THE BROWBOROUGH TRIAL.
There was another matter of public interest going on at this time
which created a great excitement. And this, too, added to the
importance of Phineas Finn, though Phineas was not the hero of the
piece. Mr. Browborough, the late member for Tankerville, was tried
for bribery. It will be remembered that when Phineas contested the
borough in the autumn, this gentleman was returned. He was afterwards
unseated, as the result of a petition before the judge, and Phineas
was declared to be the true member. The judge who had so decided had
reported to the Speaker that further inquiry before a commission into
the practices of the late and former elections at Tankerville would
be expedient, and such commission had sat in the months of January
and February. Half the voters in Tankerville had been examined, and
many who were not voters. The commissioners swept very clean, being
new brooms, and in their report recommended that Mr. Browborough,
whom they had themselves declined to examine, should be prosecuted.
That report was made about the end of March, when Mr. Daubeny's
great bill was impending. Then there arose a double feeling about
Mr. Browborough, who had been regarded by many as a model member of
Parliament, a man who never spoke, constant in his attendance, who
wanted nothing, who had plenty of money, who gave dinners, to whom a
seat in Parliament was the be-all and the end-all of life. It could
not be the wish of any gentleman, who had been accustomed to his slow
step in the lobbies, and his burly form always quiescent on one of
the upper seats just below the gangway on the Conservative side of
the House, that such a man should really be punished. When the new
laws regarding bribery came to take that shape the hearts of members
revolted from the cruelty,--the hearts even of members on the other
side of the House. As long as a seat was in question the battle
should of course be fought to the nail. Every kind of accusation
might then be lavished without restraint, and every evil practice
imputed. It had been known to all the world,--known as a thing that
was a matter of course,--that at every election Mr. Browborough had
bought his seat. How should a Browborough get a seat without buying
it,--a man who could not say ten words, of no family, with no natural
following in any constituency, distinguished by no zeal in politics,
entertaining no special convictions of his own? How should such a
one recommend himself to any borough unless he went there with money
in his hand? Of course, he had gone to Tankerville with money in
his hand, with plenty of money, and had spent it--like a gentleman.
Collectively the House of Commons had determined to put down
bribery with a very strong hand. Nobody had spoken against bribery
with more fervour than Sir Gregory Grogram, who had himself, as
Attorney-General, forged the chains for fettering future bribers. He
was now again Attorney-General, much to his disgust, as Mr. Gresham
had at the last moment found it wise to restore Lord Weazeling to the
woolsack; and to his hands was to be entrusted the prosecution of Mr.
Browborough. But it was observed by many that the job was not much to
his taste. The House had been very hot against bribery,--and certain
members of the existing Government, when the late Bill had been
passed, had expressed themselves with almost burning indignation
against the crime. But, through it all, there had been a slight
undercurrent of ridicule attaching itself to the question of which
only they who were behind the scenes were conscious. The House was
bound to let the outside world know that all corrupt practices at
elections were held to be abominable by the House; but Members of the
House, as individuals, knew very well what had taken place at their
own elections, and were aware of the cheques which they had drawn.
Public-houses had been kept open as a matter of course, and nowhere
perhaps had more beer been drunk than at Clovelly, the borough
for which Sir Gregory Grogram sat. When it came to be a matter of
individual prosecution against one whom they had all known, and
who, as a member, had been inconspicuous and therefore inoffensive,
against a heavy, rich, useful man who had been in nobody's way, many
thought that it would amount to persecution. The idea of putting
old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second
nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members
of Parliament generally. The recommendation for this prosecution was
made to the House when Mr. Daubeny was in the first agonies of his
great Bill, and he at once resolved to ignore the matter altogether,
at any rate for the present. If he was to be driven out of power
there could be no reason why his Attorney-General should prosecute
his own ally and follower,--a poor, faithful creature, who had never
in his life voted against his party, and who had always been willing
to accept as his natural leader any one whom his party might select.
But there were many who had felt that as Mr. Browborough must
certainly now be prosecuted sooner or later,--for there could be no
final neglecting of the Commissioners' report,--it would be better
that he should be dealt with by natural friends than by natural
enemies. The newspapers, therefore, had endeavoured to hurry the
matter on, and it had been decided that the trial should take place
at the Durham Spring Assizes, in the first week of May. Sir Gregory
Grogram became Attorney-General in the middle of April, and he
undertook the task upon compulsion. Mr. Browborough's own friends,
and Mr. Browborough himself, declared very loudly that there would
be the greatest possible cruelty in postponing the trial. His
lawyers thought that his best chance lay in bustling the thing on,
and were therefore able to show that the cruelty of delay would
be extreme,--nay, that any postponement in such a matter would be
unconstitutional, if not illegal. It would, of course, have been just
as easy to show that hurry on the part of the prosecutor was cruel,
and illegal, and unconstitutional, had it been considered that the
best chance of acquittal lay in postponement.
