On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    RADICAL MONARCHISTS

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    The bad influences to be overcome are many and various . No Bribery Bill will cover them . First , of course , there is Bribery itself , with all its organisation of clubs , attorneys , agents , and WVB . s Unfortunately the suffrage is in the hands of many who will sell it if they can . But if the respectable part of the constituency were determined and vigilant , corruption would become very difficult . Club interference ought to be put

    down at once . Club candidates ought to be everywhere refused . The Attorney influence ought to be vigorously diminished . But above Jill , pains should be taken in the selection of . honest candidates , which almost always rests with those who are personally above corruption , if they will only use their trust and not leave it to pettifoggers and agents . Get a really high-minded and independent man for your candidate , and you need not fear that he will use corruption .

    As to intimidation , where it exists we must combine against it . " We had rather see it put down with a high hand than shirked by the ballot . These are the grosser forms of corruption . But there are other things which drive away good men from Parliament and from the service of the State . First , there is the system of personal canvassing , which is degrading alike to the canvasser and to tlie canvassed . A seat in Parliament

    is a public trust , and a man ought not to have to solicit it as a private favour . It is enough if he meets his constituents publicly , explains to them his sentiments , and gives them proof of his political knowledge and competency . High-spirited men refuse to go through this disgusting ordeal of wheedling and adulation ; and those who do go through it are invariably the worse for it , and carry away a lower sense of the importance and duties of their trust . Canvassing is almost as great a source of corruption as bribery . Some of the most disgracefully incompetent members of the ITouse of Commons owe their seats not to

    money or local influence , but simply to skill in low flattery .. " We could point to instances in which a penniless fool , without connexions or advantages of any kind whatever , has come in by a great majority for a considerable constituency , merely through the assiduous application of soft sawder . A Chatham would no more condescend to such a process than a C 01110 LA . NUS . Secondly , there are the selfish and tyrannical exactions which constituencies make

    upon the time and money of their members . Bach constituency has a right to exact that its member shall diligently , faithfully , and uprightly discharge his public duty : it has a right to call him to account for any apparent breach of duty ; and to require from him frank explanations of hia views on public questions * But it has no right to demand that he shall be its perpetual courtier and its perpetual parasite , or that hia purse shall be always open to every beggar and every

    charity-monger connected with the town . The two functions of political representative and private slave and sycophant have no connexion whatever ; and many a high-minded man is deterred from being the first by hia horror of being the socond . Meanness of all kind is the inevitable result . And then the constituencies wonder that at a great national crisis these representatives arc not the incarnations of public spirit , and the very heart and intellect of the nation !

    Thirdly , comes . the practice of plodgings Ofjijourso , so long as the nation ia divided iiito parties , a candidate must say to which j ^' aWjr he 1 belongs . He must give a gonoral account pf " hia political principles when he offers' himself , and his views from time to

    time on any ^ great questions may arise . But to oblige him to pledge himself on particular measures is to deprive him of that freedom of conscience which he ought to value more than any seat in Parliament , and which he cannot resign without moral degradation . Dishonest men in search of a seat for private or joint-stock purposes always take these pledges without hesitation : weak men hesitate , shuflle , take the pledge with

    a qualification , equivocate , and . get into scrapes : high-minded integrity spurns the pledge and the constituency which exacts it . Not that it is generally the constituency , properly speaking , which takes pledges ; it is generally a minority who , having just votes enough to turn the scale , and being reckless of everything but their own crotchet , are able to degrade the representative of the whole body to the level of

    their folly or fanaticism . If the right man is chosen as a candidate , his judgment on particular measures ought to be better than that of his constituents ; and , therefore , on intellectual as well as moral grounds , his judgment on particular questions ought to be unrestrained . Choose the right man , and treat him as the right man , with that generous confidence which exalts alike him who bestows it and him on whom it is bestowed . Let him be responsible , but let him be free .

    Things will never be right in England till candidates are sought by constituencies instead of putting themselves forward . A vain , vacant mind will take any number of pledges , pay money , and eat any amount of dirt , for the sake of getting into St . Stephen ' s Club and seeing M . P . after his name . A wise man , with the treasures of thought and knowledge at his command , will rather be content with those treasures , and , if he wants to influence opinion , use his pen , than go through what is expected of a candidate for the exceeding

    great reward of listening to dull speeches all night long . Political ambition , even of the better kind , seldom springs spontaneously in the greatest minds . Cromwell , was invited to become member for Huntingdon at a great national crisis , otherwise his life would probably have been spent in religious exercises , and the management of his farm , without a wish for political power . Washington , in the same manner , was forced into political life , for which he clearly had no natural desire .

