Page:Electoral purity and economy.djvu/11

 wants, whether electors or non-electors; while all opportunity of bribing voters by employing them would be at an end.

The second question is more difficult of reply. The numbers first decided on must necessarily be experimental and subject to revision after trial. Care must be taken not to draw the lines too close; and as—wherever the limit may be fixed—the names of all those employed will now have to be returned, the evil of "bribery by employment" would be reduced to a minimum; and the question would become one merely of expense. The curtailment of expense is of course, a very important matter, but after all, it would be better policy to allow a reasonable, though limited, amount of expenditure,—even though it were somewhat higher than we might theoretically wish— than, by making the limits more stringent, to open a way to the temptation or to the supposed necessity of breaking the law. Probably it would be as well to allow one clerk and one messenger to every 500 electors for the period comprising the time between the declaration of the dissolution and two days before the day of poll, inclusive. On the day before the poll, and on the day of poll, the permitted numbers might well be increased by one-third. A less number could hardly, at present at all events, accomplish the work required.

The third question is still more difficult to answer. It is well known that the expenses of two candidates running together, very little, if at all exceed those of a single candidate. How, then, is the restriction on employment to be arranged so that it shall not unfairly handicap either the single candidate or the separate candidatures? Two candidates running together could hardly in fairness be allowed to employ double the numbers permitted to the single adversary. On the other hand, though there is usually an advantage from a party point of view in joint candidatures, if, as regards employment, the two candidates were to be reckoned merely as a "single candidate," it would often be thought more advantageous, in order to secure the fullest amount of employment, for them nominally to run separately. It is necessary therefore to allow to the joint candidature something more than the single, and a good deal less than the double allowance. Probably some such limit as this would work satisfactorily—for a single candidate the scale, as above given, should be sufficient, while two candidates running together should be restricted to one