And so the trial was forced forward, and Sir Gregory himself was to
appear on behalf of the prosecuting House of Commons. There could be
no doubt that the sympathies of the public generally were with Mr.
Browborough, though there was as little doubt that he was guilty.
When the evidence taken by the Commissioners had just appeared in
the newspapers,--when first the facts of this and other elections at
Tankerville were made public, and the world was shown how common it
had been for Mr. Browborough to buy votes,--how clearly the knowledge
of the corruption had been brought home to himself,--there had for
a short week or so been a feeling against him. Two or three London
papers had printed leading articles, giving in detail the salient
points of the old sinner's criminality, and expressing a conviction
that now, at least, would the real criminal be punished. But this
had died away, and the anger against Mr. Browborough, even on
the part of the most virtuous of the public press, had become no
more than lukewarm. Some papers boldly defended him, ridiculed
the Commissioners, and declared that the trial was altogether
an absurdity. The People's Banner, setting at defiance with an
admirable audacity all the facts as given in the Commissioners'
report, declared that there was not one tittle of evidence against
Mr. Browborough, and hinted that the trial had been got up by
the malign influence of that doer of all evil, Phineas Finn. But
men who knew better what was going on in the world than did Mr.
Quintus Slide, were well aware that such assertions as these were
both unavailing and unnecessary. Mr. Browborough was believed
to be quite safe; but his safety lay in the indifference of his
prosecutors,--certainly not in his innocence. Any one prominent in
affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man
may not look over a hedge. Mr. Browborough had stolen his horse, and
had repeated the theft over and over again. The evidence of it all
was forthcoming,--had, indeed, been already sifted. But Sir Gregory
Grogram, who was prominent in affairs, knew that the theft might be
condoned.
Nevertheless, the case came on at the Durham Assizes. Within the
last two months Browborough had become quite a hero at Tankerville.
The Church party had forgotten his broken pledges, and the Radicals
remembered only his generosity. Could he have stood for the seat
again on the day on which the judges entered Durham, he might have
been returned without bribery. Throughout the whole county the
prosecution was unpopular. During no portion of his Parliamentary
career had Mr. Browborough's name been treated with so much respect
in the grandly ecclesiastical city as now. He dined with the Dean on
the day before the trial, and on the Sunday was shown by the head
verger into the stall next to the Chancellor of the Diocese, with a
reverence which seemed to imply that he was almost as graceful as
a martyr. When he took his seat in the Court next to his attorney,
everybody shook hands with him. When Sir Gregory got up to open his
case, not one of the listeners then supposed that Mr. Browborough
was about to suffer any punishment. He was arraigned before Mr.
Baron Boultby, who had himself sat for a borough in his younger
days, and who knew well how things were done. We are all aware how
impassionately grand are the minds of judges, when men accused of
crimes are brought before them for trial; but judges after all are
men, and Mr. Baron Boultby, as he looked at Mr. Browborough, could
not but have thought of the old days.
It was nevertheless necessary that the prosecution should be
conducted in a properly formal manner, and that all the evidence
should be given. There was a cloud of witnesses over from
Tankerville,--miners, colliers, and the like,--having a very good
turn of it at the expense of the poor borough. All these men must be
examined, and their evidence would no doubt be the same now as when
it was given with so damnable an effect before those clean-sweeping
Commissioners. Sir Gregory's opening speech was quite worthy of Sir
Gregory. It was essentially necessary, he said, that the atmosphere
of our boroughs should be cleansed and purified from the taint of
corruption. The voice of the country had spoken very plainly on the
subject, and a verdict had gone forth that there should be no more
bribery at elections. At the last election at Tankerville, and, as he
feared, at some former elections, there had been manifest bribery. It
would be for the jury to decide whether Mr. Browborough himself had
been so connected with the acts of his agents as to be himself within
the reach of the law. If it were found that he had brought himself
within the reach of the law, the jury would no doubt say so, and in
such case would do great service to the cause of purity; but if Mr.
Browborough had not been personally cognisant of what his agents
had done, then the jury would be bound to acquit him. A man was not
necessarily guilty of bribery in the eye of the law because bribery
had been committed, even though the bribery so committed had been
sufficiently proved to deprive him of the seat which he would
otherwise have enjoyed. Nothing could be clearer than the manner in
which Sir Gregory explained it all to the jury; nothing more eloquent
than his denunciations against bribery in general; nothing more mild
than his allegations against Mr. Browborough individually.
