The Sun.
London, England, 1858-01-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 25, 1858

to 16 years of age. Now it is seldom considered
that Young ladies are quite capable of under-
standing their own minds at any of those periods,
and albeit they may delude themselves into the
belief that they can comply with the orders of
their parents without any very great pain, they
may possibly awake to find that every feeling
dear to the female heart has thereby been sacri-
ficed.
Etow can it be said that the second daughter of
Eng).and can already have bestowed her affections
on the prince for whom it is more than hinted
that she is destined ? We believe that the young
'parties have never had an opportunity of seeing
each other, or ascertaining how far their feelings
and . sympathies may be in accordance. The
mamma of the intended bridegroom made a visit
for the purpose of feeling the way, and reported
that all was right ; but young hearts, in this
country at least, can seldom, if ever, be made
matters of bargain and sale, and whatever may
be the practice in Germany, God forbid
that the system should be maintained
. in this country at the expense of all that may
render life desirable to many young hearts, whose
future prosperity is sincerely desired by the
nation.

We need not go through the other cases, but
we must say that we should greatly prefer an
English nobleman of ancient descent, handsome
fortune, and mauly bearing, to any foreigner,
however unpronounceable his name, guttural his
accents, and slender his resources. We would
gladly bestow a handsome dowry on the Princess
who would remain in England to spend it here,
and who could, by her bridegroom's aid, main-
tain a far better establishment than if married to
one of the petty princelings who have nothing
but the so-called "azure blood"-.-something analo-
gous to the divine "ichor," of which ancient poets
sung, but who could scarcely contrive to make
both ends meet.

As to its political importance, that is all both.
If the interests of England and Prussia should
ever again come into collision, we may rest
assured that the matrimonial alliance just con-
tracted will have no possible weight in the scale,
save so far as it may be against Great Britain.
In such matters, nations have no cousins. They
act, or are supposed to act, according to justice
and equity, to put forward only tenable demands,
and support them with temper and moderation.
And any other influence must be theoretically
wrong, and " far more honoured in the breach,
than in the observance." Besides, we may ask,
was it on account of his dynastic alliances that
the SULTAN received the disinterested support of
Great Britain, France, and Sardinia ? He did not
marry a Princess of any House, nor did he send
his daughters into the diplomatic mart to find
eligible Princes for the young Sultanas ; and yet,
when his position was imperilled, he found far
more powerful defenders than if he had looked
among his matrimonial connections for aid. He
might have long looked in vain in Germany, albeit
he had a son or daughter in every Brummagem
imitation of monarchical splendour.
Nor does Brother JONATHAN rely on such
matters for success to his diplomacy. He under-
stands his rights, and will have them, or know
the reason why. And he gets them, too, inasmuch
as there is no possibility of bringing back-stair
influences into operation where he is concerned.
We may add one more instance. The Emperor
NAPOLEON, and it was the best and wisest of his
acts, did not seek to gild the splendour of his
novel diadem with any German paste. He knew
that the abandonment of the noble JOBEZZLINE for
an Austrian Archduchess—afterwards the wife of
the one-eyed Chamberlain—was the chief cause of
his uncle's fall, and he avoided the mistake. He
selected a good and virtuous and amiable wife, and
obtained not only a greater chance of domestic
felicity, but also the approbation of every right-
minded and independent man. Is he less powerful
because he could not get some stale widow of high
blood, and possibly damaged reputation
Which system, we ask, then, is the wisest ?
and which should, for the future, be pursued in
England ?

EMANCIPATE YOUR VOTBRS ! Turn the matter
how we will, the first essential in representative
reform is the absolute freedom of those who
choose representatives. From time immemorial
the style and title of our voters has been—" The
free and independent electors." How merely
titular the title has been, we need not discuss ;
still it has kept its place : the instinct, or the
courtesy, or the sense of decency of the bribing
or corrupting candidates themselves, has led them
to retain the phraseology which expressed what
should be, not what is. Why the very name
electors—choosers--what does it mean ? Surely
not that the persons ao called give effect mechani-

tally to the choice of others. It would seem use-
less indeed to waste a moment on what no one
denies—denies in theory—yet no fact is more cer-
tain than the absolute refusal of men who call
themselves reformers to reduce their theory to

practice.
Attempt to argue with them as to the influences
under which a voter ought not to vote, and they
will agree with you. You tell them a man does
not vote freely who fears whether his tenancy of
his farm, his custom at his shop, his retention of
a loan, his displeasing some one who has conferred
a favour on him, hia losing a situation, his failing
to get one, or a hundred similar eventualities, de-
pend on his vote. It is at occe acknowledged
that in such a case he does not vote freely. It is
confessed that no elector ought to be liable to such
influences ;—that if he is, he transfers his vote to
the influencing party—that he is disfranchised—

