witness by whom the innocence of the accused can be established. Innocent, and the witness black, if the testimony is rejected, the innocent white man must suffer the penalty of guilt. The accused guilty, the testimony of black men the only existing proof, its rejection necessitates an acquittal, and guilt escapes punishment.

The need of this testimony becomes still more apparent if it be the design of government to enforce its own laws. If half the population of a State capable of being witnesses were to be excluded on account of size or sex, how manifest it is that with such exclusions the attempt to do justice would be almost hopeless. Colour affords no more logical reason for exclusion than size or sex.

In controversies between those of the white race, it is not a matter of privilege to the black man, who has no interest in the controversy, that he be permitted to testify, any more than it would be to the white man under like circumstances. If being a material and needed witness, either is excluded, it is the cause of justice that is endangered. Justice is equally denied when suitors are refused access to her temple, as, when having access, they are prohibited the use of the testimony by which alone right can be established.

But why not hear this testimony in suits between, or in prosecutions against, white persons? It is none the less needed because the parties are white. Is the judge of fact, howsoever called-chancellor, judge, or juryman-any the less able to weigh the evidence of black persons because the colour of the parties litigant differs from that of the excluded race? Self-satisfied with his ability to judge of the trustworthiness of black witnesses, when the parties are of the same colour, does his judicial ability vanish upon a change of colour on the part of the suitor? Receiving this testimony with parties of the black or Indian races, and weighing or assuming to weigh it, cannot he do the same thing when white men are litigating before him? The judge competent for his position, is he so afraid of the seductive influence of

black witnesses that he will not trust himself to hear them? Is the black man more untrustworthy when parties are white than when black? Is he more deceptious? Does the ability of the judge vary with the varying races and conditions of those to whom he is meting out justice? If not, then he can weigh this testimony as well when one race is litigating as another, and it has been seen he has no scruple to use it where the parties and the witnesses are of the same colour The real danger is not of undue credence, but that, hearing, the judge will not give it the weight to which it is justly entitled. But that objection is not open to the advocate of exclusion, who protests that it is so utterly unreliable that he is unwilling even to hear it.

Exclusion, let it be remembered, depends not on the status of the witness, for free blacks and slaves are alike admissible for or against those of their own race, whether bond or free. Where the rights of the dominant race are involved, the black, though free, is excluded. The admissibility of witnesses is made to depend not upon their condition, but upon their

colour alone.

No other instance can be found in the legislation of any nation, civilised, semi-civilised, or barbarous, in which free men have been rejected as witnesses because of their colour. By the civil law slaves were not admitted to testify. Such, too, is the Mahometan law on this subject. But the exclusion is limited to the slave. When free, he is at once a competent witness, irrespective of his colour or his descent.*

The negro and the Indian are excluded on account of colour. After successive intermixtures of their races with the white, varying in the different States, their descendants are received. The white race being regarded as the type of truth, the more it is intermingled with the degraded castes, the more trust

*By our treaty with Mexico, by which we obtained California, we guaranteed that citizens of the ceding republic should have equal rights with those of the republic to which the cession was made. Yet the moment California became ours, the negro and the Indian, though citizens of the ceding republic, and by their law s witnesses, were at once deprived of testimonial capacity.

worthy the witness-the mulatto than the negro, the quadroon than the mulatto-till, at length, after sufficiently numerous acts of illicit intercourse, continued through successive generations, testimonial trustworthiness is restored.

