therefore, places a magnificent premium upon bribery." In England the
_Corrupt Practices Act_ has done immense good: nothing reflects so much
honour on the Imperial Parliament as the voluntary transference of the
duty of deciding cases to the judiciary. In Australia this much-needed
reform has not yet been introduced, and direct bribery prevails to a
much larger extent than would be supposed from the number of cases
investigated. Members of Parliament are naturally loth to convict one of
their own number, and the knowledge of this fact prevents petitions
being lodged.

The mere existence of secret bribery is bad enough, but a greater danger
is that acts of indirect bribery are openly practised, with the tacit
approval of electors. "There have been instances," says Mr. Lecky, in
his "Democracy and Liberty," "in which the political votes of the police
force, of the P.O. officials, of the civil service clerks have been
avowedly marshalled for the purpose of obtaining particular class
advantages--a disintegrated majority is strongly tempted to conciliate
every detached group of votes." In Australia this has become a regular
practice; and a still worse feature is that Members of Parliament have
free access to public departments to promote class and local interests.
Class legislation is frequently brought forward on the eve of an
election with the sole object of influencing votes. These conditions
favour the wire-pullers and mere self-seekers, and, in so far as they
prevent the electors from voting on the political views and personal
merits of the candidates, they are inimical to the public interests. Mr.
Lecky has pointed out that a certain amount of moral compromise is
necessary in public life, and that a politician may indulge in
popularity-hunting from honourable public motives; the danger is that
unworthy politicians may screen themselves under shelter of this excuse.

We do not claim that the proposed system would abolish corruption, but
we are justified in hoping that it would mitigate it very much. Even if
the venal vote still held the balance of power between parties, parties
are not so easily corrupted as individuals. But the most important gain
is that it could only exert an influence proportional to its numbers; it
could not decide whether a party gets all the representation or none at
all, as at present. In most cases it would be doubtful if it would
affect a single candidate. Consider, again, the case of individ