as a public offence, may be defined as the administration of a bribe or reward, that it may be a motive in the performance of functions for which the proper motive ought to be a conscientious sense of duty. When this is superseded by the sordid impulses created by the bribe, a person is said to be corrupted, and thus corruption is a term sometimes held equivalent to bribery. The offence may be divided into two great classes, the one characteristic of despotisms, where a person invested with power is induced by payment unjustly to use it; the other, which is an unfortunate characteristic of constitutional governments, where power is obtained by purchasing the suffrages of those who can impart it. The former offence is in every sense the more odious and formidable, and indeed it may be said, that until a country has outgrown it, there is no room for the existence of elective bribery, since the nations among which justice is habitually sold appear to be far below the capacity of possessing constitutional rights.

When Samuel in his old age challenges a rigid scrutiny of his conduct, he says, "Whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hands have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?" And Amos, when denouncing the condition of the Israelites under Jeroboam, says, "they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right." It is a natural propensity, removable only by civilization or some powerful counteracting influence, to feel that every element of power is to be employed as much as possible for the owner's own behoof, and that its benefits should be conferred not on those who best deserve them, but on those who will pay most for them. Hence, judicial corruption is an inveterate vice of imperfect civilization. It is so deeply seated among oriental races, that the attempts by controlling authority to eradicate it have been often futile. It has been the main impediment to the employment of natives in the British Eastern empire, since no external appearance of respectability, or apparent systematic routine of business, can be relied on as securities that the whole organization is not contaminated by systematic bribery. It is difficult to get the oriental mind to understand how it is reasonable to expect the temptation of a bribe to be resisted. In the Russian empire this oriental characteristic has had another conflict with the demands of a higher civilization. The organization of the government requires that the empire should be honestly served by its official men, but their morality is of the humblest oriental standard, and force will not change it. In no country, perhaps, has the offence been visited with more dire chastisement where it has been discovered, yet by the concurring testimony of all who are acquainted with Russian society, not only the official departments, but the courts of law, are still influenced by systematic bribery. There is, perhaps, no other crime on which the force of law, if unaided by public opinion and morals, can have so little influence; for in other crimes, such as violence or fraud, there is generally some person immediately injured by the act, who can give his aid in the detection of the offender; but in the perpetration of the offence of bribery, all the immediate parties obtain what they desire and are satisfied.

The purification of the bench from judicial bribery has been gradual in most of the European countries. In France it received an impulse in the sixteenth century from the high-minded chancellor L'Hôpital. In England, judicial corruption acquired a painful, but perhaps a wholesome renown, from the fate of the illustrious Bacon. If it were admitted, that although he received customary gifts, they never influenced his decisions, yet a comparison of even this modified culpability with the conduct of his predecessor Ellesmere, whose hands were clear from all contact with unofficial sources of emolument, led undoubtedly to the establishment of a higher morality of the bench. In Scotland for some years after the Revolution, the bench was not without a suspicion of interested partiality; but during the past half century at least, there has been in all parts of the empire a perfect reliance on its purity.

The same may be said of the higher class of ministerial officers. There is no doubt that in the period from the Revolution to the end of Queen Anne's reign, when a speaker of the House of Commons was expelled for bribery, and the great Marlborough could not clear his character from pecuniary dishonesty, there was much corruption in the highest official quarters. The level of the offence of official bribery has gradually descended, until it has become an extremely rare thing for the humbler officers connected with the revenue to be charged with it. It has had a more lingering existence with those who, because their power is more of a constitutional than an official character, have been deemed less responsible to the public. During Walpole's administration, there is no doubt that members of parliament were paid in cash for votes; and the memorable saying, that every man has his price, has been preserved as a characteristic indication of his method of government. At the present day there is a lurking suspicion that the promoters of railways and other public objects have accomplished their aims by communicating pecuniary advantages to members of the legislature.

