are complained of which the ballot is | House of Commons to examine the intended to remedy. There never was votes, and to place in their house the an instance in this country where par-man who has combined the greatest ties were so nearly balanced; but all number of suffrages? The answer of this will pass away, and, in a very few the House of Commons is, "One of you years, either Peel will swallow Lord is undoubtedly the rightful member, John, or Lord John will pasture upon but we have so framed our laws of Peel; parties will coalesce, the Duke election, that it is impossible to find of Wellington and Viscount Melbourne out which that man is; the loss and meet at the same board, and the lion penalties ought only to fall upon one, lie down with the lamb. In the mean- but they must fall upon both; we put time a serious and dangerous political the well-doer and the evil-doer prechange is resorted to for the cure of cisely in the same situation, there shall a temporary evil, and we may be be no election ;" and this may happen cursed with ballot when we do not ten times running. want it, and cannot get rid of it.

Purity of election, the fair choice of If there be ballot there can be no representatives, must be guarded either scrutiny, the controlling power of Par-by the coercing power of the House of liament is lost, and the members are Commons exercised upon petitions, or entirely in the hands of returning it must be guarded by the watchful officers. jealousy of opposite parties at the reAn election is hard run-the re-gistrations; but if (as the Radicals turning officer lets in twenty votes suppose) ballot gives a power of perwhich he ought to have excluded, fect concealment, whose interest is it and the opposite candidate is unjustly to watch the registrations? If I desreturned. I petition, and as the law pair of distinguishing my friends from now stands, the return would be my foes, why should I take any trouble amended, and I, who had the legiti- about registrations? Why not leave mate majority, should be seated in Par- everything to that great primum mobile liament. But how could justice be of all human affairs, the barrister of six done if the ballot obtained, and if years' standing? the returning officer were careless or The answer of the excellent Bencorrupt? Would you put all the elec- thamites to all this is, "What you say tors upon their oath? Would it be may be true enough in the present advisable to accept any oath where state of registrations, but we have detection was impossible? and could another scheme of registration to which any approximation to truth be ex- these objections will not apply." There pected under such circumstances, from is really no answering this Paulopost such an inquisition? It is true, the legislation. I reason now npon regispresent committees of the House of tration and reform which are in existCommons are a very unfair tribunal, ence, which I have seen at work for but that tribunal may and will be several years. What new improveamended; and bad as that tribunal is, ments are in the womb of time, or (if nobody can be insane enough to pro-time have no womb) in the more capapose that we are to take refuge in the blunders or the corruptions of 600 returning officers, 100 of whom are Irish.

cious pockets of the followers of Bentham, I know not: when I see them tried I will reason upon them. There is no end to these eternal changes; we It is certainly in the power of a com- have made an enormous revolution mittee, when incapacity or villany of within the last ten years, let us the returning officer has produced an stop a little and secure it, and prevent unfair return, to annul the whole elec-it from being turned into ruin; I do tion and to proceed again de novo; but how is this just? or what satisfaction is this to me, who have unquestionably a lawful majority, and who ask of the

not say the Reform Bill is final, but I want a little time for breathing; and if there are to be any more changes, let them be carried into execution hereafter

