The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-21 00:00:00

MATCH.

The Nun, Bst 71b

) 1
Jessie of Dunblane, Bst 71b s(J. Osborne) 2
Betting opened at 6 to 4 on Jessie of Dunblane, and
closed at 6 to 5 on The Nun, who won by two lengths.
The Hull Stakes of 5 sovs each, with 30 added; two year
olds Est 121 b, three Bst 121 b; fillies and geldings
allowed 31b; winners once in 1866 or 1867 41b, twice or
of 200 sovs 71b extra ; the second to save his stake ;
Kingston Course ; 7 subs.
Mr. J. Osborne's f by Newcastle—N Minus 1, 2 yrs,
6st 131 b (Walker) 1
Mr. Anderson's The Gleaner, 2 yrs, Est 91b...(M. Noble) 2
Capt. Horton Ryhs's Paradise, 2 yrs, 6st9lb...(Camoron) 3

The following also ran:—Cape of Good Hope and Eliza.

Betting-5 to 2 agst Newcastle filly, 3to 1 agst Gleaner,
sto 1 agst Cape of Good Hope. Von by two lengths ;
bamo between second and third.

The Westwood Cup of 50 sovs (handicap); winners of
any handicap amounting to 50 sovs after Juno 11 (at 10
a.m.) 71b; of two of that value, or one of 100 sovs, 91b

extra ; one mile and a half.
Mr. Glover's Verdi, by Adamas—Don't Como Late's dam
3 yrs, 7st (Cradock) 1
Mr. R. Chilton's Capitola, 3 yrs, 7st 61b ...(R. Challoner) 2
Mr. Crawshaw's Dusty Miller, 4 yrs, Bst 41b (Whiteley) 3
The following also ran :—Uttyous, Woatherbit, and
Captain Hogg.
Betting—Even on Capitola, 4 to 1 agst Verdi, 6 to 1
each agst Lapidist's dam filly and Captain Hogg. Won
by two lengths.

The East Riding Handicap of 3 sovs each, with 40 added ;
winners of any handicap amounting to 50 sovs after
Juno 11, at 10 a.m. 71b, of two of 50 sovs each, or one
of 100 sovs 91b, or of the Beverley Cup on the previous
day 121 b extra; the second to save his stake ; ono mile
and a quarter; 13 subs.
Mr. J. Warneford's Rel-tub, by Leamington—Princess
Beatrice, 3 yrs, sst 121 b (M. Noble 1
Mr. T. Masterman's Fitzroy, 4 yrs, 7st 101 b ...(Cradock 2
Mr. Falshaw's Ladylike, 3 yrs, sst 121 b (G. Platt 3
Tho following also ran:— Vernon, Miss Boswell f, and
Rabbit Trap.
Betting-5 to 4 agst Fitzroy, sto 2 each agst Rabbit
Trap and Miss Boswell filly, and 6 to 1 agst Ladylike.
Won by a neck ; two lengths between second and third.
The Holderness Hunt Stakes of 3 sovs each, with 25
added; certain penalties and allowances; non-profes-
sional riders ; second to save his stake. Two miles. 21

subs.
Mr. R Calder's Aurora Leigh, by The Trapper—dam by
Harkaway, 4 yrs, lost 81b . (owr.er) 1
Mr. Davy's Wings of the Wind, 5 yrs, list 71b
(Mr. G. Walker) 2
Mr. J. Simpson's Helen, 5 yrs, list 71b (Mr. R. Walker) 3
The following also ran :—Wild Huntsman, Carperby,
Miss Polly, Ovvstwick, Philosopher, Volunteer, Tom
Moody, and The Rejected.
Betting-5 to 4 agst Aurora Leigh, 4to 1 each agst
Carperby and 0 wstwick, 6 to 1 agst Wings of the Wiud,
and 7to 1 agst Volunteer. Won by two lengths; bad
third.

Voting Papers.

(From the Times.)