The exclusion of evidence is the unmistakable proof of deficient civilisation. The barbarian refuses to have witnesses, and resorts to ordeals by fire and by water. Unwilling to trust his own judgment, he is willing to trust to chance. He prefers exclusion to investigation. Rather than weigh testimony he would reject it. He excludes the Mahometan, and is in return excluded by him, and for the self-same reason that the belief of the judge excluding differs from that of the witness excluded. Of all exclusions, the one most libellous upon humanity, most blashemous to Deity, is that by which whole races of men are prohibited from testifying on account of their colour, as if mendacity were the result of their having a greater amount of pigment cells, and a greater number of cutaneous glands; as if the Almighty had so failed as to have created whole races of men so untrustworthy that it would be unsafe even to hear their testimony. But barbarous methods for the investigation of truth recede before the advance of civilisation. The ordeal has passed away. The judicial lot has ceased. Interested witnesses are received. The Christian hears the Mahometan, and whether the Mahometan reciprocates depends upon the distance he has receded from barbarism. Testimony is judged by weight, not by count-after, and not before and without hearing. I trust the time will soon come when it will cease to be a reproach to this age and nation that whole races of men are prohibited from testimony, not from any fault of theirs, but because God in his wisdom has seen fit to impress upon their form a browner or a blacker skin than upon the bodies of the race by whose legislation they are excluded. I am, very truly, yours, &c., JOHN APPLETON.

Hon. CHARLES SUMNER,

Senate of the United States.

ART. XI.-RESTRAINT OF CORRUPTION AT ELECTIONS.*

THIS paper has a practical object and one idea. Can a

moral enthusiasm be roused, and moral influences brought to bear widely and effectively, by combined efforts of individuals, against bribery and extravagant expenditure at elections which legislation is powerless to destroy? Can this Association organize or initiate such an action?

I couple extravagant expenditure with bribery, and need hardly explain that the greater part of the expenses of expensively contested elections are virtual corruption. The expensiveness of elections, independently of bribery, may be regarded as a social question deserving the attention of social reformers, inasmuch as it restricts the area of choice of representatives, helps wealth against intellect, thwarts political earnestness, and degrades constituencies. Mr. John Mill, in denouncing the expenses of elections as "one of the most conspicuous vices of the existing electoral system," forcibly points out the importance of the ruling idea under which elections are conducted and votes sought and given, and suggests the effect on an elector's mind, auxiliary to corruption, of the simple fact of a patent large expenditure by candidates to gain a seat in Parliament. "In a good representative

system," says Mr. Mill, "there would be no election expenses to be borne by the candidate. Their effect is wholly pernicious. Politically, they constitute a property qualification of the worst kind. Morally, it is still worse; not only by the profligate and demoralising character of much of the expenditure, but by the corrupting effect of the notion inculcated on the voter, that the person he votes for should pay a large sum of money for permission to serve the public. They must be poor politicians who do not know the

A Paper by Mr. W. D. Christie (late Minister at Brazil), read at a Meeting of the Jurisprudenee Department of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held on Monday, 22nd February, 1864.

efficacy of such indirect moral influences. The incidental circumstances which surround a public act, and betoken the expectation entertained by society in regard to it, irrevocably determine the moral sentiment which adheres to the act in the mind of an average individual. So long as the candidate himself, and the customs of the world, seem to regard the function of a Member of Parliament less as a duty to be discharged than as a personal favour to be solicited, no effort will avail to implant in an ordinary voter the feeling that the election of a Member of Parliament is a matter of duty, and that he is not at liberty to bestow the vote on any other consideration than that of personal fitness. The necessary expenses of an election, those which concern all the candidates equally, should, it has often been urged, be defrayed either by the municipal body or by the State. With regard to the sources of expense which are personal to the individual candidate, committees, canvassing, even printing and public meetings, it is in every way better that these things should not be done at all, unless done by the gratuitous zeal, or paid for by the contributions, of his supporters. Even now there are several Members of Parliament whose elections cost them nothing, the whole expense being defrayed by their constituents: of these members we may be completely assured that they are elected from public motives; that they are the men whom the voters really wish to see elected, in preference to all others, either on account of the principles they represent, or the services they are thought qualified to render.” *

Perfection is unattainable in this world, and a perfect representative system is an impossibility. Human nature has everywhere engendered bribery and rioting in popular elections for places of honour, and corruption in parliamentary government. But, though perfection is unattainable, improvement is best effected by keeping a perfect system in view as a goal, which may be neared, though it cannot be

* "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," by John Stuart Mill. 1859.