"H. Stuart Wortlev.
"G. J. Holyoake, Esq."
Nothing was done during Lord John Manners' reign as Commissioner of Works, but when Mr. A. S. Ayrton became Commissioner of the Board, he found the letter in the archives of the office, and had the light erected.
CHAPTER XII. UNFORESEEN QUALITIES IN PUBLIC MEN
I.
Without noticing unexpected qualities now and then, and remembering them, many are needlessly discouraged in purposes of improvement. The two Bramwells, the judge and his brother Frederick, were both men of great parts. This narrative relates to the Judge, who could do mischief at will—and did it. It was Baron Bramwell who protected the bribers of Berwick. It is to judges of his political proclivities, to whom bribers look still for countenance. Young men of to-day enjoy advantages unknown to their forefathers, and the new generation are mostly ignorant how their good fortune, which Liberalism brought them, came to them—and they make no inquiry. Not only have they no pride in sustaining the political traditions of their family, but their base ambition is to give the influence of the position they have attained to that party who put every impediment in the way of their ever emerging from social and industrial obscurity—a condition from which they did not deserve to be rescued.
Political reformers used to complain of bribery at elections, by which a few wealthy political adventurers tempted the baser sort of citizens to sell the liberties of the nation to them. Tories, by the law of their being, seek authority by which the majority of them intend the control of public affairs for their own advantage. They supply money for corruption, intending to refund themselves by place and profit when the resources of the State come under their manipulation. Even judges of their party accord them legal security in their political nefariousness.
When the Liberals of Newcastle-on-Tyne claimed that Parliament should terminate electoral bribery, Lord John Russell said the law was already against it, and that the Newcastle applicants to the House of Commons should put bribery down at their own door, meaning in Berwick-on-Tweed, notorious for it Lord John had never tried to do this, or he would not have advised the attempt His counsel at the time seemed reasonable, and what came of it was shown in a petition from the Northern Reform Union, sent to Parliament (1859), which set forth as follows:—
That the petitioners were members of a society named "The Northern Reform Union," which was instituted for the purpose of obtaining a further Reform of the Representation of the People of these Realms in Parliament, and for the purpose of vindicating that purity and freedom of election which is essential to a true representative system. Amongst other steps with a view to these purposes, the said petitioners were induced to institute inquiries into certain corrupt practices, alleged to have taken place in the election of a member for the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.