The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-01 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sir,—The Times declining to insert a reply to
some mis=statements respecting the ballot in
America, published in its columns on the 22d inst.,
may I ask you to insert the enclosed in your paper.
—Yours faithfully,
F. HENRY F. BERKELEY.
Victoria-square, S.W., Nov. 24, 1858.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
gir,—Allow me to answer so much of the remarks
in your paper of to-day on the American elective
system as relates to the ballot.
These remarks though written in hostility to the
secrecy of the ballot are yet written anonymously.
We know not the writer and cannot therefore judge
whether his mis-statements proceed from ignorance
or an intentional desire to mislead your readers.
This is an inconvenience, and it is an inconvenience
inseparable from s:
geret writing, but to such incon-
veniences, I for one g..ladly submit because differing
from the right hon. member for South Wilts who
would take the shield of scserecY from the writer as
he withholds it from tiie voter. I hold with a
writer in the Saturday Re,-iet9 that " an anony-
mous press is necessary if for other reason be-
cause it is the only channel th. rough which any
man dares to write as he thinks.",
Substitute " suffrage" for " press" ...Ind, vote for
" say," and you have the first principle o: the argu-
ment for the ballot. You, sir, agree the
Saturday Review, but you differed from Mr. L Hight
when for the same reason he claimed the shiela 0f
secrecy for the voter. How this is logical—hoNN
this is consistent—all the many with whom I
have discussed the subject fail to see.
The object of this letter, however, is not the vali-
dity of your arguments but
.the accuracy of your
facts. I have made a., twofold accusation against
the writer of the remarks on the American elective
system, and on one horn or-other of the dilemma,
ignorance or wilful mis-statement, I submit, he
must be impaled for the reasons I will now give.
Your theory about the ballot in America is in
substance this, " the ballot is an expedient adopted
not to ensure secret but rapid voting," on the other
hand, we, the friends of the ballot say, "that tike
Americans primarily and chiefly adopted the ballot
as a means to ensure secret voting. Expedition,
and other secondary reasons there may have been,
but secrecy was the great first object sought. In
speaking of the American elective system it must
be borne in mind that America comprises 32 sove-
reign states, each having its own executive and
legislature, in all cases elected by the people, and
each state has its own laws for regulating elections,
and in 29 out of 32 states the ballot is in force, re-
gulated in each of these states by laws peculiar to
itself, and ensuring secrecy in greater or less degrees.
When therefore your writer speaks of the ballot in
America, and says it is not intended to secure secret
voting, he in fact affirms that he has examined the law
of elections, and witnessed the practice' at them in
each of the states. Unless he has done this, he is
not in a position to make the broad statements
made in your paper of to-day. '
Without pretending to have made such an exa-
mination myself, I will jselect from the corre-
spondence of the Ballot Society with American
politicians, mostly persons now or formerly in high
office, such an amount of testimony as will convince
any unprejudiced person that secrecy was the
grand object of the adoption of the Ballot wherever
adopted in America.
" What is the Ballot ?" said Mr. Anson Bur-
linghame, a member • of the State Convention of
Massachusetts of 1853, in the debates on revising
the State Constitution,—" What is this Ballot ?"
We are so in the habit in this country of voting
with it, and it is so familiar, that, like the sun-
shine and the air, we do not appreciate it as we
ought. It seems to be a very simple thing to be
sure,—a little slip of paper bearing a name which
is a symbol of the sentiments thought out by a man
after mature reflection. Those sentiments are his
own. I submit that they can belong to no other
man, and when he desires to carry them forward
into living laws, he takes this little paper and
bears it under seal to the Ballot-box, and when

that shall give up its secrets what will it disclose ?
It will disclose that man's honest vote. It will dis-
close the pure, unbiassed voice- of the people."
Secrecy in this gentleman's view is plainly the
life and soul of the Vote by Ballot.
Mr. Charles Anderson, of Cincinnati, Ohio State,
says, " I had never,'before your letter, heard a
question made as to the purpose for which the
Vote by Ballot was instituted. I have always
taken it for granted, and had always supposed that
everybody else assumed, that the object was through
secrecy to secure the independence of the vote."
