relations who would not otherwise find a seat in the house.1 Such no personal nominees, whether through friendship or purchase, were not supposed to have any personal connection with their constituents; and we learn from the diary of Lord Palmerston that when he came into parliament from a borough belonging to Sir Leonard Holmes, "one condition required was, that I would never, even for the election, set foot in the place." 2 with constituents. Methods of corpora selves : the case of Oxford; As illustrations of the methods of those constituencies or tions that corporations that enjoyed the privilege of selling themselves sold them and of applying the proceeds to their own uses, reference may be made to the notorious case of the corporation of Oxford, which, availing itself of the general election of 1768, offered to return its members, upon condition that they would pay off its bonded debt of £5670. When the matter was brought before the house of commons by those to whom the offer had been made, the mayor and ten of the aldermen were committed to Newgate; but while they were there they actually sold the representation of the city to the duke of Marlborough and the earl of Abingdon; and in the hope of concealing the facts the clerk of the corporation carried off the books containing the evidence of the bargain. More shameless still, however, was the conduct of the notoriously corrupt borough of Suditself to the bury, which, without any attempt at disguise, shamelessly advertised itself for sale to the highest bidder. While the nomination boroughs of patrons and boroughs under control of close corporations could be thus disposed of, there were more populous places, such as the few great cities, the ports, and the thriving manufacturing towns, where the franchise was sufficiently extended to insure a genuine expression of popular opinion, had the voters been permitted to act without the prescorruption sure of corruption and undue influence. In order to secure the influence in representation of such places for the crown, the government populous candidates not only resorted to money bribes, but to the zealous places; Sudbury offered highest bidder; and undue support of the army of government officials employed in the collection of the customs and excise, who were appointed with 1 The younger Pitt was given a place in the house in 1781 by Sir James Lowther, who controlled the pocket borough of Appleby. 2 Bulwer's Life, vol. i. p. 23. pole's Mem., vol. iii. p. 153; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 338, 339, 344, 346. + Walpole's Mem., vol. i. p. 42. Sudbury was ultimately disfranchised by 3 Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 397; Wal- 7 & 8 Vict. c. 58. "2 of money a view to such work. If an opposition candidate by virtue of his personal popularity seemed likely to triumph despite such obstacles, the government was ready to destroy his hopes through a fraudulent return, or by keeping open the poll for forty days,1 during which time he was permitted to accept either defeat, or the financial ruin that such prolonged contests involved. The habit of corrupting electors by money bribes the giving which had become a recognized abuse in the reign of Charles bribes; II., and which the fresh importance given to the lower house by the Revolution had greatly advanced-was still farther stimulated by the advent of the "nabobs,' as those success- stimulated by the ful adventurers were called who returned from the East and "nabobs; " West Indies, laden with spoils they were willing to divide with those who were ready to help them to places in parliament. Surrounded by such conditions, elections finally gave rise to a regular stock-jobbing traffic, in which "for many boroughs there stockjobbing was a fixed price. Rather to prevent the intrusion of the traffic in nabobs into the political preserves of the great landed proprie- elections; tors than to suppress bribery, already recognized as an offence by the common law, was passed the act of 7 Will. III. c. 4. Not until 1729 was that act followed by the first statute 5 aimed statutes directly against bribery in parliamentary elections, which, after against an interval of eighty years, was reinforced by 49 Geo. III. c. bribery. 118. To cover cases not embraced in that act was enacted, in 1842, 5 & 6 Vict. c. 102, s. 20; and, in 1852, the Corrupt Practices Act (17 & 18 Vict. c. 102), now in force. "3 enacted county con The backbone of the representative system as thus organ- Backbone of the repreized was the county constituencies, in which all forty-shillings sentative freeholders, including the country gentlemen and independent system, the yeomanry, were entitled to vote. Under so liberal a franchise stituencies; it was certainly to be expected that the independent class in whom it was vested would give forth a clear and bold expres 1 "During this period, the public houses were thrown open; and drunkenness and disorder prevailed in the streets, and at the hustings." - May, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 350. 2 For Lord Chatham's denunciation of them, see Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 752. 8 Davenant's Works, vol. iii. pp. 326, 328, "Essay on the Balance of Power." 4 Burrow, vol. iii. pp. 1235, 1388; Douglas, vol. iv. p. 294; Male's Election Law, pp. 339-345, cited by May, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 334. Sir J. F. Stephen, however, rather discredits the assumption. Hist. of the Crim. Law, vol. iii. p. 252. 5 2 Geo. II. c. 24. Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law, vol. iii. pp. 253, 254. nobles and land owners over politics; enormous expenditures incident to electoral contests; sion of the popular will, unfettered by the ignoble influences that prevailed in the cities and towns. The difficulty, however, was that the county voters as a class were slaves of that control of social custom which recognized the nobles and other great other great landowners as local potentates, authorized by virtue of their status to direct the political affairs of their counties either in county person, or through dependents over whom they exercised a kind of feudal sway. The political control in many counties thus remained permanently in the hands of certain great families, whose battles for supremacy often rivaled in bitterness the feuds of the Montagues and Capulets, while the expenditures incident to electoral struggles often overtaxed even princely fortunes. In contesting Westmoreland and Cumberland with Sir James Lowther in 1768, the duke of Portland is said to have expended over £40,000, and in comparatively recent times an election for the county of York is known to have cost upwards of £150,000.2 When all of the influences, tending as well in the shires as in