Page:Mr. John Stuart Mill and the ballot.djvu/24

22 of irregular influences, though not very considerable, by parties in getting up voters; but neither in France, nor in Belgium, nor in Holland, nor in the chief cantons of Switzerland, in respect to which I made inquiries, was there any such bribery, nor indeed any practice of individual bribery, nor any such extravagant electoral expenses as are known to be so common as almost to be general in England. I say there was no individual bribery, for there were occasionally instances of what was considered collective bribery, by candidates promising, if they were elected, to get a railway carried in their direction, or to do something for their peculiar local advantage. In those countries the gross debauchery and rioting at our elections, as well as the excessive expenditure, any getting in of "third men" for the sake of the electoral expenditure in contests—such scenes as those at the last election in Brighton—are subjects of surprise and disparaging comment." Mr. Chadwick ascertained that in France four or five hundred francs are the usual amount of a candidate's expenses, and that double that sum, or thirty or forty pounds, would be open to challenge as irregular. He added: "In the Continental examples to which I have referred for the absence of any practice of bribery, it is due to state that in each instance the ballot was in use. It is due also to state on testimony of persons, like myself, who had filled public executive offices, and were in neutral positions, as well as of persons of the classes which were highly Conservative, that the ballot was deemed to work on the whole most satisfactorily."

One great advantage, if not the chief good, of the ballot would be the ignorance in which candidates and committees would be kept as to the state of the poll during the progress of the election. Corruption