"In some minds of the Convention, as well
as amongst the constituent people, the shorter
,roquistite _ the mere polling of the
votes, when takcn by ballot, and other real
or imagined advantages of that method, may,
by possibility, have been considered as addi-
tional and subordinate reasons for its adoption, in
preference to the viva voce plan. But without
question the great, the leading purpose of all par-
ties, the only one much talked about or thought of,
then and for long years afterwards, was the great
one of principle (not the lesser ones of convenience)
viz., that every man should do his own voting !
an it really does seem to me that the attribution
of any other main motive to the framers of these
constitutions, as to this provision, must be an inge-
nious, not to say uncandid afterthought. Of
course I do not intend to make unkind imputations
upon parties or persons in, your country (of whom
I know so little.) My uncharitable suspicions arc
against those citizens of my own country, whom I
suspect to have given sueli opinions and made such
statements to Lord Palmerston and his allies. (*)
Besides, I presume you must must be sufficiently
well acquainted with human nature to know that
there must be a large number of Americans abroad,
of wealth and high social standing, who really
know very little of our own politics, or the work.
ings of our government in such regards. and quite
as many at home and abroad, who would, through
an excessive desire to gratify correspondents of
such eminence, respond perhaps unconsciously,
pretty much in any terms that might be most ac-
ceptable to his lordship. However all this may
be, and whatsoever may have been the motives of
these reasoners or of their informants, I am confi-
dent that the facts are against their statements and
assumption.."
Mr. Anderson is a native of Virginia, one of the
three States where open voting prevails and where
the " old Virginians," like your writer of to-day,
think " The Ballot Box to be the original Box of
Pandora." He went to Ohio, he says, with strong
prejudices against the Ballot, but his " early anti-
pathies to it have been more than overcome," and
he then proceeds to contrast open voting with the
Ballot.
"Wherever the viva voce system prevails, except
amongst the ruraland independent voters, immense
sums of money are disbursed at every annual and
semi-annual election, in the direct and unqualified
bribery of poor andunprincipled voters. Whilst on
this side of the Ohio River for example, under the
Ballot system and to say the very least, most un-
questionably, with no superiority of either integ-
rity in pecuniary matters or in general morals,
there is, almost no such disbursement or barter
whatsoever. There, it is rife. Here, I have never
heard of and do not believe a single instance has ever
occurred. What a difference between these two sys-
tems, in this momentous question ?
" The reason is obvious enough, the compelled se-
crecy, of the proceeding in the deposit and keeping
of the Ballot prevents its-purchase, for no cunning
`or corrupt man (and who else would so traffic) will
pay money for an article, unless he can be assured
that he has obtained or will obtain it ; least of all
would he trust a man to deposit the purchased se-
cret who has shown himself so vile a freeman as
to sell his freedom."
This day's post brought me aletter from the Hon.
Amasa Walker, late Secretary of State for Massa-
chusetts in which he says :—" I went to the poll
yesterday to deposit my vote. It was the day of our
general election in Massachusetts. We were called
upon to give our suffrages for Governor and all
other State Officers chosen by the people; for all
County Officers,, for a Representative of our district
to the Legislature of this Commonwealth, and a
Representative to the Congress of the United States
all 13 different officers. On going to the Town
Hall, where the election was held, I found men at the
door employed by the different parties as vote distri-
butors, who offered me their respective tickets, and
of course, recommended their particular candidates
with great earnestness and eloquence. From these
persons I took a sample of the different tickets and
passed into the Hall. Near the entrance
I found two men employed, ' according to
law, to, furnish the voters with the en-
velopes ordered by the State. Taking one of
these envelopes and seating myself in one of the
numerous desks that surround the hall, I examined
my tickets, selected the one I preferred, examined
it to see that there was no error or deception, en-
closed it in the envelope, and then proceeded to the
platform, where three officers, called " Select men"
assisted by the town clerk, presided as " Inspectors
of the election."
" On announcing my name, one of these officers
found and checked it, on a list of all the voters
lying before him for that purpose; and then another
of these officials handed the ballot or box towards

* Referring to a statement by Lord Palmerston in 49-
eordanco with the Times on The American, glecti've
Sptem."