Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/161

 tively few in whom the disposition to be corrupt is owing if not to an innate depravity, at least to an indifference to, or a want of, conception of the public good, accompanied by a disregard of their own character in the estimation of their neighbours.

It is not to be supposed that corrupt motives and objects will be wholly extinguished in the political conduct of any class of men by any system of things. So long as a seat in the representative assembly of this country shall be one of the highest distinctions which the people can confer—and long may that continue to be so—there will be found men ready to make great pecuniary sacrifices to reach it. In every county or town, no doubt some men will be found ready to sell their votes; and no commodity is so vile that it has not sectors and dealers engaged in the traffic. If a wealthy and obscure candidate has to collect two thousand votes by this means, he is not likely to pay any considerable sum for each vote; and the members who thus obtain their seats, whether they owe their wealth to success in trade or speculation, or to inheritance, will pyobably have had advantages of experience or of leisure which will render them not inferior in sagacity to the average of those who now fill the House, and they are not likely to act less on their independent judgment. A member elected by these means, if he be actuated by a generous ambition, may still show by his public conduct that he is not unworthy of the position he has gained, and may at a future election deserve and obtain the support of independent men. In the mean time, in representing those alone who have voted for him, he neither prevents nor interferes with the representation of any earnest or virtuous elector; and the evil of bribery has been thus reduced to its minimum.