The Sun.
London, England, 1833-01-04 00:00:00

quired. The report was taken into consideration
on the 21st, and adopted unanimously. On
that day the Chambers adjourned for the holy-
deys, to meet again on the 7th. The motion on
the decrees of the German Diet and the liberty
of the press will then be debated. Frankfort
letters state that the Austrian Envoy has called
the attention of the German Diet to the pro-
ceedings of the Hesse Darmstadt Represen-
tatives, and that the result has been a note ad-
dressed to the Grand Duke requiring him to
dissolve the Chambers if any measures relative
to the liberty of the press or other matters should
be carried in opposition to the decrees of the
Diet. This is given merely as a report, but it
is one which so well accords with Metternich
policy and the previous proceedings of the Diet,
that we should not be surprised to find it soon
confirmed.— Times.

If we needed any proof of the depraving in-
fluence which the abuses of the representative
system have exercised over our political rea-
soners, we should find it in the course of argu-
ment now employed against the ballot. To hear
one of these objectors thundering against the
mendacity and promise-breaking, practicable
under secret voting, we should be tempted to
imagine that the only desideratum in election
matters was a strict observance of promises,
however criminally made, however tyrannically
extorted, and however repugnant to the real
sentiments of the voter who makes the promise.
The purpose, the working, and the beneficial
tendency of the elective system, as regards the
public, are totally put out of the question : no-
thing is thought of except the fairness of the
race as between man and man—the necessity
of forcing, voters to stick to their engagements
as regards this or that individual. " Promise
me," says the landlord to his tenant, " your
vote for my friend, Mr. A., or else
There now, you have promised : recollect, if
you do not fulfil your promise, not only shall
I eject you, but no honest man will ever look
you in the face again !" Now, though we hold
in high reverence the general duty of observing
promises, we do not extend this feeling, nor does
any reasonable man extend it, to all promises,
without exception. And we further maintain that,
in looking at the electoral system, not only is
the observance of promises not the main end to
be attained by it, but promises themselves are
altogether out of place, and unbecoming. If
villains break into a man's house, and force
him, with the pistol at his head, to sign a deed
or note of hand for a large sum of money, is he
a knave, or void of principle, if he refuses to
fulfil a contract so extorted ? Both the law and
the common reason of mankind decide in the
negative. Here the purpose of the engagement
is perfectly innocent and permissible ; yet the
means by which it is obtained are so violent and
atrocious, that the most honourable man is
under no obligation to fulfil it. Now suppose
that not only the promise is extorted by violence,
but that the deed promised to be done is an in-
fringement of some moral rule—a violation of
the rights of third parties—a breach of trust to-
wards the public—how stands the obligation
of fulfilment in this case ? If a landlord
forces his tenant to promise that he will
come and bear false witness in an approach-
ing law-suit—that he will defraud a neigh-
bour—that he will connive at the misap-
propriation of public money about to come
into his hand—is the tenant to be held
obliged to perform any of these ingiuities,
because he has been terrified into promising
them ? Nay, more ;is he to be held justified
in performing them, even if he has promised to
do so of his own free choice ? Not if he has
promised them a thousand times over. Here
are cases, and those too of a kind neither ima-
ginary nor extravagant, in which the promiser is
not only not bound to perform his engagement,
but in which lie is positively and peremptorily
bound to violate it. He has done wrong—very
wrong—by entering into a criminal engagement ;
but he will do a fresh wrong, and a far greater
wrong, by performing what he has engaged. It
suits the purpose of the Times, and other de-
fenders of compulsory voting, to pour melted
lead on the head of every non-performer of a
promise, be the promise what it may, or ob-
tained how it may. Against such a sweeping
condemnation we loudly protest. The observance
of promises is, doubtless, a sacred duty, but it is
not the whole of a man's duties ; it is only one
amongst a large and manifold catalogue. It is to be
performed most religiously in all cases, except
those in which performance is forbidden by
some conflicting duty, still more sacred and im-
perious. Now we undertake to show that the
compulsory election promises, on the solemnity
of which so much has been said, rank among
the foremost of those cases of exception, in
which violation of a promise is commanded by a
holier duty. For what is a compulsory election-
promise ? It is a promise to go and tell a
deliberate lie ; to tell that lie nnder most aw-
ful circumstances ; to tell it in a matter of over-
whelming importance, and in direct breach of a
special trust confided to the elector by the Le-
gislature, which calls upon him to speak the
truth. There cannot be a falsehood more
glaring, more deliberate, or more extensively
hurtful, than a vote given in favour of one
candidate, while the conscience pronounces in
fa'rour of another. When a landlord says to
his tenant, "I know you are a Reformer ; but
you must go and tell a lie for me at the coming
election in favour of Baring and Tyrell, or else
* *." Is it possible, we ask, to conceive any
promise more thoroughly combining all those
conditions which extinguish obligation to ob-
servance—obtained as it is by the most tyran-
nical means, and pledging the promiser to a
grand moral and political crime ? It would be
not jot more guilty in principle, if the land-
lord o
werel to say to his tenant, " I have got a cause
coming on at Chelmsford Assizes ; you tnust give
me your pledge to be there as a witness, and swear
to such and such a falsehood, or else " ".”
We say there is no difference in principle
between suborningthe testimony of a voter at the
roll and suborning the testimony of a witness in
a Court of Justice ; indeed a voter is nothing
more than a witness to character, for the candi-
date whom he conscientiously prefers, on one
signal and solemn occasion. If landlords
thought themselves warranted in suborning false
testimony in a Court of Justice, by the same
threats and tortures as they now suborn it at
elections, all security even for private rights
would be subverted, and our judicature would
become a mere instrument of their disastrous
dominion, just as our Legislature has been up
to the present moment. Should a dependent be
induced, under the influence of threats, to
promise that lie will appear and give false evi-
dence in his landlord's judicial cause, we main-
tain that he ought not to fulfil it ; and we say
exactly the same in the case of a compulsory
promise to vote. The language of the Times;
and of those Whigs who oppose the_ballot, is