CHAPTER XXXV.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION.

No American can deny that great corruptions have come into American politics. It is a matter of world-wide notoriety that during the past twenty years legislatures have been bribed; that the State and national treasuries have been despoiled of millions; that members of Congress have sold their votes in open market to the highest bidder. Nor can it be doubted that nominations to offices, legislative, executive, and judicial, are bought with money, and elections to the most responsible positions carried by the same influence.

The principle of rotation in office, and the doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils of the vanquished,” have filled America with greedy and unscrupulous partisans. The governors of States have hundreds of offices to bestow; the President has many thousands. Every office-holder must be a partisan, that he may keep his place. Every office-seeker is a partisan that he may get one. The country is thus divided into two great hostile camps, the ins and the outs, with the annual and quadrennial struggles between them. What could we expect from the constant recurrence of such contests, where selfishness takes the place of patriotism, and no means are spared by needy and unscrupulous adventurers to secure their ends, but that all decent, honest, and respectable men should retire in disgust from the field, leaving it to bullies and blacklegs, rowdies and thieves?

With a laudable desire to diminish the patronage of the State Governments, and so remove some sources of corruption, many States have made their judges, sheriffs, and nearly every officer elective. But it has unfortunately happened, that in the large cities this has proved a cause of still deeper corruption.

The judges of the criminal courts, for example, are nominated in political caucusses and conventions. These are controlled by the most violent and reckless of the population-in a large degree, by the very men whom the judges, when elected, may be called upon to try for offences against the laws. He can secure a nomination who will pay the highest price before, and grant the most important favours after, the election.

Rowdies, bullies, prize fighters, have long been among the most active politicians in the large American cities. No man can be nominated or elected to the lowest office without paying them. When a man who depends upon his place for bread pays more for a nomination than his entire salary, it is easy to see that he must reimburse himself by some kind of robbery of the public.

It was believed that where the people made their own laws, or elected their own legislators, they would choose wisely, and that such a Government would be free from corruption. What has been the fact? That never, since the empire of the world was sold to the highest bidder, have there been such scenes of profligacy and corruption as in the municipal, State, and Federal Governments of the United States. The man who wants a law passed by which he can benefit—a charter, monopoly, patent extension, or subsidy—by a city council, a State Legislature, or Congress, must bribe right and left. There are lobby agents, brokers in corruption, at Albany, at Harrisburg, and at Washington, who fatten on a percentage of the bribes they give to members of the State and Federal legislatures. Poor men get elected, and after a few years have large fortunes. Members of Congress have received as handsome a bribe as a house and lot in Washington, for a single vote. A few of the most notorious of these corrupt members who have made a scandal, have been expelled; but not one in a hundred of those who deserved to be.

The payment of members of Congress and of the State legis

latures was at an early period a necessity. Many of the best men in the community were dependent upon professional or other labours for the support of their families. And why should the legislator serve his country without pay, any more than the soldier, the judge, or the diplomatist? It is said that the pay has induced a low class of men to aspire to office, who have yielded to corrupt practices, where men of fortune and position would have preserved their integrity. The truth is, that with corrupt politicians the pay has been the smallest consideration, while the lack of pay would have been a ready excuse for jobbings and peculations. Many Englishmen have spent from twenty to fifty thousand pounds to secure a seat in Parliament for the mere honour of serving their country. Wilberforce is said to have paid forty thousand at one election. If an American were to pay as many dollars, most people would expect him to "make money" by the investment.

Four years ago, the governor, lieutenant-governor, and nearly the whole legislature of the State of Wisconsin were proved to have taken bribes of a railway company. The case of Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War under Mr. Lincoln, and afterwards minister to Russia, who was judicially accused of attempting to bribe a member of the Pennsylvania legislature to vote for him as senator in the Federal Congress, surprised no one acquainted with American politics or the career of Mr. Cameron.

I am not speaking of idle rumours or party slanders. Every person who has been intimately acquainted with American politics for the last twenty years, knows how public, notorious, and undoubted these matters have become. Money is paid for nominations even to important judicial offices. The very thieves of New York are bribed to nominate the judges who are to try and sentence them. Money is paid for votes, and in certain States the man or the party that can pay the most money can make sure of carrying an election. This has been the case in England also; and formerly the British Parliament

was as corrupt as the American Congress, and some, at least, of the State Legislatures; but for many years we have not heard in England of bribing legislators. But in America money is paid to secure the passage of legislative grants for charities, appropriations, contracts, and monopolies.

No American will question these sorrowful and disgraceful facts, but some Englishmen may; therefore, I give the statements of some American newspapers. I regret that I carelessly

omitted to preserve the dates, but all my extracts were made before the war, and probably in 1860 or 1861. The first is from the New York Herald:—

"What is the cause of this rowdyism assuming so bold and defiant an attitude, domineering over law and order, and keeping respectable and virtuous citizens in continual fear? We answer that politics-party politics, and the corrupt practices connected with them, are the fruitful source of the anarchy which is a foul disgrace to our free institutions, and a cause of prejudice against democracy throughout the civilised world. The political wire-pullers and managers of elections have for many years subsidised a class of men who have cheated the State prison and the gallows of their due, to do their dirty work and to commit every sort of violence. The result of this system will be that the rowdies will virtually rule the country. And to such an alarming extent has this anomaly already grown that the peaceable and orderly portion of the citizens are beginning to consider whether the community would not fare betterwhether there would not be more security for property and life and limb-under a government like that of France or Russia, than under the best and freest government ever devised by the wisdom of man."

The Baltimore Sun has the following:-

"The history of the past few years has been truly appalling. It is a record of violence, bloodshed, and terrorism such as no man could ever have deemed possible to occur under the in

stitutions we profess. Organisations of the vilest, lowest, and most profligate outcasts of society have been maintained and used for the sole purpose of overawing, disfranchising, insulting and degrading respectable citizenship. And offices have been obtained and occupied, through such dishonourable means alone, by men who have doubtless ventured upon the absurd belief that they could at the same time maintain their social and political status unimpaired."

The New York World says:-"The fact is indisputable that defalcations, embezzlements, breaches of trust in all forms, jobbing and bribery in public affairs, swindling and over-reaching in private affairs, were never so rife in this country as they have been during the last few years. Fraud and corruption have acquired a power they never before possessed."

The New York Mercury mentions a notorious fact to which I have already alluded:

"Have not all our troubles fallen upon us as the climax of an era of corruption? What can we expect, when members of the national Congress and State legislatures go into the open market of politics and buy nominations with cash and promises of patronage or pay; buy votes to elect themselves; buy off rival candidates who may put their election in peril, and then go to the capital of the State or nation, as ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder as they were to buy the votes of their constituents? Thousands of dollars have been paid to the members of our legislatures for votes which have helped to plunder the people whose interests they are sworn to protect. Millions have been paid to members of Congress, stolen from the national treasury by their connivance. We have known of a member of Congress receiving an elegant house in Washington city, as the price of a single vote. And this is so far from being a solitary instance, that there are men in Washington who could tell how many millions of dollars have been distributed in this way for the past ten years, and could give a list of the