by those little legislators who are now | It is the Radical doctrine that a reprereceiving every day after dinner a cake sentative is to obey the instructions of or a plum, in happy ignorance of Mr. his constituents. He has been elected Grote and his ballot. I long for the under the ballot by a large majority; quiet times of Log, when all the En- an open meeting is called, and he glish common people are making receives instructions in direct oppocalico, and all the English gentlemen sition to all those principles upon are making long and short verses, with which he has been elected. Is this no other interruption of their happi- the real opinion of his constituents? ness than when false quantities are dis- and if he receive his instructions for a covered in one or the other. ballot meeting, who are his instrucWhat is to become of petitions if tors? The lowest men in the town, or ballot is established? Are they to be the wisest and the best? But if ballot open as they now are, or are they to be established for elections only, and be conducted by ballot? Are the all communications between the conradical shopkeepers and the radical stituents on one side, and Parliament tenant to be exposed (as they say) to and the representatives on the other, all the fury of incensed wealth and are carried on in open meetings, then power, and is that protection to be are there two publics according to the denied to them in petitions, which is Radical doctrines, essentially differing so loudly demanded in the choice of from each other; the one acting under representatives? Are there to be two the influence of the rich and powerful, distinct methods of ascertaining the the other free; and if all political petiopinions of the people, and these com- tions are to be carried on by ballot, pletely opposed to each other? A how are Parliament to know who member is chosen this week by a large petitions, or the member to know who majority of voters who vote in the instructs? dark, and the next week, when men vote in the light of day, some petition is carried totally opposite to all those principles for which the member with invisible votes was returned to Parliament. How, under such a system, can Parliament ever ascertain what the wishes of the people really are? The representatives are Radicals, the petitioners eminently conservative; the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

I have hitherto spoken of ballot, as if it were, as the Radicals suppose it to be, a mean of secrecy; their very cardinal position is, that landlords, after the ballot is established, will give up in despair all hopes of commanding the votes of their tenants. I scarcely ever heard a more foolish and gratuitous assumption. Given up? Why should they be given up? I can give many reasons why landlords should never exercise this unreasonable power, but I can give no possible reason why a man determined to do so should be baffled by the ballot. When two great parties in the empire are combating for the supreme power, does Mr. Grote imagine, that the man of woods, forests, and rivers,- that they who have the strength of the hills,-are to be baffled by bumpkins thrusting a little pin into a little card in a little box? that England is to be governed by political acupunctuation?

And if the same protection be adopted for petitions as is given in elections, and if both are conducted by ballot, how are the House of Commons to deal with petitions? When it is intended particularly that a petition should attract the attention of the House of Commons, some member bears witness to the respectability or the futility of the signatures; and how is it possible, without some guides of this kind, that the House could form any idea of the value and importance A landlord who would otherwise be of the petition? guilty of the oppression will not change These observations apply with equal his purpose, because you attempt to foree to the communications between outwit him by the invention of the the representative and the constituent. | ballot; he will become, on the con

tenant who wishes to deceive his landlord, by promising one way and voting another, but you expose all the other tenants who have no intention of deceiving, to all the evils of mistake and misrepresentation. The steward hates a tenant, and a rival wants his farm; they begin to whisper him out of favour, and to propagate rumours of his disaffection to the blue or the yellow cause; as matters now stand he can refer to the poll-book and show how he has voted. Under the ballot his security is gone, and he is exposed

bour, to that suspicion from which none can be exempt when all vote in secret. If ballot then answered the purpose for which it was intended, the number of honest tenants whom it exposed to danger would be as great as the number of deceitful tenants whom it screened.

trary, doubly vigilant, inquisitive, and Not only you do not protect the severe. "I am a professed Radical," said the tenant of a great duke to a friend of mine, "and the duke knows it; but if I vote for his candidates, he lets me talk as I please, live with whom I please, and does not care if I dine at a Radical dinner every day in the week. If there was a ballot, nothing could persuade the duke, or the duke's master, the steward, that I was not deceiving them, and I should lose my farm in a week." This is the real history of what would take place. The single lie on the hustings would not suffice; the concealed democrat in common with his deceitful neighwho voted against his landlord must talk with the wrong people, subscribe to the wrong club, huzza at the wrong dinner, break the wrong head, lead (if he wished to escape from the watchful jealousy of his landlord) a long life of lies between every election; and he must do this, not only eundo, in his calm and prudential state, but redeundo from the market, warmed with beer, and expanded by alcohol; and he must not only carry on his seven years of dissimulation before the world, but in the very bosom of his family, or he must expose himself to the dangerous garrulity of wife, children, and servants, from whose indiscretion every kind of evil report would be carried to the ears of the watchful steward. And when once the ballot is established, mere gentle, quiet lying will not do to hide the tenant who secretly votes against his landlord: the quiet passive liar will be suspected, and he will find, if he does not wave his bonnet and strain his throat in furtherance of his bad faith, and lie loudly, that he has put in a false ball in the dark to very little purpose. I consider a long concealment of political opinion from the landlord to be nearly impossible for the tenant: and if you conceal from the landlord the only proof he can have of his tenant's sincerity, you are taking from the tenant the only means he has of living quietly upon his farm, You are increasing the jealousy and irascibility of the tyrant, and multiplying instead of lessening the number of his victims.

