The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-21 00:00:00

ciples of Lord GREY'S Government were adhered
to, become now incapable of refutation.
The result is certain, and it is fatal to
the attempted union of sects. If Roman
Catholics are to monopolise the public funds in-
tended for all, a special and separate grant must
be made for the benefit of Protestants. Thus
sectarianism resumes its sway ; and the sacerdotal
caste will, as before, have in its hands the form-
ing of the national mind. How that power will be
used, experience sufficiently tells us ; and all this
is done because Lord ABERDEEN and Sir JAMES
GRAHAM cannot think themselves safe in their
seats without the purchased support of the Bri-
gade. Yet we are said to live under a Ministry
of progress !

Lord SHAFTESBURY and free voting do not ap-
pear to have any natural connection, but Lord
SHAFTESBURY and suppression of vice hang well
together. As might, therefore, be expected in
his Polling at Elections Bill, his Lordship is obvi-
ously far more concerned to put down drunken-
ness, demoralising bribery and violence, than to
secure the political liberty of the voter. Hence,
though we always welcome Lord SHAFTESBURY as
a legislator for juvenile mendicants, lodging-
houses, and the like, we must beg to decline his
aid in a province where his sympathies, we fear,
are all on the wrong side. The Tory Lieutenant-
General for heading the Lords' deadly opposition
to Jewish Emancipation, is hardly the fitting
leader in emancipating the voters of Great Britain
from the millionaire and the landlord. Lord
SHAFTESBURY'S Bill is, indeed, withdrawn ; it has
shared the fate of almost all reforming proposals,
having died in a tolerably happy hope of entering
into the clauses of the great Reform Bill of 1854,
much as Hindoos placidly surrender their indiv:-
dual existence, in expectation of that consumma-
tion of bliss, absorption into the essence of the
DEITY. Still, from us, every serious proposition
of the kind claims attention, the more so as the
Noble Lords thought, that, in bringing his pro-
positions into public discussion, Lord SHAFTES-
BURY had obtained all ho could just now particu-
larly desire.
On his proposal to limit all the legal expenses
to such only as should be incurred by a publ;c
officer authorised to conduct the election, we will
not at present dilate. It would, of course, be
impossible to do away with Committees, and with
persons who should be the candidates' agents in
dealing with the electors as to everything but
mere pecuniary expenses. But if it be practicable,
and we hope it is so, to elect a Member without
putting him to any expenses but such as are really
necessary, and which need not, therefore, shrink
from publicity, any plan which would effect that
should have our most hearty support. Lord
SHAFTESBURY'S adoption of the Edinburgh Review
scheme of house-voting by papers left and called
for, as in the election of Poor-law Guardians, is
the chief point of interest. Now, we have no ob-
jection whatever to a fair trial of this plan
in a few of the next places which offer, just as we
demanded the same trial for the Ballot ; but, look-
ing at its probable working previous to any trial,
or with no better trial than it has already had in
electing guardians, we do not hail it as the desired
ultimatum. It will still leave an annual battle to
be fought for the Ballot by all the honest Reform-
ers. We will not deny that it is an improvement
upon the present mode of taking votes—miserable
praise that—nor that it will at least annihilate
one particular kind of bribery—waiting till after
two o'clock to make the best market of the votes.
It will also put an end to a system which has
become quite a costly nuisance in boroughs—that
of employing a large number of cabs to bring
voters to the polling-booths, till expenses of con-
veyance amount to something like those of a
county election. It will, however, even facilitate
the commoner forms of bribery. The voting-papers
are, of course, delivered some reasonable time before
the day of collection. The voter knows that he
must bag his bribe before the day ; the agent
knows it also. The ss. or Si., therefore, will be
paid with admirable convenience at the voter's
house, the paper will be marked and sigasd in the
presence of the briber, and after that the latter
will be as sure as he need be of the man's vote.
