The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 3, 1862.

down to the old, weary conviction respecting both
the Whigs and Tories and their journalists, that—
" He who's convinced against his will,

Is of the same opinion still."
Secrecy seems to be the great abhorrence of
county and pocket-borough members, and of the
journals who espouse their cause, till we have been
inclined to ask with HUDIBIIAS, taking editorial
license with a word or two—

" What makes a secret vote a crime,
The most notorious of the time—
A secret vote, which Tory saints
And sinning Whigs cry out against ?"

We hardly know what to make of all this vague
ad captandum declaration against secrecy, and in
praise of publicity. Surely each is appropriate in
its place ; the point being to show that secrecy is
out of place in giving a vote. There may be, per-
haps, at the present day, a tendency to nude
exhibition of what civilisation and modesty are
supposed to prefer concealing. Our better print
shops go a long way in this direction—and the
procession of a living Lady GODIVA was quite a
grand day for the railways to Coventry. The close
fitting "flesh coloured silk" and the "rutty Bark,"
of some unknown damsel, were beauties in the eyes
of many thousands, who doubtless wished they
could have lived in the better days of PHRYNE.
We need
cnoontsttihtueerfo
neeierse , wonderandall much
countrythat many
ou
consti-
tuencies,borgh are required to act the part of political
Lady GODIVAS, and to make public their moral
nudity without even the short petticoats or the silk,
or even a girdle of fig-leaves. It is asserted that
bribery, and still more overpowering landlord
influence, there must be and will be. So, undress
it—and let every county constituency unblushingly
ride the Whig or the Tory horse provided by the
county landlords—and let all the poor tenants at
will expose the naked fact of their subjection to
their landlords. On this moral nakedness depends
the charter of our aristooracy, just as that of
Coventry should depend on the physical nakedness
of Madame GODIVA.

The universal power of public opinion is appealed
to as requiring public voting for its expression.
The argument is, indeed, a curious one. Public
opinion in free countries is the means, we are told,
by which men climb to power. It becomes, there-
fore, so valuable that men will bribe and use un-
due influence to get possession of it—this influence
and bribery are " the proofs of the reign of public
opinion—but this cannot be done with secrecy, for
publicity is the very soul of the system." To which
we entirely assent. This bribery and undue influ-
ence are entirely due to the publicity. But surely
so far as they go they destroy public opinion, and
substitute for it the interests and ambition of those
who purchase or coerce the voters. The advocates
of the ballot desire nothing more than to give the
fullest weight to public opinion. What they affirm,
and what they prove from the experience of every
country where there is a real ballot, is that it ren-
ders an appeal to the understanding, instead of one
to the covetousness or fears, or low passions, of the
voter necessary. If by public opinion be meant-the
opinion of landlords and wealthy masters, of
bankers and lawyers, of creditors and customers,
then no doubt open voting collects it accurately
enough. But if public opinion means the opinion
of the electoral constituencies, assuredly a secret
vote is its only guarantee.

It is a perfectly just remark of Mr. BERKELEY'S
that the "chief attribute of the Ballot is, that is
the barrier against the usurpation of political
power, whether by the aristocracy, the money-
ocracy, or a fierce democracy." As a means of
taking votes in a free country, it is neither, pro-
perly speaking, a demoeratic nor an aristrocratic
device—it is popular when the aristocracy oppress,
it is aristocratic when the people oppress ; but
everywhere it is conservative, if by conservative we
mean the preservation of their political rights to
those from whom some kind of violence or corrup-
tion would endeavour to filch them. At Notting-
ham and Longford it would have been found to
neutralise the unfair influence of the mob and of
the priests respectively. In an English county, in
due time, it would neutralise landlord despotism.
In corrupt boroughs it would double the difficulties
of their corrupters. Everywhere it would liberate
the timid and the dependent, in most places it
would make a bribe of little worth. This, let the
present possessors of undue influence rage as they
will, is the true account of the working of the
Ballot.

