Principles of western civilisation

508 WESTERN CIVILISATION

fraud or wilful omission, the accounts may be reopened, and the agent be required to restate and verify them by oath.

(4) A master or principal may as a general rule dismiss without notice, or without payment in lieu of notice, any servant or agent who has received and not disclosed a bribe.

(c) A contracting party may repudiate and rescind any contract entered into through an agent who has received a bribe from the other side.

(2) A contracting party may recover from the briber, and the bribed, or either of them, any sum which he has paid under the contract, and which, in consequence of the bribe, was in excess of the fair or market price.

(e) A contracting party whose agent has been bribed by the other party during the execution of the contract may, in spite of its being part performed, rescind and recover what he paid, both to the briber and the bribed.

17. The great benefits which may be derived from the enforcement of the appropriate civil remedy have been forcibly shown by the experience of a member of your Committee, Mr. Oetzmann, the plaintiff in the well-known case before the Lord Chief Justice, who says :—

(Here follow particulars. )

18. Your Committee further suggest :—

That all professional and trade bodies (such as those representing the medical, legal, artistic, and other professions and trades) be recommended to make an emphatic declaration on the subject of secret commissions, and adopt the course already taken by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Institution of Civil Engineers, and other bodies, by inserting into their byelaws a stipulation that any member guilty of the pernicious practice will be expelled the Society by the Council. In order to make such a provision effective this would require the aid of the general public, as well as of the members of the several professions and trades.

1g. That traders should make with all with whom they deala definite agreement, similar to that entered into by the members of the Calico Printers’ Association, undertaking that nothing in the form of a bribe, commission, or present shall be offered or given by them to any one.

20. It would be highly advantageous if masters and principals,