The House of Commons discussing, or attempting
to discuss, an abstract question is not an edifying
spectacle. All the faults of our national character,
which, as well as its virtues, are admirably repre-
sented in the Lower House of Parliament, are on
such occasions made strikingly apparent. It would
almost seem as if we could not deal with any
matter which did not come before us in a concrete
form and illustrated by a thousand precedents.
The language of our legislators, deprived of the
aid of experience, becomes vague and uncertain ;
they debate as men who beat the air ; they seek to
hide their mental nakedness by weaving words into
sentences which convey nothing but a sense of
sonorousness. There is a ludicrous side to the ex-
hibition, yet every sympathetic mind must be
touched by the distress too evidently manifested ;
except, indeed, when—a not uncommon spectacle
—an honourable member who suffers from this
unusual cause of embarrassment betrays his impa-
tience, and tosses aside with contempt the subject
which gives him the trouble of thinking.

The House of Commons has made such swift
progress with the Reform Bill that the 29th
clause, enabling electors in all cases to vote by
voting papers, came on for discussion yesterday,
and the Committee showed all the well-known
symptoms of distress in dealing with the subject.
The " unerring instinct" of the House came to a
sound conclusion in rejecting the clause, but the
decision was in its most emphatic sense one of in-
stinct. Not, indeed, that voting papers are an en-
tirely new suggestion. They have been in use for
many years in elections under the Poor-law, and
six years ago an Act was passed enabling the elec-
tors of the universities to vote by their means. It
was proposed by the Government that the provisions
of the University Elections Act should be applied
to all elections. But university elections are mat-
ters of so little moment that though a large number,
if not a majority, of the members of the House of
Commons may have votes for the universities; the
provisions of the Act were almost unknown to the
committee, and those who took part in the debate
felt like voyagers in unknown seas. It would, per-
haps, have been as well if some of them, before
entering on the discussion, had made themselves
better acquainted with the statute the operation of
which the Government proposed to extend. Mr.
M'Cullagh Torrens, for example, who led the op-
position, showed himself absolutely ignorant of the
machinery against the use of which he argued. By
the Act of 1861 any university elector can, after
notice has been given by the returning officer of
the day of election, fill up before a magistrate
of the place where he lives a voting paper, giving
his vote to some candidate or candidates, and
also nominating some one to deliver the voting
paper at the poll. The magistrate must attest the
signature to the paper, declaring that the voter is
personally known to him, and the person who is
authorised to tender the paper at the poll must also
be an elector, and must at the time he gives in the
paper make a declaration that he is personally ac-
quainted with the voter. These are the provisions
which the Government embodied in their bill, and it
is plain that the policy of adopting them is one to
be decided only after grave and careful comparison
of arguments. If all electors were perfectly virtu.
ous, if every landlord respected the opinions of his
tenants, if election agents were unknown, the use of
voting papers might be at once introduced. The
suggestion could not, however, even out of Arcadia,
be disposed of by the mere assertion that voting
papers are unconstitutional, or that their use would
be destructive of the local principle lying at the
root of .our electoral system, or by any other vague
phrase which might serve to indicate the uncertainty
and distrust of the speaker. Sir R. Palmer candidly
admitted there was much to be said on both sides of
the question. The arguments in favour are, indeed,
obvious, and they arc very little diminished by the
legal difficulties Sir R. Palmer urged. The inten-
tion of the Legislature iu conferring votes on elec-
tors by former bills or by the present Reform Bill
is to have the judgment of the persons enfranchised
represented in the Legislature, and it was never
intended that any accident not connected with
the faculty of choice should prevent the voter
from taking part in an election. The-mere fact
that it was convenient or inconvenient to an
elector to attend at the polling booth could not be
admitted as a reason why his vote should or should
not be recorded ; and the objection urged by Mr.
Bright that non-residents would be able to vote,
pAchaps, in a different direction from the majority
of the residents is a reason why non-residents should
not have a vote at all, and not against giving them
facilities for voting. The arguments in favour of
voting papers are, indeed, unanswerable, if we could

PRICE.... 4d.
STAMPED sd.

