Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-04-28 00:00:00

generous,—

narrow, contracted, mean. There ought to be about

such a party, much of greatness, comprehension,
amplitude. Well, the General Election is develo-

ping all this in a very signal manner. Liberals in
politics, as we all know, are of various shades, and of
divers degrees. They are to be found of the
positive, the comparative, and the superlative
degrees. So long as these several qualities of the
same thing remain separate and distinct in their
respective positions, they are comparatively weak
and powerless ; but only combine them, and they are
at once so powerful as to be irresistible. " Take
unity out of the world," it has been said, "and it
dissolves into chaos." And as in natural, so is it,
very much, in political philosophy. Union is
strength ;it is more,—it is order, it is influence, it is
success. But for such union at a political crisis like
the present, Conservatism; they find, would inevi-
tably carry the day ; and. .they hold, by common
consent, upon some indefinable principle or other,
that this ConSen''atism is the common enemy of all
Liberalism, and must therefore be united against.
There was one, and, apparently, only one formid-
able obstacle to union on the part of the Liberals,
at the commencement of the present struggle,—and
that was, the difference of opinion on the subject of
the Ballot. The advocates and the opponents of the
Ballot were regarding each other not only with
suspicion; but with something like hostility. But
the latter saw the fatal mistake of such a course.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, in the City of London, was one
of the first to discover, and remark upon, this
source of weakness. He remembered the ancient
maxim—United We stand ; divided we fall. He saw
it, he felt it, in his own case, as a candidate for re-
election. He became sensible that the hostility,
and the consequent secession of the . Ballot men,
imperilled his own return to Parliament, and placed
in jeopardy, in fact, the Liberal cause. He had
recourse, therefore, to conciliation. He appealed :to
their forbearance. He would not yet give
in his adhesion to the Ballot ; but he did con-
descend to point out to its advocates how they
were to succeed in carrying it. "It is not,"
he told them, "by excluding men who are
against the Ballot from any Government but
it is by free admission into places in the Govern-
ment, into seats in the legislature, of men who take
different views on this subject. It is by such a
course that the Ballot, if it is well founded in truth
and reason, if it is required for freedom of vote—it
is in that manner, I say, that the Ballot is most
likely to be carried, if it is ever to be carried at all.
I believe much in the utility of constant discussion,
year by year, for the carrying of questions which
are recommended by reason and the public benefit."
This was encouraging,—it was more, it was in-
spiriting. It raised their hopes ; it conciliated their
good-will. And when Lord JOHN added, " Let the
question be fairly and freely discussed ; do not
proscribe men because they are against the Ballot
do not adopt men who have no other merit merely
because they are in favour of it,"—he carried con-
viction to many a lately reluctant mind, that they
would gain by such a course as was here marked
out for them.

Sir JAMES GRAHAM, at Carlisle, has also conciliated
the people on the same question. Sir JAMES, it is
true, was in a somewhat better condition, from the

fact that, lately, though he could not vote for the
Ballot, he did not vote against it. And, besides, he
went to them with a powerful argument. as a sub-
stitute, or a set-off, for his want of affection for the
Ballot. He declares to them,--" Upon this matter
of the Ballot, I say this, that a large extension of
the suffrage is the surest protection, in my opinion,
both against intimidation and against bribery."
Such a result as this, therefore, would render the
Ballot unnecessary ; and it could not but reconcile
the people to a candidate of Sir JAMES'S complexion,
to find him ready to grant them " a large extension
of the suffrage," even without the Ballot. "I cannot
' the right hon. baronet further declared, " that

I am a convert to it ; I cannot promise, my opinion
being unchanged, to support it. But I did declare
in my place in Parliament what I believe to be the
truth, that the desire for it is increasing. In a
marked manner I declared that it is increasing here.
That was denied in his place by my colleague. You
now have the opportunity of marking well what is
your sense upon that point. I cannot support it ;
but I believe my nephew, without pinning his faith
to my sleeve, is prepared to support the Ballot." So
that if Sir JAMES can succeed in carrying his nephew
into the House of Commons under his wing, he will
at any rate, gain them a Ballot vote, and thereby
assist in procuring the Vote by Ballot,—in addition
to his own vote for " a large extension of the
suffrage

ERE the present week has passed away, the
Boroughs of England will have pronounced pretty
decisively their opinions "on the state of public
affairs." We do not know that it would be fair to
draw any conclusions, however, from this week's
issue of the appeal to the country ; though it
It is thus, then, that union has been effected in certainly may be regarded as in some degree
the Liberal ranks, and the strength of this union foreshadowing the response which the constituencies,
will be tested at the Elections now about to begin. as a whole, will give to her Majesty's Government.
The compromise is one in which both parties have But let us be patient. Another week—at most,
made concessions. On the one hand, there has been another fortnight—will put the question beyond all
everything yielded in its favour, save a promise to i doubt. The wind of on country is Liberal; and the ,

