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various 616 TIB Ii EADEE. [Saturday,
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RADICAL. MONARCHISTS. One good thing, at...
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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.
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The Right End To Begin At. The Work Of A...
^ a & r M ^ ' * s ? ^ influences to be overcome are $ /^ J ^^^^ fah ^ L 4 No Bribery Bill will 5 ^^^^ P ^ I ^ P §! course > there is Bribery itself , ^ p ^^^ gj ^ ypii ^ l jp & s organisation of clubs , attor-2 Wfmi - ^ w ^ (^ fe *** » and W . B . s Unfortunately " jfe'jJP ^ if ^&* P ^& * * ^ hands of many who i /^ E' ^ W ^ P ^^ iftS ^ f they can . But if the respect-1 V'b r *!*^ 33 ^ ' ° ^ *^ constituency were determined ' - - ~ - »* i ^ -vigilant , corruption would become very difficult . Club interference ought to be put . do ^^ n at once . Club candidates ought to be
everywhere refused . The Attorney influence ought to be vigorously diminished . But above all , pains should be taken in the selection of honest candidates , which almost always rests with those who are personally above corruption , if they will only use their trust and not leave it to pettifoggers and agents . Get a really high-minded and independent man for your candidate , and you need not fear that he will use corruption .
As to intimidation , where it exists we " must combine against it . We had rather see it put down with a high hand than shirked by the ballot . These are the grosser forms of corruption . But there are other things which drive away good men from Parliament and from the service of the State . First , there is the system of personal canvassing , which is degrading alike to the canvasser and to the canvassed . A seat in Parliament
is a public trust , and a man ought not to have to solicit it as a private favour . It is enough if he meets his constituents publicly , explains to them his sentiments , and gives them proof of his political knowledge and competency . High-spirited men refuse to go through this disgusting ordeal of wheedling and adulation ; and those , who do go through it are invariably the worse for it , and carry away a lower sense of the importance and duties of their trust . Canvassing is almost as great a source of corruption as bribery . Some of the most disgracefully incompetent members of the House of Commons owe their seats not to
money or local influence , but simply to skill in low flattery . We could point to instances in which a penniless fool , without connexions or advantages of any kind whatever , has come in by a great majority for a considerable constituency , merely through the assiduous application of soft sawderr A Chatham would no more condescend to such a process than a CORIOIiANUS .
Secondly , there are the selfish and tyrannical exactions which constituencies mak & upon the time and money of their members . Each constituency lias a right to exact that its member shall diligently , faithfully , and uprightly discharge his public duty : it has a right to call him to account for any apparent breach of duty ; and . to require from him frank explanations of his views on public questions . But it has no right to demand that he shall be its perpetual courtier and its perpetual parasite , or that his purse shall
be always open to every beggar and every charity-monger connected with the town . The two functions of political representative and private slave and sycophant havo no connexion whatever ; and many a high-minded man is deterred from being the first by hia horror of being the second . Meanness of all kind is the inevitable result . And then the constituencies wonder that at a great national crisis these representatives are not the incarnations of public spirit , and the very heart and intellect of the nation !
Thirdly , comes the practice of plodgmgs Ot course , so long as the nation is divided into parties , a candidate must say to which party he belongs . He must give a general account of hie political principles when he offers himself , and his views from time to
time on any great questions that may arise . But to oblige him to pledge himself on particular measures is to deprive him of that freedom of conscience which he ought to value more than any seat in Parliament , and which he cannot resign without moral degradation . Dishonest men in search of a seat for private or joint-stock purposes always take these pledges without hesitation : weak men hesitate , shuffle , take the pledge with a qualification , equivocate , and get into
scrapes : high-minded integrity spurns the pledge and the constituency which exacts it . Not that it is generally the constituency , properly speaking , which takes pledges- it is generally a minority who , having just votes enough to turn the scale , and being reckless of everything but their own crotchet , are able to degrade the representative of the whole body to the level of
their folly or fanaticism . If the right man is chosen as a candidate , his judgment on particular measures ought to be better than that of his constituents ; and , therefore , on intellectual as well as moral grounas , his judgment on particular questions ought to be unrestrained . Choose the right man , and treat him as the right man , with that generous confidence which exalts alike him who bestows it and him on whom it is bestowed .
