And
consequently, as time wore on, severer measures were considered
necessary. Some boroughs were deprived of the right of election
altogether; in others, whose population or constituency was too numerous
to make their permanent disfranchisement advisable, the writ was
suspended for a time, that its suspension might serve both as a
punishment and as a warning, a practice which is still not unfrequently
adopted. But no plan could be devised for dealing with the evil in
counties, till what seemed hopeless to achieve by direct legislation
was, in a great degree, effected by the indirect operation of the Reform
Bill of 1832. The shortening of the duration of an election, which was
henceforth concluded in a single day, and the multiplication of polling
places, which rendered it impossible to ascertain the progress of the
different candidates till the close of the poll, were provisions having
an inevitable and most salutary effect in diminishing alike the
temptation to bribe on the part of the candidate, and the opportunity of
enhancing the value of his vote by the elector. The vast increase of
newspapers, by diffusing political education and stimulating political
discussion, has had, perhaps, a still greater influence in the same
direction. And, as bribery could only be brought to bear on electors too
ignorant to estimate the importance of the exercise of the franchise by
any higher test than the personal advantage it might bring to
themselves, it is to the general diffusion of education among the poorer
classes, and their gradually improved and improving intelligence that a
complete eradication of electoral corruption can alone be looked for.
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