THE IMPORTUNITY FOR THE BRIBERS.
THE Liberal Members of Parliament who have, unfor- tunately, joined in the request for the remission of the sentence on the Bribers, have made a very serious mistake. Indeed, since we last wrote, a correspondent of the Daily News has shown that the one plausible plea for the remission of the severe sentence passed,—the want of notice,—does not really exist. In writing on this subject., we alleged, what is now singularly verified, that if the Judges had gives notice of their intention to punish bribery with the full penalties at their disposal, the notice would never have taken hold of the mind of the public, and now we have the absolute proof of this allegation of ours. It is shown that in dealing. with the Bridgewater Bribery cases in 1870, reported by the Times on May 11411 in that year, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, did give the most ample and deliberate notice that it was his in- tention, and that of his colleagues, to inflict the severer penalties allowed by law in future cases of the same kind. In the pre- sence of Lord Blackburn, Sir John Mellor, and Sir James Hannen, the Lord Chief Justice then said :— " Your case has afforded us-an opportunity of giving general RAPS- ing to the whole community Omit this, Ethekriberyian-Bridgewaterj Is-a mime which the Couruwill feel itaelf bound to use the utmost of us power to repress, in-all futitre-cases in which for-subscquent offences persons shall be bronght Tor ptunehmear; mere' etch cases we-shall
do all we can, by the most rigorous exercise of our power, to put a stop to these pernicious practices. Considering, however, that
this is the first instance in which any one has been brought up in this Court to be sentenced after a conviction for bribery, we will not gu to that extent, as it might involve some harsh- ness or injustice. We shall not, therefore, do in your case what we have quite made up our minds to do in future cases. And I take this opportunity of publicly declaring that we shall in all future cases think it our duty to enforce the law to its utmost extent, and that we shall think it our duty to subject any one convicted of future bribery to the most degrading and humiliating punishment, by refusing to make the offender a first-class misdemeanant. We shall not do so in your case, because it is the first instance in which we have been called upon to put the law in force. But we feel it to be our duty to mark the sense of the gravity and enormity of the offence, against which statute after statute has been passed, and which is aggravated by the circumstance that it was committed after an Aot had been passed showing a serious intention in the Legisla- ture to put down corrupt practices at elections. We, therefore, think it necessary to impose upon you a severe sentence, and that sentence is imprisonment for twelve months, and a fine of £1,000."
No more express and formal notice could have been given. But it impressed nobody, because it was thought to be a mere threat. Better evidence could not be produced of our assertion that the only way in which effectual " notice " of this kind of penalty can be given, is to use the powers given by the law on some culprit or culprits who have not realised that those powers ever would be used. No doubt, it is hard upon them that they should be made the means of giving effectual " notice " to the rest of the world. But, as we have seen, the more lenient sentence which the apologists for bribery reproached the Judges for not having given was actually given, with full notice that it would not be given again, and was not enough. The threat fell upon stony ground, on the hard unbelief of men who would not and could not think that any one really desired to punish bribery by a degrading punishment, and therefore it took no effect. If the same thing is to be done over again, if the present mis- demeanants are to be exalted into social martyrs, the rest of their sentences remitted, and they themselves welcomed back into social life by an enthusiastic public, the notice now effectually given will have been as effectually withdrawn. Nothiog could be so ruinous to the cause of purity of election as that the present movement for the release of these bribers should succeed. The mere fact that sufficient public sympathy had been elicited to induce Sir William Harcourt to make such a recommendation to her Majesty, would morally white- wash all such bribers for a long time to come. It would amount to a public declaration that bribery is a venial sort of offence, the severe punishment of which had caused so great a scandal to the conscience of England, that it was found im- possible seriously to enforce a sentence passed deliberately by the Judges—after ample notice of their intention to pass such a sentence, so far as sufficient notice could be given by any- thing but action—and after full conference, as it is stated, with their brethren on the Bench. The plea now urged for sail a remission of the sentence is that if the present victims deserve their sentence, a vast number of other gentlemen enjoy- ing their freedom, and perhaps even quite unconscious of any stain upon their consciences, deserve it too ; and that it is not fair that they should go scot-free, when their associates in guilt are suffering the pains of ordinary misdemeanants. The plea is so weak that it must make even those who urge it laugh, as they place it upon paper. If no enhancement of the penalties of any offence can be justly introduced till all who have suffered the lighter penalties of a former time have passed away, so as not to scandalise us by the inequality of their sufferings, no such enhancement of penalty could ever be in- troduced at all. There will always be offenders to be punished. If they are punished on the old-and more lenient system, in order that there may be no invidious comparisons made between them and their predecessors in the same offence, then their lenient punishment will serve as the plea for leniency to future offenders of the same class, and so we shall go on for ever. The truth is, that when the public estimate of an offence has really grown severer, there must be a com- mencement in enforcing the severer penalty ; and if the pre- sent most just beginning is not to be justified, the Judges will very rightly hesitate to follow their present precedent in future.
But, in truth, Sir William Harcourt will never dream of yielding to this unwise and unpatriotic attempt to put pressure upon him for the pardon of the prisoners. As far as we know, the Secretary of State never recommends a pardon to the Crown without first communicating with the Judge who posed the sentence, and very seldom without receiving his
sanction to the pardon. If he communicates with the Judges who passed these sentences, he will, we are very sure, receive no such sanction, for they are justified by the notice given in 1870 by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, and also, as we believe, by the approval of their colleagues on the Bench. But for a Secretary of State to advise a pardon without the sanction of the Judges would be a scandal so serious, that Sir William Harcourt, who has a wholesome respect for the conventions of his office, would never dream of it. It would, indeed, be a heavy blow to purity of election. And whatever Sir William Harcourt may think of the pro- spect of purity of election, we are quite sure that we shall not find him amongst those who will publicly sneer at it. He is much more likely to write a letter to one of the Judges, congratulating the Bench on their courage in taking the requisite steps for putting down Bribery with a strong hand.
We feel pretty confident, therefore, that this movement for relieving the bribers of their disgrace will fail, as it well
deserves to fail. It is perfectly true, of course, that these gentlemen regard themselves as martyrs, and feel no shame at all for the acts of which they have been guilty. But that is precisely the mischief which we desire to see removed. And the only way, so far as we know, to make gentlemen of this class feel bribery to be a shameful and un- gentlemanly act, is to persist in treating those who are guilty of it as if they had committed an ordinary crime. If a serious deficiency in their own consciences were any reason why offenders should not be punished, there would be a great many more burglars and pickpockets with a reasonable claim for the remission of their sentences than there are bribers. In their case, by strictly enforcing the penalty of the law, we try to fit them with a new conscience, the reflex in some degree of the disapprobation of society ; and, to some extent, we hope that we succeed. We must do the same with the bribers. No doubt it will be difficult at first to get it into their heads that it is a disgraceful thing to tempt a poor man with money either to profess an opinion which he has not got, or even if he does hap- pen to be the owner of such an opinion, to tempt him by the offer of money not to keep it to himself. But if we are but sturdy in enforcing the belief of society that these acts are disgraceful and disastrous to all true patriotism, we shall before long succeed in making the political agents, of both sides feel some faint sense of shame in confessing that they were parties to them. Directly an act ceases to be " respectable " in England, it comes near to being held shameful. And bribery will not cease to be respectable till it entails the cropping of the offender's hair and the other amenities of prison discipline.
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