The discussion coming on this evening in the
House of Commons in reference to the sayings
and doings, the sittings, and the report of the
Thames Embankment Committee, must not on any
account be slurred over. There is the evidence
now in the hands of hon. members, and of the bear-
ing of that evidence they can, one and all of them,
judge. Several days have elapsed since the blue
book was published. It is ample enough in its
detail of facts in all conscience. It is, in fast—for
cynical readers especially—only too readable. As
affording evidence unmistakeable of the weak-
nesses of human nature, it is almost painfully ludi-
crous to contemplate, here and there. Some of
the witnesses go upon their hands and knees,
as it were, along one sacred portion of the
'mite, to wit, the river frontage of White-
hall-gardens. Yesterday we took occasion to
afford our readers a taste of this, by presenting them
with excerpts from the exemplary evidence elicited
on behalf of his Grace the Duke of BUCCLEUCH
from the lips of the Hon. CHARLES GORE, when
that gentleman stood under a cross fire of ques-
tions before the Committee. An ample banquet of
the like appetitizing tidbits the House has a fair
prospect of enjoying now at its leisure this evening.
In the enjoyment of it, however, let not the Com-
mons forget the heavy weight of responsibility that
now devolves upon them in this matter of the
Thames Embankment. The Government Commis-
sion has long ago pronounced its deliberate opinion
up.= that subject of a Northern Thames Embank-
ment. Out of that deliberate opinion of the Com-
mission has come forth the Government Bill mark-
ing out the whole scheme, and defining it in all its
details. The committee sat upon that scheme, upon
the Bill, upon the recommendation of the Commis-
sioners, and we all know now with what result.
At the eleventh hour all the arrangements are
changed. The grandest of all our metropolitan
improvements, has been marred to a very lamentable
extent. And all this for the personal convenience of
the Duke of BUCCLEUCH, and at a cost to the public
of an outlay—here of £90,000, there of £300,000
additional. The House of Commons has the power
to sweep away these shameful concessions to the
Duke of BUCCLEUCH on the part of a subservient
committee. Let the House, by promptly using that
power, perfect the whole project of this Northern
Embankment.

It never rains but it pours—at Turin as elsewhere.
Xing VICTOR EMMANUEL—if he is constrained
to put down with a heavy hand the immature
and, as his Ministers think, the premature move-
ments recently discovered to be in preparation on the
part of certain Garibaldians—receives very notable
auguries of success from remote and widely dif-
ferent directions, Imperial and Royal auguries of
taneonsly from Lisbon
success coming to him simul

and from St. Petersburgh. The long looked-for
recognition of the Kingdom of Italy by the Russian
Autocrat is borne into his M.JESTY'S presence, at
length, by the hands of a Mtscovite Ambassador.
And simultaneously with the arrival of this Envoy
Extraordinary from the Empror ALEXANDER IL,
comes an Envoy also from tilt young King of POR-
TUGAL asking his MAJESTY of Italy to bestow upon
that Monarch, in marriage, the youthful Princess
MARIA PIA of Savoy. Hands of fellowship thus
extended to VICTOR EMMANUIL from such opposite
directions, and both of them on pleas so
eminently gratifying in themselves, will
tend, probably, to heartei the councils of
His MAJESTY at Turin, in the development
of a policy strangely compotnded of caution and
audacity. Meanwhile Genaral GARIBALDI has
nothing for it but to command his impatience and
still more the impatience of his followers. How
long the present state of trues in Italy may last it
were difficult to predict. But in the meantime the
Government of Turin is being ;lowly but appreciably
strengthened ; while the notes of preparation for
some new outbreak of war, tratapet notes so often
sounded from Caprera fully hif it year since, are
gradually, on the other hand, dying away in faint
and fainter echoes.

LATEST NEWS.

WARSAW, JULY 2.

The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Constantine
arrived here at 6.80 p.m. to-day, and were warmly
cheered by crowds of people who awaited their
arrival.

THE PENINSULAR MAILS.

SOUTHAMPTON, THURSDAY MORNING.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's screw
steamer Alhambra, Captain J. D. Steward, arrived
at 1 a.m., with mails in charge of Commander
Bingham, R.N., naval mail agent, 14 passengers,
£2,319 in specie, a box of precious stones, 12 boxes
of machinery, 120 chests of oranges, 62 boxes of
lemons, 5 boxes onions, 193 boxes of eggs, and 20
general merchandise.
packages of
This packet left Lisbon at 9 a.m. on the 27th ult.,
Oporto at 10 a.m. on the 28th, and Vigo at 7 a.m.
on the 29th, and had fresh N. to N.E. winds, with

overcast, hazy weather.
Off Finisterre, on the 29th, the Alhambra spoke
the Company's steamer Delta, bound south.

There were no English vessels of war at Lisbon
when the Alhambra left. The usual Portuguese
squadron was lying in the Tagus.
The exchanges this packet were, at three
months. for London, 531 to 531 ; Paris, 530 to 532.;
Hamburg, 48 ; Amsterdam, 42k ; Genoa, 527,
Three per Cent. Stock, 461 to 46/. Bank of
Portugal Shares, 558 to 560; Bank of Oporto
Shares, 258 to 260.