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All this but emphasizes the purity of the wooing of the electors to-day. The various stringent Acts against bribery and corruption carried in the latter half of the nineteenth century have not been passed in vain. In 1854 bribery was made a criminal offence by the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act. Election petitions by defeated candidates claiming seats on the ground that there had been corrupt practices were formerly tried by committees of the House of Commons. Often the decisions were partisan, and directly in the teeth of the evidence. Yet the House of Commons for centuries so jealously guarded its own jurisdiction over all matters relating to the election of its members that it rejected proposals of a judicial tribunal. At length in 1868 the Parliamentary Elections Act was passed, and since then two Judges of the King’s Bench Division try petitions, and report the result to the Speaker. After the General Election of 1880 there were no fewer than ninety-five petitions impugning returns on various grounds, including bribery, intimidation, personation of dead or absent voters, and most of them were sustained. After the General Election of 1885 there was not a single petition. Between these electoral contests a statute was passed—the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act of 1883—which has done much to make parliamentary elections pure. Its main purpose was the fixing of a maximum scale of electioneering expenditure, varying in amount according to the character and extent of the constituency, and each candidate was required to make a statement of his expenses to the returning officer within thirty-five days after the contest. The expenditure of an election—other than the personal expenses of the candidate and the returning officers’ charges—was limited by this Act in England and Scotland to £350 for the first 2,000 electors in boroughs, and £650 for the first 2,000 electors in counties, with accretions of £30 in the case of boroughs, and £60 in the case of counties, for every additional 1,000 electors. The personal expenses of a candidate were confined to £100. The General Election of 1880—the last election in which expenditure within the law was practically unlimited, and, as the disclosures in the hearing of the petitions showed, was most excessive—cost the candidates over £2,000,000, or about 15s. for each vote polled. The General Election of 1885, the first held under the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, cost only £1,026,646, or 4s. 5d. per vote. The tendency of the expenditure is still downwards. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1918, the expenses of a candidate must not exceed an amount equal to 7d. for each elector on the register, in the case of counties, and 5d. in the case of boroughs, exclusive of personal expenses. The fee paid to the election agent must not exceed £75 in counties and £50 in boroughs.
Still, the question is sometimes asked in all seriousness: Is electioneering really any purer now than it was in the days before the first Reform Act? It is admitted that seats in the House of Commons are no longer openly purchased, that individual voters are no longer directly bribed. But it is said that the old blunt and barefaced forms of corruption have simply given place to newer and subtler methods of bribery, which are just as dishonourable to those who give and those who take. A candidate does not now buy a constituency; he “nurses” it. In other words, he tries to secure the good will and support of the electors by subscriptions and donations for various local objects. Against this practice, with its many by-ways of expenditure, there is no law. The objects for which money is thus spent divide themselves into two classes—religion and philanthropy, sport and amusements. Is a peal of bells required for the parish church? Does the chapel aspire to a steeple? Is a billiard-table wanted by the young men’s society? Are coal and blankets needed by the poor during the winter? The open-handed candidate is only waiting for a hint in order to supply the necessary cheque. Then there are football and cricket clubs to which the candidate is expected to give financial assistance. And give it he does gladly, for, as he says, it is the duty of public men to encourage national sports and pastimes. If the stories one hears be true, it would seem, indeed, as if the old tradition that a vote is a saleable commodity, and that parliamentary elections are held, not so much that the country may be governed in accordance with the wishes of the people as that the constituency may profit financially in one way or another by the return of a representative, still to some extent survives. It is even said that impudent individual demands are made on the purse of the candidate. They range from five shillings for getting a voter’s clothes or tools out of pawn to a five-pound note for sending an invalid supporter to the seaside.
But these attempts to blackmail the candidate are, when all is said and done, exceedingly rare. According as the franchise has been broadened, as the property qualification for the vote has been reduced, the purer have elections become. This is due to some extent partly to the fear of the law against corrupt and illegal practices, and partly to the size of the constituencies, which are now so large that the purchase of a sufficient number of votes to decide the issue is beyond the capacity of most purses. But I think it is more due to the sturdy pride and self-respect of the new electors, the working classes generally, as well as their sense of public duty, which have put an end to the old petitional extension of hands for doles in return for votes. Happily, there is no gainsaying the seriousness and responsibility with which, on the whole, the franchise is now exercised. Taking them all in all, the voters go to the polling booths animated by a fine public spirit—respect for the Constitution, devotion to the State—which it is not too much to say is aroused and kept purely aflame by their different political convictions, anti without a thought of individual gain.
Moreover, Party organization makes a representative largely independent, not only of the local whims and caprices of his constituency, but of any section of the electors who may look for favours in return for their support. The representative may occasionally be hard pressed by local interests, but as a rule these are regarded as subsidiary to Party considerations, to the supreme purpose of each Party to obtain control of the machinery of Government. Therefore the secret of success in the wooing of the electors to-day is not the distribution of blankets or billiard-tables. It might perhaps be said that it is not even wit, wisdom and eloquence in the candidate—though, of course, these possessions greatly count—much less complete independence of Party in public affairs. It is adherence to one Party ticket or the other; it is agreement with the Party opinions of the majority of the constituency. The victorious candidate does not always owe his election to his personal success in turning the majority of the voters round to his side. As a rule, his election means simply that he has had the good fortune to present himself to a constituency which, in the main, was already in agreement with his political opinions. And instead of five-pound notes, he is expected to distribute only Party promises and pledges.