the squire, unused to be pointed at, and thinking that | sesses the land should never speak to the man who all Europe and part of Asia are thinking of him and tills it. The intercourse between landlord and tenant his farmers, is driven to the brink of suicide and de- should be as strictly guarded as that of the sexes in spair. That such things are done is not denied; that Turkey. A funded duenna should be placed over they are scandalous when they are done is equally every landed grandee.-And then intimidation! Is true; but these are reasons why such acts are less intimidation confined to the aristocracy? Can any frequent than they are commonly represented to be. thing be more scandalous and atrocious than the inIn the same manner, there are instances of shopkeep- timidation of mobs? Did not the mob of Bristol occa ers being materially injured in their business from the sion more ruin, wretchedness, death, and alarm than votes they have given; but the facts themselves, as all the ejection of tenants, and combinations against well as the consequences, are grossly exaggerated. If shopkeepers, from the beginning of the century? and shopkeepers lose tory they gain whig customers; and did not the Scotch philosophers tear off the clothes of it is not always the vote which does the mischief, but the tories in Mintoshire? or at least such clothes as the low vulgar impertinence, and the unbridled scur- the customs of the country admit of being worn?-and rility of a man who thinks that by dividing to man- did not they, without any reflection at all upon the kind their rations of butter and of cheese he has qual- customs of the country, wash the tory voters in the ified himself for legislation, and that he can hold the river? rod of empire because he has wielded the yard of mensuration. I detest all inquisition into political opinions, but I have very rarely seen a combination against any tradesman who modestly, quietly, and conscientiously took his own line in politics. But Brutus and butterman, cheesemonger and Cato, do not harmonize well together; good taste is offended, the coxcomb loses his friends, and general disgust is mistaken for combined oppression. Shopkeepers, too, are very apt to cry out before they are hurt: a man who sees after an election one of his customers buying a pair of gloves on the opposite side of the way, roars out that his honesty will make him a bankrupt, and the county papers are filled with letters from Brutus, Publicola, Hampden, and Pym.

This interference with the freedom of voting, bad as it is, produces no political deliberation; it does not make the tories stronger than the whigs, nor the whigs than the tories, for both are equally guilty of this species of tyranny; and any particular system of measures fails or prevails, much as if no such practice existed. The practice had better not be at all, but if a certain quantity of the evil does exist, it is better that it should be equally divided among both parties, than that it should be exercised by one for the depres. sion of the other. There are politicians always at a white heat, who suppose that there are landed tyrants only on one side of the question; but human life has been distressingly abridged by the flood: there is no time to spare, it is impossible to waste it upon such senseless bigotry.

Some sanguine advocates of the ballot contend that it would put an end to all canvassing: why should it do so! Under the ballot, I canvass (it is true) a person who may secretly deceive me. I cannot be sure he will not do so-but I am sure it is much less likely he will vote against me, when I have paid him all the deference and attention which a representative bestows on his constituents, than if I had totally neglected him to any other objections he may have against me, at least I will not add that of personal incivility.

Scarcely is any great virtue practised without some sacrifice; and the admiration which virtue excites seems to proceed from the contemplation of such sufferings, and of the exertions by which they are endured: a tradesman suffers some loss of trade by voting for his country; is he not to vote? he might suffer some loss of blood in fighting for his country; is he not to fight? Every one would be a good Samaritan, if he was quite sure his compassion would cost him nothing. We should all be heroes, if it was not for blood and fractures; all saints, if it were not for the restrictions and privations of sanctity; all patriots, if it were not for the losses and misrepresentations to which patriotism exposes us. The ballotists are a se? of Englishmen glowing with the love of England and the love of virtue, but determined to hazard the most dangerous experiments in politics, rather than run the risk of losing a penny in defence of their exalted feelings.