In regard to the evidence Sir Gregory, with his two assistants, went
through his work manfully. The evidence was given,--not to the same
length as at Tankerville before the Commissioners,--but really to
the same effect. But yet the record of the evidence as given in the
newspapers seemed to be altogether different. At Tankerville there
had been an indignant and sometimes an indiscreet zeal which had
communicated itself to the whole proceedings. The general flavour
of the trial at Durham was one of good-humoured raillery. Mr.
Browborough's counsel in cross-examining the witnesses for the
prosecution displayed none of that righteous wrath,--wrath righteous
on behalf of injured innocence,--which is so common with gentlemen
employed in the defence of criminals; but bowed and simpered, and
nodded at Sir Gregory in a manner that was quite pleasant to behold.
Nobody scolded anybody. There was no roaring of barristers, no
clenching of fists and kicking up of dust, no threats, no allusions
to witnesses' oaths. A considerable amount of gentle fun was poked
at the witnesses by the defending counsel, but not in a manner to
give any pain. Gentlemen who acknowledged to have received seventeen
shillings and sixpence for their votes at the last election were
asked how they had invested their money. Allusions were made to their
wives, and a large amount of good-humoured sparring was allowed, in
which the witnesses thought that they had the best of it. The men
of Tankerville long remembered this trial, and hoped anxiously that
there might soon be another. The only man treated with severity was
poor Phineas Finn, and luckily for himself he was not present. His
qualifications as member of Parliament for Tankerville were somewhat
roughly treated. Each witness there, when he was asked what candidate
would probably be returned for Tankerville at the next election,
readily answered that Mr. Browborough would certainly carry the seat.
Mr. Browborough sat in the Court throughout it all, and was the hero
of the day.
The judge's summing up was very short, and seemed to have been given
almost with indolence. The one point on which he insisted was the
difference between such evidence of bribery as would deprive a man
of his seat, and that which would make him subject to the criminal
law. By the criminal law a man could not be punished for the acts
of another. Punishment must follow a man's own act. If a man were
to instigate another to murder he would be punished, not for the
murder, but for the instigation. They were now administering the
criminal law, and they were bound to give their verdict for an
acquittal unless they were convinced that the man on his trial had
himself,--wilfully and wittingly,--been guilty of the crime imputed.
He went through the evidence, which was in itself clear against the
old sinner, and which had been in no instance validly contradicted,
and then left the matter to the jury. The men in the box put their
heads together, and returned a verdict of acquittal without one
moment's delay. Sir Gregory Grogram and his assistants collected
their papers together. The judge addressed three or four words almost
of compliment to Mr. Browborough, and the affair was over, to the
manifest contentment of every one there present. Sir Gregory Grogram
was by no means disappointed, and everybody, on his own side in
Parliament and on the other, thought that he had done his duty very
well. The clean-sweeping Commissioners, who had been animated with
wonderful zeal by the nature and novelty of their work, probably felt
that they had been betrayed, but it may be doubted whether any one
else was disconcerted by the result of the trial, unless it might be
some poor innocents here and there about the country who had been
induced to believe that bribery and corruption were in truth to be
banished from the purlieus of Westminster.
Mr. Roby and Mr. Ratler, who filled the same office each for his own
party, in and out, were both acquainted with each other, and apt to
discuss parliamentary questions in the library and smoking-room of
the House, where such discussions could be held on most matters.
"I was very glad that the case went as it did at Durham," said Mr.
Ratler.
"And so am I," said Mr. Roby. "Browborough was always a good fellow."
"Not a doubt about it; and no good could have come from a conviction.
I suppose there has been a little money spent at Tankerville."
"And at other places one could mention," said Mr. Roby.
"Of course there has;--and money will be spent again. Nobody dislikes
bribery more than I do. The House, of course, dislikes it. But if a
man loses his seat, surely that is punishment enough."
"It's better to have to draw a cheque sometimes than to be out in the
cold."
"Nevertheless, members would prefer that their seats should not cost
them so much," continued Mr. Ratler. "But the thing can't be done all
at once. That idea of pouncing upon one man and making a victim of
him is very disagreeable to me. I should have been sorry to have seen
a verdict against Browborough. You must acknowledge that there was no
bitterness in the way in which Grogram did it."
"We all feel that," said Mr. Roby,--who was, perhaps, by nature a
little more candid than his rival,--"and when the time comes no doubt
we shall return the compliment."
The matter was discussed in quite a different spirit between two
other politicians. "So Sir Gregory has failed at Durham," said Lord
Cantrip to his friend, Mr. Gresham.
