Bribery carried on in any town now, would probably be carried on with equal success under the ballot. The attorney (if such a system prevailed) would say to the candidate, "There is my list of promises: if you come in I will have 5000%, and if you do not, you shall pay me nothing." To this list, to which I suppose all the venal rabble of the town to have put their names, there either is an opposition bribery list, or there is not: if there is not, the promisers, looking | only to make money by their vote, have every inducement to keep their word. If there be an opposite list, the only trick which a promiser can play is to put down his name upon both lists: but this trick would be so easily detected, so much watched and suspected, and would even in the vote market render a man so infamous, that it never would be attempted to any great extent. At present, if a man promise his vote to A., and votes for B., because he can get more money by it, he does not become infamous among the bribed, because they lose no money by him; but where a list is found, and a certain sum of money is to be divided among that list, every interloper lessens the receipts of all the rest; it becomes their interest to guard against fraudulent intrusion; and a man who puts his name upon more lists than the votes he was entitled to give, would soon be hunted down by those he had robbed. Of course there would be no pay till after the election, and the man who having one vote had put himself down on two lists, or having two votes had put himself down on three lists, could hardly fail to be detected, and would, of course, lose his political aceldama. There must be honour among thieves; the mob regularly inured to bribery under the canopy of the ballot, would for their own sake soon introduce rules for the distribution of the plunder, and infuse with their customary energy, the morality of not being sold more than once at every election.

If ballot were established, it would be received by the upper classes with the greatest possible suspicion, and every effort would be made to counteract it and to get

rid of it. Against those attacks the inferior orders would naturally wish to strengthen themselves, and the obvious means would be by extending the number of voters; and so comes on universal suffrage. The ballot would fail: it would be found neither to prevent intimidation nor bribery. Universal suffrage would cure both, as a teaspoonful of prussic acid is a certain cure for the most formidable diseases; but universal suffrage would in all probability be the next step. "The 200 richest voters of Bridport shall not beat the 400 poorest voters. Every body who has a house shall vote, or every body who is twenty-one shall vote, and then the people will be sure to have their way— we will blackball every member standing for Bridgewater who does not promise to vote for universal suffrage."

The ballot and universal suffrage are never mentioned by the Radicals without being coupled together. Nobody ever thinks of separating them. Any person who attempted to separate them at torchlight or sunlight meetings would be hooted down. It is professedly avowed that ballot is only wanted for ulterior purposes, and no one makes a secret of what those ulterior purposes are: not only would the gift of ballot, if universal suffrage were refused, not be received with gratitude, but it would be received with furious indignation and contempt, and universal suffrage be speedily extorted from you.

There would be this argument also for universal suffrage, to which I do not think it very easy to find an answer. The son of a man who rents a house of ten pounds a year is often a much cleverer man than his father; the wife more intelligent than the husband. Under the system of open voting, these persons are not excluded from want of intellect, but for want of independence, for they would necessarily vote with their principal; but the moment the ballot is established, according to the reasoning of the Grote school, one man is as independent as another, because all are concealed, and so all are equally entitled to offer their suffrages. This cannot sow dissensions in

families; for how, ballotically reasoning, can the father find it out? or, if he did find it out, how has any father, ballotically speaking, a right to control the votes of his family?

I have often drawn a picture in my own mind of a Balloto-Grotical family voting and promising under the new system. There is one vacancy, and three candidates, Tory, Whig, and Radical. Walter Wiggins, a small artificer of shoes, for the moderate gratuity of five pounds, promises his own vote, and that of the chaste Arabella his wife, to the Tory candidate; he, Walter Wiggins, having also sold, for one sovereign, the vote of the before-named Arabella to the Whigs. Mr. John Wiggins, a tailor, the male progeny of Walter and Arabella, at the solicitation of his master, promises his vote to the Whigs, and persuades his sister Honoria to make a similar promise in the same cause. Arabella, the wife, yields implicitly to the wishes of her husband. In this way, before the election, stand committed the highly moral family of Mr. Wiggins. The period for lying arrives, and the mendacity machine is exhibited to the view of the Wigginses. What happens? Arabella, who has in the interim been chastised by her drunken husband, votes secretly for the Radicals, having been sold both to Whig and Tory. Mr. John Wiggins, pledged beyond redemption to Whigs, votes for the Tory; and Honoria, extrinsically furious in the cause of Whigs, is persuaded by her lover to vote for the Radical member. The following Table exhibits the state of this moral family, before and after the election:

Walter Wiggins sells himself once and his wife twice.

Arabella Wiggins, sold to Tory and Whig, votes for Radical.

John Wiggins, promised to Whig, votes for Tory. Honoria Wiggins promised to Whig, votes for Radical.

