Cases of bribery in the election of members of Parliament are most com monly brought to notice by the special reports made by Election Committees. [.ELecriosis.] 2. Bribery at municipal elections was also an offence at common law, and a criminal information was granted by the Court of King's Bench against a man for promising money to a member of the corporation of Tiverton to induce him to vote for a particular person at the election of a mayor. (Plytnpton's Case, 2 Lord Raymond's Reports, 1367.) The 54th clause of the act for the regu lation of Municipal Corporations in Eng land and Wales (5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 76) provides " that if any person who shall have, or claim to have, any right to vote in any election of mayor, or of a council lor, auditor, or assessor of any borough, shall ask or take any money or other reward, or agree or contract for any money or other reward whatsoever, to give or forbear to give his vote in any such election, or if any person shall by any gift or reward, or by any promise, agreement, or security for any gift or re ward, corrupt or procure, or offer to cor rupt or procure any person to give or for bear to give his vote in any such election, such person so offending in any of the cases aforesaid, shall for every such of fence forfeit the sum of 50/., and for ever be disabled to vote in any municipal or parliamentary election whatever in any part of the United Kingdom, and also shall for ever be disabled to hold any office or franchise to which he then shall or at any time afterwards may be entitled as a burgess of such borough, as if such person was naturally dead." The Elections of Roman magistrates occurred annually, and this circumstance gave the Romans great opportunity of be coming expert in all the means of se curing votes. The word Ambitio (from which our word Ambition comes) signified literally a going about. As applied to elections, it signified any improper mode of trying to gam votes. The Tribunes of the Plebs at an early period attempted to check the solicitation of votes, by pro posing and carrying a law which forbade a man to add any white to his dress with a view to an election. (Livy, iv. 25.) This, observes Livy, which would now be viewed as a small matter, raised at that time a great contest between the Patres and the Plebs (the Patricians and Plebeians). " To add white to the dress" signified to whiten the dress by artificial means as it is said, or perhaps to put on a white dress. From this circumstance, persons who were seeking the magistracy were called Candidati, that is, persons dressed in a white (candida) dress ; and this is the remote origin of onr word Can didate. Another law (Lex Paetelia) against canvassing on the market-days, and going round to the country places where numbers of people were collected, was passed n.o. 359, which Livy (vii. 15) calls a law about Ambitus, the name by which canvassing and solicitation of votes was designated. The object of this law was to check the canvassing of Novi homines, men not of the class of nobles, who were aspiring to the honours of the State. After a long interval (a.c. 181) the Lex Cornelia Baebia enacted that those who were convicted of the offence called Am bitus should be incapable of being nut didates for a magistracy for ten years. (Liv. xl. 19.) The Lex Acilia Calpunda (ex. 67) contained enactments against hiring people to attend the candidates, feasting the people, and giving them places according to their tribes at the shows of gladiators. The penalties were fines and exclusion from the Senate, and disability to be elected to magistracies. In the consulship of Cicero, s.c. 63, a Lex Tullia added to the former penalties for the offence of Ambitus, ten years' exile. This law also forbade a man to exhibit shows of gladiators within two years be fore he was a candidate for a magistracy. In it.c. a Lex which was proposed by the tribune M. Aufidius Lurco enacted that if a man promised money to a tribe with a view to his election, he should be liable to no penalty, if he did not pay it ; if he did pay it, he was liable to pay the tribe a certain sum (annually ?) as long as he lived. (Cicero, Ad Attic. i. 16.) The usual mode of trying to gain votes, to which the word ambitus applied, was by gifts of money. The candidate used to go round and call on the voters, shake them by the hand, and make them civil speeches. The voting by ballot in the Comitia was established a.c. 139, and, according to the Roman system, the vote of each of the centuries and of each of the thirty-four tribes was counted as one vote. Whether then the election was at the Comitia Centuriata or the Co mitia Tribute, the object was to secure the votes of the centuries and of the tribes. Agents were employed to manage all this: interpreter, to make the bar gain; sequestres, to hold the money till the election was over ; and divisores, to pay it out. The Lex Licinia (a.c. 55) was entitled a law against Sodalitia ; but critics have not been agreed as to what the term properly means. Wunder (Pro legomena to his edition of Cicero's oration for Cn. Plancius) says that the offence against which this Liciuian law was directed, differed from Ambitus, which consisted in giving money or treating the people, or in any way buying their votes. The offence of Sodalitia consisted, as he says, in using force ; certain perscus. called sodales (associates, agents), were bribed by the candidates to,compel the rest to give their votes to the briber ; and that this might be the more easily managed, the members of each tribe were marked out into divisions, and the whole body of voters was divided into parcels, so that each sodalis or agent had a cer tain portion of a tribe or of the whole body of voters assigned to