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The Ballot and Corruption and Expenditure at Elections
The Ballot and Corruption and Expenditure at Elections Author:William Dougal Christie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. SUGGESTIONS FOE AN ORGANIZATION FOE EESTEAINT OF COEEUPTION AND EXPENDITUEE AT ELECTIONS. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. The following essay was read at a meet... more »ing of the Department of Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, on February 22, 1864. Two editions were published in that year by the Association. Mr. John Stuart Mill attended a discussion on the essay, and gave an emphatic approval of the plan. He said:—" I think there are legal measures which could be made effectual, but only if backed by a moral demonstration of a sufficient number of honest men who would league themselves together against the political crime, expressly or virtually pledging themselves both to abstain from it personally, and to use all their influence to prevent it. They would probably be able to obtain from the Legislature any such enactments as may be desirable, while they would supply the only powers which could enable those enactments to be enforced. Great credit is due to Mr. Christie for having, as it seems to me, ' hit the right nail on the head.' " The Eev. F. D. Maurice honoured me by writing an article upon this essay in Macmillan's Magazine? from which 1 July 1864, art. "Corruption at Elections; Mr. Christie's Suggestions."the following is an extract:—" Nothing may do more to justify the existence of this Association (the Social Science), and to explain its real objects, than an effort to which Mr. Christie, the late Minister in Brazil, has incited it. In an admirable paper, which he read on the 24th of February, he proposed ' an organization for the restraint of corruption at elections.' He gave specimens from Blue- books and from the evidence before election committees of the extent of the evil. He showed—without any exagg...« less