- THE FRANCHISE AS A TRUST.
IT is proposed to disenfranchise Berwick for bribery and cor- ruption as it has been proposed to disfranchise or even to punish individual voters for the reception of bribes. '00 • uiries in the town of Berwick disclose the fact, a Itea for election in that boraugh have not been chosen onm e0seete..7 Politi- cal grounds, but on other grounds. Mr. Ralph Ai. aro. svaer Earle distributed money and held out a hope of barracee; "nd this electors preferred him to a gentleman who was not so opood or so promising. Captain Gordon took another course : he bbil,le a church, and was generally' charitable ; and although he failed tç one election' on a subsequent occasion the town appreciated hi tal better. Its decision was, that Gordon should represent Berwick; and there really does appear to be precisely that relation between Gordon and Berwick which makes him a very fair representative man of the place. It was a manage de convenance between people without romantic notions, who looked upon a settlement in life political as the great object of such alliances, and who duly at- tained their object. We might suppose, therefore, that Captain Gordon and Mr. Earle a gentleman of similar conduct, actually re- present Berwick better than any man of more pecuniary punctilio. The argument for disfranchisement, or for the p mishment of individual voters, we believe would run somewhat in this fashion. Franchise is conferred upon a particular class of the country, because it is considered to represent the remainder of the country, or at all events the superior qualities and intelligence of the country. The franchise conferred upon the voter, therefore, is a privilege accompanied by an obligation ; and it is the duty of the voter to select as the representative of the country the person who would be its best representative. If we state the ease wrongly we should be glad to be corrected. According to this aspect of the question, the voter is a public officer who holds his office, not by special appointment, but by the force of a general law. It is his duty to be selector for the remainder of the community; and if he does not select according to his judgment he is a defaulter in his duty. Now the moral responsibility of the voter should be pre- cisely in proportion to the powers which he possesses for the execution of his duty. But the judgment of any individual voter in Berwick is liable to be neutralized by the judgment of 813 other voters ; so that in point of fact each selecting officer in the town of Berwick only exercises the 814th part of a selecting power, sustaining, therefore, just the 814th part of a responsi- bility. To whom is his responsibility ? Theoretically it is due to the remainder of the 3200 men who are unenfranchised in Berwick, for whom he holds the "trust ;" but how is the appeal to be made towards those trusters? How do we know that, even if the 816 enfranchised selectors of Berwick had acted upon certain grounds, they may not represent the entire body of the Berwick people ? And if so, how have these public officers, appointed by the last Parliamentary Franchise Act, "violated their trust?' They are accused of having been guided in their selection by certain motives; the Acts of Parliament regulating the franchise, therefore, undertake to deal with the motives of men. This is a very delicate and difficult task. What is it that the selectors are bound to do ? They are bound to select, as representatives of the country, those men who are the best according to the judgment of the selectors. But what are the constitutionally recognized stan- dards attesting the judicial fitness of the selectors ? °Is it educa- tion, or any moral quality ? No, it is mostly the possession of a certain property, or the payment of certain moneys. With a class thus selected by money standards, it is very natural that money should exercise a great influence. The lower you descend in the intellectual or moral scale of society, the more empirical and trivial will every- kind of standard become. It is in strict logic quite possible that the selector may think the per- son who pays him three or four pounds actually .a better man,—
i fitter to sit n a national council, than a gentleman whose judg- ment is so far short of the other as only to pay one or two pounds ; while no pounds at all would indicate intellectual vacuity to the man who judges by money standards. How can we dictate to any individual selector the motives by which he is to be guided in his judgment,—the standards, the tests in that chemistry of polities? Or, if we attempt to dictate motives, how are we to enforce our dictate positively? The whole difficulty seems to arise from the attempt at appointing a vast multitude of political officers who are to act as trustees for four-fifths of the population, which have no voice in the appointment of those trustees, no power of en- forcing the trust, and no means even of expressing a judgment upon the exercise of the trust. Or, if the franchise is not a trust, upon what grounds is any restraint at all put upon the judgment of the elector ? Why should he not be free to choose his own representative according to his own judgment ? Fiat experimentum ! We are not arguing for the encourage- ment of bribery ; we are arguing for perfect free trade in opinion, perfect freedom of electoral judgment; without which we never can attain the only true relation between the representative and the represented,—thorough freedom of choice and actual conge- niality of sentiment. If legislators succeed in empirically con- triving a check upon bribery in one form, the only result is to stimulate ingenuity in contriving another form of bribery.
The real cure for this species of misrepresentation, whether by the Member in Parliament, or by the enfranchised selectors in elections, is by a direct, absolute, and unrestrained appeal to the country itself, the entire population. Not, indeed, that we would recommend any Member to bring in a bill for such a measure in any sense whatever ; but it is never too soon to recognize the ab- stract principles of any science, even of politics.
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