    Have we any real political virtue in us ¦ — that is the question which the next general election will decide . The borough constituencies have done their part well on great questions , such as Free Trade and the Suffrage . They have also chosen their leaders well out of those who have found their way into the House of Commons ; of which the public course of Mr . Cobden and Mr . Bitiairr ,

    unspotted by any mean iaction or intrigue for place , is a high instance . But in order to send the right men generally to the House of Commons , they have yet much to learn ; and everything now depends upon their learning it . Might we not have an Association for Electoral as well as Administrative lieform ? We cannot help thinking that Electoral Reform is the right end to begin at .

    Radical Monarchists

    RADICAL MONARCHISTS . One good thing , at all events , the present war has produced—a distinct demand for administrative capacity . The ovila of maladministration in peace aro aa groat and greater than those of maladministration in war , but they are less seen and folt ; and , therefore , while peace is content with tho titled shadow of ability , war in general domands the homely substance . But unfortunately , owing to the di p lomatic character of fcho war , tho movement in favour of

    administrative reform does not coincide with the movement in favour of political improvement on the contrary , it tends to thwart it , and we are threatened with political retrogradation as the price of victory in war . Such will always be the case when nations fight , not in self-defence , or in defence of a great principle , but for conquest , glory , punctilio , or from pugnacity alone—though they may fight gallantly , or even heroically , as our soldiers are fighting now . " Were we really striking for liberty and justice , as we . should ha ve

    been if we had taken up the cause of Hungary or the Horn an Republic , our love of English freedom and our position as the champions of freedom in Europe would rise with every blow . But we are not fighting for the cause of liberty and justice , however the mass of the people may be possessed with that generous illusion . Our success , if we succeed , will not break the chain , political or religious , of one human being : on the

    contrary , it will rivet the chains of France and Rome . " We are fighting to open the Danube and restore the equilibrium of Russia and Turkey in the Black Sea . The consequence is that nothing is awakened but the purely military spirit , and the desire for a vigorous military administration and a large standing army . Instead of being more and more fired with the love of freedom , and standing forth more and more as a free nation , we seem to become more careless of freedom

    every hour . The greatest symptom of this was the ovation of the French Emperor . Its latest symptom is an article full of gushing loyalty in the daily Radical journal , tempting the Crown to break through the Constitution , and take the selection of Ministers and the conduct of affairs out of the hands of the

    House of Commons ; the alleged reason for this proposal being that the Queen has shown a sympathy for our soldiers in the Crimea . The tears of Royalty of course are far brighter in the eyes of our Radical contemporary than those of ordinary women . But do they imply any peculiar political capacity ? The last Monarch who took part in the conduct of affairs and selected his own

    Ministers was George III ., also a Sovereign of many kindly sympathies and many domestic virtues . The part he took in affairs was to urge on the American and French wars . The Ministers of his selection were Lord Bute and Lord North , neither of whom very materially advanced the welfare or honour of the countty . Queen Charlotte was excluded by her sex . Who does

    our contemporary think would govern us now —who would be Connnander-in-Chief and Minister of War if the Crown had tho selection ? We shrewdly guess that it would be a person for whoso intellect , whose liberality of mind and social sympathies we have a very high and sincere respect , but whoso attempts , or alleged attempts , to take part in the work of Government were not received

    with applause by the journal in question . We aro no revolutioniats . We have read political philosophy too seriously , if not too wisely , to regard sudden and violent constitutional changes as anything but the remedy of despair . But we feel none tho less convinced that the gradual elimination of tho hereditary principle of government , not its restoration in any form , has become tho neadvanced

    ccssity and tho duty of tho more nations of tho world . Tho principle is worn out . All attempts to propagate it fail . Whenever it exists in vigour among advanced nations , it rests not on opinion but on standing armies . It waa a necessity and a source 01 order to tho anarchy of the middle agea : it is a source of anarchy to modern civilisation . Ita lingering" existence presents tho full de-

    Untitled Article

    516 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 2, 1855, page 516, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2093/page/12/