Karl Marx 
Corruption at Elections 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 3552, 4. September 1852 

Corruption at Elections. 

Correspondence of The N.Y. Tribune. 

London, Friday, Aug. 20, 1852. 

Just before the late House of Commons separated, it resolved to heap up 
as many difficulties as possible for its successors in their way to Parliament. 
It voted a Draconian law against bribery, corruption, intimidation, and elec- 
tioneering sharp practices in general. 
A long list of questions is drawn up, which, by this enactment, may be put 
to petitioners or sitting members, the most searching and stringent that can 
be conceived. They may be required on oath to state who were their agents, 
and what communications they held with them. They may be asked and 
compelled to state, not only what they know, but what they ,,believe, con- 
jecture, and suspect," as to money expended either by themselves or any 
one else acting—authorized or not authorized—on their behalf. In a word, no 
member can go through the strange ordeal without risk of perjury, if he have 
the slightest idea that it is possible or likely that any one has been led to 
overstep on his behalf the limits of the law. 
Now, even supposing this law to take it for granted that the new legislators 
will use the same liberty as the clergy, who only believe some of the Thirty 
Nine Articles, yet contrive to sign them all yet there remain, nevertheless, 
clauses sufficient to make the new Parliament the most virginal assembly 
that ever made speeches and passed laws for the three kingdoms. And in 
juxtaposition with the general election immediately following, this law se- 
cures to the Tories the glory, that under their administration the greatest 
purity of election has been theoretically proclaimed, and the greatest amount 
of electoral corruption has been practically carried out. 
"A fresh election is proceeded with, and here a scene of bribery, cor- 

Karl Marx 

ruption, violence, drunkenness and murder ensues, unparalleled since the 
times when old Tory monopoly reigned supreme before. We actually hear 
of soldiers with loaded guns, and bayonets fixed, taking Liberal electors by 
force, dragging them under the landlord's eyes to vote against their own 
consciences, and these soldiers, shooting with deliberate aim, the people who 
dared to sympathize with the captive electors, and committing wholesale 
murder on the unresisting people! (Allusion to the event at Six Mile Bridge, 
Limerick, County Clare.) It may be said: That was in Ireland! Ay, and in 
England they have employed their police to break the skulls of those opposed 
to them; they have sent their organized gangs of midnight ruffians prowling 
through the streets to intercept and intimidate the Liberal electors; they have 
opened the cesspools of drunkenness; they have showered the gold of 
corruption, as at Derby, and in almost every contested place they have 
exercised systematic intimidation." 

Thus far Ernest Jones's People's Paper. Now, after this Chartist weekly 
paper, hear the weekly paper of the opposite party, the most sober, the most 
rational, the most moderate organ of the industrial Bourgeoisie, The London 
Economist: 

"We believe we may affirm, at this general election, there has been more 
truckling, more corruption, more intimidation, more fanaticism and more 
debauchery than on any previous occasion. It is reported that bribery has 
been more extensively resorted to at this election than for many previous 
years ... Of the amount of intimidation and undue influence of every sort 
which has been practised at the late election, it is probably impossible to form 
an exaggerated estimate ... And when we sum up all these things—the brutal 
drunkenness, the low intrigues, the wholesale corruption, the barbarous 
intimidation, the integrity of candidates warped and stained, the honest 
electors who are ruined, the feeble ones who are suborned and dishonored; 
the lies, the stratagems, the slanders, which stalk abroad in the daylight, 
naked and not ashamed—the desecration of holy words, the soiling of noble 
names—we stand aghast at the holocaust of victims, of destroyed bodies and 
lost souls, on whose funeral pile a new Parliament is reared." 

The means of corruption and intimidation were the usual ones: direct 
Government influence. Thus on an electioneering agent at Derby, arrested 
in the flagrant act of bribing, aletter was found from Major Beresford, the 
Secretary at War, wherein that same Beresford opens a credit upon a com- 
mercial firm for electioneering monies. The Poole HeraWpublishes a circular 
from the Admiralty-House to the half-pay officers, signed by the com- 
mander-in-chief of a naval station, requesting their votes for the ministerial 
candidates—Direct force of arms has also been employed, as at Cork, 
Belfast, Limerick (at which latter place eight persons were killed.)—Threats 

Corruption at Elections 

of ejectment by landlords against their farmers, unless they voted with them; 
the Land-Agents of Lord Derby herein gave the example to their col- 
leagues—Threats of exclusive dealing against shop-keepers, of dismissal 
against workmen, intoxication, etc., etc.—To these profane means of cor- 
ruption spiritual ones were added by the Tories; the royal proclamation 
against Roman Catholic Processions was issued in order to inflame bigotry 
and religious hatred; the No-Popery cry was raised everywhere. One of the 
results of this proclamation were the Stockport Riots. The Irish priests, of 
course, retorted with similar weapons. 

The election is hardly over, and already a single Queen's Counsel has 
received from twenty-five places instructions to invalidate the returns to 
Parliament on account of bribery and intimidation. Such petitions against 
elected members have been signed, and the expenses of the proceedings 
raised at Derby, Cockermouth, Barnstaple, Harwich, Canterbury, Yar- 
mouth, Wakefield, Boston, Huddersfield, Windsor and a great number of 
other places. Of eight to ten Derbyite members it is proved that, even under 
the most favorable circumstances, they will be rejected on petition. 

The principal scenes of this bribery, corruption and intimidation were, of 
course, the agricultural counties and the Peers’ Boroughs, for the con- 
servation of the greatest possible number of which latter the Whigs had 
expended all their acumen in the Reform Bill of 1831. The constituencies of 
large towns and of densely populated manufacturing counties were, by their 
peculiar circumstances, very unfavorable ground for such manceuvres. 

Days of general election are in Britain traditionally the bacchanalia of 
drunken debauchery, conventional stockjobbing terms for the discounting 
of political consciences, the richest harvest times of the publicans. As an 
English paper says, "these recurring saturnalia never fail to leave enduring 
traces of their pestilential presence." Quite naturally so. They are saturnalia 
in the ancient Roman sense of the word. The master then turned servant, 
the servant turned master. If the servant be master for one day, on that day 
brutality will reign supreme. The masters were the grand dignitaries of the 
ruling classes, or sections of classes, the servants formed the mass of these 
same classes, the privileged electors encircled by the mass of the non-elec- 
tors, of those thousands that had no other calling than to be mere hangers-on, 
and whose support, vocal or manual, always appeared desirable, were it only 
on account of the theatrical effect. If you follow up the history of British 
Elections for acentury past or longer, you are tempted to ask, not why British 
Parliaments were so bad, but on the contrary, how they managed to be even 
as good as they were, and to represent as much as they did, though in a dim 
refraction the actual movement of British society. Just as opponents of the 
representative system must feel surprised on finding that legislative bodies 

Karl Marx 

formality, but from the moment Parliament should make front against the 
pressure from without, and dictate laws to the nation in the sense of its 
narrow constituencies, they would join the general assault against the whole 
antiquated system of machinery. 

The bribery and intimidation practised by the Tories were, then, merely 
violent experiments for bringing back to life dying electoral bodies which 
have become incapable of production, and which can no longer create 
decisive electoral results andreally national Parliaments. And the result? The 
old Parliament was dissolved, because, at the end of its career it had dissolved 
into sections which brought each other to a complete stand-still. The new 
Parliament begins where the old one ended; it is paralytic from the hour of 
its birth. 

Karl Marx.