! Let him be responsible , but let him be free . Things will never be right in England till candidates are sought by constituencies instead of putting themselves forward . A vain , vacant mind will take any number of pledges , pay money , and eat any amount of dirt , for the sake of getting into St . Stephen ' s Club and seeing M . P . after his name . A wise man , with the treasures of thought and knowledge at his command , will rather be content with those treasures , and , if he wants to influence opinion , use his pen , than go through what
is expected of a candidate for the exceeding great reward of listening to dull speeches all night long . Political ambition , even of the better kind , seldom springs spontaneously in the greatest minds . Ckomwell was invited to become member for Huntingdon at a great national crisis , otherwise his life would probably have been spent in religious exercises , and the management of his farm , without a wish for political power . Washington , in the same manner , was forced into political life , for which he clearly had no natural desire .
Have we any real political virtue in us ?—that is the question which the next general election will decide . The borough constituencies have done their part well on great questions , such as Free Trade and the Suffrage . They have also chosen their leaders well out of those who have found their way into the House of Commons ; of which the
public course of Mr . Cobden and Mr . BitiGHT , unspotted by any mean faction or intrigue for place , is a high instance . But in order to send the right men generally to the House of Commons , they havo yet much to learn ; and everything now depends upon , their learning it . Might we not have an Association for Electoral as well as Administrative Reform ? " We cannot help thinking that Eloctoral Reform is the right end to begin at .
Various 616 Tib Ii Eadee. [Saturday,
various 616 TIB Ii EADEE . [ Saturday ,
Radical. Monarchists. One Good Thing, At...
RADICAL . MONARCHISTS . One good thing , at all events , the present war has produced—a distinct demand for administrative capacity . The evils of maladministration in peace are as great and greater than those of maladministration in war , but they are less seen and felt ; and , therefore , while peace is content with the titled shadow of ability , war in general demands the homely substance . But unfortunately , owing to the di p lomatic character of the war , the movement in favour of
administrative reform does not coincide with the movement in favour of political improvement on the contrary , it tends to thwart it , and -we are threatened with political retfcogradation as the price of victory in war . Such will always be the case when nations fight , not in self-defence , or in -defence of a great principle , but for conquest , glory , punctilio , or from pugnacity alone—though they may fight gallantly , or even heroically , as our soldiers are fighting now . Were we really striking
for liberty and justice , as we should nave been if we had taken up the cause of Hungary or the Roman Republic , our love of English freedom and our position as the champions of freedom in Europe would rise with every blow . But we are not fighting for the cause of liberty and justice , however the mass of the people may be possessed with that generous illusion . Our success , if we succeed , will not break the chain , political or religious , of one human being : on the
contrary , it will rivet the chains of France and Rome . We are fighting to open the Danube and restore the equilibrium of Russia and Turkey in the Black Sea . The consequence is that nothing is awakened but the purely military spirit , and the desire for a vigorous military administration and a large standing army . Instead of being more and more fired with the love of freedom , and standing forth more and more as a free nation , we seem to become more careless of freedom
every hour . The greatest symptom of this was the ovation of the Fbench Empeboe . Its latest symptom is an article full of gvishing loyalty in the daily Radical journal , tempting the Crown to break through the Constitution , and take the selection of Ministers and the
conduct of affairs out of the hands of the House of Commons ; the alleged reason for this proposal being that the Queen has shown a sympathy for our soldiers in the Crimea . The tears of Royalty of course are far brighter in the eyes of our Radical contemporary than those of ordinary women . But do they imply any peculiar political capacity ? Monarch who took in the
The last part conduct of affairs and selected his own Ministers was Geokge III ., also a Sovereign of many kindly sympathies and many domestic virtues . The part he took in affairs was to urge on the American and French wars . The Ministers of his selection were Lord Bute and Lord Nobth , neither of whom very materially advanced the welfare or honour of the country . Queen
Charlotte was excluded by her sex . Who does our contemporary think would govern us nmv —who would be Commander-in-Chief and Minister of War if the Crown had the selection ? We shrewdly guess that it would be a person for whose Intellect , whoso liberality of mind and social sympathies we havo a very high and sincere respect , but whoso attempts , or alleged attempts , to take part m the work of Government were not received
with applause by the journal in question . We are no revoluti ' oniats . Wo have read political philosophy too seriously , not too wisely , to regard sudden and violent constitutional changes as anything but tho remedy of despair . But we feel none the less convinced that tho gradual elimination of the hereditary principle of government , not its restoration in any form , has become the necessity and tho duty of tho more advanced nations of tho world . Tho principle isj rom «©»
out . All attempts to propagato it fail . V - ovor it oxiats in vigour among advanced nations , it rests not on opinXm but on Binding armies . It was a necessity and a >* ourco oi order to the anarchy of the middJa ages : it is a source of anarchy to modern civJiaution . Its lingering , existence present ? tho lull ac-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 2, 1855, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02061855/page/12/
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