280 
Gregory—Political Corruption. 
proving corrupt practice on the part of the incumbent, it seems 
more efficient than even Sir Henry James’s act. Of course it is 
new and untried, and Mr. Brice justly says that our juries are 
more lenient, except in cases of offenses against women, than 
any European juries. We are loth to enforce the most just and 
deserved penalties against a fellowmin, and in this respect con¬ 
trast sharply with our English cousins. How far any law 
against electoral corruption will be enforced among us is a 
grave question, but this Missouri law seems drawn so as to 
make its enforcement by private interest probable, and it is a, 
model from which all reforming legislators must now start when 
they deal with these questions. It takes the good points of the 
English law and adapts them to our more complicated elections 
and, at the same time shortens and simplifies the whole statute 
without in any essential emasculating it. A few days ago I 
asked Mr. Henry Hitchcock, the eminent lawyer and civil ser¬ 
vice reformer of St. Louis, and also asked the present mayor 
of St. Louis, how this law was working. They both told me 
that in their judgment it was generally complied with and was 
accepted without difficulty much like the Austratian ballot. 
The mayor told me as an interesting and significant fact that he 
subscribed $250 for the expenses of his campaign and after the 
election the committee returned $100 of this. Yesterdays dis¬ 
patches announced, however, that the grand jury at St. Louis 
returned fifty indictments for election offenses, an evidence that 
the law is violated but also that it is enforced. 
So far for the laws with which English speaking men have 
sought to meet electoral corruption. I have only a word for 
the evil itself. That such corruption exists in all our communi¬ 
ties every one who has touched practical politics knows, and 
that it masquerades under the specious pretext of legitimate 
election expenses. The periodicals have printed much on the 
subject during the past two years and various writers have 
tried to estimate the percentage of venal voters in some of our 
states or communities. Thus the Century Magazine printed an 
entertaining and ingenious article which intimated that in some 
parts of New York they exceeded the unbought voters. Thi& 
statement seems to me more credible since a short time ago 
