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    1130 THE LEADEK [No, 498. Oct. 8, 1859.

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    SOCIAL SCIENCE. The gentlemen who are to...

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    JUDGE LYNCH AT DO.ON. Lord Derby's condu...

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Election Bribery. Lkgisj-Ation Studiousl...

    lowering the character of every . district in which they occur . Nothing can tend more to bring the House of Commons into contempt than the way into it . The process is simple and discreditable at every point . -The aspirant for senatorial honours must make speeches he does not believe , engage a batch of lawyers , at good retaining fees ; take a score or two of public-houses ; employ all the printers who arc " red" " blue , as the case may be ; appoint committees and confidential agents ; letthem spend what they like , and then take his chance of an election petition , which enroties his pockets but makes good for the town . littl

    If the landed gentry could manage to see a e way before their olfactory organs , they ^ would combine to do away with this farrago of vice and scandal , for in the long run it will beat them out of the field . As a class , they live up to their incomes , and if M . P . ship is to go by purchase ^ they will be outbid by mercantile speculators and jointstock company blacklegs , who are best able to make such ah investment pay . Of all countries havinrr an electoral system , England is the most extensively and profoundly disgraced by bribery , and such a fact cannot remain without undermining parliamentary government itself Lord John ^ Russell got much cheering for that portion of his last speech , in which he explained his averand there is

    sion to radical alterations , we suspect no direction in which the Whig party is less prepared to advance with 'firmness , and vigour , than in that which leads to the abolition of electoral cor " ruption . The principles' of action are simple enough : let each locality pi'ovide and pay for the incidents really necessary for an election , and let all private employment of agents in any shape be made penal . The expense of election petitions should also be borne by the district giving rise to them , and the inquiry should take place in a simple manner on the spot . These , with the ballot and the Members' Bribery Oath , will probably become law whenever the public is honest enough to desire the correction of a most flagrant evil .

    1130 The Leadek [No, 498. Oct. 8, 1859.

    1130 THE LEADEK [ No , 498 . Oct . 8 , 1859 .

    Social Science. The Gentlemen Who Are To...

    SOCIAL SCIENCE . The gentlemen who are to meet at Bradford on Monday ought to be well aware that an obstacle is encountered on the very threshold of the temple of social science . The changes on the surface of the earth—such as the ebb and flow of the tides , the fall of rain , and the drying up of water , the clothing of the earth with verdure , and the binding it fast in ice ; and the changes in the heavenly bodies as they command our attention by their splendour and their movements , invite us b y the curiosity they excite to investigate them . We feel and know that we have no part in bringing them about , and that the science of them , consistently with the meaning of the word , is limited to observing and reducing our observations

    and their results to some method or order . But society is another name for ourselves , for man , his actions , and their consequences . He must act to bring about the phenomena of society bofore ho can know them , and thus his own acts in all the sooial sciences are the objects of his observation and his studies . They ore susceptible , though extremely multifarious , of being recorded and known , like tho rest of the phenomena of the material world , but they arc always seen through tho confusing hazu oi passion . To distinguish between the pure results of actions and . the motives or causes for actions—instincts and passions—the laws of our being , which co-exist with the results—is very difficult . This constitutes the obstacle to progress in the social sciences .

    Tho student of sooial science can only learn the natural laws which govern society b y observation , as holoarns the laws which govern the tides ? but society ia professedly regulated b y many acts of legislation —by some persons it is thought to rcoeive ii'oui them its whole being , and ho is required at starting to ascertain tho boundaries between the infiuenoe of natural laws and of legislation . To ascertain this , however , is one of the last results

    of investigation , for men make laws as they do other things , without knowing what will be their effects , and thus he has to investigate two distinct series of phenomena , inseparably intermingled ; without any * olue except abifcrary assump-4 £ o » e ' to guide him in distinguishing one from the . other . Accordingly , he assumes that society is regulated by legislation , and then he conducts all Ins observations in subserviency to that

    assumption , always carrying with him the strong belief that but for legislation society would be only an anarchical mass of conflicting atoms . Or he assumes that society is , and has been , at . all times regulated by natural laws—in which he runs counter to the almost universal belief , warranted by many facts , and shuts himself out from the general confidence . AsMcCulloch has expressed it , he might as well address Aldgate pump as the British public if he confine himself to abstract principles . Or he may assume—which cannot be denied—that natural laws and legislation partly and mutually regulate society , and then begins the onerous task of assigning justly to nature or legislation each its influence , while the effects of both are always commingling .

    At the approaching meeting of the National Association , Mr . Monckton Millies , "to illustrate our argument , is to deliver an address on the punishment and prevention of crime and the reformation of criminals . Now , the term crime does not mean what offends one man or another , or what men conscientiously dislike , for then it would be a crime for a Roman Catholic to worship one way and a Protestant another—it would be a crime to be a Puseyite and a crime to be a Low Churchman ; nor does it mean merely what legislation forbids , for then it would not be a crime to be idle , though idleness brings a man and his family to want and shame , and it would be a crime

    will be made between what nature forbids and what it pleases hereditary legislators , « ainekeeping squires , monopolist landowners , and the occupants of the Treasury—men who live by a system—to command ; but there will be no investigation into the pi-iriciple whether nature regulates society , whether her regulations are sufficient , and whether the law ° for securing the land to Lord Derby and his copartners , & c , be founded in reason and justice .

