The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-30 00:00:00

37, BEDFORD-SQUARE, LONDON

Dr. La'Mert has just published, price Sixpence, with nu-
merous Engravings and Cases, a New Edition of his Work
SELF-PRESERVATION, ,
which will be sent free, in a sealed envelope. by Mann, 38
Cornhill, London, or by the
CONTENTS Author, .
for Eight stamps.

SECTION I.—The Physiology of the Generative Organs.
SECTION ll.—Puberty--Manhood -The Morale of Genera-
ive Physiology—True and False Morality.
SECTION lll.—Marriage in its Moral, Social, and Physical
ttelattons—lts Expectancies and Disappointmexts—Advan-
tages of Physical Contrasts in securing Healthy Offspring'
SECTION IY.—Spermatorrlices and Impotence—The cansee
of Sterility in both Sexes—Self-inflicted Miseries.
SECTION. -The 'Vices of Schools—Effects of certain per-
nicious habits en the mental and general faculties.
SECTION Vl.—Treatment of Nervous and Generative De-
bility—lmpotence and Sterility—Dangerous Results of
various Hazardous Specifics—The Author's Principles of
Treatment ; Medical, Dietetic, and General, derived from
Twenty Yeara' successful practice'
- - -

The above work is intended for the perusal of those who
leave in early life been induced to swerve from the strict rules
of morality. In its pages facts of par mount utility are
brought together, wholly divested of tne delusions and incon-
sistencies so largely introduced into certain quasi medical
publications given to the world gratis, under the guise of
philanthropy, or as "acts of gratitude," by pretended clergy-
men and others, whose tamperings with the constitution are
frequently followed by itliows consequimee•.

In 1839, Lord (then Mr.) Macaulay returned from
India, and in May of that year was elected mem-
ber for Edinburgh. On the 18th of June, Mr. Grote,
member for London, moved for leave to bring in a
bill to provide that the votes at elections for mem-
bers of Parliament be taken by ballot. In the de-
bate that followed, Mr. Macaulay made his first
speech after his reappearance in the House of Com-
mons. Having defended the Ministry for making
the ballot an open question, he proceeded—
I shall vote for the motion of the hon. member
for the city of London ; and I wish to explain that,
in doing so, I merely understand myself to be re-
cording a declaration in favour of the principle of
secret voting. I desire to be understood as reserv-
ing to myself the right of withholding my support
from any bill which, on examining its details, shall
not appear to me to provide a machinery that will
secure secrecy and prevent fraud and intimidation;
and I must reserve to myself the right of consider-
ing how far I ea*, with propriety, give my support
to any bill which shall not be either accompanied
or preceded by some measure for improving the
mode of revising the registration, I should think
it most disingenuous to give a popular vote, sad-
dled with conditions which I thought either im-
possible or exceedingly difficult of fulfilment. Such
is not my opinion with regard to those which I have
mentioned. I entertain no doubt that it is possible
to provide a machinery which will protect the in-
terests both of the voter and the country, by in-
suring all the secrecy of which the transactions
of human life will admit. I have little doubt
that it is possible to devise a tribunal whose de-
cisions before the election shall command as much
public confidence as the decisions of the committees
of this house after election. Subject to these two
conditiOns, I give my support to this motion for
establishing the vote- by ballot. But I cannot say
that I do soon, all the grounds on which many of the
supporters of the ,-kellot rest their case. Iby no
insane consider, as iranY &them appeir to-do, that
it is.a,question respecting which allitb.e arguments
urged are upon one side, and that there van be no
set-off to the great advantages that may result from
the adoption of secret voting. SO embarrassing
appear to me the difficulties that beset the subject,
that I am not surprised that many wise and virtu-
ous men should have arrived at a conclusion differ-
ing from my own. In this, as in every other ques-
tion that tests the prudence and experience of men,
we must expect to find a balance of good and evil.