In this way the families of the poor, under the legislation of Mr. Grote, will become schools for good faith, openness, and truth! What are Chrysippus and Crantor, and all the moralists of the whole world, compared to Mr. Grote ?

It is urged that the lower order of voters, proud of such a distinction, will not be anxious to extend it to others: but the lower order of voters will often find that they possess this distinction in vain — that wealth and education are too strong for them; and they will call in the multitude as auxiliaries, firmly believing that they can curb their inferiors and conquer their superiors. Ballot is a mere illusion, but universal suffrage is not an illusion. The common people will get nothing by the one, but they will gain every thing, and ruin every thing, by the last.

Some members of Parliament who mean to vote for ballot, in the fear of losing their seats, and who are desirous of reconciling to their conscience such an act of disloyalty to mankind, are fond of saying that ballot is harmless; that it will neither do the good nor the evil that is expected from it; and that the people may fairly be indulged in such an innocent piece of legislation. Never was such folly and madness as this: ballot will be the cause of interminable hatred and jealousy among the different orders of mankind; it will familiarise the English people to a long tenour of deceit; it will not answer its purpose of protecting the independent voter, and the people, exasperated and disappointed by the failure, will indemnify themselves by insisting upon unlimited suffrage.

And then it is talked of as an experiment, as if men were talking of acids and alkalies, and the galvanic pile; as if Lord John could get on the hustings and say, "Gentlemen, you see this ballot does not answer; do me the favour to give it up, and to allow yourselves to be replaced in the same situation as the ballot found you." Such, no doubt, is the history of nations and the march of human affairs; and, in this way, the error of a sudden and foolish largess of power to the people might, no doubt, be easily retrieved! The most unpleasant of all bodily feelings is a cold sweat: nothing brings it on so surely as perilous nonsense in politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily frame when I hear the ballot talked of as an experiment.

I cannot at all understand what is meant by this indolent opinion. Votes are coerced now; if votes are free, will the elected be the same? if not, will the difference of the elected be unimportant? Will not the ballot stimulate the upper orders to fresh exertions? and is their increased jealousy and interference of no importance? If ballot, after all, be found to hold out a real protection to the voter, is universal lying of no importance? I can understand what is meant by calling ballot a great good, or a great evil; but, in the mighty contention for power which is raging in this country, to call it indifferent, appears to me extremely foolish in all those in whom it is not extremely dishonest.

If the ballot did succeed in enabling the lower order of voters to conquer their betters, so much the worse. In a town consisting of 700 voters, the 300 most opulent and powerful (and therefore probably the best instructed) would make a much better choice than the remaining 400; and the ballot would, in that case, do more harm than good. In nineteen cases out of twenty, | the most numerous party would be in the wrong. If this be the case, why give the franchise to all? why not confine it to the first division? because even with all the abuses which occur, and in spite of them, the great mass of the people are much more satisfied with having a vote occasionally controlled, than with having none. Many agree with their superiors, and therefore feel no control. Many are persuaded by their superiors, and not controlled. Some are indifferent which way they exercise the power, though they would not like to be utterly deprived of it. Some guzzle away their vote, some sell it, some brave their superiors, if they are threatened and controlled. The election, in different ways, is affected by the superior influence of the upper orders; and the great mass (occasionally and justly complaining) are, beyond all doubt, better pleased than if they had no votes at all. The lower orders always have it in their power to rebel against their superiors; and occasionally they will do so, and have done

so, and occasionally and justly carried elections* against gold, and birth, and education. But it is madness to make laws of society which attempt to shake off the great laws of nature. As long as men love bread, and mutton, and broad cloth, wealth, in a long series of years, must have enormous effects upon human affairs, and the strong box will beat the ballot box. Mr. Grote has both, but he miscalculates their re- ¦ spective powers. Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold and silver; but by what moral rate of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values of liberty and

truth?

It is hardly necessary to say any thing about universal suffrage, as there is no act of folly or madness which it may not in the beginning produce. There would be the greatest risk that the monarchy, as at present constituted, the funded debt, the esta- | blished church, titles, and hereditary peerage, would give way before it. Many really honest men may wish for these changes; I know, or at least believe, that wheat and barley would grow if there were no Archbishop of Canterbury, and domestic fowls would breed if our Viscount Melbourne was again called Mr. Lamb; but they have stronger nerves than I have who would venture to bring these changes about. So few nations have been free, it is so difficult to guard freedom from kings, and mobs, and patriotic gentlemen; and we are in such a very tolerable state of happiness in England, that I think such changes would be! very rash; and I have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and penetration of political reasoners who pretend to foresee all the consequences to which they would give birth. When I speak of the tolerable state! of happiness in which we live in England, I do not speak merely of nobles, squires, and canons of St. Paul's, but of drivers of coaches, clerks in offices, carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and most men

The 400 or 500 voting against the 200 are right about as often as juries are right in differing from judges; and that is very seldom.

who do not marry upon nothing, and become burdened with large families before they have arrived at years of maturity. The earth is not sufficiently fertile for this:

Difficilem victum fundit durissima tellus.

