POLITICS LONG AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20252, 11 May 1929, Page 13

POLITICS LONG AGO.

WIDESPREAD BRIBERY. WHEN SEATS WHERE BOUGHT* MOTIVES AND METHODS, g Curiosities of politics in the eighteenth century are discussed by the writer of the "Musings Without Method," in Blackwood's Magazine. Mr. L. B. Namier, in his book "The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III," refers among ether things to the accounts of the secret service fund administered by the Duke of Newcastle. The magazine writer says that the size of this fund and the corruption wrought by it has been largely over-rated by earlier authors; it was spent in a foolish charity rather than in corruption; but the plea that it was "only a little one" does not excuse Newcastle. He was timid even in his bribery, and the poor £15,000 which he spent out of the secret service fund was wasted upon helping lame dogs; if he had made use of them, or in fumbling attempts at corruption. In tho eighteenth century thero was very little prejudice against bribery and corruption. Soame Jenyns held that ''an independent House of Commons is no part of the English Constitution." Henry Fox, a rapacious politician, exhorted the youthful Shelborne to get place as soon as possible, since it is "the placemen, lob the independent lordj who can do this country good." It was not Newcastle's fault that he could not find places or money for all the men he wished to favour. Motives of Various Kinds. Among the motives for going into Parliament at that time, according to various writers, were "to make a figure," to use the institution as a "very agreeable coffee-house" or club, and to find in it a mixture of business, study and society, or to depend upon the House as "the known way to military preferment." It helped toward naval preferment also In 174 C "most of our flag officers were in the House of Commons," according to the Duke of Argyll. "Then, as now," adds the magazine writer, "such lawyers as were determined to climb to the heights found it wise to surmount the mountain of politics as soon as they could. And others there were—the merchants, the bankers, the nabobs—who most easily rose to affluence with the help and patronage of the House of Commons. And lastly there were the adventurers, no longer surviving, -who could save themselves from ruin and a debtor's prison by the im-' munity afforded by membership 'of Par-' liament. "A motley throng" is the writer's summing up, "differing very little from that which confronts us to-day; better in manners, perhaps, and speech;' of as paltry an ambition, and no loftier aspiration."

One difference was that "in the eighteenth century purses were weighed in " tho twentieth century we count heads," ; and one plan is no more and no less soundly logical than the other." As tho voting was open, those in dependent positions could rarely exercise a free choice. So late as 1841 a member of the Grosvenor family complained of Mr. Gladstone for having violated the sacred canons of electioneering etiquette by canvassing Lord Westminster's tenants. "I did think," says the wounded patrician, "that interference between a landlord, with whose opinions s you were acquainted, t, and his tenants was not justifiable ac-V cording to those laws of delicacy and propriety which I considered binding in such cases." Members of Different Kinds.

Usually the result of the elections was foreordained. The agricultural influence was incontestable, and the great land-" owners had their own way. "And who shall say," asks the writer, "that tha v? influence of the big land-owners was not,, better and more wisely exercised than the 1 influence of the members of a caucus, completely ignorant of the countryside, 1 • and of its carpet-baggers sent down to represent a county whose name they have never before heard mentioned?" There were, however, members, of various kinds—some benevolent, and others neglectful. Votes and voters were readily bought. In 1774 the notorious Anthony Henley addressed the following remarkable letter to his constituents of a borough in Hampshire, who had written to hnn to oppose the Excise Bill .—"Gentlemen,—l received yours, and am surprised at your insolence in troubling yourselves about the Excise. You know wbgt I very well know, that I bought you 3 j' ky God, I am determined to sell you; and I know that perhaps you think I do not know, 3'ou are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know also what yoii do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all; may your homes be open and common to all Excise officers.