Footnotes:
1 (return)
[ I limit the expression to
past time, because I would say nothing derogatory of a great, and now at
last a free, people, who are entering into the general movement of
European progress with a vigor which bids fair to make up rapidly the
ground they have lost. No one can doubt what Spanish intellect and energy
are capable of; and their faults as a people are chiefly those for which
freedom and industrial ardor are a real specific.]
2 (return)
[ Italy, which alone can be
quoted as an exception, is only so in regard to the final stage of its
transformation. The more difficult previous advance from the city
isolation of Florence, Pisa, or Milan, to the provincial unity of Tuscany
or Lombardy, took place in the usual manner.]
3 (return)
[ This blunder of Mr.
Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit, Sir John Pakington took an
opportunity soon after of separating himself) is a speaking instance,
among many, how little the Conservative leaders understand Conservative
principles. Without presuming to require from political parties such an
amount of virtue and discernment as that they should comprehend, and know
when to apply, the principles of their opponents, we may yet say that it
would be a great improvement if each party understood and acted upon its
own. Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently for
every thing conservative, and Liberals for every thing liberal. We should
not then have to wait long for things which, like the present and many
other great measures, are eminently both the one and the other. The
Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the stupidest party,
have much the greatest sins of this description to answer for; and it is a
melancholy truth, that if any measure were proposed on any subject truly,
largely, and far-sightedly conservative, even if Liberals were willing to
vote for it, the great bulk of the Conservative party would rush blindly
in and prevent it from being carried.]
4 (return)
[ "Thoughts on Parliamentary
Reform," 2nd ed. p. 32-36.]
5 (return)
[ "This expedient has been
recommended both on the score of saving expense and on that of obtaining
the votes of many electors who otherwise would not vote, and who are
regarded by the advocates of the plan as a particularly desirable class of
voters. The scheme has been carried into practice in the election of
poor-law guardians, and its success in that instance is appealed to in
favor of adopting it in the more important case of voting for a member of
the Legislature. But the two cases appear to me to differ in the point on
which the benefits of the expedient depend. In a local election for a
special kind of administrative business, which consists mainly in the
dispensation of a public fund, it is an object to prevent the choice from
being exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern themselves
about it; for the public interest which attaches to the election being of
a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the
disposition to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a great
measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to their own
private advantage; and it may be very desirable to render the intervention
of other people as little onerous to them as possible, if only for the
purpose of swamping these private interests. But when the matter in hand
is the great business of national government, in which every one must take
an interest who cares for any thing out of himself, or who cares even for
himself intelligently, it is much rather an object to prevent those from
voting who are indifferent to the subject, than to induce them to vote by
any other means than that of awakening their dormant minds. The voter who
does not care enough about the election to go to the poll is the very man
who, if he can vote without that small trouble, will give his vote to the
first person who asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous
inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes is not likely to care
much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of mind has no moral
right to vote at all; since, if he does so, a vote which is not the
expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as far in
determining the result as one which represents the thoughts and purposes
of a life."—Thoughts, etc., p. 39.]
6 (return)
[ Several of the witnesses
before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1860, on the operation of
the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, some of them of great practical
experience in election matters, were favorable (either absolutely or as a
last resort) to the principle of requiring a declaration from members of
Parliament, and were of opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would
be, to a great degree, effectual. (Evidence, pp. 46, 54-7, 67, 123,
198-202, 208.) The chief commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in
reference certainly to a different proposal), "If they see that the
Legislature is earnest upon the subject, the machinery will work.... I am
quite sure that if some personal stigma were applied upon conviction of
bribery, it would change the current of public opinion" (pp. 26 and 32). A
distinguished member of the committee (and of the present cabinet) seemed
to think it very objectionable to attach the penalties of perjury to a
merely promissory as distinguished from an assertory oath; but he was
reminded that the oath taken by a witness in a court of justice is a
promissory oath; and the rejoinder (that the witness's promise relates to
an act to be done at once, while the member's would be a promise for all
future time) would only be to the purpose if it could be supposed that the
swearer might forget the obligation he had entered into, or could possibly
violate it unawares: contingencies which, in a case like the present, are
out of the question.
A more substantial difficulty is, that one of the forms most frequently assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to local charities or other local objects; and it would be a strong measure to enact that money should not be given in charity within a place by the member for it. When such subscriptions are bonâ fide, the popularity which may be derived from them is an advantage which it seems hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the greatest part of the mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is employed in bribery, under the euphonious name of keeping up the member's interest. To guard against this, it should be part of the member's promissory declaration that all sums expended by him in the place, or for any purpose connected with it or with any of its inhabitants (with the exception perhaps of his own hotel expenses) should pass through the hands of the election auditor, and be by him (and not by the member himself or his friends) applied to its declared purpose.
The principle of making all lawful expenses of a charge, not upon the candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of the best witnesses (pp. 20, 65-70, 277).]
7 (return)
[ "As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by
creating a pecuniary inducement to persons of the lowest class to devote
themselves to public affairs, the calling of the demagogue would be
formally inaugurated. Nothing is more to be deprecated than making it the
private interest of a number of active persons to urge the form of
government in the direction of its natural perversion. The indications
which either a multitude or an individual can give when merely left to
their own weaknesses, afford but a faint idea of what those weaknesses
would become when played upon by a thousand flatterers. If there were 658
places of certain, however moderate emolument, to be gained by persuading
the multitude that ignorance is as good as knowledge, and better, it is
terrible odds that they would believe and act upon the lesson."—(Article
in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1859, headed "Recent Writers on
Reform.")]
8 (return)
[ Not always, however, the
most recondite; for one of the latest denouncers of competitive
examination in the House of Commons had the näiveté to produce a
set of almost elementary questions in algebra, history, and geography, as
a proof of the exorbitant amount of high scientific attainment which the
Commissioners were so wild as to exact.]
9 (return)
[ On Liberty, concluding
chapter; and, at greater length, in the final chapter of "Principles of
Political Economy."]
10 (return)
[ Mr. Calhoun.]
11 (return)
[ I am speaking here of the
adoption of this improved policy, not, of course, of its original
suggestion. The honor of having been its earliest champion belongs
unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.]