CORRUPTION AT ENGLISH ELECTIONS.
Published: October 23, 1880 Copyright The New York Times
The Election Commissions now sitting in England have unearthed a surprising variety of corrupt practices by which the provisions of the Ballot act were evaded or defied at the last election.
Petitions for investigation have issued from a large number of boroughs. Commissions have lately been sitting in Oxford, Sandwich, Chester, Canterbury, Knaresborough, and Macclesfield.
The ingenious mind of the American political “worker” is supposed to be capable of inventing any kind of device that may be called for to carry a closely contested ward, but the published reports of the investigations in such places as Macclesfield, in the university town of Oxford, or in the cathedral city of Canterbury, the earliest home of the Christian religion in England, prove that our most cunning manipulators have hardly mastered the merest rudiments of their art.
Of the higher ornamental branches as they are known and practiced by the English election agent they have but a faint conception. The use of repeaters, said to be common in many States and cities here, and the open purchase of votes are very coarse forms of election frauds. For these they substitute in England a wholesale “employment” of voters in the work of “canvassing.”
The number and character of uses to which a voter can be put on polling day is amazing. In one ward in Oxford. 97 “clerks and messengers” were employed by the Conservatives, though there were only 907 voters in the ward, and they nearly all belonged to the Conservative Party, and ought to have required very little “electioneering.” One Conservative committeeman bought 100 flags and hired men to carry them. Horses were hired of voters, and other voters were hired to deck them with blue rosettes and drive them about the streets. Ten or twelve shillings would be paid to a voter for the privilege of displaying a flag from his house, or to set up a flag-pole in his yard. The flags, rosettes, and streamers would mysteriously disappear during the night, and next day more voters would be hired to provide others and exhibit them.
It will be remembered that in the April election Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT was returned for Oxford. On his offering himself for re-election after his appointment as Home Secretary he was defeated by Mr. HALL, the Conservative candidate. Mr. HALL was subsequently unseated on petition, corrupt practices on an extensive scale being alleged. It now appears that £3,000 was sent down from the Carlton Club in London to help on his election, and a further sum of £500 was raised in Oxford.
In addition to this, Mr. HALL contributed liberally, and as he owns nearly all the public houses in Oxford, and is a brewer, he had the powerful influence of unlimited free beer at work on his side. It is proved that the Liberal agent was guilty of illegal expenditures, but it seems that the drunkenness was all on the side of the Conservatives. Mr. HALL’s beer and the Carlton Club’s banknotes effected a political revolution in the an- cient university town. It rarely appears that so well-founded a suspicion of collusion with the agent in his corrupt practices attaches to a candidate as is the case of Mr. HALL.
GATHORNE-HARDY lost his seat for Canterbury on account of illegal methods, of which no one supposes that he had any knowledge whatever. Each candidate employs an agent to work for him in the canvass, and the men employed for this purpose are too often carried away by their own zeal and the excitement of a close contest; but the candidate suffers for the acts of his agent, and loses his seat if undue use of money can be shown.
It is illegal to treat a voter with the intention of winning his vote, or to pay his railroad fare to the town where he casts his vote, or to pay him for time lost in going to the poll. Sir EDWARD BATES, elected for Southwark, was unseated sub-agent had promised to pay some Penzance fishermen for their time while they were going to the voting place. Many kinds of “inducement” which are declared to be corrupt by the English Bailot act are entirely permissible here. This fact accounts for the large number of petitions which follow every general election.
Macclesfield is admittedly one of the most corrupt boroughs. Alderman SWALE, of the Liberal Association, told the Commissioners that of the £2,047 expended by his party at the recent election not more than £100 was legally employed. The rest went in indirect bribery. It is a common practice for agents to issue tickets which are accepted in payment of services and not redeemed until after election. In many boroughs voters were not openly employed by the agents, but their minor sons, nephews, wives, and other members of their families were given something to do.
In Sandwich, a sub-agent paid £754 for “flags, colors, poles, rope,” &c., and many men and women were employed to make up the material. In one ward more than one hundred flag-poles were put up by the Liberal committee. The agent paid £8 12s. “ ‘to voters for hire of ground to put up poles,” and em- ployed 12 men, at £1 cach, to watch one flag-pole, day and night. To his brother he paid £55 “for making flags.” An extraordinary number of committee-rooms are required in an English election, and the agent usually secures the needed accommodation in houses or other buildings belonging to voters. The careful agent, too, always engages a large number of “personation agents,” whose duty it is to see that the other party do not employ “imported” voters, or send up men of their own faith to personate and vote upon the names of citizens of different politics.
It is easy for a commission to get at such facts as these by inducing guilty agents to confess by a promise of immunity from punishment. But there must be a vast amount of fraud which is never exposed. In many boroughs corrupt practices are passed over by mutual consent, the public never hears of them. A seat in Parliament is proverbially an expensive honor.
These election investigations show where the money goes in many cases. Still, the legitimate expenses are very great. No one supposes that any corrupt practices in Mid-Lothian would have passed unchallenged by Mr. GLADSTONE’s adversaries, yet the expenses of the Liberal chieftain were £2,704, or rather more than £1 14s. for each one of the votes cast for him. Lord HARTINGTON’s votes cost him 13s. 9d. each. An expenditure of £10,000 by a single candidate is not unusual, but in most cases where so large a sum is put into the hands of an agent it can hardly be supposed that it is all legally employed.
The Ballot act of 1872 expires with this year. It is already apparent that it will require some amendment hefore being re-enacted.
The New York Times