And, first, I will admit that secrecy would with-
draw the voter from the influence of some good as
well as some bad motives. I admit that it would
take away the salutary effect of public opinion, as
well as the pernicious influence of intimidation
But I am compelled to take refuge in the ballot—
and select that which, to the best of my judgment,
is the least of two evils. lam not sure that I quite
agree with the hon. member for the City of London
in thinking that it would be an entire preservative
against bribery ; on that point, I confess, I am in-
clined to dissent from the hon. member. In small
constituent bodies, I think that bribery, under a
system of secret voting, would continue to exist,
though, at the same time, without any material
aggravation. But I support the ballot chiefly on
this ground—l consider it as the specific, the only
remedy for the monstrous evils of intimidation.
There was a time when—like the noble lord who
seconded the motion of the hon. member for Lon-
don—l was inclined to think this evil, like many
others which had yielded to the force of public
opinion and the progress of intelligence, would die
a natural death. That hope I have been compelled
to relinquish; I believe the evil to be a growing evil;
lam satisfied that it has considerably increased within
the last seven years, and I believe it has increased
within the last three years. I cannot disguise from
myself that the growth of this evil is in some measure
to be imputed to the Reform Bill ; and, in saying
this, I impute to the Reform Bill only that imper-
fection which is common to it and every other great
measure. The reformation of the church has pro-
duced classes of social and moral evil unknown in
the times of the Plantagenets. The revolution has
produced descriptions of abuse unknown in the times
of the Stuarts; and I believe that the Reform Bill,
though on the whole it has conferred great blessings
on the country, has, like the great changes which I
have mentioned, produced some new evils, and ag-
gravated others of old standing. It has swept away
many abuses; but it seems to me to have given new
life and more malignant energy to those which it
spared. It has stopped up many of the channels of
corrupt influence; but within those which it did not
stop the stream not only runs on, but runs deeper,
stronger, fouller than ever. If it does not destroy,
it at least restricts within narrow limits the ancient
practice of nomination; but by doing so I believe it
has given a new impulse to the spirit of intimidation,
and that, too, at the very moment when it conferred
the franchise on thousands of electors who were
placed precisely in that situation in which they were
most liable to the influence of terror. I cannot close
my eyes to the evidence of these evils, accumulated
from all quarters; if any credit can be given to the
outcries which have been raised in every quarter of
the kingdom—not by one party only-, but by Tories,
Whigs, anal Radicals—from England, Scotland, and
Ireland—l must believe that there are now sitting
in this house gentlemen who owe their seats to votes
extorted by fear. And I say that if there be any
gentleman in this house who owes his seat to such
practices, it would be infinitely better he sat here
for Old Sarum; for, sitting for that borough, he
would be no representative of the people; nor is he
now; but at Old Sarum there could be no threats,
no ejectments, no struggle in the breast of the
elector between regard for his public duty and re-
gard for his private interest. There the alterna-
tive could never be put to any elector, whether he
would abandon his principles, or reduce his family
to misery. All tyranny is bad, but the worst is
that which works with the machinery of freedom.
Under an undisguised oligarchy, the people suffer
haveonly thenot eviloho chosen
; butbeinggoinvertnheedobtyhetrh oesaeswe,htoomwthhaety.
ever extent intimidation mixes itself up with
election to
ot thhaetioegxtent
theth e system
people soufffer
go-
verned by those whom they have not chosen, and
the evil of being coerced into professed choice.
And the more wide the basis of the elective system,
bothpopular et
the worse are the mischiefs arising. from it. The
more human beings are converted into machines,
through which some great proprietor may express
his pleasure, the greater is the quantity of misery
and degradation. The noble lord who seconded
this motion said, and most justl7 too, that he did
not wish to deprive wealth of; its legitimate influ-
ence. Wealth is power : and power, properly
used—with kindness and justice on its side—
necessarily inspires affection. Wealth, or that
which is so, compared with what is possessed by
the great mass of electors, is closely connected
with intellectual superiority. It enables its pos-
sessor to select and prosecute any study to which
he may be inclined; to continue it when those
who commence life with him, under less favourable
circumstances, are forced to drudge for their daily
bread ; to enlarge his mind by foreign travel ; to
acquire an intimacy with the history of nations,
and with the arts and sciences. These are advan-
tages to which it is impossible that constituencies
can be blind; naz, going much below those who

form the present body of electors, and descending
to the very lowest of the populace, it never is found
that in their wildest aberrations they choose a
leader destitute of these recommendations. This is
the natural, the indestructible, the legitimate, the
salutary influence of wealth. Whatever is more
than this is corruption; and if it be thought
necessary, as it appears from the speech of
the hon. member who last spoke, that some
persons in this house do think it necessary, to
maintain the influence of bribery in our
elective system—then I say that, incomparably, the
best and the least objectionable method is that of
open bribery. But against bribery have passed re-
solutions—for bribery boroughs are disfranchised,
for bribery members are unseated, for bribery in-
dictments and informations are preferred, for
bribery the penalties extend both to the elector and
the elected—one man is disqualified, another man
fined. On what principle do we inflict penalties
on the elector ? On what principle but this—that,
from having dealt in pecuniary corruption, the elec-
tor is no longer fit to exercise the right of voting.
