ELECTION EXPENSES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5567, 16 May 1896, Page 6

ELECTION EXPENSES.

Acts of Parliament are powerless, it seems, to stop the system of insidious bribery and corruption that prevails in connection with parliamentary elections. The power of money is still tremendous in . the .- way of influencing popular feeling, and even a law making all election expenses payable by the State" would not by any means equalise matters as between the moneyed candidate and the one without superfluous cash. • In .England the amount allowed for election expenses is .£350 for a borough constituency and .£I4OO for a county or division. But, as the Saturday Review' recently remarked, the candidate on either side who proposed to keep strictly to the law .would be told that he was not wanted. Formerly the fight was crowded into, a few weeks; now the preparations for an election begin on the morrow of the declaration of the result of the preceding one, and trouble awaits the member who, resting on his laurels of 1895, does not keep an eye fixed on the struggle of 1902. '■" Just before the election of last July we heard 1 (says ■ the Saturday Review) the lament of a member who had for three years been spending two nights a week and two thousand a year on the simple pleasures of his constituents, and who was yet reproached because by his " closeness " he was endangering the seat at the coming election ! Another English paper lately drew attention to a new form of attack on the pocket of a member — for members who wish to retain their seats must, it appears, keep on spending lavishly all the time. In this case a local cricket club invited the member for the district to provide " a thoroughly good set of bats and cricket nets for practice." Sir John Leng, the M.P. in question, bowled over the application neatly enough. It was, he said,, entirely alien to the good old spirit of self-reliance and independence. When he was a, boy, yoting men" never thought of begging for cricket bats and balls. They saved up what they could and bought them. It is to be hoped that the youths who meanly begged in the way described were shamed into doing the right thing. There can be no doubt that the covert bribery of electors that goes on is largelyj[encouraged by the want of proper spirit, among the people.; /Members of .the New. Zealand House of . Representatives can all bear witness to the arts of the "sturdy i beggars" in their constituencies, which they find it impossible to resist. Donations and subscriptions to every conceivable organisation are wrung from the member until he has, in many cases, given away the whole of the honorarium which is supposed to be the safeguard of his independence and the guarantee that merit and not money is the ground upon which he is chosen to represent the people. At election times, too, he finds that he has to make payments in excess and outside of statutory limitations, or otherwise he •woiild be unable to succeed against the influences opposed to him. Our law against corrupt practices, stringent though it is, ought to be made more so, as a meanis of educating.pnbuc opinion to a higher sense of purity \pi election. We are far in advance of England in this respect, but at the same time the abuses that still prevail are not creditable to the popular intelligence and morality. ;