264 
Gregory—Political Coirupzion. 
buy it. The beasts of the field have no commerce, the ruder 
tribes of men but little. Force is their sole resource. But in 
later soeiety, “when men change swords for ledgers,” violence 
disappears and barter and purchase take its place. So the 
story of the interference with voters begins with force and 
domination and ends in bribery. We early find a Duchess of 
Norfolk demanding that her Lord’s menial servants be returned 
to parliament and the King’s letters directing the sheriff to re¬ 
turn such as his privy councillors might nominate. 
In Jack Cade’s Insurrection, the commons of Kent complained 
from Black Heath that they could not have their free election 
“but letters beene sent from diverse estates to the great rulers 
of the countrie, the which embraceth these tenants and other 
people by force to choose other persons than the common’s will 
is.” And certain freemen of Huntington protest in the same 
year against the return of two Knights of the Shire and com¬ 
plain of armed interference at the polls and say “ so we depart¬ 
ed for fear of the inconvenience that was likely to be done for 
manslaughter. ” 
Pelham and the Duke of G-rafton brought armed forces to the 
Hustings to intimidate the opposition, and when Willian Pitt 
was prime minister, guards and sailors surrounded the polling 
place in support of the court candidate and menaced all who op¬ 
posed. 
The best witness of the old wrong and the old fear is the 
law still on the statute books of our own and most of our sister 
states forbidding the parading of the militia, the modern rep¬ 
resentatives of force, on election day or for a certain time be¬ 
fore. But the temper of the world has changed. A military 
officer is of little consequence now except in a Washington 
drawing room. Wars now are won, not by great generals, but 
by good financiers. It is a question of supplies rather than of 
hardihood or heroism. As Lecky points out, the rich commer¬ 
cial nation is most potent even in war, because it alone can 
provide the equipments for a great campaign. Just so, money or 
money’s worth has taken the place of direct force in controlling 
political action, and the danger which our time must meet is 
corruption, not violence. 
Great offices are got, not by great characters, but by great 