But what is the operation of intimidation ? It is
this—" Vote with mei or you give up my custom.
Vote with me, or you give up your farm." Or it is
thus—" Vote with me, and I will give you .£2O for
pair of boots." Why, surely, it is notorious that
this is one of the constant forms of corruption.
" Vote with me, and I will give you £2O for a pair
of boots,' is a common and constant form of corrup-
tion ; though less so, perhaps, because less easy, than
" Vote for me, or I will carry my custom to the
bootmaker's in the next street." But the truth is,
that I almost disient from the very form of expres-
sion which the hon. member for the City of London
has made use of in his very able speech, in reference
to this part of the subject. I object to making an
antiphrasis between 'corruption and intimidation.
Intimidation is corruption—corruption stripped of
everything that may seem to lend it a grace—
stripped of all that conciliates—stripped of every
affinity to hospitality and good humour—stripped,
in short, of every colour of any kind of excuse
which can be invented to recommend or adorn it;
it is corruption presented in a form more loathsome
even than its own end. It is corruption working
by barbarity. Let it be considered, too, that cor-
ruption of this sort is the easiest, because it is the
cheapest of all. People cannot lose by a promise ;
to corrupt by giving, costs something—thousands;
to corrupt by threatening, costs nothing but a crime.
They only think superficially who suppose that cor-
ruption is to be exercised by giving, but is not to be
exercised by taking away and threatening. The man
who practises intimidation is under no necessity of
mortgaging his estate to prepare for an election ;
nay, at the same time that he improves, perhaps,
his lands, and by the very mode of administering
the economy of his family, is he able to effect by
intimidation, the purposes of corruption—and that
to a greater extent, and with more complete demo-
ralisation, than was ever practised in Grampound
or East Retford. :But though intimidation be more
easy than corruption to practise towards the poorer
classes 'of men, the feelings with which those men
view the relation of the two things are very diffe-
rent. It is much more easy and agreeable for a man
to refuse that which he never had, than to submit
to be pillaged of that which he is accustomed to
have. Many a man who would throw away with
scorn the purse of any one who came to bribe him,
is now obliged to vote against his conscience and his
wishes, for fear of an ejectment. And this form of
corruption, be it remembered, must tell—for it may
be practised with perfect impunity. You can punish
the good-natured corruption which wins men's
minds under the semblance of making them happy;
but you cannot reaeh, to punish, that ill-natured
kind of 'corruption whiCh makes them miserable.
You cannot set lip a "tribunal which shall have
right to ask the landed gentry throughout the coun-
try such, questions as these :—" Why did you part
with,auelt a tenant? Was it because he did not.
Fiityliis 'tent If he did; why don't you renew his
lease?"' Hoe. Would such a question have, been
brooked, at the 'last election for Westminster, as
" What has such and such a tailor done, that you
have turned him away and taken another ? Evi-
dently such a system would be iniquitous in the ex-
treme. Property' ceases to be property if men can-
not hold without being liable to be called upon to
give a reason why they may have thought fit to
discharge any one of their tradesmen. Still I
feel convinced that something must be done.
