Andrew Forrester
Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664591753
Table of Contents
MY GREAT ELECTIONEERING TRICK.
THE VIRTUE OF AN AMERICAN PASSPORT.
WHO WAS THE GREATEST CRIMINAL?
AN EPISODE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE.
THE ATTORNEY AND THE SMUGGLER.
SWINDLING ACCORDING TO ACT OF PARLIAMENT.
MY GREAT ELECTIONEERING TRICK.
ABOUT twelve years ago there was an election anticipated in the Borough of N——. It was a notorious place for bribery, as I, who have been professionally concerned in many elections, perfectly well knew. It was an extraordinary town. It had once been a very flourishing place. A staple trade had been carried on there, and almost nowhere else; but an evil spirit of gentility pervaded its corporation in those days.
The genius of two or three well-known men would have taken advantage of the neutral position and prospects of that spot and its neighbourhood to found there a new industry, and give employment to an immense population of skilled artisans. The labour of these people, however, could only be set to work and supplemented by smoke. The mayor and town-council of N——, acting in the supposed interest of its inhabitants, determined they would have no smoky chimneys within their town. An Act of Parliament had been obtained sanctioning such municipal regulations as enabled these wiseacres to keep out the threatened innovation of gold-producing smoke. The new industry had, therefore, to settle down in the neighbourhood beyond municipal control. After this achievement had been successful, the surrounding district went on rapidly increasing in prosperity until it reached its present exalted position in that respect, and the trade of N—— went on diminishing to its present abject or exhausted condition. Meanwhile, also, the stage-coaches, which ran continuously through its streets—for N—— was on the great northern line of turnpike-road—dropping in their course a modicum of wealth for the inhabitants, were themselves put down by the unequal competition of a trunk railway; so that N—— became in course of time what it now is—a clean, shabby, pretentious, and poverty-stricken place. Stagnation amid activity distinguishes it. The grass grows in its High Street and Market-place. The remnant of independent people—that is, people who have a pecuniary independence—show airs, and walk about the neighbourhood under the belief that they are thought to be and are superior beings. The inhabitants who are not in this sense independent are craven, humiliated, impoverished, and corrupt. Yet N—— is a parliamentary borough; and, consequently, its present dilapidated, forlorn position supplies a fine opportunity for adventurous politicians—whether with or without brains, no matter—who have heavy purses, skilful agents, and good machinery at their command.
Before I describe the special incidents of the case I am about to lay before the reader, let me supply some further particulars about the electoral conscience of this extraordinary old town. It has three classes of voters, who have been classified by a well-known Conservative electioneering agent (an attorney residing there); and a similar, or rather obverse, classification has no doubt been made by the other side. In the first list or classification are the really true and honest electors, men who would resent as an insult the offered bribe, sterling, worthy fellows, who would resist almost, or perhaps quite, to the death any attempt to coerce them to vote otherwise than as their consciences directed.
There is another list or classification of men who are inclined towards Conservatism (as, perhaps, some sardonic reader will suggest, every body in an old place like N—— ought to be); and these men will take half as much from the real supporter of our venerable institutions as they can get from some mushroom pursy adventurer professing ultra-Radical principles, who desires to make a market of his political influence, or is perhaps anxious to satisfy the cravings for distinction of his wife by getting himself as her marital adjunct returned to Parliament, and privileged to wear M.P. after his name.
The third list or classification embraces those electors who have no political principles, or character, or conscience whatever. These are fellows who want as much from Conservative as from Radical or from Whig. They are the scum and refuse, or dregs, of political life; and this foul element of the political existence at N—— is by no means the smaller portion of the three classifications.
The operator, or agent, as he likes to be called,—although, as police-magistrates and all other people dealing with crime are aware, the title “agent” is complimentary,—knows precisely with what material he has to deal. He “plays his cards,” as he sometimes describes his anxious labours, accordingly; and is only liable to one derangement. It is said that honesty and good faith towards one another is characteristic of thief-life. I have, in a former volume, shown that notion to be a fallacy. Politicians supply an additional proof of the accuracy of my statement.
When the operator or agent has—say, two days before the election—made all his arrangements for voting, and feels quite confident that, as the representative of Mr. Heavy Purse, his candidate,—a gentleman who rejoices in a retiring forehead, thick neck, small brain, a little talker and smaller doer, who has no political character, principle, sentiment, or notion whatever,—he has made it all right by virtue of the money already dropped, and the vastly larger amount promised, he goes to sleep in his downy, well-curtained bed at the Dodo, charged to the brim with rosy wine and deep spiritual potations, only to be awakened in the morning by a vigilant subordinate, who informs him that shortly