him, and it was his business to get the votes of his portion of the voters in any way that he could for the candidate who hired him. "Accordingly," Wander concludes, "in those elections (comitia) in which can didates employed sodales (agents), the multitude were not so much induced to five their votes by money as by force." this is a strange way of explaining in election : the agents were paid, and the voters got nothing. If the learned German had read the late Report on the Sudbury election, he would find it was just the other way there. The absurdity of supposing that the voters were compelled to vote, and that by one man in his particular divi sion, is sufficiently striking. The learned commentator then proceeds to quote pas sages from Cicero's oration for his friend Cn. Plancins, who was tried under the Licinian law, to prove his point; but his quotations prove just as much as his assertions. It is evident that the law was directed against one of those arrange ments which had been invented to facili tate bribery. Agents were appointed to look after particular sets of voters : the value of the division of labour was re cognised in this method of securing votes. It is evident from an expression in Cicero's oration (c. 18), that the marking out of the voters into classes or bodies, the putting money in the hands of a per son who had to pay it if the candidate was returned, the promising of the money, and the final payment, were all parts of one well-organised system of bribery. One may conclude that the voters in a tribe got nothing unless their briber was returned. They now voted by ballot, but this did not prevent bribery : it only rendered the payment contingent The means of knowing who had voted right and who had not, we can only conjecture ; but if the agents kept a good account of all the proceedings, they might not have much difficulty in ascertaining if their several squads had done their duty and kept their promise. It is quite consistent with all this that a man might be tried for the offence of bribery under the Licinian law only. There were, as it has been shown, various laws against bribery ; and this was directed against that particular part of the system which was the most efficacious in corrupting the voters. It is stated that the penalties of the Licinian law were ten years' exile, the same as under the Lex Tullis. Pompeius Magnus, when he was sole consul, B.C. 52, proposed and carried a law for shortening pro ceedings in trials for Ambitus. When C. Julius Caesar was Dictator, he nomi nated one-half of the candidates for ma gistracies, except for the consulship, and signified his pleasure to the tribes by a circular. (Snetonius, Caesar, c. 91.) Under Augustus the forms of elections were still maintained : under his succes sor Tiberius the elections were trans ferred from the Popular assembly to the Senate. Finally, the Emperors nominated to all public offices, many of which, such as the consulship, were now merely ho norary.
Besides the speech of Cicero for Cn. Plancius, there is another for L. Murena, who was tried under the laws against Ambitus. The Romans could never stop bribery by legislation. The penalties, so far as we know, were only directed against those who gave a bribe, unless the Li cinian law, the provisions of which are imperfectly known, may have gone fur ther, and included Sodales (agents). But we are not aware that there is any proof of this.
Bribery at elections for members of a legislative body, and of one invested with such power as the English House of Com mons, is universally considered to be a political evil. It is considered a demoral izing practice with respect to those who sell their votes ; and, if that be so, there seems no reason why it should not be demoralizing to those who buy them, though it is not always true that he who hires and he who is hired are equally demoralized by the baseness of the deed for which money is paid. The practice is also injurious to the constitution of the House of Commons, if men are returned by the force of bribery, who would be replaced by better men if there was no bribery. In a rich country, where men are ambitious of political distinction, and the system of representation exists, bri bery also will probably always exist. Pui"io opinion, or positive morality, will perhaps never be strong enough to stop the practice entirely. If it cannot be en tirely stopped, the question is how it can be reduced to the least possible amount. It is generally assumed that the State should in some way attempt to suppress bribery at elections ; but it might be worth consideration whether the State should make any attempt to prevent it by penal measures. It is not certain that, where there are large constituencies, there would be more bribery at el zetions if there were no laws against it ; nor is it certain that worse members would be returned by such constituencies than at present. One objection to bribery being permitted, or not declared to be a legal offence, might be that the State would, by such permission, allow the purchase of votes as a thing indifferent, instead of declaring it to be a thing that ought to be punished. And it may be urged that the electors, instead of looking to due qualifications in their representative, would only look to his ability to pay, and would give their vote solely to him who paid most for it; which is the case even now in some consti tuencies, as experience has proved. But if this is not the case at present to any great extent in the largest constituencies ; if in such bodies there are many to whom a bribe is not offered, and many who from various reasons would not accept it, what reason is there for supposing that there would be more bribery in such consti tuencies if there were no laws against it ? When the constituencies are large and collected on a comparatively small sur face, and when the time of the election is limited to a few days, bribery cannot be very effectually carried on, though it is true that there is time enough before the election for the opposite parties to canvass actively, and to divide a large constitu ency into districts for the purpose of bet ter securing the votes. Still the numbers Ale the electors, their proximity, and the shortness of the time, are obstacles to bribery. The proximity of the electors to one another might be supposed to favour bribery, because the trouble of dealing with a large number on a limited surface is less than the trouble with an equal number who are dispersed over a larger surface. This argument must be allowed to have its weight; but it is overweighed by another. In poli tical discussions we must assume some principles as true. If the assumptions are not generally admitted, the conclusion will not convince those who deny the assumptions. If the assumptions are ad mitta, to be true, it only concerns all parties to see that the conclusion is fairly drawn. It is here assumed that a ma jority of the electors in the largest con stituencies, and a great majority of the educated class, admit that it is a mean, a dishonest act, to receive money for a vote; and they will also admit that a vote ought to be given to the man whom the voter thinks best qualified to be a representative. It is also assumed that opinion is more powerful in a dense than in a scattered population, and that the ex ample and the opinion of a few men of character have more weight than the ex ample and opinion of a much greater number of men who have no character or only a bad one. Now, when bribery is forbidden by law, it must be done se cretly : when it is forbidden by opinion, it will for that reason also be done se cretly ; and there are many acts the public doing of which is more restrained by opinion than by law. There are some acts which the law can hardly reach, and yet men do not for that reason take the less pains to do them secretly. If the buying of votes were not a legal offence, it is true that the purchase might be made openly. But it is not probable that it would be so ; for there is no reason why that bribery which is now known or be lieved to be done in secret, and is con demned not because it is illegal, but for other reasons, would receive less con demnation if it were done openly. No is it probable that many candidates who now give bribes through agents who take all possible means to conceal themselves and their employers, in order to avoid legal penalties, would choose to let their agents do it openly, simply because the legal penalties were removed. It is con cluded, then, that the attempt would be to do it secretly from various motives, and mainly from respect to opinion, which condemns the act. But as the only fear would be the fear of opinion, it is certain that, though done secretly, it would not be managed with all the caution that it now is, and that the fact of a candidate being a purchaser of votes, or the fact of money being paid for votes, would be known beyond all doubt. As the law now stands, it is a very difficult thing to bring the proof of bribery home to a can didate ; so expert are the agents in all the means for baffling investigation. When bribery is said and believed to have been practised at an election, who will undertake to prove that the candidate was privy to it, though he may be able to prove that large sums were expended in bribery ? But if it should be known be yond all doubt that a man purchased votes at an election, or if it should be known beyond all doubt that money was given for votes, and if the fact were so notorious that it could be published with safety, either a man would on that account not buy votes at all, or that opinion does not exist against bribery which we have assumed to exist. If it does exist, in order to prevent bribery we must operate on the giver of the bribe rather than the receiver; on the few who can be dealt with, rather than on the many. It is here assumed that if bribery should be notoriously practised at an election, every body would believe that the candidate on whose behalf money was given, was privy to it or consented to it. Whether the money was his own or another person's, makes no difference in his moral offence, if he consents to have his seat by such means; and he who openly published the fact of bribery and charged the candidate with it, would do good service, and should need no legal defence except to prove the fact Bribery is most practicable and is most practised when the constituencies are small. When they are large and scat tered over a large surface, bribery is also easily practicable. It is also practicable and practised even when the consti tuencies are large and collected on a comparatively small surface ; and it may cost no more to bribe a considerable por tion of such constituencies than to bribe the whole or a majority of a small con stituency. But the fewer persons there are to deal with, the less is the chance of detection ; and therefore if the same sum will secure a seat in a small and in a large constituency, the small constituency ap pears to offer the better opportunity to the briber. Now as small constituencies may be and are bribed under the exist ing laws, so they might be bribed if there were no penalties against bribery. But for the reason already given the candidate would do it secretly, and yet the fact of bribery might become noto rious, and the condemnation of opinion might fall upon him. At any rate there is no reason for supposing that there would be more bribery in small consti tuencies than there is at present, if the penalties against bribery were repealed.