An abominable tyranny exercised by the ballot is, If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it at all that it compels those persons to conceal their votes, clear that he would vote from any better motive than who hate all concealment, and who glory in the cause intimidation? If you make so tremendous an experi- they support. If you are afraid to go in at the front ment, are you sure of attaining your object? The door, and to say in a clear voice what you have to say, landlord has perhaps said a cross word to the tenant; go in at the back door, and say it in a whisper-but the candidate for whom the tenant votes in opposition this is not enough for you; you make me, who am to his landlord has taken his second son for a footman, bold and honest, sneak in at the back door as well as or his father knew the candidate's grandfather: how yourself: because you are afraid of selling a dozen or many thousand votes, sheltered (as the ballotists sup- two of gloves less than usual, you compel me, whe pose) from intimidation, would be given from such have no gloves to sell, or who would dare or despise silly motives as these? how many would be given the loss, if I had, to hide the best feelings of my heart, from the mere discontent of inferiority? or from that and to lower myself down to your mean morals. It is strange simious schoolboy passion of giving pain to as if a few cowards who could only fight behind walls others, even when the author cannot be found out?-and houses, were to prevent the whole regiment from motives as pernicious as any which could proceed from showing a bold front in the field: what right has the intimidation. So that all voters screened by ballot would not be screened for any public good.

coward to degrade me who am no coward, and put me in the same shameful predicament with himself? If The radicals, (I do not use this word in any offen- ballot is established, a zealous voter cannot do justice sive sense, for I know many honest and excellent men to his cause; there will be so many false Hampdens, of this way of thinking), but the radicals praise and and spurious Catos, that all men's actions and motives admit the lawful influence of wealth and power. They will be mistrusted. It is in the power of any man to are quite satisfied if a rich man of popular manners tell me that my colours are false, that I declaim with gains the votes and affections of his dependants; but stimulated warmth, and canvass with fallacious zeal; why is not this as bad as intimidation? The real ob- that I am a tory, though I call Russell for ever, or a ject is to vote for the good politician, not for the kind-whig, in spite of my obstreperous panegyrics of Peel. hearted or agreeable man: the mischief is just the It is really a curious condition that all men must imisame to the country whether I am smiled into a cor- tate the defects of a few, in order that it may not be rupt choice, or frowned into a corrupt choice,-what known who have the natural imperfection, and who is it to me whether my landlord is the best of land- put it on from conformity. In this way, in former lords, or the most agreeable of men? I must vote for days, to hide the gray hairs of the old, every body Joseph Hume, if I think Joseph more honest than the was forced to wear powder and pomatum. marquis. The more mitigated radical may pass over this, but the real carnivorous variety of the animal should declaim as loudly against the fascinations as against the threats of the great. The man who pos.

It must not be forgetten that, in the ballot, concealment must be absolutely compulsory. It would never do to let one man vote openly, and another secretly. You may go to the edge of the box, and say,' I vote

for A.,' but who knows that your ball is not put in for | placed on the north wall, and starved for their hones. B.? There must be a clear plain opportunity for tell-ty. Judges, too, suffer for their unpopularity-Lord ing an undiscoverable lie, or the whole invention is at Kilwarden was murdered, Lord Mansfield burnt down; an end. How beautiful is the progress of man!- but voters, forgetting that they are only trustees for printing has abolished ignorance-gas put an end to those who have no vote, require that they themselves darkness-steam has conquered time and distance-it should be virtuous with impunity, and that all the penremained for Grote and his box to remove the incum-alties of austerity and Catonism should fall upon othbrance of truth from human transactions. May we ers. I am aware that it is of the greatest consequence not look now for more little machines to abolish the to the constituent that he should be made acquainted other cardinal virtues. with the conduct of his representative; but I maintain, that to know, without the fear of mistake, what the conduct of individuals has been in their fulfilment of the great trust of electing members of Parliament, is also of the greatest importance in the formation of the power of distinguishing between the bad and the good would be at an end.

To institute ballot, is to apply a very dangerons innovation to a temporary evil; for it is seldom, but in very excited times, that these acts of power are complained of which the ballot is intended to remedy.There never was an instance in this country where parties were so nearly balanced; but all this will pass away, and, in a very few years, either Peel will swallow Lord John, or Lord John will pasture upon Peel; parties will coalesce, the Duke of Wellington and Viscount Melbourne meet at the same board, and the lion lie down with the lamb. In the mean time a serious and dangerous political change is resorted to for the cure of a temporary evil, and we may be cursed with ballot when we do not want it, and cannot get rid of it.