I have any sufficient security that they would be
honestly used, and the conviction that they would
not be misused justified their adoption in university
elections, and would have justified their adoption
even if university electors lived as a rule within a
stone's throw of the place of election. Their effect
in the singl.3 instance in which they have been put
into force was to substitute Mr. Hardy for Mr.
Gladstone in the representation of the university
of Oxford, but if we believe ill representative Go-
vernment we ought not to regret even this conse-
quence. The choice of electors may be bad, but so
long as it is a free choice we must acquiesce in it.
The very consideration however which justifies the
use of voting papers in university elections furnishes
a conclusive reason for rejecting their use elsewhere.
We should not only be without a guarantee that
the result of an election represented the free choice
of the electors : all experience tells us we should
have positive grounds for believing the contrary.
The speech Lord Stanley made ten years ago,
when Lord Cranborne first moved for a select com-
mittee to inquire into the possibility of introducing
voting papers into Parliamentary elections, contains
such reasoning against the experiment that it is to
be regretted he did not last night enlighten the com-
mittee as to the grounds which now induced him to
support a contrary conclusion. If he had explained
the motives of his conversion, he might have con-
verted the committee ; but until he did so, the
majority prudently determined to abide by the
opinions he expressed when out of office. Like
Sir Roundell Palmer yesterday, Lord Stanley
recognised a balance of arguments on the question.
It was perfectly true that voting papers would
diminish rioting and neutralise the intimidation of
a mob ; but if they would destroy the power of a
crowd over an elector, they would add indefi-
nitely to the power of individuals. The intimi-
dation of a landlord or an employer, practised
probaby through an agent, would be lega-
lised. A man's agent might collect votes as he col-
lects rents, and many a county election would be
determined by a comparison of lists of tenants.
The facilities which voting papers would afford to
bribery are also evident. They would remove, as
Lord Stanley pointed out, the insecurity a briber
now has, as to whether the vote he has purchased
will be given, by enabling him to secure at once the
vote itself, instead of a promise of it. The offer of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to allow the use of
voting papers to be restricted at the outset to
county elections found no favour with the com-
mittee. It is impossible, indeed, that the conces-
sion, far from diminishing the feeling against the
use of the papers, aggravated the sense of distrust.
It was too plainly consistent with that dominant
conception, to which Mr. Disraeli has adhered
through all apparent changes, of making the coun-
ties the stronghold of the Conservative party, by
increasing the number of county seats, by subtract-
ing all urban elements from county constituencies,
and now at last by introducing a machinery to
enable a landlord to hand in his tenants' votes at
the polling booth in a compact bundle.
It was, as we have said, the instinct of the
House which foiled the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer. Members knew the stuff of which electors
are made, and dared not trust themselves with
the perilous power voting papers would give
unscrupulous men. It may not be easy to express
in words the grounds for these conclusions, without
suggesting the existence of things which we are all
agreed to treat as non-existent ; but, amid all the
uncertainty and inconsequent reasoning of indivi-
dual members, their distrust of the practical work-
ing of voting papers in a wicked world was appa-
rent. Mr. Bright might declare that the arguments
in favour of their use tended directly to the ballot,
and Sir Roundell Palmer could say more accurately
that the system was the exact antithesis of the ballot,
but their conclusion was the same. Their meaning,
and the meaning of the majority, was simply that
they had no confidence that the proposal would, if
adopted, be carried out honestly and in good faith.
It might have been as well if members had contented
themselves with a declaration of this feeling, and
have abstained from an appearance of reasoning
which occupied much time with very little increase
to our enlightment ; but if the strength of the ar-
guments advanced was one way, the sounder judg-
ment of the committee was the other, and a deci-
sive majority in a very full house refused to sanc-
tion the introduction of a machinery fraught with
so much danger.