Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-04-20 00:00:00

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BALLOT

THERE is no question that is likely to exercise
so powerful an influence at the approaching Elections
as the Ballot. It is not, perhaps, that there are
many real converts to it among the more liberal
politicians of the day : on the contrary, they are
proclaiming their aversion to it, upon principle,
although they are yielding to its necessity in
practice. We confine our remarks to the liberal
party, of course ; because to that party exclusively
the question belongs. No one ever thinks of any-
thing so preposterous, as to ask a Conservative if
he is for the Ballot. No one, that we are aware of,
ever heard of a Conservative being in favour of the
Ballot. It would be quite out of character. And
it is only very lately that any of the Whigs have
taken up with it. Those who have done so, have
apparently been influenced, not by any conviction of
the propriety of secret voting, but by the expe-
diency of respecting what they see and feel to be a
popular opinion. The Ballot has made its way very
powerfully among what we may truly call the
democracy of the country—using this term in no
offensive sense, but as distinguishing a large and
influential section of the body politic. The demo-
cratic is one of the elements of the Government of
England,—and always has been ; though never to
the same extent, or in the same form, as at the pre-
sent moment. It is one of those three great combi-
.AaLluilm, of vviileb. our hunted Monarchy is made up :
and hence it has been also called a mixed Govern-
ment,—the Monarchy residing in the Throne ; the
Aristocracy in the House of Lords ; and the Demo-
cracy in the House of Commons ; the design of such
a scheme being to unite the advantages of all the
three elements, and, by so uniting, to obviate the
inconveniences of their separate and uncontrolled
influences. With this section, then, of the common-
wealth ; or, rather, with its more popular extremities ;
the Ballot has become a household word. And it is
very natural the common people should easily be
persuaded that it would be a great protection to
them, in the dependent circumstances in which they
are so generally placed. As DEAN SWIFT has said,
—" Giving their votes by ballotting, they lie under
no awe." And they do not want to lie under any, on
such an occasion. But then the Whigs are not real
democrats,—they never were they never can be.
They may make great professions of respect for, and
sympathy with democracy ; they may even be
constrained, ever and anon, to make partial con-
cessions to its demands,—but they cannot, really
and unreservedly, make common cause with it. And
hence their strong antipathy to the Ballet. They
are, it is true, being largely divested of such
antipathy, But it is solely on their ordinary system
of popular expediency.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM has gone to his constituents at
Carlisle in that position, —perhaps we might say,
that predicament. He is not a convert to the
Ballot. But his principal supporters there are
Ballot-men ; and while he feels, perhaps he dreads,
the awkwardness of the uncongeniality, he does his
best to counteract it, by half persuading them that
they are drawing him on into their own views in its
As one of the right hon. baronet's friends
said at a publivneeting at Carlisle a few days since,
in furtherance of his re-election, —" Lord JOAN
RUSSELL and Sir JAMES GRAHAM had both spoken

favour

out stronger on the ,subject of the Ballot than ever
they had done before, and it only required a few
meetings of this kind, and in a year or two they
would see those statesmen allied with the cause."
And thus enabling them to live in hopes, they are
reconciled for the time being.
Lord Joint RUSSELL has, within the last few days,
been speaking out " stronger than ever," with
special regard to his re-election for the City of
London. Not that he is yet in favour of the Ballot.
"I ask you to trust me," he says to its advocates
among his constituents,—" I ask you to trust me upon
that important question, which some persons wish
to make a connecting part of reform—l mean the
question of the Ballot. I have always been ready
to give my opinions in the House of Commons upon
that subject, and I will not bind or tie my discretion
in any way whatever. I tell you I am against the
Ballot." He is against the Ballot—at present.
"It is not my belief," he says again, " that
it would be for the public interest "—at
present. Yet would he do all he could, he

tells them, to promote it. And he points out the
way in which this is to be done,—the very way in
which other popular questions have been carried :
agitate, agitate, agitate ! "Itis a matter which I
wish seriously to be discussed—it is a matter of
considerable importance, although I believe its
decision one way or another would hardly hav e the
consequences which some hope and others appre-
hend,"—an opinion, by the way, not altogether in
accordance with the belief he had just expressed,
that it would not be for the public interest to have