But if all men are suspected; if things are so contrived that it is impossible to know what men really think, a serious impediment is created to the formation of good public opinion in the multitude. There is a town (No. 1.) in which live two very clever and re-public opinion; and that, when men acted in the dark, spectable men, Johnson and Pelham, small tradesmen, men always willing to run some risk for the public good, and to be less rich, and more honest than their neighbours. It is of considerable consequence to the formation of opinion in this town, as an example, to know how Johnson and Pelham vote. It guides the affections, and directs the understandings, of the whole population, and materially affects public opinion in this town; and in another borough, No. 2., it would be of the highest importance to public opinion if it were certain how Mr. Smith, the ironmonger, and Mr. Rogers, the London carrier, voted; because they are both thoroughly honest men, and of excellent understanding for their condition of life. Now, the tendency of ballot would be to destroy all the Pelhams, Johnsons, Rogers's, and Smiths, to sow a universal mistrust, and to exterminate the natural guides and leaders of the people: political influence, founded upon honour and ancient honesty in politics, could not grow up under such a system. No man's declaration could get believed. It would be easy to whisper away the character of the best men; and to assert that, in spite of all his declarations, which are nothing but a blind, the romantic Rogers has voted on the other side, and is in secret league with our enemies.

"Who brought that mischievous profligate villain into Parliament? Let us see the names of his real supporters. Who stood out against the strong and uplifted arm of power? Who discovered this excellent and hitherto unknown person? Who opposed the man whom we all know to be one of the first men in the country?" Are these fair and useful questions to be veiled hereafter in impenetrable mystery? Is this sort of publicity of no good as a restraint? Is it of no good as an incitement to and a reward for exertions? Is not public opinion formed by such feelings? and is it not a dark and demoralizing system to draw this veil ever human actions, to say to the mass, be base, and you will not be despised; be virtuous, and you will not be honoured? Is this the way in which Mr. Grote would foster the spirit of a bold and indomitable people? Was the liberty of that people established by fraud? Did America lie herself into independence? Was it treachery which enabled Holland to shake off the yoke of Spain? Is there any instance since the beginning of the world where human liberty has been established by little systems of trumpery and trick?These are the weapons of monarchs against the people, not of the people against monarchs. With their own right hand, and with their mighty arm, have the people gotten to themselves the victory, and upon them may they ever depend; and then comes Mr. Grote, a scholar and a gentleman, and knowing all the histories of public courage, preaches cowardice and treachery to England; tells us that the bold cannot be free, and bids us seek for liberty by clothing ourselves in the mask of falsehood, and trampling on the cross of truth..

If this shrinking from the performance of duties is to be tolerated, voters are not the only persons who would recur to the accommodating convenience of ballot. A member of Parliament, who votes against government, can get nothing in the army, navy, or church, or at the bar, for his children or himself; they are

If there is ballot there can be no scrutiny, the controlling power of Parliament is lost, and the members are entirely in the hands of returning officers.

An election is hard run-the, returning officer lets in twenty votes which he ought to have excluded, and the opposite candidate is unjustly returned. I petition, and as the law now stands, the return would be amend ed, and I, who had the legitimate majority, should be seated in Parliament. But how could justice be done if the ballot obtained, and if the returning officer were careless or corrupt? Would you put all the electors upon their oath? Would it be advisable to accept any oath where detection was impossible? and could any approximation to truth be expected under such circumstances, from such an inquisition? It is true, the present committees of the House of Commons are a very unfair tribunal, but that tribunal may and will be mended; and bad as that tribunal is, nobody can be insane enough to propose that we are to take refuge in the blunders or the corruptions of 600 returning offi. cers, 100 of whom are Irish.