is no longer an elector at all, but the tool of an
other elector, or possibly of a man who is not an
elector. Well, you go a step farther—can these
disfranchising influences be met by legal defini-
tions and penalties ? It is not pretended that they
can. Take one case of a thousand—one of the
very best farmers of England, a farmer who had
gained a prize for having the best cultivated farm,
was lately ejected by his landlord—he had sunk
a large sum of money in the farm on
the faith of the landlord's honour—he asks the
reason,i none is given ; the whole neighbourhood
is
indignant, but no reason is given. The farmer
no law can interfere
. walks out, and the avaracious landlord walks into
And so of the customer,
the possession of h
the banker, the mortgagee,
tyrant legion who
cannot be amenable
to
law,
elections, *
1 age numbers of the
borough.
No conclusion, then, can be
that a vast proportion of the re gi
is late tenant's property, and
cougtagele, the creditor, and the
are not,
Yet they disfran-
chise most of the countyeleet
ecrus iustituencies, and
n almost every
more
steerce,ritain than
electors
are not at present electors at all. They a
exercise their own judgment—do not vote
a coro not
ing to their own preference. They do not choose,
but vote for the man of another's choice. Of course
there are a considerable number who vote as freely
as could be wished, but perhaps almost as
many, if
we take the entire constituency of the kingdom,
vote entirely at the dictation, more or less
avowed, of others. What we want then is to see
these registered electors made real electors. To

emancipate them, and to utilise to the full our I
present constituency ought surely to be the first
step in any new Reform Bill. We should be
thankful to prevent at the same time, if possible,
the baser influence of bribery ; but we must con-
fess that the argument is of a different kind.
The worthless slave of corruption is indeed a
slave, but a voluntary one. He has no conscience
or judgment of his own, which it is any pain to
' him to violate. It would be indeed a great gain
if we could put him into an Electoral Reforma-
tory School, and turn a base-minded man into an
honourable one ; but he wants no protection,
and is altogether in a different category from
his coerced neighbour. The latter often must
yield. He is compelled to choose between his
livelihood and his country, and he votes for his
family and his livelihood.

Hence it is that we insist on that common-
sense demand—the Ballot—as the first point in a
new Reform Bill. We do not undervalue exten-
si,m of the suffrage, or equalisation of electoral
districts, or abolition of property qualification, or
triennial Parliaments : they are all good points,
important points, but all put together they are
not of the same importance as the Ballot. The
first especially—extension of the suffrage, is, we
think, both the right of the many, and would be a
great advantage to the State. It would widen
the basis of the body politic. But of what earthly
use would it be to introduce a larger number of
subservient voters into the register ? Take, for
instance, the class which we believe both the great
political parties think it would be wise to place on
the register, the more intelligent mechanics—they
are an industrious, an intelligent set of men, and
very desirable is it to give them a recognised place
in the political constitution of the country. Yet
almost all these men are servants of someemployer,
and their votes are far more likely, therefore, to
be their employers' votes than their own. The
householders, also, below the ten-pound franchise,
are certainly, for the greater part, very much at
the mercy of their superiors. Where can be the
gain to the constitution, or the advantage to the
men themselves, of giving them a vote for their
masters ? The latter have already their share of
political power. No one proposes to give them
more, and certainly no one proposes to give them
power by placing operative votes at their disposal;
yet this is the obvious result of simple enfranchise•
ment of such classes.

Enfranchising a large number of persons, as
things now stand, is very much like convey-
ing free negroes to New Orleans or Cuba. Aboli-
tion of slavery should precede immigration, and abo-
lition of the polling-book should precede an exten-
sion of the franchise. New electors will be kidnapped
and reduced to electoral servitude as negroes
liberated from a slaver would be absorbed by slave
plantations. At Manchester an election would
be a war of master manufacturers, just as in the
counties it is a war of landlords. Indeed, to
extend the franchise without giving the protection
of the ballot to the new voters, would be but to
demoralize them. We want to raise and ennoble
them, to arouse them to free, manly, independent
action ; but to have them, as at Manchester, in
the last election, taken from the factory in an
omnibus to the polling booth, not daring to Tote
against their masters' candidate, is but to create a
fresh ground of irritation between the two classes,
and to give to the great cotton spinners what we
meant for their men.

Then, as to the equalization of constituencies,
on which we shall have somewhat to say ere long
—something in that way must be done. Perhaps
Lord PALMERSTON may not purpose more than
striking off a few of the most glaringly indefen-
sible boroughs ; but suppose any attempt made to
apportion members according to numbers, the

counties must then come in for a much larger
share of members ; so also must London and a
few other places. Now, were the counties eman-
cipated, there could be no objection to a perfectly
fair apportionment of members in the ratio of the
voters ; but while the suffrage is in reality but a
landlord suffrage, such a result would of course be
simply intolerable. To hive the counties votes in
proportion to the voters, without the ballot, would
be to imitate exactly the process by which the
slaveholders sustain their power in Congress. Tbey
have representatives for two-fifths of their slaves,
while they themselves have the votes in their own
hands Emancipate the tenants-at-will, and any
voters who may yet be added, by the ballot, and
we aro quite content that voters and representa-

tives should be proportioned to each other. Look

at which point in any Reform programme you will,
and the first requisite to make it worth having
19, to DIANCIP.ITI YOUR VOTERS.

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