The Sun.
London, England, 1832-08-20 00:00:00

legislature can foresee all coming circumstances—and we
must all bend to circumstances ; and it is now a question
of discretion, whether it would he advisable to agitate
these points in the present circumstances of the country."
—(Cheers.
Adverting then to the Ballot, he observed—
,' If, in the result, it shall lie found that the exercise of
the franchise cannot be had with, nt control or coercion,
we must vote by Ballot; for the voter must be protected
—must be secured ; and if we are compelled to resort to
Ballot, that would he the Ballot, not of the Reformers,
but of the Conservatives. It would not be forced by the
Reformers, but by the oppressive and unjustifiable conduct
of the Conservatives."

The Scotsman of Wednesday has the follow-
ing spirited observations on this subject of
intimidation :

" The attempts making in this city and elsewhere t.)
intimidate electors are a remnant of the old Tory system,
and a striking pro-,f of the arrogant feelings which that
system nourished .in the breasts of the class who were
lately the exclusive depositaries of power. The franchise
is not a property, but a trust ; the use of it, however, is
left Entirely to the elector's private judgment ; and (as
Mr. Abercromby observed the other day) any person who
interferes ceirli the free exercise of his judgment in dis-
posing of his vote, insults him as much as if he should dic-
tare to him what furniture he shall have in his house, or
what cloth he shall wear on his back ! We can scarcely
figure indeed a greater act of insolence. The Tories who
indulge in it, we believe, are not fully conscious of its
atrocity. If they had not been long accustomed to tram-
ple on the people of this country,—if they had not seen
the mark of the yoke yet upon our reeks, they would not
have dared to insult the tradesmen of this city as they
have done.

" We pray our brother electors, when threats of loss of
business, of pecuniary injury in any other shape, are held
out to them, to consider what must he p i•sing in the mind
of the p,rson who addresses them. Let them try to put
his or her thoughts into words, and see what the proposi-
tion really implies. It must amount to something like
this—

" You are poor ; you live by your industry ; you are
much too ignorant to know what is right and wrong in
politics, or who is fit to watch over the public interest.
It is presump'ion in a creature like you, who live by re-
tailing cheese or cloth, or by making chairs or watches,
to meddle with such matters. Lave them to me, who
own many acres and keep a carriage, and learned much
Latin in my youth, which I have since entirely forgotten.
I tell sou this in good humour; but I know you are
cowardly and mean, and if you are not sensible of your
own unworthiness, tl--re is a way to make you so. I
and my friends will do all we can to take the bread from
the mouths of your children, and make you a bankrupt,
to punish your insolence, in pretending to judge of public
matters !'

" This is one version of a conservative threat ; but
there is another depending on a different principle, which
may be put into English thus—
" You are a poor man, and being poor, it is merely
hypocrisy in you to pretend to have any honesty It
is true, you are hound to employ your vote fur the
public good, and not for your own profit ; never-
theless, every body knows that a poor man's con-
science is always a marketable commodity ! There-
fore we shall strike a bargain thus: you shall have
my cu,torn, which will put 101. per annum in yorr pocket,
and I shall have your vote, which will enab'e a friend
of mine to get into Parliament, where he will keep up
jobs and sinecur. s, and provide for his family. There is
no hitin in this exchange, whatever your neighbours may
say. You get your loaves, and he gets the power of tlx-
ing and mi,ruling the nation. I tell you it is all right,
and you know you may rely upon my word, seeing I have
two thousand pounds per annum, derived from a Finecure
got by my father for voting with Ministers in Parliament.
It belongs to men like me to have a conscience; mean and
poor devils like you should take my word for the rule of
right and wrong, and surrender to me the power of think-
ing and judging, which you are too ignorant and wcrthless
ti know how to toe.'

We deny that this is any caricature. We maintain
that every Conservative who addresses a threat to a trades-
man do; s, in fact, tell him to his floe that he is grossly ig-
norant, or cowardly, or venal, or a'l the tlaree ! It is quite
fair and proper for one ciCz,n to advise another, or tea-on
wi,h him about the disposal of his vote ; but if any person
came to us and dictated whom we should elect, under a
threat of injuring us in our worldly circumstances, we
should Been It as great an insult as if he struck us a blow
cn the face, or demanded that we should turn his spit, or
put on his livery. It is a power which no conscientious
roan would attempt to exercise even over a menial ser-
vant ; and when our countrymen have a proper sense of
what is due to them as per,ons selected for their inde-
pendence to be the depositaries of a public trust, few will
dare to insult flit-rat by such proposals."

If the Conservatives proceed with such au-
dacity in large towns like Edinburgh, how great
must be the intimidation in the agriculturaldis-
tricts ! Is it then to be wondered at, that the
tenantry and freeholders gladly avail themselves
of the pretext of unwillingness to pay the shil-
ling for registering to avoid offending their land-
lords in the one case, and becoming objects of
public odium by voting for a detested represen-
tative in the other. We are lovers of' peace.
We, therefore, strenuously urge all electors to
make it a sina qua non with candidates, that if
returned they will vote for the ballot. If the
ballot be not conceded, the consequences will
be mischievous, almost beyond conception.—
Property in this. country is very unequally di-
vided, and it is vain to deny that rich men, whe-
ther Whigs or Tories, have the power of doing
much mischief to electors, and causing them to
apprehend still more. The Tories will conceive
they have to dread the vengeance of a Whig
landlord, and the Whigs the vengeance of a
Tory landlord. The suffrage under the Reform
Bill is given chiefly to the class of all others the
most apprehensive—tradesmen and tenants.—
These men are quick in discerning what may
injure or benefit themselves; and we have no
doubt that one of the parts on which they will
most insist is the ballot. If the ballot he not
carried, there is not a gentleman in England
who will not soon have cause to rue the circum-
stance.—Morning Chronicle.
So much ignorance and misconception prevail
relative to some important provisions of the Re-
form Bill, that we may perhaps render an ac-
ceptable service to the public by an explanation
of certain clauses, touching the qualifications of
electors, which have been the occasion of much
perplexed and unsatisfactory discussion, of late,
both in and out of Parliament. If Mr. Lemuel
Gulliver had, in his various peregrinations
through earth, ocean, and air, happened to
have met with a body of Legislators who pro-
fessed that they did not know the meaning of
their own laws the moment, they were enacted,
his plain recital of the fact would have been
treated by his contemporaries as au indulgence
in a propensity for satirical fiction which pre-
sumed too largely upon the credulity of his
readers. Yet the English House of Commons,
in the 19th century, has presented some scenes
which realize what inventive malice would
hardly venture to suggest ; for scarcely had the
Reform Bill become a law, when we find both
its supporters and opponents differing as to
the meaning of some essential clauses, pro-
fessing au absolute ignorance of the meaning
of others, and only making one thing clear by
their discussions—namely, that neither party,
Jong and angry as their previous conflicts
had been, exactly knew what it was they sup-
ported or opposed. Thus we find the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer acknowledging his in-
ability to explain the legal construction of cer-
tain passages most necessary to be rightly un-
derstood by the people, although with the Law
Officers of the Crown at his elbow. We find
the Attorney-General only rising to assist his
Right Hon. Friend in involving the subject in
a denser medium' of the " palpable obscure,"
declaring that " the House of Commons was
of the place to answer legal questions --giving
to all people who wished to know their elective'
:1 rights au intimation that, if votes are not to be