It is certainly in the power of a committee, when incapacity or villany of the returning officer has produced an unfair return, to annul the whole election, 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 House of Commons to examine the votes, and to place in their house the man who has combined the greatest number of suffrages? The answer of the House of Commons is,

One of you is undoubtedly the rightful member, but we have so framed our laws of election, that it is im possible to find out which that man is; the loss and penalties ought only to fall upon one, but they must fall upon both; we put the well-doer and the evil-doer precisely in the same situation; there shall be no elec tion;' and this may happen ten times running.

Purity of election, the fair choice of representatives, must be guarded either by the coercing power of the House of Commons exercised upon petitions, or it must be guarded by the watchful jealousy of opposite parties at the registrations; but if (as the radicals suppose) ballot gives a power of perfect concealment, whose interest is it to watch the registrations? If Í despair of distinguishing my friends from my foes, why should I take any trouble about registrations?— Why not leave every thing to that great primum mobile of all human affairs, the barrister of six years' standing?

The answer of the excellent Benthamites to all this

Mr. Grote is a very worthy, honest, and able man; and, if the world were a chess-board, would be an important po- is, What you say may be true enough in the present

litician.

state of registrations, but we have another scheme of | why a man determined to do so should be baffled by registration to which these objections will not apply.' the ballot. When two great parties in the empire are There is really no answering this Paulo post legisla-combating for the supreme power, does Mr. Grote tion. I reason now upon registration and reform which imagine, that the man of woods, forests, and rivers,are in existence, which I have seen at work for several that they who have the strength of the hills,-are to years. What new improvements are in the womb of be baffled by bumpkins thrusting a little pin into a little time, or (if time has no womb) in the more capacious card in a little box? that England is to be governed by pockets of the followers of Bentham, I know not :- political acupuncturation? when I see them tried, I will reason upon them. There is no end to these eternal changes; we have made an enormous revolution within the last ten years,-let us stop a little and secure it, and prevent it from being turned into ruin; I do 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 receiving every day after dinner a cake or a plumb, in hapyy ignorance of Mr. Grote and his ballot. I long for the quiet times of Log, when all the English common people are making calico, and all the English gentlemen are making long and short verses, with no other interruption of their happiness than when false quantities are discovered in one or the other.

What is to become of petitions if ballot is established? Are they to be open as they now are, or are they to be conducted by ballot? Are the radical shopkeepers and the radical tenant to be exposed (as they say) to all the fury of incensed wealth and power, and is that protection to be denied to them in petitions, which is so loudly demanded in the choice of representatives? Are there to be two distinct methods of ascertaining the opinions of the people, and these completely opposed to each other?" A member is chosen this week by a large majority of voters who vote in the 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.

And if the same protection is adopted for petitions as is given in elections, and if both are conducted by ballot, how is 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 of the petition

A landlord who would otherwise be guilty of the oppression will not change his purpose, because you attempt to outwit him by the invention of the ballot; he will become, on the contrary, doubly vigilant, inquisitive, and 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 who 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 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 his 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, it 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 impos sible 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.

Not only do you not protect the tenant who wishes to deceive his landlord, by promising one way and voting another, but you expose all the other tenants who have These observations apply with equal force to the no intention of deceiving, to all the evils of mistake and communications between the representative and the misrepresentation. The steward hates a tenant, and a constituent. It is the radical doctrine that a represen-rival wants his farm: they begin to whisper him out tative is to obey the instructions of his constituents. He has been elected under the ballot by a large majority; an open meeting is called, and he receives instructions in direct opposition to all those principles upon which he has been elected. Is this the real opinion of his constituents? and if he receives his instructions for a ballot meeting, who are his instructors? The lowest men in the town, or the wisest and the best?-But if ballot is established for elections only, and all communications between the constituents on one side, and Parliament and the representatives on the other, are carried on in open meetings, then are there two publics according to the radical doctrines, essentially different from each other; the one acting under the influence of the rich and powerful, the other free; and if all political petitions are to be carried on by ballot, how is Parliament to know who petitions, or the member to know who instructs?

of favour, and to propagate rumours of his disaffection to the blue or 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, in common with his deceitful neighbour, 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.