But if landlords could be prevented from influencing their tenants in voting, by threatening them with the loss of farms;-if public opinion were too strong to allow of such threats, what would prevent a landlord from refusing to take, as a tenant, a man whose political opinion did not agree with his own? what would prevent him from questioning, long before the election, and cross-examining his tenant, and demanding certificates of his behaviour and opinions, till he had, according to all human probability, found a man who felt as strongly as himself upon political subjects, and who would adhere to those opinions with as much firmness and tenacity? What would prevent, for instance, an Orange landlord from filling his farms with Orange tenants, and from cautiously rejecting every Catholic tenant who presented himself plough in hand? But if this practice were to obtain generally, of cautiously selecting tenants from their political opinion, what would become of the sevenfold shield of the ballot? Not only this tenant is not continued in the farm he already holds, but he finds, from the severe inquisition into which men of property are driven by the invention of ballot,

that it is extremely difficult for a man | tocrats are of preserving the power of whose principles are opposed to those property, and will in the same way reof his landlord, to get any farm at all. double their vicious activity from the The noise and jollity of a ballot mob attempt at destroying their empire by must be such as the very devils would ballot. look on with delight. A set of deceitful wretches wearing the wrong colours, abusing their friends, pelting the man for whom they voted, drinking their enemies' punch, knocking down persons with whom they entirely agreed, and roaring out eternal duration to principles they abhorred. A scene of wholesale bacchanalian fraud, a posse comitatus of liars, which would disgust any man with a free government, and make him sigh for the monocracy of Constantinople.

Ballot could not prevent the disfranchisement of a great number of voters. The shopkeeper, harassed by men of both parties, equally consuming the articles in which he dealt, would seek security in not voting at all, and, of course, the ballot could not screen the disobedient tenant whom the landlord requested to stay away from the poll. Mr. Grote has no box for this; but a remedy for securing the freedom of election, which has no power to prevent the voter from losing the exercise All the arguments which apply to of his franchise altogether, can scarcely suspected tenants apply to suspected be considered as a remedy at all. shopkeepers. Their condition under There is a method, indeed, by which the ballot would be infinitely worse this might be remedied, if the great than under the present system; the soul of Mr. Grote will stoop to adopt veracious shopkeeper would be sus-it. Why are the acts of concealment pected, perhaps without having his vote to be confined to putting in a ball? to appeal to for his protection, and the shopkeeper who meant to deceive must prop up his fraud, by accommodating his whole life to the first deceit, or he would have told a disgraceful falsehood in vain. The political persecutors would not be baffled by the ballot: customers who think they have a right| What a flood of deceit and villany to persecute tradesmen now, would do comes in with ballot! I admit there it then; the only difference would be are great moral faults under the that more would be persecuted then on present system. It is a serious violasuspicion, than are prosecuted now tion of duty to vote for A. when you from a full knowledge of every man's think B. the more worthy representvote. Inquisitors would be exas-ative; but the open voter, acting under perated by this attempt of their victims to become invisible, and the search for delinquents would be more sharp and incessant.

