THE STANMORE ELECTION.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2458, 21 February 1882, Page 3

THE STANMORE ELECTION.

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The Judges have delivered their judgment on the Stanmore election petition, and the justice of it will probably not be called in question in any quarter. It is, in fact, the judgment that was anticipated by counsel on both sides after all the evidence was before Court. The election is declared void on account of illegal practice, and Mr. Pilliet, instead of Bitting in Parliament and assisting to govern the country, is deprived of all political rights whatever for a period of three years.

So far it was the duty of the Judges to proceed, and no further. Having disposed of the individual petitioned against their function was at an end. It cannot be doubted, however, that others besides that individual have been on their trial before the high court of puhlic opinion, or that the judgment has gone against them far more decidedly than the judgment of the judges went against the member elect for Stanmore. The public verdict, from one end of the colony to the other, is that the Stanmore election was a disgrace to the country. It is even worse than that. It is a slur upon the free institutions enjoyed by the people, and a victory to those who have contended that the people are unworthy of such institutions. The people asked for an extreme extension of the suffrage, and it was heartily accorded to them. They asked for representation according to population, and after a desperate struggle it was obtained for them. They asked for single electorates and single electorates were forthwith established. They asked for a stringent law to purify elections, and the Corrupt Practices Act was passed. All this was done that the representative principle might operate in its fulness, and that the people might be enabled to choose their rulers untrammelled by any of those hindrances which have grown around the elective system in older countries. But what is the result as exhibited in the evidence on the Stanmore petition ? The people themselves have shown the utmost contempt for the representative principle, for the political franchise, and for the safeguards which the law has erected for their special protection. What could be more grievous to any well wisher of the people, than to hear of a candidate coming forward and receiving no inconsiderable share of support, and who was prepared to retire at any moment, " as it was only a matter of £ b. d." with him. It appears to be a fact, admitted by more than one, that the issue of the election actually lay in the hands of this weak minded person. On his own confession, if the defeated candidate had "taken the hint''" and been civil to him, he would have remained in the field and secured his return. Anything more degrading than that part of the business probably never transpired in any contest. But the whole story of the election is a dismal record of degrading incidents. If this is how elections are to be contested under the new legislation, it would have been a hundred times better to have had no new electoral laws at all. The inevitable effect of such a state of affairs will be to drive all our best men out of the politics of the country. The blame in this case, morever, does not rest on one side. The petitioner, not having asked that the seat might be awarded to him, avoided the counter inquiry that would otherwise have been instituted into his share in the contest. It came out in evidence, nevertheless, that he and some of his supporters had, after the contest was over, to say the least of it, stooped to deeds even more discreditable than these his opponents were proved to have committed. That scene in the public house, where the petitioner and his friemd tried to lure the retiring candidate into liquor, and actually employed a shorthand writer to take down his halfdrunken utterances, would form a fine subject for the pencil of a Hogarth. If that is the sort of thing they did in cold blood by way of promoting a judicial inquiry, the public are at liberty to form their own conclusion as to what they would do in the excitement of a heated contest. For the sake of the public education it is to be regretted that the petition was not so worded that the doings of both candidates and their supporters might have been equally inquired into. The Stanmore electors, truly, have little to be preud of in the history of their first election as an independent constituency. Let us hope that the humiliating expose that has taken place will be a lesson to them and to the constituencies generally. One thing is very evident in this miserable affair, and that is that the Corrupt Practices Act has proved a two-edgad sword wounding thoso who wield it. That statute was passed at the most eloquent instance of the " liberal " party as a death blow to the power of wealth and social influence. But how has it operated ? It has unseated a radical member; and brought to light the most astonishing proceedings amongst the "liberals" themselves. If half the evidence on the Stanmore petition ia to be believed there never was a more unpopular measure than the Corrupt Practices Act so far as the lower grades of the people are concerned. Upright

| men like it because they have nothing t lose by it. Independent men lik* i J because they have nothing to fear froi it. _ But the class who are neithe npright nor independent—tho class wb constitute the main strength of dema gogues—hate it and dread it equallj If this fact has been conspicuousr established, as it undoubtedly has, tb Staamore election scandal will not bar been in Tain.