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

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 certifi cates 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 cau

The noise and jollity of a ballot mob must be such as the very devils would 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 comita-ful, and for whom this leaf out of the Punic pandects tus of liars, which would disgust any man with a free government, and make him sigh for the monocracy of Constantinoble.

nounce them boldly and emphatically; stick to yes and no to the death; for yes and no lay his head 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 or to prevail.

In clubs, ballot preserves secrecy; but in clubs, after the barrister has blackballed the colonel, he most likely never hears of the colonel again: he does not live among people who are calling out for seven years the colonel for ever; nor is there any one who, thinking he has a right to the barrister's suffrage, exercises the most incessant vigilance to detect whether or not he has been defrauded of it. I do not say that ballot can never in any instance be a mean of secrecy and safety, but that it cannot be so in popular elections. Even in elections, a consummate hypocrite who was unmar. ried, and drank water, might perhaps 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 man, it is the master, not the man. Some of the states have no ballot, some have exchanged the ballot for open voting.

their way-we will blackball every member standing for Bridgewater who does not vote for universal suff rage.'

The ballot and universal suffrage are never mentioned by the radicals without being coupled togegether. 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 gifter ballot, if universal suffrage were refused, not be recei ved with gratitude, but it would be received with furi. ous indgination 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 estab lished, 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 out? or, if he did find out, how has any father, ballo tically speaking, a right to control the votes of his family?"

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 I have often drawn a picture in my own mind of a to the candidate, There is my list of promises; if Balloto-Grotical family voting and promising under the you come in I will have 5,000l., and if you do not, you new system. There is one vacancy, and three candi. shall pay me nothing. To this list, to which I sup-dates, tory, whig, and radical. Walter Wiggins, a pose all the venal rabble of the town to have put their small artificer of shoes, for the moderate gratuity of names, there either is an opposition bribery-list, or five pounds, promises his own vote. and that of the there is not: if there is not, the promisers, looking only chaste Arabella his wife, to the tory candidate; he, to make money by their vote, have every inducement Walter Wiggins, having also sold, for one sovereign, to keep their word. If there is an opposition list, the the vote of the before-named Arabella to the whigs. only trick which a promiser can play is to put down Mr. John Wiggins, a tailor, the male progeny of Wai his name upon both lists: but this trick would be so ter and Arabella, at the solicitation of his master, easily detected, so much watched and suspected, and promises his vote to the whigs, and persuades his sister would even in the vote-market render a man so infa- Honoria to make a similar promise in the same cause. mous, that it never would be attempted to any great Arabella, the wife, yields implicitly to the wishes of extent. At present, if a man promises his vote to A., her husband. In this way, before election, stand com and votes for B., because he can get more money by mitted the highly moral family of Mr. Wiggins. The it, he does not become infamous among the bribed, period for lying arrives, and the mendacity machine is because they lose no money by him; but where a list exhibited to the view of the Wigginses. What hap is found, and a certain sum of money is to be divided pens? Arabella, who has in the interim been chast's among that list, every interloper lessons the receipts ed by her drunken husband, votes secretly for the rad of all the rest; it becomes their interest to guard icals, having been sold both to whig and tory. Mr. against fraudulent intrusion; and a man who puts his John Wiggins, pledged beyond redemption to the name upon more lists than the votes he was entitled whigs, votes for the tory; and Honoria, extrinsically to give, would soon be hunted down by those he had furious in the cause of whigs, is persuaded by her lover robbed. Of course there would be no pay till after the to vote for the radical member. The following table election, and the man who having one vote had put exhibits the state of this moral family before and after himself down on two lists, or having two votes had the election.put himself down on three lists, could hardly fail to be detected, and would, of course, lose his political acel dama. 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. Everybody who has a house shall vote, or everybody who is twenty-one shall vote, and then the people will be sure to have

Arabella Wiggins, sold to tory and whig, votes for radical.
Walter Wiggins sells himself once and his wife twice.
John Wiggins, promised to whis, votes for tory.
Honoria Wiggins, promised to whig, votes for radical.

In this way the families of the poor, under the leg. islation 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 fird that they possess this distinction in vain-that weal 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 everything, 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