Men
are not fond of paying large sums for leave to perform a laborious
duty. Plato had a much juster view of the conditions of good
government when he asserted that the persons who should be sought
out to be invested with political power are those who are personally
most averse to it, and that the only motive which can be relied on for
inducing the fittest men to take upon themselves the toils of
government is the fear of being governed by worse men. What must an
elector think, when he sees three or four gentlemen, none of them
previously observed to be lavish of their money on projects of
disinterested beneficence, vying with one another in the sums they
expend to be enabled to write M.P. after their names? Is it likely
he will suppose that it is for his interest they incur all this
cost? And if he form an uncomplimentary opinion of their part in the
affair, what moral obligation is he likely to feel as to his own?
Politicians are fond of treating it as the dream of enthusiasts that
the electoral body will ever be uncorrupt: truly enough, until they
are willing to become so themselves: for the electors, assuredly, will
take their moral tone from the candidates. So long as the elected
member, in any shape or manner, pay for his seat, all endeavours, will
fail to make the business of election anything but a selfish bargain
on all sides. "So long as the candidate himself, and the customs of
the world, seem to regard the function of a member of Parliament
less as a duty to be discharged than a personal favour to be
solicited, no effort will avail to implant in an ordinary voter the
feeling that the election of a member of Parliament is also a matter
of duty, and that he is not at liberty to bestow his vote on any other
consideration than that of personal fitness.
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