The Sun.
London, England, 1870-07-29 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1870.

A CROTCHETTY Wednesday was everything con-
sidered about the aptest day in the week that could
have been selected for the PREMIER'S latest expres-
sion of his opinions in Parliament. In the midst of
the stupendous responsibilities devolving at this time
upon every member of the Cabinet, but more espe-
cially upon himself as first Minister of the Crown—
when all Europe is awaiting with breathless suspense
the first shock of the collission between the giant
armies of France and Prussia, Mr. GLADSTONE'S
equanimity is such that he can, as M. OLLIVIER would
express it " with alight heart," explain certainly with
placid deliberation to the astonished House of Commons
the reasons which have led him at length to alter his
opinions entirely in regard to the Ballot. This,
moreover, at the fag end of the session, when his
thoroughly practical and hard-working Government
had already covered itself with honour by the
laborious furthering of two such momentous achieve-
ments in the way of comprehensive legislation as the
Irish Land Bill and as Mr. FORSTER'S elaborate and
carefully considered scheme of National Education.
Regarding as we do with so much complacency the
application at last of the machinery of the Ballot to
our more than ever comprehensive scheme of popular
representation, we cannot, of course, do otherwise
than rejoice over the acquisition of a recruit of so
much importance as Mr. GLADSTONE to the fast-
growing army of advocates now bent upon applying
the safegutrd of secret voting to the wonderfully
multiplied possessors of the franchise in our en-
larged constituencies. At the same time, it cannot
be a matter of surprise to us for one moment, that a
wit, half cynic, half humorist, like Mr. DISRAELI,
should, in witnessing the spectacle of this complete
conversion, especially in the midst of the out-
burst of a great European war, amuse himself with
bantering the Prime Minister, almost, we might say,
if the phrase were sufficiently parliamentary to be
decorous in our so applying it, of chaffing him, upon
the almost ludicrous, upon the certainly anomalous
effect of time, place, and circumstance.
However this may be, there is the fact at any rate
that Mr. GLADSTONE has avowed himself a convert
to the Ballot. The Government had long previously
withdrawn their own bill. Mr. LEATHAM had pro-
duced another. Several members of the Adminis-
tration had given their support to the draft of au
enactment at the time of its introduction. And at
length, on Wednesday afternoon, . the PRIME
MINISTER himself, who had never once before opened
his lips in the House of Commons on the subject of
the Ballot, though he had often voted against it, stood
forward manfully to avow his conversion, his complete
and absolute conversion to the principle of secret
voting, now that the imperial Legislature has taken
household suffrage as the basis of the national
representation. Latterly the conviction has more
and more come home to us that the Ballot was at
length and in very deed approaching; that it was
at hand ; that it was fated to be our next great
parliamentary reform. If we were unconvinced
before, we must needs have been satisfied that the
fact was so, now, when the PREMIER, himself, towards
the immediate close of the session, in the very midst
of the bitter anxieties arising out of this appalling
rupture of the peace of Europe, deems it advis-
able to rise in his place in the Commons and there
announce the fact and explain the reason of his
conversion. Hitherto, though constitutionally not
very susceptible to a joke, Mr. Gladstone may have
relaxed the severity of his features before now while
considering the pros and cons in regard to the ques-
tion of the Ballot, when arguments like those of
SYDNEY SMITH have been adduced against it in his
hearing. As, for example, when in his good-
natured way, that most delightful of political
humourists, spoke of a hypothetical Ballot
mob as—" A set of deceitful wretches wear-
ing 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 entirely abhorred."
Now, however, as MOLIERE'S Doctor in Spite of Him-
self expresses it, we have changed all that. The area of
the franchise has been widened. Household suf-
frage has been secured to the borough constituencies.
Its extension to the counties, eventually, the Prime
Minister regards as merely a question of time.
Having sanctioned these enormous changes, the
Legislature is bound, according to Mr. GLADSTONE'S
frank and simple way of putting it, to see
that the exercise of the franchise should be free
and protected against the violence of mobs and the
organised influence of property. It is not, at the
same time, as an unmixed blessing that he accepts at
last the notion of the Ballot, but rather as a choice
of evils. However reached, that at any rate is the
conclusion he has arrived at. And as an augury of
the success awaiting, even at this late period of the
session, Mr. LEATHAM'S tentative measure in regard
to the Ballot, the second reading of the bill was
passed on Wednesday without a division—passed,
not sub silentio, but with cheers below the gangway,
cheers that, under the circumstances, could hardly be
wondered at.

THAT a revolutionary movement is threatening
in Italy will surprise no one who has
watched the current of events. For some
time past the revolutionary party in . England
have been preparing to strike a great blow, together
with their brethren on the Continent. The present
crisis gives them an opportunity of striking rather
sooner than they anticipated. There is little reason
to doubt that NAPOLEON has resolved to with-
draw his troops from Rome, not so much,
perhaps, because he needs the few thousands of French
soldiers who are in the Italian peninsula, as because he