ELECTIONS HALF A CENTURY AGO.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 270, 11 November 1908, Page 6

ELECTIONS HALF A CENTURY AGO.

(By ROBT. H. BAKE WELL, M.D.)

One cannctt altogether escape from the influence of one/s environments. Elections and elottioneeruig—that is to say, copious lying «f every description—are in the air, and I find myself morally compelled to write about elections, although 1 had planned a, series of essays on a, much loftier topic. My own feeling would be in favour of a series of papers —perhaps five or six—on the question "whether the projection of the Ego into the subconscious Noumenon is subjective j or objective." ' This important question j has never yet been solved, and I very much fear that the editor of the c 7\uckland Star" will never permit it to be properly treated in the columns of his paper. The manifestation of the will of the adult population of New Zealand, by the. election of the House of Representatives, presents some curious, and, I think, in tej-esting contracts to the general election that took place in the United Kingdom in I*4l, onfly a little more than a year after the colony of New Zealand was added to the> British Dominions. The. election of 1841 took place under the Ministry of Lord and was in consequence of a vote of no-confidence passed by the Hoose of Commons by a ! majority of one! ! It is the first election of which I have | any personal recollection. I was bom in 1831, two years before the Reform Bill— the first and greatest Reform Bill—was ] passed. After thai there was a general ; election, and two or three more before 1841. But 1 was too young to remember anything about them. But in 1841 I wa- , ten yca.i;s old. 1 was at a boarding school | in Staffordshire, and I well remember the warm partizanship of the boys, who were divided, following the politics of their fathers, into Whigs and Tories. As my father was a Whig, of course I was one too. I have a, vague remembrance of I many rowdy meetings and more than the ordinary a.mount of drunkenness, and of the triumph of the Tory candidate, who was said to bave bribed more heavily than his opponent. ' in those days, with open voting, bribery in a contested elec- j tion was, I should think, universal.' There may have been a, few cases in i which one candidate was so ?ure of sue-1 cess, and the other so hopeless, that, neither eared to spend money in bribery, i bnt in all the contested elections ...i i which I knew anything, before the adop- ! tion of the ballot, bribery was unbhir.ii- i ing. It is a curious example of what I have before alluded to as the influence of one.'s environments, that I cannot look upon' paying an elector for his vote as (lis-

honourable, either to the briber or the ■ bribed, ' Of course I mean when the elector belongs to the working or lower middle class; gentlemen -were never bribed with money, but they might be Lwith promises of plaices. But five pounds I was looked upon in my couptry as a fair price to pay a freeman for his vote. The Reform Bill admitted all housej holders paying a. rent of £10 per annum las electors, but it also continued, in the old boroughs snch as Stafford and New Castle-under-Lyme (not Newcastle-upon-Tyne) the franchise of the freemen. Now, the freedom of these boroughs, and others like them, could be acquired by purchase, or by apprenticeship to a freeman. The greater number of the freemen had acquired their rights by apprenticeship, and were genuine working men. Thns we had the curious English* anomaly of two boroughs lying side bY side, as Stoke-upon-Trent and Xewcastle-under-Lymo did, in one of which nearly all the working men had a vote as freemen, and in the other only the small minority who could afford to rent a house of A'lo a year. ; Xow, the freeman looked upon, a payment for his vote at a contested election —and the freeman took very good care that all elections, should be contested— as just, as much a right, as the privilege of setting up in business in the borough. Most of them, I think, belonged to one of the two great parties—blue or yellow • —and voted accordingly, and could not have been induced by any ordinary bribe to vote against their (known) party. It iii ust be remembered that every man's vote was registered with his name. It was thL-i that alone made bribery safe and secure. A voter, after having voted, 'A as met by an agent of the candidate, who slipped a ticket into his hand, and whispered to him to go to a certain I public house. Then he was shown into ! v room in which was no other person. There was a little movable panel in the wall about a foot square; on tapping, it was opened; the voter clipped his ticket in. and received immediately five golden sovereigns. Then he passed out, but not by tbe same door by which he had entered. Not a word was spoken. The reason of the secrecy was that a single j act. of bribery proved before an election committee of the House of Commons, subjected the briber to heavy penalties, :iild caused the loss of his seat. j I suppose that in these days there is no more bribery in the United Kingdom ti-an there is here, and for the same reason—you have no means of ascertainj .n<r how the elector lias voted. Besides, both at Home and bere the constituencies • are so large that only a millionaire could afford to give any bribe that a colonial : votf-i would think worth acceptance. I l.avn often wondered why the advocates Jof Reform did not agitate first of all for i tile ballot, for without it no extension lof the suffrage was of much use. And ! yet the old Whigs bitterly opposed vote by ballot, and it was at one time looked upon as a Chartist or revolution- ; ary measure. ', Of course, in those days we had bands playing, and colours flying everywhere. There were tumultuous public meetings, ! tben due the public nomination of the candidates, when the popular vote was taken. The popular favourite, however, Jul not by any means always win. ■ Canvassing of doubtful voters became acute. It a canvasser—most of them unpaid —reported that he could get no satis- . factory reply from a voter, then one of ; those who were fully in the secrete of ', the party as regards bribery, was sent, I yud the man was booked one way or i another. j An immense number of public houses : were engaged as committee rooms. They tlew the colours of the candidate by whose agents they were engaged, and had a large placard on which wai printed in his colours, "Mr. 's Committee Room." But no committee* ever met in one-tenth of these houses. Any known ; member of the candidate's committee 1 crulci go in and bring a friend with him, ; and call for any drink he liked. The bills iat some of these houses were appalling. In one election in which I was engaged actively, the bill for one hotel, used as a head committee room, came to more than a thousand pounds. There \\;\s no dispute about the payment of ti.ese bills; in fact, the candidate dare r.ot dispute them. The candidate who \\;is successful was afraid of a petition, .md the unsuccessful one, if he ever inj tended to try again, knew that to dispute J such a bill would ruin his chances at t.he J next elect ion. The last contested electirn in which I took part was in 1863, •md the expenses of the two candidates amounted to twenty-five thousand

