The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-07 00:00:00

at last, in daring the men to go aloft for the pur-
pose of taking in sail, by setting them the example
himself. The rigging was bad, was weak, was
wholly insufficient for the strain upon it. The men
recognised this, and refused to go u aloft to cer-
tain destruction. The second mat Mr. PETHE-
RICK, tries to lure them into obeying the Captain's
orders, by leading the way. Vainly—the men are
too shrewd seamen. Grog is then distributed among
them, and the chief mate, Mr. PAUL, setting his
life upon the hazard of a die, goes aloft, and shames
the seventeen up after him to the perilous topsail-
yard. Scarcely are they there busy fumbling at
the tackling when a heavy sea strikes the ship,
" causing her to lurch so fearfully" that—away
goes the rigging like packthread, the mizenmast
goes by the board, three boats are smashed, and
all aloft are thrown into the surge. Imme-
diately afterwards the captain again wants
some of the men to go aloft, "a few
minutes before the foremast went overboard,
and when it was supported by only one shroud."
According to the testimony of the survivers of the
crew "they refused to go, and presently the mast
fell." On the following day, the 17th, the jibboom
and the flying jibboom are carried away, and by
the 22d the wreck is pretty nearly completed—the
last means of escape from it, the sole remaining
boats, the spare and the long boat going adrift, and
in doing so carrying away a part of the bulwarks.
It is only, as we have seen, by the sth of Decem-
ber, after exactly four weeks of perillous voyaging
in the Channel have elapsed, that the battered, dis-
masted, boatless Bombay- is towed into port at
Plymouth. How this comes to pass—when, on the
18th ult., the barque Port-Glasgow was spoken
and on the 24th ult. the American barque, Alice
Provost, and at midnight, on the 27th-28th ult., the
ship Pilgrim—is soon told. The captain of the
Bombay was above taking assistance—had implicit
confidence in his own vessel and in his own seaman-
ship. Not without reason obviously, of course, see-
ing that the old Bombay, under his command, has
clearly weathered the storm, and been brought at
last into port with all the officers and soldiers of
the different regiments entrusted to her care, in
health and safety. But with what increase
of danger and discomfort to all on board, will have
been painfully recognised by those who read the
narrative of those perils and sufferings detailed in
our impression of yesterday. Captain FLAMANK'S
undaunted courage throughout we are less disposed
to designate as gallantry than as positive foolhardi-
ness. And certainly the thrift shown by the autho-
rities in committing so many of our gallant fellows
thus rashly to an old ill-rigged vessel like the
Bombay, we are less inclined to term economy than
a most miserabl e combination of parsomony and ex-
travagance--to save a few paltry pounds jeopardising
the lives of 300 persons, men, women, and children.

We have been asked by a very intelligent an d
hearty Liberal what remedy we could provide,
under secret voting, against personation. He had
seen so much of it in municipal elections--and we
must add we have seen much of it ourselves in a
large municipal constituency—that he was really
embarrassed by the difficulty. He was a most sincere
advocate of, any plan which would rescue the depen-
dent voter from unfairand degrading terrorism, and
from temptations which, :if yielded to, are still
more degrading. It does, however, seem a great
evil that if you can prove the death or the alibi of
any person whose vote stands in the polling book
in favour of this or that candidate, there should
be no means of amending the return by striking
out the votes on a scrutiny. If the voting were
absolutely secret this might of course be easily
done. You could, with the Ballot, prove indeed
that the person had voted, but you could not prove
for whom he had voted. Your independent voting
might, therefore, after all, have given a false majo-
rity—a majority of the dead or the absent.
The Australians have devised a plan to meet the
difficulty, but it is one which, though very slightly,
interferes with absolute secrecy. The registrar
numbers the electors ; the returning officer, when the
elector receives the voting paper, places the elec-
tor's number on its back ; when the votes have
been counted over, the papers are deposited under
seal for a limited time, to allow of petitions against
the return, and then destroyed; hence, should a
scrutiny be demanded; and personations of the dead
or absent proved, the fraudulent votes can be struck
off by reference to the numbers. It is provided that
only those numbers shall be examined which are
proved to have been fraudulently used. The chance,
therefore, of any elector's vote becoming known is
small indeed. It resolves itself into the possibility
of the returning officer's first remembering the
elector's number so as to identify him, while rapidly
counting over the votes after the poll ; and
secondly, of his violating the oath which he and
all the officials are required to take, that be will
not directly or indirectly make known how any
elector has voted. We believe that, practically,
this security for secrecy is perfect, while it theo-
retically provides against the danger of persona-
tion. We should be quite content with such a
mode of ballot here, if the slight concession would
allay the apprehensions of any timid friends of in-
dependent voting.
But it is worth while to consider whether other
arrangements might not render even the precaution
of numbering the balloting papers needless. Of
course, under any system there must be a register
of voters ; and the elector, on presenting himself at
the polling booth, must prove his right to be there,
and that he has not previously voted at the elec-
tion. With the ballot, therefore, or without it,
there is the record that Smith, Jones, and Robin-
son have voted at the election. By secret voting, as
well as by open voting, should these gentlemen have
been on their travels, and been putting the heads
of German gens d'arnzes into chancery instead of
showing themselves at the polling-booth, the detec-
tion of the fact that they did not vote is equally
easy. So in the case of a political resurrection of
the dead, though proper arrangements with the
registrar of deaths should render this nearly im-

practicable, the false vote could be promptly de-
tected. We do not see how open voting could faci-
litate the discovery of the fact that a fraudulent
vote had been given ; it could only enable us to

redress the wrong done'to the candidate who had

not received it.

Now, besides the Australian plan, there is another
course open, which would issue in giving hardly
any _more trouble, and yet would redress the wrong.
Let the fact of the votes personated be ascertained;
let them be verified by affidavit, if desired, before

any non-political judge—say the judge of the
county court—Ad if their number would have
altered the return, let the defeated candidate, or
some reasonable number of electors, have the right
to demand a new election. This, now, is often the
result of a successful petition, and it would rarely
exceed the cost of a House of Commons scrutiny.
It seems to us that the knowledge that for some
time after the election a scrutiny by the opposite
party could not set it aside, if favourable to the

process, together
fraudulent, by an inexpensive

with very severe penalties for all parties guilty of

personation or of aiding and abetting it, would reduce
that practice to an utterly insignificant minimum.