V. POLITICS IN VICTORIA. Strange to say, it is a fact notorious in Victoria that a proportion of the Legislative Assembly, sufficient to sway its vote on almost any measure that may be introduced, is altogether corrupt and amenable to bribes! How long this has been so I know not, or how long it has been a matter of notoriety; but attention has been particularly drawn in this direction lately by the scandalous disclosures made in the case of _Sands_ v. _Armstrong_, which was tried in May. The plaintiff was a member of the Assembly, against whom charges were made in a local paper of so serious a nature that he was compelled to bring an action for libel, to endeavour to re-establish his character. The trial lasted several days, and resulted in a verdict of a farthing damages—practically, of course, a verdict for the defendant—as nearly all the charges against the plaintiff were fully made out. The following extracts from a leading article in the _Argus_ of May 6, 1867, describe his operations:— For years past there has been a prevalent belief that rank jobbery and corruption infested our governing system, and from time to time circumstances came to light which confirmed and strengthened this belief. But outside political circles the facts were not known with certainty, while as to the extent of the evil the general public could not even form a guess. At last we have got at the truth, so far as concerns the operations of one honourable member. For the first time the veil has been completely lifted, and the life of a jobbing legislator fully exposed to view. And the reality is immeasurably worse than any but the initiated could have imagined. Scheme and trick and dodge are proved to have been the constant practice of the person whose conduct has been investigated, his public position a mere agency by which he could work out, by means of wholesale corruption, sordid plans of personal aggrandizement.... Using his influence with the Government, and pretending to greater influence than we are willing to believe they ever permitted him to exercise, he seems to have meddled in every kind of public business transacted in his locality, and turned it to account for his own pecuniary gain. Nothing was above—nothing beneath him. If a poor labouring man wanted a bit of land under the 42nd Clause, it was ten shillings to Sands; if there was a returning officer to be appointed, that was an affair of 30_l._ if it could be managed. Circumstances rendered one piece of local preferment particularly desirable during the currency of his operations, by reason of its great profitableness, and that he apparently tried to keep in his own hands altogether, appointing a dummy official representative (though on this part of the case the evidence is necessarily incomplete, the only persons fully cognizant