On this page
- Departments (2)
-
Text (5)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
BRIBERY..
-
THE LITERARY PENSION LIST.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
sive fleets on the coast of Africa and in the Mexican Gulf , for the new ¦ Government-of'Washington Avill reverse the foreign policy of the slave power , and render the slave trade impossible . Our attthor adds , that were our Government to encourage the cultivation of cotton along the Western Coast of Africa , any future anxiety as to supplies of that staple would be obviated , and we' should ! have done for ever with the trade in African slaves . Cotton is indigenous to that Continent , and labourers may be numbered by millions . Let it be shown to the chiefs , who now carry on continual wars for tho
sole purpose of replenishing their coffers by the sale of their ' -prisoners , that the cultivation of the cotton plant would be immeasurably more remunerative , and they would quickly desist from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs . Our present policy with regard to the slave trade , Mr . Edge thinks , is simply ridiculous ; for we enhance the value of the shipments which evade our cruisers , and thus offer an inducement for the continuance of the traffic . These suggestions appear to us of much value ; and we trust that the author's hopes may be fulfilled ,
Untitled Article
IT was CoiERiDGK , we think , / who said that , if he were clergyman in a village where " wrecking " " was practised , he would preach about nothing else till he cured it . The intention was laudable , but the operation might be difficult ; the fear is , that the subject would pall , and the physic sicken , before the cure was produced . We have been writing- against " Bribery , " that is , we , the Press of England , ever since the " Commons" were of consequence enough to make a Parliamentary seat an object of ambition , and not a task to be deprecated , -winch , as some of our readers may know , was the case once . When a member was paid for his trouble , and disfranchisement was a privilege , and not a stain , —a time , probably , when the Commons still trembled , before the Lords , and made little either by vote-setting or place-giving , — when one of the tricks of Statecraft recomineiided by Sir Walter Raleigh was as follows : —
"To suffer the poorer and meaner sort to be absentj and neglect these ( state ) assemblies , tradei ; pretence that they will not draw them from their business and private earnings * yet withal to cite thither some few of them , viz ., so many of them ^ as are easily overmatched by the richer sort , to make a show that they would have the people ^ or poorer sort , partakers likewise of those matters , yet terrifying those thafc ~ come to theiv assemblies with tediousness of consultations , &c . "<—Raleigh ' s Maxims of Stale . ^ . Such precautions agaiust the poor are now entirely needless . There are others , more effectual ones , sufficiently referred to in our title ; we have got thro ugh the medium phase , when Scotch tnAmiwre * ur > iw nmVI i ' flninor Parliamentarv dutv as a labour , and
rights of the people . " Alas ! neither of the protesters Were pure . One could create peers by wholesale , to carry his measures ; and We should have been sorry , in his days of debt and difficulty , to tempt Sheridan with a large money-bid for his support . But the question is whether bribery is not more rampant and iinpxident than ever . We track the mischief with some trouble ; personified , it stands before us , ready for execution ; and , with , a precious spirit of nepotism , Mr , Bbi&hI , the defender of the people , the would-be purifier of the House of Commons , does not wish matters to be pushed to extremes , and ATr . James , another of our Reformers , seconds him . It is enough to disgust any honest voter , and to raise in the House of Commons the reciprocally encouraging , but degrading cry , " Tantara-rara , rogues all . " We go back , for something of a parallel , to the ease of Hindon , f near Salisbury , where , in 1702 , " upon a complaint of t Burnet , Book vii . bribery , the case was so full and clear , that they ordered a Bill to disfranchise the town for bribery ; and yet , because the bribes were given by a man of their party , they would not pass a vote upon him as guilty of it ; so that a borough was voted to lose its right of electing , because many in it were guilty of a corruption in which no man appeared to be the actor . " Now , it is wink for wink between the parties , and the upper classes cant to the lower ones about educating , and , forsooth , moralising them , in order that they may deserve suffrage , when the real desire of half of tkem is to make this a pretext for delaying the time when they may have more votes to pay for , "being as incapable of perceivingthe ehanec of the people ' s improvements in honesty , as of their own ; which is , it must be confessed , rather hopeless in the case of those who have all along been sinning against light , and who persist hi doing no still . How dare we deny the people votes , at te the pretext of the erior morality of the rich tii ii ui jjuxiua xijr ? " ¦
richer Englishmen linying- for the same as a privilege . It is astonishing how long vices take killing ; longer , even , than interest . In one of the many fortresses which , our favourite . hf > T . ^ - ^ x ^ nA-vjx < L-fifl . ptiii-nd lie found the coxirt of the castle thickly strewn with apparent corpses , in all the attitudes oi death ; But , ¦ on examining more closely their physiognomies , he discovered a warm ruddiness of the most suspicious character , and with a poke or two of his scabbard , set them , though in a penitent and ^ submissivo state , upon their logs again . So it has been with the agricultural interest , in spite o its imitations of collapse ; and so , perhaps , the brewers' physiognomy will not lose much of its contour by the acidities of claret . * »« ' * wo do not wish too muuh to interrupt tho course of the text , but there u a passage in an old play , " Wits , " which suits amazingly some of our . " dying interests . " Tho hero ¦ wishes tho lady to understand that he has been dying for love . " Elder Palatine . —Heaven knows how I have gromied , nnd pined , since first Your letter jyuvis hie knowledge of the cause . Lady . — It is not seen , sir , in your face . Elder l *« latin <> . —My face ! I grant you ; I bate Inwardly ; I ' m ssprched and dried , with sighing , to a mummy j JVTy heart and liver nro not big enough To choke a daw ; a Iamb laid on tlio ultar For sacrifice hath much , vnoro entrails in it . Itiicif , —Yet still your sorrow alters not your face Elder Palatine . — 'Why , no ! I say no man that over was Of nature ' s making' , hnth a face that ' s moulded ¦ With less help for liypocrlsy than mine . " ThB scene proceed * with equal huinonr on tho same tack , but wo CAiltiot nuoto more , The play Is by Sir William Duvonant .
