ELECTORAL TRICKERY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1252, 7 October 1911, Page 4

ELECTORAL TRICKERY.

_ A TEODTSLE which confronts the British Radicals is that tho payment of members may lead to a certain kind of political corruption. Rich members, it is feared, may ostentatiously subscribe the _ amount of their salaries to charitable objects in their constituencies. This experiment, tho Westminster Gazette records, was lately tried in Franco by a deputy, who offered an instalment of his salary for charitable objects in the Commune of Saint-Eticnne-cn-Bresse. He received the following letter from tho Mayor:

Jlr. Deputy,—Tho Committee of the Philanthropic Association of Saint-Etienne-en-Bresse, at its meeting on August 13, unanimously decided, at my suggestion, to decline a charitable offering which does not emanate from the heart, but is inspired by electoral trickery. I beg, therefore, to return to you the 2-4 francs which you have been kind enough to forward to me.

The Gazette thinks this "an example worth noting in the times in which we live." It is not beneath the notice of New Zealand. How much of the PnniE Minister's Budget—which has fallen so shockingly flat— ated from the heart" i How much of the accommodating kindnesses to districts are emanating from the same place? How much heart inspiration is there in the Attorney-General's discovery of his passionate love for Parnell and_ the fascination it has for him—or in his extremely "broad" views on land tenure? We fancy that the public will soon demonstrate in a most emphatic maaner that it has been infected by the cynicism of the Mayor of Saint-Etienne-en-Bresse.