stick to Yes and No to the death; for Yes and No lay his head down upon the scaffold, where his ancestors have laid their heads before, and cling to his Yes and No in spite of Robert Peel and John Wilson, and Joseph, and Daniel, and Fergus, and Stephens himself. He must do as the Russells always have done, advance his firm foot on the field of honour, plant it on the line marked out by justice, and determine in that cause to perish cr to prevail. 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; In clubs, ballot preserves secrecy; but where a list is found, and a cerbut in clubs, after the barrister has tain sum of money is to be divided blackballed the colonel, he most likely among that list, every interloper lessens never hears of the colonel again: he the receipts of all the rest; it becomes does not live among people who are their interest to guard against fraudncalling out for seven years the colonel lent intrusion; and a man who puts for ever; nor is there any one who, his name upon more lists than the votes thinking he has a right to the barris- he was entitled to give, would soon be ter's suffrage, exercises the most in-hunted down by those he had robbed. cessant vigilance to detect whether or not he has been defrauded of it. I do not say that ballot can never in any instance be made a mean of secrecy and safety, but that it cannot be so in popular elections. Even in elections, a consummate hypocrite who was unmarried, and drank water, might per-aceldama. haps exercise his timid patriotism with impunity; but the instances would be so rare, as to render ballot utterly inefficient as a general protection against the abuses of power. In America, ballot is nearly a dead letter; no protection is wanted: if the ballot protects any one it is the master, not the man. Some of the States have no ballot-some have exchanged the ballot for open voting. 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 5000l., 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 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 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 | gratuity of five pounds, promises his poorest voters. Everybody who has own vote, and that of the chaste a house shall vote, or everybody 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." 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 The ballot and universal suffrage his vote to the Whigs, and persuades are never mentioned by the Radicals his sister Honoria to make a similar without being coupled together. No- promise in the same cause. Arabella, body ever thinks of separating them. the wife, yields implicitly to the wishes Any person who attempted to separate of her husband. In this way, before them at torchlight or sunlight meet- the election, stand committed the ings would be hooted down. It is highly moral family of Mr. Wiggins. professedly avowed that ballot is only The period for lying arrives, and the wanted for ulterior purposes, and no mendacity machine is exhibited to the one makes a secret of what those view of the Wigginses. What hapulterior purposes are: not only would pens? Arabella, who has in the the gift of ballot, if universal suffrage interim been chastised by her drunken were refused, not be received with husband, votes secretly for the Radigratitude, but it would be received cals, having been sold both to Whig with furious indignation and con- and Tory. Mr. John Wiggins, pledged tempt, and universal suffrage be beyond redemption to Whigs, votes speedily extorted from you. 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: 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, balloti cally 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 Walter Wiggins sells himself once and his wife twice. Arabella Wiggins, sold to Tory and Whig. John Wiggins, promised to Whig, votes for Honoria Wiggins, promised to Whig, votes 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 illu- lousy and interference of no importsion, but universal suffrage is not an ance? If ballot, after all, be found illusion. The common people will to hold out a real protection to the get nothing by the one, but they will voter, is universal lying of no importgain everything, and ruin everything, ance? I can understand what is by the last. 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. 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 If the ballot did succeed in enabling the evil that is expected from it; and the lower order of voters to conquer that the people may fairly be indulged their betters, so much the worse. In in such an innocent piece of legisla- a town consisting of 700 voters, the tion. Never was such folly and mad- 300 most opulent and powerful (and ness as this: ballot will be the cause therefore probably the best instructed) of interminable hatred and jealousy would make a much better choice than among the different orders of man- the remaining 400; and the ballot kind; it will familiarise the English would, in that case, do more harm people to a long tenor of deceit; it than good. In nineteen cases out of will not answer its purpose of protect- twenty, the most numerous party ing the independent voter, and the would be in the wrong. If this be people, exasperated and disappointed the case, why give the franchise to by the failure, will indemnify them- all? why not confine it to the first selves by insisting upon unlimited division? because even with all the suffrage. And then it is talked of as abuses which occur, and in spite of an experiment, as if men were talking them, the great mass of the people are of acids and alkalies, and the galvanic much more satisfied with having a vote pile; as if Lord John could get on the occasionally controlled, than with having hustings and say, "Gentlemen, you none. Many agree with their supesee this ballot does not answer; do riors, and therefore feel no control. me the favour to give it up, and to Many are persuaded by their supeallow yourselves to be replaced in the riors, and not controlled. Some are same situation as the ballot found indifferent which way they exercise you." Such, no doubt, is the history the power, though they would not of nations and the march of human like to be utterly deprived of it. affairs; and, in this way, the error of Some guzzle away their vote, some a sudden and foolish largess of power sell it, some brave their superiors, if to the people might, no doubt, be they are threatened and controlled. easily retrieved! The most unpleasant The election, in different ways, is afof all bodily feelings is a cold sweat:fected by the superior influence of the nothing brings it on so surely as upper orders; and the great mass perilous nonsense in politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily frame when I hear the ballot talked of as an experiment. (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, 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 jea-seldom. * 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 and birth, and education. But it is who pretend to foresee all the conse 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 respective 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? quences to which they would give birth. It is hardly necessary to say anyAfter all, the great art in politics thing about universal suffrage, as there and war is to choose a good position is no act of folly or madness which it for making a stand. The Duke of may not in the beginning produce. Wellington examined and fortified the There would be the greatest risk that lines of Torres Vedras a year before the monarchy, as at present constituted, he had any occasion to make use of the funded debt, the established church, them, and he had previously marked titles, and hereditary peerage, would out Waterloo as the probable scene of give way before it. Many really honest some future exploit. The people seem men may wish for these changes; I to be hurrying on through all the know, or at least believe, that wheat well known steps to anarchy; they and barley would grow if there were must be stopped at some pass or anno Archbishop of Canterbury, and other: the first is the best and the most domestic fowls would breed if our Vis-easily defended, The people have a count Melbourne was again called Mr. right to ballot or to anything else which Lamb; but they have stronger nerves will make them happy; and they have than I have who would venture to a right to nothing which will make them bring these changes about. So few unhappy. They are the best judges nations have been free, it is so difficult of their immediate gratifications, and to guard freedom from kings, and mobs, the worst judges of what would best and patriotic gentlemen; and we are conduce to their interests for a series in such a very tolerable state of happi- of years. Most earnestly and conscienness in England, that I think such tiously wishing their good, I say, changes would be very rash; and I NO BALLOT. have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and penetration of political reasoners SYDNEY SMITH. LETTER TO LEONARD HORNER, ESQ. 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 Dundas, 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. 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 of education, in making long and short verses and scanning Greek choruses, but in the masculine pursuits of the philosophy of legislation, of political economy, of the constitutional history of the country, and of the history and changes of Ancient and Modern Europe. He had read so much, and so well, that he was a contemporary of all men, and a citizen of all states. 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 |