The Spectator puts forward a proposal to tackle the extreme corruption that existed in the 1880 elections by suggesting that the cost of the election, and of all future elections for the next five or ten years, be paid by the ratepayers.
Spectator commentary on the publication of the Commissioners Report to Parliament in February 1881.
Commentary on the ‘heroic scale’ of the bribery uncovered in the various election petitions being heard around the country. ‘It would appear that in the art of corruption, as in the art of advertising, no half-measures are of any avail, and the man who resorts to them merely throws his money away.’
An apology about a previous article overstating the honesty of rascals as demonstrated by the behaviour of voters in the Sandwich Election’s habit of taking bribes from both sides.
Could anything be baser than to swell the votes on either side, by voting for the candidate who paid them most?
Sir Henry James, in moving for a Commission to inquire into the Corrupt Practices at Gloucester, Macclesfield, Chester, Knaresborough, Boston, Oxford, and Sandwich, expressed a rather sanguine opinion that corrupt …