It cannot, indeed, be given against him. It may
be withheld, certainly ; but as all the voter's
interest lies the other way, that is an improbable
supposition. We have no doubt the old Freemen
of Liverpool, Hull, Yarmouth, and Canterbury
will thank Lord SHAFTESBURY for his plan. The
voting-paper and the colour-ticket will be as regu-
larly exchanged as money and Mr. GLADSTONE'S
new receipt stamps. Indeed, the voting-papers
might be not inaptly designated the SHAFTESBURY
bribe receipts. Let them also be stamped, for
they will no doubt be regularly given for
" value received." Earl GnEY—his genuine
Whig faith being confident of the immor-
tality of small constituencies—pointed out how
easy it would be in small boroughs to purchase a
seat to a certainty, since it would be only needful
to buy the requisite number of voting-papers
signed in blank. It would bo unfair of us, how-
ever, to avail ourselves of cases which we main-
tain that any decent proposition of Reform ought
to banish from our representation. Of course
Earl GREY is perfectly right, if pocket boroughs
are to survive the Coalition Reform Bill. He
might have added, however, that the bribable
portion of even very large constituencies could be
manoeuvred with almost equal ease.
There would be no small difficulty also in dis-
pensing with the delivery of the voting-paper by
the voter himself, on the one hand, or in re-
quiring him to stay at home until the collector
called on the other. We aro pleased to see that
Lord REDESDALE took notice of this objection,
for it has always struck us as a very serious prac-
tical one. Not only, as Lord REDESDALE pointed
out, might the person 'n whose charge the paper
was left withhold it for a bribe, but, we
may add, the facilities for personation would be
largely increased. It would become quite a settled
practice to look out as early as possible for all
the dead and many of the absent voters,
and to secure, perhaps by a bribe, the ser-
vices of their families. The great, the
glaring defect of Lord SHAFTESBURY'S plan, how-
ever, is, that it leaves Lord SHAFTESBURY master
of his tenants' votes. We call it a defect. Pro-
bably in the eyes of the Premier, the Marquis of
LANSDOWNE, Lord WHARNCLIFFE, and the Earl of
ITARDWICKE, it was a chief merit. It will render
pocket-borough elections a little more decent,
without delivering the dependent voter from his
old masters ; and when applied to counties, which
of course it would soon be, if only for consist-
ency's sake (as indeed Earl GREY seemed to take
for granted), it would leave the tenants-at-will as
much as ever without a will of their own. All
the " influence" boroughs would be as amenable
as over to their respective nabobs, while every
voter in fear of the screw, of the good customer,
of the employer, of the landlord, of everything in
a word but the mob, would be as unprotected as
before. Indeed, the Earl of DONOUGHMORE de-
clared that in Ireland it would be no security
from the mob itself, not for the collectors at least;
but that these officials must perform their duty
in helmets, or be escorted by the military, if they
were to be safe ; and he instanced a late election
of Poor-law Guardians. We aro continually driven
back to the old conclusion that intimidation ad

mite of but one cure, and bribery of but one
grand check, and that is the adhesive envelope en-

closing the anonymous voting-ticket deposited by
the elector himself in the returning officer's ballot-
box,

commis-
sionersßßlTlfsonr
1F 85 12 hassiiEn
accounts bring out a gross catch for the year of 602,6604
ifuSA—The
published. The of
Tbarrels, being a result undoubtedly below a general aver-
theh
ecombined
aver-
age, and no less than 122,7554 barrels below the gross
catch of the previous year.
TnE OFFicE OF SPEAKER.—Sir Robert Inglis, on
Tuesday evening, gave notice of his intention on Friday
next to bring under the consideration of the House of
Commons the report of the select committee, and to
move that, " whenever the house shall be informed of
the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, the Chairman
of the Committee of Ways and Means do take the chair
for that day only ; and, in the event of Mr. Speaker's
absence continuing for more than one day, do, if the
house shall think fit and shall so order it, take the chair
in like manner on. Lany oubsecsent day during such
alveo."