pounds. During the last hours of tb.4 poll, when the content was very close, the cost of a vote might rise to as much as £20. The state of the poll was published every hour. It was of some importance, especially where the constituency vras a large one. to get a majority in the first hour, I as many voters make a point of being on i the winning side. J remember that at the election 1 have just referred to our side i won, and we of the committee considi ered that the victory was in part daie to our having kept a large body of doubtful voters in custody all uight in order to march them to the poll at S a.m. We thus secured a. ma-jority in the first hour. Another point we made was by securing all the cabs and other vehicles that could be hired, as soon as the polling day was known. Our committee immediately sent round to all the livery stables, etc., in the borough, and hired even 7 vehicle for the polling il.ay. When our opponents began to think it. was time to hire cabs, they found that there were none to be had unless thfiy got them from miles awa.y. TtiP consequence was tha-t they could not get their voters to the polling booth as quickly as wr> did. Another little point iv our favour was that at every booth, either our candidate or a well-known member of his committee, remained in attendance all day in order tn thank the voters who voted for our side. The regular formula was this: As sonn as the vote. wa s registered, 1 (for! example) would go up to th<' voter, offering my handi to shake, an-.l saying "Allow mc to thank you, Mr. iSmith, on behalf of Mr. Beresford Hope." This gratified the voter, and although he was probably jia.it) £0 for his vote." it diid good to bo nyil to him. 1 remember the committee-man for the other candidate, a man 1 well i knew, after I had gone through this per- j forinance a few times, said to mc. " 1 ' wonder you're not ashamed of such a ' piece of siftkening humbug! '' My reply | was. ■'You'll find- you'll have to do it. mt boy! " And so he had! In another hour, as he saw the numbers going against him, he began to shake hands and thank his voters. But it. wa.s too late; we won with a majority of over a hundred in • bout, three thousand voters. It wag a. close shave. The defeated candidate got into Parliament afterwards, but for a less expensive borough than Stoke-upon-Trent. j In most of the (.]d boroi:tfh«. where | the freemen bad votes, while the bulk of i ihcni openly declared their polities, then , were small compact bodies of perhaf* 40 lo 50. who would make no promise-, until the polling began. Often thi.s lii.tlf band would not vote until thro/! p.m.. the poll closing at- four.' Then, if. the contest was in such a con*

dition that either side -would win if it teouJd get their votes, they obtained much more than the regular pay. But it -was a risky game. For, suppose thai ( there were 700 or 800 voters, and by i •two o'clock it was found that 500 had | polled, giving a majority of, say, 100 j to one side; the purchase of 40 or 50 i votes would not give the losing party a. majority, and the winning paTty would'not buy the votes. These judicious trimmers would then be sorely dis- j appointed. Among this class must be | reckoned the beershop keepers, who openly avowed, when canvassed, that the man that emptied the largest number of barrels of boor in their cellars would have their vote. Several made this reply to mc when I was canvassing. Altogether, when the excitement was over, and one had time to reflect, one was disgusted with the whole procedure. Out of all this corruption, drunkenness and mendacity, how could it be expected that a virtuous and patriotic legislature would be elected? The voters naturally asked themselves why gentlemen should give themselves all this trouble a,nd incur all too expense, unless they had some selfish object in view. And, for the most part, so they had. Some looked for a place in the 'Ministry, some ifor a title, some for influence —social or political, and some of the new rich i simply to acquire a social position which, in, those days, money alone would not give them. But there is no one who looks back on those bad old times but must feel that to take part, or, at least, an active part, in a contested election, dulled his sense of honour, tempted him to tamper with the trut'u, and, on behalf of his candidate, to promise one. thing to one man, and the opposite to another, and left upon his soul the feeling that its ideals were debased, and that he came out of the contest lowered in his own esteem as no logger an honest and truthful man. So let us thank God that we. have the ballot, which renders money bribery, at least, impossible, and that we live in a country where anything like the bribery of constituencies by the expenditure of public money cannot exist. How thankful we ought to be that our candidates are all actuated by the highest, ■noblest, and most patriotic motives, and that our only difficulty lies in choosing among such admirable men. Xovemner 7th, 1908.