After all, the great art in politics and war is to choose a good position for making a stand. The Duke of Wellington examined and fortified the lines of Torres Vedras a year before he had any occasion to make use of them, and he had previously marked out Waterloo as the probable scene of some future exploit. The people seem to be hurrying on through all the well

known steps to anarchy; they must be stopped at some pass or another: the first is the best and the most easily defended. The people have a right to ballot or to any thing else which will make them happy; and they have a right to nothing which will make them unhappy. They are the best judges of their immediate gratifications, and the worst judges of what would best conduce to their interests for a series of years. Most earnestly and conscientiously wishing their good, I say,

NO BALLOT.

SYDNEY SMITH.

MY DEAR SIR,

You desire me to commit to paper my recollections of your brother, Francis Horner. I think that the many years which have elapsed since his death have not at all impaired my memory of his virtues, at the same time that they have afforded me more ample means of comparing him with other important human beings with whom I have become acquainted since that period.

I first made the acquaintance of Francis Horner at Edinburgh, where he was among the most conspicuous young men in that energetic, and infragrant city. My desire to know him proceeded first of all from being cautioned against him by some excellent and feeble people to whom I had brought letters of introduction, and who represented him to me as a person of violent political opinions; I interpreted this to mean a person who thought for himself—who had firmness enough to take his own line in life, and who loved truth better than he loved Dun

das, at that time the tyrant of Scotland. I found my interpretation to be just, and from thence till the period of his death we lived in constant society and friendship with each other.

There was something very remarkable in his countenance- the commandments were written on his face, and I have often told him there was not a crime he might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw him would give the smallest degree of credit to any evidence against him there was in his look a calm settled love of all that was honourable and good — an air of wisdom and of sweetness; you saw at once that he was a great man, whom nature had intended for a leader of human beings; you ranged yourself willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his sway.

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He had an intense love of knowledge; he wasted very little of the portion of life conceded to him, and was always improving himself, not in the most foolish of all schemes

I never saw any person who took such a lively interest in the daily happiness of his friends. If you were unwell, if there was a sick child in the nursery, if any death happened in your family, he never forgot you for an instant! You always found there was a man with a good heart who was never far from you.

He loved truth so much, that he never could bear any jesting upon important subjects. I remember one evening the late Lord Dudley and myself pretended to justify the conduct of the government in stealing the Danish fleet; we carried on the argument with some wickedness against our graver friend; he could not stand it, but bolted indignantly out of the room; we flung up the sash, and, with loud peals of laughter, professed ourselves decided Scandinavians; we offered him not only the ships, but all the shot, powder, cordage, and even the biscuit, if he would come back: but nothing could turn him; he went home; and it took us a fortnight of serious behaviour before we were forgiven.

Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great understanding seldom

are.

It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the opinions of others; and often to form them from the same source.

His success in the House of Commons was decided and immediate, and went on increasing to the last day of his life. Though put into Parliament by some of the Great Borough Lords, every one saw that he represented his own real opinions: without hereditary wealth, and known as a writer in the Edinburgh Review, his independence was never questioned his integrity, sincerity, and moderation, were acknowledged by all sides, and respected even by those

Your brother was wholly without pre- | tensions or affectation. I have lived a long time in Scotland, and have seen very few affected Scotchmen; of those few he certainly was not one. In the ordinary course of life, he never bestowed a thought upon the effect he was producing; he trusted to his own good nature and good intentions, and left the rest to chance.

Having known him well before he had acquired a great London reputation, I never observed that his fame produced the slightest alteration in his deportment: he was as affable to me, and to all his old friends, as when we were debating metaphysics in a garret in Edinburgh. I don't think it was in the power of ermine, or mace, or seals, or lawn, or lace, or of any of those emblems and or- | naments with which power loves to decorate | itself, to have destroyed the simplicity of his character. I believe it would have defied all the corrupting appellations of human vanity: Serene, Honourable, Right Honourable, Sacred, Reverend, Right Reverend, Lord High, Earl, Marquis, Lord Mayor, Your Grace, Your Honour, and every other vocable which folly has invented and idolatry cherished, would all have been lavished on him in vain.

The character of his understanding was the exercise of vigorous reasoning, in pursuit of important and difficult truth. He had no wit; nor did he condescend to that inferior variety of this electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of Wut, is so infinitely distressing to persons of good taste: he had no very

Mr. Sydney Smith's brother, the late Mr. Robert Smith.