election purposes. And the same principle which forbids any payment of money for election purposes forbids also that the occupation of a member of Parliament should be taken up, like other professions, with a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns. J. S. Mill objects to the payment of members of Parliament on the ground that such payment—
"Would become an object of desire to adventurers of a low class; and six hundred and fifty-eight persons in possession, with ten or twenty times as many in expectancy, would be incessantly bidding to attract or retain the suffrages of the electors, by promising all things, honest or dishonest, possible or impossible, and rivalling each other in pandering to the meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest part of the crowd. … Such an institution would amount to offering six hundred and fifty-eight prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen."[1]
Among the letters published by General Thompson, in the sixth volume of his writings, will be found at page 389 a letter dated Blackheath, 2nd September, 1841, and addressed to Mr. James Sinclair, Secretary of the Charter Association, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in reply to General Thompson, to be one of the securities required for the
- ↑ J. S. Mill's Considerations on Representative Government, p. 210. London, 1861.