"I was sure he would."
"And why?"
"Ah;--why? How am I to answer such a question? Did you think that Mr.
Browborough would be convicted of bribery by a jury?"
"No, indeed," answered Lord Cantrip.
"And can you tell me why?"
"Because there was no earnestness in the matter,--either with the
Attorney-General or with any one else."
"And yet," said Mr. Gresham, "Grogram is a very earnest man when he
believes in his case. No member of Parliament will ever be punished
for bribery as for a crime till members of Parliament generally look
upon bribery as a crime. We are very far from that as yet. I should
have thought a conviction to be a great misfortune."
"Why so?"
"Because it would have created ill blood, and our own hands in this
matter are not a bit cleaner than those of our adversaries. We
can't afford to pull their houses to pieces before we have put our
own in order. The thing will be done; but it must, I fear, be done
slowly,--as is the case with all reforms from within."
Phineas Finn, who was very sore and unhappy at this time, and who
consequently was much in love with purity and anxious for severity,
felt himself personally aggrieved by the acquittal. It was almost
tantamount to a verdict against himself. And then he knew so well
that bribery had been committed, and was so confident that such a one
as Mr. Browborough could have been returned to Parliament by none
other than corrupt means! In his present mood he would have been
almost glad to see Mr. Browborough at the treadmill, and would have
thought six months' solitary confinement quite inadequate to the
offence. "I never read anything in my life that disgusted me so
much," he said to his friend, Mr. Monk.
"I can't go along with you there."
"If any man ever was guilty of bribery, he was guilty!"
"I don't doubt it for a moment."
"And yet Grogram did not try to get a verdict."
"Had he tried ever so much he would have failed. In a matter such as
that,--political and not social in its nature,--a jury is sure to
be guided by what it has, perhaps unconsciously, learned to be the
feeling of the country. No disgrace is attached to their verdict, and
yet everybody knows that Mr. Browborough had bribed, and all those
who have looked into it know, too, that the evidence was conclusive."
"Then are the jury all perjured," said Phineas.
"I have nothing to say to that. No stain of perjury clings to them.
They are better received in Durham to-day than they would have been
had they found Mr. Browborough guilty. In business, as in private
life, they will be held to be as trustworthy as before;--and they
will be, for aught that we know, quite trustworthy. There are still
circumstances in which a man, though on his oath, may be untrue with
no more stain of falsehood than falls upon him when he denies himself
at his front door though he happen to be at home."
"What must we think of such a condition of things, Mr. Monk?"
"That it's capable of improvement. I do not know that we can think
anything else. As for Sir Gregory Grogram and Baron Boultby and the
jury, it would be waste of power to execrate them. In political
matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his
neighbours,--and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome. I have found
that out before to-day."
With Lady Laura Kennedy, Phineas did find some sympathy;--but then
she would have sympathised with him on any subject under the sun. If
he would only come to her and sit with her she would fool him to the
top of his bent. He had resolved that he would go to Portman Square
as little as possible, and had been confirmed in that resolution
by the scandal which had now spread everywhere about the town in
reference to himself and herself. But still he went. He never left
her till some promise of returning at some stated time had been
extracted from him. He had even told her of his own scruples and of
her danger,--and they had discussed together that last thunderbolt
which had fallen from the Jove of The People's Banner. But she had
laughed his caution to scorn. Did she not know herself and her own
innocence? Was she not living in her father's house, and with her
father? Should she quail beneath the stings and venom of such a
reptile as Quintus Slide? "Oh, Phineas," she said, "let us be braver
than that." He would much prefer to have stayed away,--but still he
went to her. He was conscious of her dangerous love for him. He knew
well that it was not returned. He was aware that it would be best for
both that he should be apart. But yet he could not bring himself to
wound her by his absence. "I do not see why you should feel it so
much," she said, speaking of the trial at Durham.
"We were both on our trial,--he and I."
"Everybody knows that he bribed and that you did not."
"Yes;--and everybody despises me and pats him on the back. I am sick
of the whole thing. There is no honesty in the life we lead."
"You got your seat at any rate."
"I wish with all my heart that I had never seen the dirty wretched
place," said he.
"Oh, Phineas, do not say that."
"But I do say it. Of what use is the seat to me? If I could only feel
that any one knew--"
"Knew what, Phineas?"
"It doesn't matter."
"I understand. I know that you have meant to be honest, while this
man has always meant to be dishonest. I know that you have intended
to serve your country, and have wished to work for it. But you cannot
expect that it should all be roses."
"Roses! The nosegays which are worn down at Westminster are made of
garlick and dandelions!"