Liberal party have gone to the people with much in
their present case to propitiate popular sympathy.
It will generally 'be so, where it is the town
populations that are applied to, in furtherance of a
cause in which they are persuaded that their own
interests are deeply involved. How far there may
be a favourable response from the county constituen-
cies, we must wait to ascertain. But of this we may
be sure, judging from all that is taking place,—that
the voice of the country will be given in favour of
peace, of reform, and of progress_: of peace, abso-
lutely, and without any conditions, except, of course,
such as concern the national honour and security;
bat of reform and progress, variously modified in
some directions, and thorough and unlimited in
others, and left, therefore to form the subjects of
future parliamentary struggles, equally fierce—it
may be, equally disorganizing—as any that have
gone before. A well-informed contemporary has
already hazarded the opinion, we observe, that " as
far as it is at present possible to estimate the result
of the election, the nominal balance of parties will
remain unchanged, while the Liberal majority will
be hampered by pledges, forced into action, and, for
the moment at least, compressed into ostensible
union. The Conservative candidates are already
largely outnumbered, and as their party has been
advised to assume the offensive, it may be supposed
to have undertaken several uphill contests with
comparatively little hope of a successful issue. The
return of every ministerial candidate for Great
Britain," it is added, " would scarcely give Lord
DERBY a majority in the House. If he gains ten or
twelve votes by the dissolution, he will have
profited at the expense of the moderate members,
who were, if not his safest allies, yet the surest
defenders of the principles which he professes to
maintain."*

It is not, then, that there will be a loss of
"moderate members " only,—but there will be the
further, and, in many respects, the more serious
consequence, of the Liberal majority being " ham-
pered with pledges." One of these pledges, it
appears, is the Ballot. Though, for our parts, we
do not see that it is so much a hampering by pledges
on that question, as it is the spontaneous expression
in its favour which an increasing force of the Liberal
candidates are making to the borough constituencies.
The same authority we have just quoted regards, we
think most mistakingly, this popular question of the
Ballot as one which it would be quite possible to put
aside,—instead of, as it is termed, " the Liberal
candidates bolting it on all sides." This, we say, is
a mistake. The Liberal candidates find it in many
instances utterly impossible to parry it any longer,
provided, that is, they would succeed. If they do
not practically declare for it, they feel it indis-
pensable, at the very least, not to declare against it.
But let our ingenious and independent contemporary
' state his reasons. "If ever there was a question,"
he says, "on which, under fair conditions, a stand
might be made against dictation, it is this of the
Ballot. The Liberal electors of country constituencies
merely cling to it as a tradition, or insist on it as the
symbol of a compromise between the Radical and
Whig sections. Genuine desire for it there is none.
The original cry for secret voting came from persons
who were disgusted with that change in the temper
of the counties which showed itself soon after the
Reform Bill. The Reform party of that day chose
to attribute to the influence of the landlords over
the class enfranchised by the Chandos clause a series
of reverses which might, with great plausibility,
have been set to the credit of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
dexterity, and of the mismanagement of the
Liberal cause by successive Whig Ministries.
But at the present moment the Liberals of
the counties have learned to fight their battles by
means of the forty-shilling freeholders ; and it is
exactly the influence of occasional Whig landholders
that turns the scale against the £5O occupiers, whom
reminiscences of the Free-trade struggle have made
Conservatives almost to a man. So far as the coun-
ties are concerned, there is little reason to believe
that the Ballot would be of the slightest value to the
Liberal party ; and it is quite as doubtful whether it
would really help them in the towns. There are no
closer boroughs in England than manufacturing
towns of what may be called the second order. In
these, a combination of a dozen large employers of
labour entirely controls the representation. To such
combinations the greater number of the Whig
leaders owe their seats in Parliament, which would
otherwise fall a prey to the Chartist and the dema-
gogue, or, still more frequently, to the democratising
Tory." -i• Now, it is probable that one effort of this
General Election will be, to expose the untenableness
of such an argument as this on the question of the
Ballot. As it is, there is a palpable contradiction to
one of the most plausible of his arguments, in the
admission that, at present, in the manufacturing
towns, " a combination of a dozen large employers
of labour entirely controls the representation." For
if this be so, what a reason does it not furnish for the
adoption of an expedient, the avowed object of which
is to protect the trading and working classes against
the influence of all such combinations of their
employers, who may not always, as at the present
conjuncture, be of one mind with them regarding
the quality of the candidates it is desirable to return.

We give this prominency to the Ballot in the
Elections that are now taking place, because there is
no question that is being pressed with so much
earnestness upon the Liberal candidates in all
directions ; as there is none, also, according to
present appearances, which is likely to exercise
greater influence upon the fate of such candidates,—
at any rate in the boroughs. We may add, that
there is no question, in our humble opinion, that
seems so likely to give a peculiar influence to the
general issues of this appeal to the country. One
result of it will undoubtedly be, that, as we see it
remarked, " the question of the Ballot can no longer
be trifled with, as it has been, as if it were one
which did not belong to the actual political world in
which we live." Trifled with it certainly has been,
by several leading members of the Liberal party,—
Lord JOHN RUSSELL among the rest. We believe
it is, in the main, true, as.it is further remarked, that
" the humbler class of electors and the mass of
non-electors in many large towns believe that they
can at once distinguish between the friends and
enemies of popular rights by the simple question
whether a candidate for the representation of their
community will or will not pledge himself to vote for
the adoption of the Ballot." This is being illustrated
at the present moment in many a borough con-
stituency. And the practical effect of it must be, to
check the too general practice of late, among a
certain class of Liberals, of halting between two
opinions on this question. As the Elections take
place, it will become more and more manifest. We

shall have future opportunities, therefore, of referring
to its influence in the issues of the present electoral
cionflict.

* 'Sat:inlay