Why not vote in a domino, taking off the vizor to the returning officer only? or as tenant Jenkins or tenant Hodge might be detected by their stature, why not poll in sedan chairs with the curtains closely drawn, choosing the chairman by ballot?

the influence of his landlord, commits only this one fault, great as it is:-if he vote for his candidate, the landlord is satisfied, and asks no other sacrifice A state of things may (to be sure) of truth and opinion; but if the tenant occur where the aristocratic part of the vote against his landlord under the voters may be desirous, by concealing ballot, he is practising every day some their votes, of protecting themselves fraud to conceal his first deviation from from the fury of the multitude; but truth. The present method may proprecisely the same objection obtains duce a vicious act, but the ballot estaagainst ballot, whoever may be the blishes a vicious habit; and then it is oppressor or the oppressed. It is no of some consequence, that the law defence; the single falsehood at the should not range itself on the side of hustings will not suffice. Hypocrisy vice. In the open voting, the law leaves for seven years is impossible; the mul- you fairly to choose between the dantitude will be just as jealous of preserv-gers of giving an honest, or the coning the power of intimidation, as aris-venience of giving a dishonest vote;

lord would be exposed to the constant suspicions and the unjust misrepresentation of the tenant. Every tenant who was dismissed for a fair and a just cause, would presume he was suspected, would attribute his dismissal to political motives, and endeavour to make himself a martyr with the public; and in this way violent hatred would be by the ballot disseminated among classes of men on whose agreement the order and

but the ballot law opens a booth and asylum for fraud, calling upon all men to lie by beat of drum, forbidding open honesty, promising impunity for the most scandalous deceit, and encouraging men to take no other view of virtue than whether it pays or does not pay; for it must always be remembered and often repeated, and said and sung to Mr. Grote, that it is to the degraded liar only that the box will be useful. The man who performs what he pro-happiness of England depends. mises needs no box. The man who All objections to ballot which are refuses to do what he is asked to do important in England, apply with despises the box. The liar, who says much greater force to Ireland, a counhe will do what he never means to do, try of intense agitation, fierce passions, is the only man to whom the box is and quick movements. Then how useful, and for whom this leaf out of would the ballot box of Mr. Grote harthe punic Pandects is to be inserted in monise with the confessional box of our statute book; the other vices will Father O'Leary? begin to look up, and to think themselves neglected, if falsehood obtains such flattering distinction, and is thus defended by the solemn enactments of law.

I observe Lord John Russell, and some important men as well as him, saying, "We hate ballot, but if these practices continue, we shall be compelled to vote for it." What! vote for it, if ballot be Old John Randolph, the American no remedy for these evils? Vote for orator, was asked one day at a dinner it, if ballot produce still greater evils party in London, whether the ballot than it cures? That is (says the phyprevailed in his state of Virginia-"Isician), if fevers increase in this alarmscarcely believe," he said, "we have such a fool in all Virginia, as to mention even the vote by ballot; and I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot would make any nation a nation of scoundrels if it did not find them so.' 99 John Randolph was right; he felt that it was not necessary that a people should be false in order to be free; uinversal hypocrisy would be the consequence of ballot: we should soon say on deliberation what David only asserted in his haste, that all men were liars.

ing manner, I shall be compelled to make use of some medicine which will be of no use to fevers, and will at the same time bring on diseases of a much more serious nature. I shall be under the absolute necessity of putting out your eyes, because I cannot prevent you from being lame. In fact, this sort of language is utterly unworthy of the sense and courage of Lord John; he gives hopes where he ought to create absolute despair. This is that hovering between two principles which ruins political strength by lowering political This exclamation of old Randolph character, and creates a notion that applied to the method of popular elec- his enemies need not fear such a man, tions, which I believe has always been and that his friends cannot trust him. by open voice in Virginia; but the as- No opinion could be more unjust as semblies voted, and the Judges were applied to Lord John; but such an chosen by ballot; and in the year 1830, opinion will grow if he begin to value upon a solemn review of their institu- himself more upon his dexterity and tions, ballot was entirely abolished in finesse, than upon those fine manly every instance throughout the State, historico-Russell qualities he most unand open voting substituted in its place. doubtedly possesses. There are two Not only would the tenant under beautiful words in the English lanballot be constantly exposed to the guage,-Yes and No; he must prosuspicions of the landlord, but the land-nounce them boldly and emphatically;