the towns to take away the franchise from the main body of freemen and to vest it in a comparatively few individuals, have been carefully estimated, it is certain that the actual number of persons who returned the five hundred and fifty-eight members composing the house of commons after the union with Scotland was comparatively small. While such evidence as exists upon the subject is open to suspicion, we may accept as substantially correct the statea majority ment contained in the petition presented in 1793 by the Society of the Friends of the People, from which it appears that 1793 nomi- three hundred and fifty-seven members — more than a majority of the house as then constituted were returned to parliament by one hundred and fifty-four patrons, of whom forty were peers.3 Then in corroboration of that estimate we have, after the union with Ireland, the statistics contained in Dr. Oldfield's "Representative History" (1816), from which we learn that of the six hundred and fifty-eight members then composing the lower house, four hundred and eighty-seven were returned by nomination of the government, and two hundred and sixty-seven private patrons, of whom one hundred actual number of independ compara tively small; of the lower house in nated by 154 patrons; Dr. Oldfield's estimate made in 1816; 1 Oldfield's Representative Hist., vol. vi. p. 285. 2 Walpole's Mem., vol. iii. p. 197; Speech of Lord J. Russell, March 1, 1831, in Hans. Deb., 3d ser. vol. ii. p. 1074; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 354, 355. 8 Parl. Hist., vol. xxx. p. 787. and forty-four were peers. one third of the Thus only a hundred and seventy- less than a - less than a third of the house remained as the free house the choice of such independent constituencies as were possessed free choice of the limited franchise then existing.1 of independent constit Bribery as minster; peerages It would have been strange indeed if the members of the uencies. representative chamber, chosen in the local communities as a employed general rule through an organized system of corruption and at Westundue influence, should have been insensible to all the blandishments of power to which they were subjected after their arrival at Westminster. From the accession of William III. it was necessary for the cabinet to control a majority of the house of commons, and from that time dates the lavish use of everything at the disposal of the crown to secure that end. Noblest among the bribes thus parcelled out were the coveted distinctions that flowed from the crown as the fountain of honor. During the administration of Lord North he either gifts of created or promoted about thirty British peers; the younger and baronPitt, more lavish still, created during the first five years of his etcies; administration nearly fifty peers; while between 1761 and 1821 the extraordinary number of four hundred and ninety-four baronetcies was added to the hereditary knighthood of the realm. While the crown thus pandered to the pride of the rich, gifts of places, the poor and necessitous were consoled by places, pensions, pensions, and money bribes, paid either in hard cash, or realized through and money shares in lotteries and loans, or through lucrative government contracts. As heretofore explained, William III., who was first called upon to manipulate the new ministerial system, attempted to do so to a great extent by a multiplication of offices, which were so lavishly bestowed upon members of the lower house that parliament, at the instance of that body, was forced to enact a series of statutes against placemen whose history has been drawn out already. The grosser expedient of using systemadirect pecuniary bribes, begun under Charles II. and continued Walpole under William III., after having been systematized by Sir Robert Walpole, reached its highest point under Henry Pel- Pelham ham and his wretched brother the duke of Newcastle. Lord castle; 1 Oldfield's Representative Hist., vol. pp. 277, 279, 323, citing as to the barvi. pp. 285-300. 2 Beatson's Political Index, vol. i. Pp. 137, 140; Parl. Hist., vol. xxvii. p. 967 et seq.; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. onetcies a paper by the late Mr. Pul- bribes ; tized by and per fected by and New Bute, who was no unworthy pupil of such masters, intrusted Mr. Henry Fox 1 with "the management of the house of commons," and in 1762 Horace Walpole tells us that when voters were needed to support the preliminaries of the Peace of Paris, "a shop was publicly opened at the Pay Office, whither the members flocked, and received the wages of their venality in bank bills, even to so low a sum as £200 for their votes on loans and the treaty."2 In the next year it was that Lord Bute invented the new method of bribery by means of shares in loans and lotteries.8 a shop opened at the Pay Office; lotteries; abuse of the right to decide contested elections; Political parties that succeeded by means of such expedients in securing majorities in the house of commons soon learned how to take away from hostile voters the right to chose representatives by an abuse of the sacred judicial function involved in the determination of contested elections. An account has heretofore been given of the process through which not only the right to pass upon the legality of returns and the conduct of returning officers, but also upon the qualifications of the electors themselves, became the exclusive possession of the lower house, and of the manner in which it was recognized and affirmed in turn by the peers, the courts of law, and by the act of 7 Will. III. c. 7. Originally the house exercised the right thus acquired by means of a select committee specially chosen for that purpose; and afterwards by that formally Committee designated as the Committee of Privileges and Elections, into leges and whose composition for a long time entered such privy counElections; cillors and eminent lawyers as were qualified to perform the of Privi delicate judicial duties required of them. But in the course of time, specially during the reigns of George II. and George III., the power to seat a party friend and to oust a party rival superseded was so grossly abused that in 1770 Mr. Grenville introduced mittee his famous measure that passed into law, by virtue of which organized the right to try election petitions was transferred from the Grenville's house itself to a committee of thirteen, armed with the right to decide without appeal, and selected by the petitioners and the by com under Mr. Act of 1770; 1 Rockingham, Mem., vol. i. p. 127. 8 Parl. Hist., vol. xv. p. 1305; Lord 4 Vol. i. pp. 528-531. 5 As to the trial of controverted elections prior to 1770, see May, Parl. Practice, p. 613; Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 363–369. |