One of the forms in which administrative corruption is most difficult of eradication, is the appointment to office. It is sometimes maintained that the purity which characterizes the administration of justice is here unattainable, because in giving a judgment there is but one form in which it can be justly given, but when an office has to be filled many people may be equally fitted for it, and personal motives must influence a choice. It very rarely happens, however, that direct bribery is supposed to influence such appointments. Perhaps those which lie most open to suspicion are the lucrative offices with easy duties at the disposal of the East India Company.

In its other great form of electoral bribery, the offence still flourishes, and it is at present the object of the anxious attention of British statesmen. To be a legislator in a free country seems so worthy an object of ambition, and the distribution of a small portion of superfluous wealth among needy voters seems so unselfish a method of securing the distinction, that it is difficult to obtain for the pernicious practice that social condemnation which is necessary to give laws for its extinction a fair field. This offence was a characteristic of Rome in her best days, as it has been of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The common word ambition is derived from the ambitus, or going about of the briber distributing money among voters. Severe laws were directed against this practice, as well as against the seeker of office, to attract the attention of those ready to dispose of their votes, making himself conspicuous by being clothed in white, or candidatus—the word whence the common term candidate is derived.

It does not appear that bribery was conspicuous in England, until in the early part of the eighteenth century constituencies had thrown off the feudal dependence which lingered among them; and, indeed, it is often said, that bribery is essentially the defect of a free people, since it is the sale of that which is taken from others without payment. It is alluded to by Fielding and Smollett, and had become conspicuous in the days of Hogarth, who represents it in its double shape of demoralization; one picture shows a reckless expenditure of money among profligate expectants, whose demoralization is a systematic source of profit to them; while another presents us with the impoverished father of a family urged against his conscience to relieve the misery of his wife and children by the sale of his vote.

The exceptional classes of humble voters preserved by the reform act in the shape of freemen, or others holding the franchise not by qualification but by privilege, have ever been the most amenable to bribery. It is worthy of remark, that the scandal does not extend to Scotland, probably because the popular element was not let in to the Scottish constituencies until after a considerable amount of public feeling had been concentrated against the practice. It has been comparatively little known in France, and its absence has been attributed, perhaps uncharitably, not so much to the virtue of the humbler ranks as to the unwillingness of the higher classes to make the pecuniary sacrifices readily submitted to in England for political objects. It is certain that towards the conclusion of the reign of Louis-Philippe, this electoral purity was contemporary with much official corruption.

In this country there has been much elaborate legislation for the suppression of bribery. It has ever had to contend with the unwillingness of the House of Commons to commit electoral questions to the legal tribunals, and has thus been subject to the cumbrous forms and the influence of party spirit inseparable from the gregarious operations of the house. The Grenville Act, and those which followed up its design of infusing impartiality and responsibility with the elements of election committees, have of course had their influence; and in 1851 an act was passed for appointing special commissioners to inquire into accusations of bribery on the spot (15th and 16th Vict., c. 57).

It would be useless on the present occasion to offer an account of the laws against bribery, as the whole question is under discussion in parliament while this notice passes through the press. The importance of obtaining some really effective remedy was forcibly exemplified by the statement of an eminent lawyer, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who, in the House of Commons, on February 10, 1854, said: "He agreed that it was quite useless to add to the penalties by which the commission of bribery was now followed, either with respect to the voter or the candidate. They had seen that imprisonment, unlimited except by the discretion or mercy of the judge, heavy pecuniary penalties, disfranchisement, disqualification to hold office, to vote, or to sit in parliament, and even the punishment of transportation where perjury had accompanied bribery, had been all inadequate to repress the offence; for they had found that the bribery and every species of corruption which prevailed at the last general election equalled, if they did not exceed, that which had ever been known at any former period of our history." It is certain, however, that both public and parliamentary morality have been of late setting strongly against the practice, and it may be useful to preserve a record of so lamentable a statement, that it may serve as that point of highest elevation from which it is to be hoped that the tide of political immorality will henceforth be found to recede. (J.H.B.)