years' Travels amongst Forty-eight different Tribes of Indians in America, to be illustrated with more than 300 steel plate illustrations, were nearly ready to be put to press; and I called on my good friend John Murray, in Albemarle Street, believing that he would be glad to publish them for me. To my surprise he objected to them (but without seeing my manuscript), for two reasons which he at once alleged: first, because he was afraid of the great number of illustrations to be embodied in the work, and secondly for (certainly) the most unfashionable reason, that he loved me too much!' I had brought a letter of introduction to him from his old friend Washington Irving; and from the deep interest Mr. Murray had taken in my collection and the history and prospects of the poor Indians, my rooms (which were near his dwelling-house) were his almost daily resort, and I a weekly guest at his hospitable board, where I always met gentlemen of eminence connected with literature and art. Good and generous old man! he therefore 'loved me too much' to share with me the profits of a work which he said should all belong to me, for my hard labour and the risks of my life I had run in procuring it; and as the means of enlarging those profits, he advised me to publish it myself. I would advise you,' said he, as one of your best friends, to publish your own book; and I am sure you will make a handsome profit by it. Being an artist yourself, and able to make the drawings for your 300 illustrations, which for me would require a very great outlay to artists to produce them, and having in your exhibitionroom the opportunity of receiving subscriptions for your work, which I could not do, it will be quite an easy thing for you to take names enough to cover all the expenses of getting it up, which at once will place you on safe ground; and if the work should be well received by Mr. Dilke and others of the critical world, it will insure you a handsome reward for your labours, and exceedingly please your sincere friend, John Murray.'

"This disinterested frankness endeared me to that good man, to his last days, and his advice, which I followed, resulted, as he had predicted, to my benefit. My subscription list, my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had in a few days commenced, with the subscriptions of

HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN,

H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT,

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN DOWAGER,
H. R. H. THE DUCHESS OF KENT,

HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS,
H. M. THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS,

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX,
H. R. H. LEOPOLD DUC DE BRABANT,

After which soon followed a complimentary list of the nobility and gentry, together with the leading institutions of the kingdom.

·

My work was published by myself, at the Egyptian Hall, and the only fears which my good friend John Murray had expressed for me