THE LAST EFFORT AGAINST BRIBERY.
FEW measures have been debated with more zeal and care than the bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to bribery, treating, and undue influence at elections of Members of Parliament. Three classes of Members appear to have devoted themselves to this assiduous and painstaking process of constructing and revising the measure,—those who are sincerely desirous of effecting, if pos- sible, a legislative check for bribery ; those who foresee the dif- ficulties, impracticabilities, perhaps injurious working, of in- quisitorial laws, and endeavour therefore, in all sincerity, to mo- derate, amend, and purify the measure itself; and thirdly, those who, conscious of little irregularities in the return of themselves or their friends, wish if possible to disarm the statute of some degree of its efficacy. The last party has not been altogether unsuccessful in the debate ; it will, we fear, be yet more successful in the work, ing of the measure. The chief object of the bill is to check bribery. There is no step towards abolishing a wrong so important as to arrive at a clear understanding what the wrong really is : what, then, is bribery ? The bill takes nearly one folio page for " bribery defined "; and a good bit more for "bribery further defined." Here is above a folio page of definitions ; with the usual effect—that the words heaped up in the endeavour to shut out every conceivable miscon- ception clash against each other, and introduce two new agencies of misconstruction. A definition that is a folio page wide affords ample room for the proverbial coach-and-six. But that is not all. The bill next makes the audacious effort to define "undue influ- ence "; and yet, in a clause about half a folio page long, there is no mention of the Duchess of- Devonshire style of influence. In fact, a statute cannot define the undefinable. Amongst the disabilities which the bill attaches to bribery are these two, that. the candidate cannot be elected to the House of Commons for a period of seven years, and that the offending voters shall be struck out of the register ; and the bill has other safeguards, including a prohibition upon the use of cockades. Yet who will expect that the neighbouring landlord, the wellanown customer, tb* opent•
handed candidate, the lovely canvasser, shall not have influence as much after the bill as before; probably more than before,—an influence exercised -under all the romantic aggravation of being more than ever illicit, forbidden, smuggled?
The bill defines too much, directs too much, legalizes too much. It permits voters to be brought from a distance at the expense of a candidate or party. It will be lawful to give an elector a rail- way ticket, but not a crust of bread. Yet a bribe may be as well weapped up in railway fare as in a tavern bill. To complete the round of mutually sustaining enactments, there should be a clause to prohibit evasion. The plain disavowal to be made by the Mem- ber is struck out ! If there remains one hopeful provision, it is the direction that a person shall be appointed, to be called "the Auditor of Election Expenses," through whom all payments shall be made. But it appears to us that the desired result would have been rendered more probable if a far shorter bill had been passed. It 'might have contained that one clause and have also forbidden the candidate to pay any'expenses whatever directly, leaving the hustings to be paid for by the district, and the candidate to pay only. for the personal charge that he occasions. If the candidate were forbidden to pay except to the Auditor within a certain space of distance and time; if the Auditor were to send up the election- bill of expenses to the Speaker with the return for the election; if all these details were, submitted to an officer in the House of Com- mons; if that officer were empowered to disallow any payment improperly made, and if the disallowance were to fall upon the Auditor himself,—that officer would be rendered practically re- sponsible ; he would refuse questionable payments, and there would be some chance that money intended for purposes of bribe- ry and corruption would be stopped in its passage. There is nothing like concentrating responsibility, and making the person upon whom it is concentrated feel that a breach of duty would be costly to himself. Under such circumstances, of course, a hand- some salary would be due to the Auditor of Election Expenses; but, we presume, in expressing so great an anxiety to abolish cor- ruption, Parliament and the public are prepared to pay for an in- strument of purification.
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