    From an association which is sure to proceed on a bias , and which proposes to treat subjects that interest all men , and which are day by day discussed in all their bearings , with more or less vigour and acumen , by the press , no public-advantage can be expected . The members will natter each other , and harden each other in error , if error exist ; they will make a noise about each other's great merits or blowup a reputation for one another , but they will not much extend accurate knowledge . ••

    to sell a newspaper on o , or compose and print on that day the paper that is to be sold on Monday . The term crime means actions which nature forbids ; and it is impossible to find a more important subject for investigation . It takes in the whole of human conduct , for all which men are not forbidden by nature to do they , may do . At once arises the difficulty of distinguishing between the effects of natural laws and legislation . The legislator forbids many actions- —so does nature ; and Mr . Milnes ought to distinguish

    -between the prohibitions of the two . His discussion of punishments , to be complete , must include the punishments inflicted by nature and the punishments inflicted by law . Mr . Milnes will have to discriminate , too , between those actions punished both by law and nature and those punished only by law or only by nature . It is quite clear that nature forbids man to maim his own body , and the legislator , except in very extreme cases , does not think it necessary to enforce or strengthen the prohibition . It is equally clear that nature does not prohibit individuals , though living under different governments , from exchanging the products of their respective industries , while it is well known that the policy of most governments includes , or has included , a considerable number of such prohibitions . Before Mr . Milnes can successfully discuss the means of preventing crime , he must inform us whether he mean actions forbidden by nature or merely legal crimes ; if he

    mean natural crimes he must prove that nature does not equally punish every action she forbids ; if he mean legal crimes , to prevent them one short method is for the legislator to create as few as possible . The best prevention of actions naturally criminal is clearly that appointed by nature with the knowledge of consequences . Probably , too , the best means to prevent legal crimes i « for the legislator to learn all the eonsoquunoos of actions , and then ho will never

    forbid what nature does not iorbiu . perfectly clear , alike from theory and experience , that nature forbids a great many possible actions , and that legislation now forbids , and has at all ' times forbidden , many actions which nature commands man to perform . We sec distinctly in Mr . Milnes proposed discussion , tho two princi ples—of legislation regulating society , and nature regulating sooioty- —in conflict ; and social science cannot make any progress unless the effects of these two principles oo always discriminated . Not to do this would be like mingling the vortices of Descartes with tho real motions ofthe heavenly bodies , and would promote confusion instead of knowledge .

    Will Mr . Monokton Milnos do this P Will any of tho gentlemen who are to meet at Bradford do this ? We believe not . They will tails much about jurisprudence ; they will expatiate about some proposed improvements in the law without ever asking themselves whether these alterations will reoonoile the law of the land with the law of nature ; they will bring together some statistics whioh will be valueless , booause no discrimination

    Judge Lynch At Do.On. Lord Derby's Condu...

    JUDGE LYNCH AT DO . ON . Lord Derby ' s conduct , we see with regretthough it is no more than-. we expected—finds imitators as well as admirers . A weekly contemporary refers to the practice of Mahomet . 'AH : to hang the Sheik whenever a man was' murdered by a tribe of Arabs ; and intimates that it might possibly be right on this principle to hung a Catholic priest whenever a murder is committed in a part of Ireland . If this is to be our policy , let it be enacted by law , and do not let us leave it to a mob of Protestants , or to Lord Derby and his retainers to carry sueh a barbarous principle into execution . Or if , as is said , the old Anglo- '

    Saxon plan of making the hundred or the barony responsible for every crime committed in it , is required in Ireland , let such a policy be debated in Parliament , and settled there , not enacted by Lord Derby and Mr . Gray . What we contend for is , that all punishment for the prevention of crime , the preservation of order , and the maintenance , of the . , should be decreed by Parliament or the judges as interpreters of common law , and neither by mobs nor individual landlords . They may be humane , kindly , and considerate , but they may be the reverse ; and on principle condemn the much-praised exercise by Lord Derby of his power as a landlord .

    We must admit and state that m many cases the punishment of the law is accompanied and enforced by punishment inflicted by individuals . In no other light can we regard the exclusion from all trust and all employment , which in the present condition of society is tantamount to complete degradation , if not starvation , of the man whom the . law has punished for theft . The offence is by no means expiated by ' the . pain the law inflicts . Society actually punishes him also still more heavily . For Lord Derby , then , it may membe

    be pleaded that he only acts like any other r of society , in punishing an act , according to his power , which society generally condemns . Alien his conduct , so defended , opund up anothev gvetU question , viz ., whether every action wl . icli tac society ' dislikes or treats us u crime should be doubly punished ? The society , from the nature of its own feelings and sentiments , just like . bora Derby , will punish any and every offender . H it does not , then in the eyes of society thuru w no offence . And then comes the question—slmuki lnw ns f > nnfi « rwliH »\ miviii '« lin < l from SOCK'tVi ]» U 111 S 1 J

    those offenges which society also puniuher ., aim should it punish actions which society Uoch not punish ? Now , onb of the reasons usually nssigneii for punishment by law is to properly direct ( lie indignation of society , and its infallible punwhmonts , against crimes 5 and the law having , in this i-noe , assigned no punishment to tho non-detection or n . inurdorer by his neighbours , Lord Derby w wronB ' in" assuming to punish an action winch tlie law does not punish . Whether wo look nt tap pi exceeding under tho light thrown on it by itn ( -Kfenders or its impugners , it stands out remuricivuiy from ordinary events , and forms an epoch in oui history of landed property and our theory ol punishment . , , , The proceeding is the more to bo l-opyehonaou . ot iy

    though we do wot allow any feelings piu ^ mingle in our judgment , because Lord Derby mis been Prime Minister . In that capacity—having both Houses of Parliament at his bock , and tuc power of the Crown in his hands—lie might almost acquire a conviction that he was the solo rospon-

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1859, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08101859/page/14/