This is a growing evil
.; the number_ of cases wo
hear of becomes more and more frequent every
election ; it is at evil more subtle than any against
which you direct the sharpest censures of the
penal law ; and yet it is not by penal laws that you
can put it down, because it is so mixed up with pro-
perty, that if you strike at it by a penal enactment,
you inflict a ,blow on the rights of property at the
same time. As therefore, punishment is out of the
question, and as the evil, beyond all dispute,
ought to be abated, we are bound to try the means
of prevention. What means, then, have been sug-
gested ? Absolutely, none except this of the ballot.
Here, then, or nowhere, we have the desired re-
medy ; here, or nowhere must we find the means of
reconciling the rights of property with the right of
suffrage. It is not only those who possess property
that have " a right to do what they will with their
own." The estate is the landlord's—the vote is the
tenant's. "So use their own rights," is the lan-
guage of all civil as well as moral law, " as not to
interfere with the rights of others." But, here, it
should be remarked, you cannot give the one right
without infringing on, or destroying the other. On
the other hand, you cannot adopt any measure for
rendering the right of voting openly, inviolable
and sacred, without interfering at the same time
with the holy texture of that system of property
which ought to be equally sacred. If you were
to adopt such a step, you would find that you
had only got an imperfect and inadequate change
of the present system, at the expense of that on
which is founded the national credit, wealth,
prosperity, and liberty. It does, then, in my opi-
nion, become imperative upon us to consider whe-
ther there is not found in the ballot all that is re-
quired ? whether the ballot would not give equal
and perfect protection to the voter P and whether
the ballot, and the ballot alone would not give to
each class, all that each class ought to have, and
nothing more ? If this would be the effect of the
ballot, which I believe it would be, if here, and here
alone,we can find that resolution of so many important
political problems, for which we all are desirous
surely no slight difficulties, or apprehension of diffi-
culties, ought to deter us from the adoption of it.
But what is the nature of the objections that
are generally urged against it ? The objection—
though by no means the only one which has been
raised—which to me appears to present the real
difficulty in the way of carrying through such a
measure, is the moral objection. Many ingenious
and lively things have been said against the ballot ;
but it is my belief that if, in the minds of the people,
the moral objections were once disposed of, nothing
could prevent their carrying on the principle of the
ballot ie a single session. As for the objection itself,
much as I respect the opinions of those who urge it,
I must confess that I do not think it is a sound and
well-considered objection. I believe that many able
and excellent persons sincerely entertain a different
opinion on the matter ; but I do not think that those
persons have fully considered the moral evil which
results from the present system. If it be an immo-
rality, as every one considers it to be, to tell an un-
truth, surely it is, at least, equally immoral so to
use a public trust, which is reposed in us for the
public good, as may enable us to avoid a private
loss. If it be un-English for a man not to dare to
own the vote that he has given, surely it is more
sturdy
not to dare to vote as he thinks right.
When the word " un-English" is used, I feel com-
pelled to contrast our idea of that bold and
y
independence which has been our great pride
as a national characteristic, with the situation of a
man who, holding his farm from year to year, is
compelled, by fear of pecuniary loss and ruin to poll
against him whom he wishes to see chaired, and to
vote for the candidate whom, with all his heart, he
would see well ducked. At present we know that
many dishonest votes are given • but let a system of
secresy be introduced, and we should have honest
votes, although the parties might afterwards deny
that they had given them. Which is the greater evil
of the two ? God forbid that I should say anything
which should seem to extenuate the guilt of falsehood!
but God forbid also, that I should not make some
allowance for the poor as well as for the rich ! God
forbid that I should see more distinctly the mote in
the eye of the £lO householder, than the beam in
the eye of a baronet or a bishop ! If our morality be
anything more than capricious favour or mere pre-
text, we shall have ample opportunities of exercising
it, without waiting till the ballot becomes the law
of the land, or without even descending below our
our own rank in life. If it be criminal in a man to
utter an untruth for the purpose of guarding a secret
against private curiosity, then I say that we find
many criminals of a far higher station, and of a far
more cultivated intellect, than the butchers and
bakers, about whose veracity we are now so anxious.
I will take a single illustration from the case of
anonymous writers. It is perfectly notorious that
men of high consideration, men of the first distinc-
tion, have written books, and published them with-