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

just this----" Landlords have now, and always
must have, the power of terrifying their tenants
into a criminal promise to vote; we must take
care that the voting shall be public, in order that
they may have the still farther power of terrify-
ing the tenants into performance of those
promises ; for on no account must a promise,
criminal or otherwise, remain unperformed."
We say, on the other hand, that it is a great and
heinous crime to extort any such promise ; it is
a crirrie, though far more pardonable, to submit
to threats, so far as to give it ; but it is an addi-
tional crime to fulfil it. He who promises to
commit a crime, but repents prior to the moment
of consummation, isassuredly lessguilty than if he
faithfully consummated his criminal engagement.
Those who object to the ballot on the ground that
it will enable voters who have been bullied into
reluctant promises to evade their promises at the
poll, entirely forget that these same voters must
inevitaloly lie if they fulfilled their promises, be-
cause their votes would then be given contrary
to their consciences. So that the ballot, take it
at the worst, introduces no additional lie into
the business : it merely substitutes one lie for
another: the elector discharges his duty towards
the State faithfully and veraciously, while he
violates a criminal pledge into which an oppres-
sive superior had frightened him. It would be
the lie harmless and venial, in place of the lie
hurtful and traitorous. But we contend that
even this mitigated measure of falsehood will not
continue under the ballot ; because there can
be no advantage in forcing a man to promise,
contrary to his inclinations, when you cannot
force him to performance ; and, therefore, the
compulsory promise, the root of the whole mis-
chief and immorality, will no longer be extorted.
The promise, as we before observed, ought to
have no place in such a manner ; it is useless,
if the tenant coincides with his landlord ; it is
iniquitous, if he differswith him.—Morn. Chron.

The efforts which philanthropic individuals
are making by associations called " temperance
societies " to eradicate the habit of drunkenness
—the besetting vice of the lower orders in this
country, and instances of which are but too
often found among persons of a better condition
—deserve the support of all who are the friends
of civilization and humanity. A reform among
the people themselves which would relieve them
from the malignant domination of that enemy
which they " put into their mouth to steal away
their brains " would be a reform worthy of an
age that arrogates to itself superiority of intel-
lect. There is no such slave in existence as he
whose reason is under the ernbruted dominion
of passions rendered wild and furious by intoxi-
cation. The mind, in such a state of artificial
brutality, is capable of follies and of crimes at
which the simple barbarism of nature would be
astonished. By far the greater proportion of
crimes of violence and blood, committed in this
and in other civilized countries, is the result of
that prostration of reason and the moral faculties
which inordinate drinking occasions. The most
recent murder of a truly demoniac character—
that of Enfield-chase—how did it arise ? If the
evidence given on the Coroner's inquest be cor-
rect ; and we have no desire to prejudge men
who have yet to be tried—the crime was planned
in the beer-house--the last stimulant to the
perpetration of the horrid deed was a quantity of
gin, under whose influence the prepared victim
and his executioners reeled away, the one inca-
pable of flight or resistance, the others lost to
every human feeling, and, not having even that
ordinary power of reflection which can look be-
yond an act committed under circumstances
which render its concealment impossible, to its
inevitable consequences. There is a beastly
practice in this country which cannot be too
severely reprobated, and which is too often
noticed in the Press in the way rather to en-
coura2e than to repress it-we mean the prac-
tice of taking an enormous quantity of drink at
a sitting, or a single draught for a wager, which
not unfrequently ends in the miserable death of
the debauched victor, as was the case in an in-
stance of this sort related the other day by a
country paper, where a man, having undertaken,
for a wager, to swallow two quarts of ale at a
draught, and a pint of neat gin afterwards,
accomplished the disgusting exploit, and died
a wretched spectacle the next day, leaving a
widow and a large destitute family. It cannot
be denied that those who entered into this
brutal wager with him, and encouraged it, were
as bad as the wretch who was its victim. But
the horrors and depravity of Hogarth's picture
of " Gin-alley" is surpassed by an incident
which happened in London a few days ago, and
which led to a Coroner's inquest, at a public-
house in Moorfields. It appears that the land-
lord of the house in question opened his door
to let a party out, between one and two o'clock
in the morning, when a man and his wife rushed
in for liquor, which the landlord refused, and,
putting the man out, closed the door, till the
woman, who had a child about three weeks old
in her arms, wrapped in a shawl, consented to
leave the house ; but, while she was in the act
of quitting it, a number of persons who were on
the outside, ravening also for more drink, pressed
so savagely against her, in their eagerness to
force an entrance, that, in spite of her cries to
forbear, they would not desist until they crushed
the child to death ! Horrible scene of a civi-
lized and Christian land ! Among mere savages
no such atrocity could occur. The Jury re-
turned a verdict of " Accidental death." It
should have been ‘. Manslaughter," as the per-
sons that destroyed the child were committing
an illegal act—an act of trespass, which made
' them responsible for the homicide.—Morn. Her.
" The question of the ballot must not be
blinked," observed a morning cotemporary the
other day ; and assuredly it shall not be blinked
by us, who are, and always have been, its stre-
nuous, though humble, advocates. What are
the objections to it ? It is " un-English," says
one, with an effrontery which we cannot but ad-
mire, seeing that voting by ballot is the mode of
collecting the sense of all public bodies through-
out the country, except in the election of
Members of Parliament. " It is odious," says
another, but for no assignable reason that we
have yet seen—" it is immoral," says a
third, though what immorality can dwell
in a white or black ball, it would puzzle
a wiser than Solomon to discover. If the
black and white be obnoxious, take yellow
and green, or any other colours ; for, assuredly,im-
morality does not dwell in all of them, else the evil
principle must be universally predominant, and
the good wholly subdued. But "it will lead to
deceit, and eventually to perjury," quoth our
cotemporary ; but of all the sophistries that it
was ever attempted to palm upon the good sense
of the people of England, this is by far the
most gross, the most unjustifiable, the most ab-,
surd. Deceit and perjury forsooth ! Why,
who but a fool would dream for a moment of
soliciting a vote, or of endeavouring to obtain a
pledge, from a person who bad the power of