any ra , on sup . any rate , on e pieniA . wxu su . . au . ua a ,. < . u > uu . y »• Bribery is so old a crime , and in . some cases so congenial , that our senators seem to view it very much as the country lad views poaching , and as the sailor on the French seaboard viewed contraband traffic ; to some of whom , nevertheless , our aristocratic Shallows onthe Beiicli take care to show little pity , though , in reality jtliey are not only far more innocent , but , strange to say , have views far more enlightened thanthose who punish them the smuggler anticipates the wisdom of the Senate , and , with his « ye on the weather q uarter , is the first to see the lights of the vessel of free-ti ^ de ; and the poacher , thoug h blindly and savagely , and far the least innocently of the tiro , carries on a o-uerilla warfare against the baronial power , against which we Save all been fighting , when he knocks down the fera natura which crosses his path . Whilst you , moral aristocrat , feed your own * corruption on the more pardonable corruptibility of your toe Brinsn
poorer bx-others , and perpetually act a Ixe against . constitution on which , you are so fond of dilating , and commit what you know to be against its laws . When will you learn , not to buy votes with gold , but " golden opinions from all sorts o people , " by character and kindly concessions ? When will you learn that a lie is no less a lie , and dishonesty is no less dishonesty , if bent to obtaiii an end which they succeed in obtaining-, simply because everybody knows of the roguery ? This is somethin * worse than your " not at home , " your " very obedient - ^ erjt aiitjV nor is it even on a level with the " not guilty" in a to
couiTof justice . If you confess th ^ tyotrsxjll ^ our-honours--save your country , in the first place there are more views than ono of " saving a country ; " and in the second , when you sacrifice your honour , there may be also more views than one of the mighty value of the offering . . ¦ It is our earnest hope that the press , or at least the honest part of it , will ever carry on tho battle , though it may have to do so against the cupidity of the poor , intentionally encouraged by the rfoh , against dishonest Tory , or dishonest Radical , against the slyness of individuals , and the impudence of cliques and parties ; they will have all honest men on their side ; and the more inveterate the evil , tho better worth their perseverance and their Rtpel The onenness of bribery is a blot on England ' s charaoter ,
• which makes the corrupt Governments on . the Continent laugh at our theory of constitutional representation of the people ; and , unfbrtunatoly , the laugh is merrily echoed , b y too many on our own shores , in whom the sentiments of Sir Robert Walpolk about ¦ " saints" and " patriots" still survive , and who eare about nothing but " social position , " got and saved at tho oxpenso of any prico and any prinoiple . We have had a long lease ot national power and national glory , dospito our faults , and they ; are many , but we cling none tho less firmly to a golden maxim ot tho German Sen leg VX : — " At no tim , o haB a political constitution or modo of government been dorised which could permanent fj / supply tho place o principle . — -Ph \ lQHO $ Mf of History . We have road with pleasure tho rocont , as wo should any measures or bills for putting down bribery j but , after all , tho morale is what wo want improving .
It is tho same with our political vices , which are hunted like that noblo animal tho stag , only to bo lot loose again , and not nailed up , like vormin , at tho barn door of Saint Stephen ' s . A misohiovous knight in ' < Ariosto , " when oloft from the skull to the chin , manages ( it must bo confessed , under rather painful and diffioult circumstances ) to murmur out a confession , and then dies decently and penitently ; but bribery—-- ™ Mcdiftjnjnjw > tp _ nogmitaon _ Exponn'e— " ' has all tho resurgams of the heads of a hydra . . ¦ Shoreham formerly , St . Albau ' a lately , aro disfranchised in vain , tho pest re-appears at Wakeiit'ld and Bovorley . In vain did Pitt present , in 1 , 7 N 8 , the resolwtions , " That it wns tho opinion of the Houso that measures wore highly nooes , sar y to bo taken for the furthor prevention of bribery and expense at eleotions } " and Sheridan inveigh , in 1797 , against thoso " wJao , indeed , oould not buy men and sell them , beoause that was nort yot to bo done ; but who bought and , sold boroughs , and with the « n sold the dourest
Untitled Article
AN annual fraud ih perpetrated l > y Govovnimmt on people Bnffland , under the above title : By tho Parliament ot Wijxusi IV . twelve hundred pounds a yeur . was ullocated from the Civil List , for tho purpose of being distVibutcd m pensions to mcrary scientilic , a Jl artistic personl ^ ium . BH ^ J W voted every year for that ostensible purpose ; but w "jver , except to a Hinall extent , applied to it . In ovidonce , we nwy qwote the
Untitled Article
Aug . 4 , I 860 . ] The Saturday Analyst mid Leader . 703
Bribery..
BPJBERY .
The Literary Pension List.
THE LITERARY PENSION LIST .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 4, 1860, page 703, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2359/page/7/
-