The Sun.
London, England, 1832-12-27 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—A loud outcry has been raised respecting the
ballot. I have myself no great objection to that metsure,
though I am very certain that the concession would only givi
rise to new demands on the part of the Destructive!, who
;n so many places have put forward their nominees at the
present election. The ballot will not prevent landlords
and others from exercising undue influence by extorting a
promise before the vote is given, and can only prove effi-
cacious where the voter secretly makes up his mind to he
guilty of an untruth in promising what he does not in-
tend to do. A few scoundrels might escape the influence
in this way, but the man of integrity would not. There
is, however, a species of influence far more to be dreaded,
and against which no ballot could afford any protection,
and that species of influence is and always will be exer-
cised to a great extent by the desperate and unprincipled
over the lower and less informed class of voters by tht
circulation of sophisms and the most barefaced falsehoods,
in order to dupe them into giving their votes for the Ra-
dical champion. Whether, therefore, the ballot be con-
ceded or not, it is essential, at all events, that those who
have property to lose should be protected against the intro-
duction into the House of Commons of the pauper And all-
promising nominees of the Destructives, by a new and
e ctual registration of the Parliamentary qualification,
which is now merely colourable. This might be easily
accomplished so as to prevent fraud or evasion, and at the
same time the qualification might be safely extended
funded and other property, to a certain rank in the army
or navy, to high public situations, and whatever els.-
affords good presumptive evidence of substantiality and
trustworthiness, which is the great object of the quail-
-cation. The seat, of course, should be vacant the mo
ment the qualification passes into other hands, unless an
equivalent be substituted, and all secret transactions re-
specting it of which the Registrar is unapprised should
be void. lam induced to press this topic on the public
notice, because persons have lately presented themselves as
candidates who are bankrupt in character and in circum-
stances, and to whom even the most clamorous in their
support would hesitate to lend a 10/. note. The account
in a recent number of your paper of the application made
by some hackney-coachmen at a police-office, in conse
quence of the non-payment of their demand for conveying
voters to the poll, deserves the serious attention of all
those who are ignorant of the sort of substantiality that
belongs to a Radical candidate. In urging the absolute
necessity of placing the Parliamentary qualification on
such a footing as effectually to exclude King's Bench ad-
venturers from a trust that involves the dearest interests
of a mighty empire, and the security of all the property it
contains, I indulge the hope that I shall not have written
in vain, and that every respectable Member of the new
Parliament will direct his earliest thoughts to this subject,
which is of paramount importance.
Loudon, Dec. 20. AN ENGLISHMAN.

It has been too readily taken for granted, that
in the county elections, the tenants at will are
more subservient to their landlords than tenants
by lease. In the Times of yesterday, for in-
stance, appears the following passage :
Whatever difference of opinion may exist among Con-
servatives with regard to the general working of the Re-
form Bill, sure we are that there is one portion of it to
which they cannot reasonably make the shadow of objec-
tion—we mean the clause of the Mirquis of Chandos, for
restoring the old borough system in the shape of a vassal
franchise. Fatally has that invention of the Tory Mar-
quis worked, and intolerable are the fruits of it to the
country. The Irish 40s. freeholders were exclaimed
against because of their supposed dependence, upon their
landlords—but what was that dependence? A mere ac-
cident, or oversight, was the occasion of it. In its nature,
the Irish 40s. freehold war a valid and respectable founda-
tion for a vote, inasmuch a at least one life, with a period
of 21 or 31 years, was the usual term secured by his lease
to the tenant. The evil habit of letting rent lie in arrear
Was the only real ground of the Irish landlord's power
over his tenantry, and it was the tenant's own fault. But
Ibinv is it amongst ourselves under this abominable provi-
eion,ingrafted on the first Reform Bill by Lord Chandos,
and most injudiciously (to say no worse of it) interwoven,
with the frame of the second Bill by Ministers themselves,
when subject to no visible compulsion ? The tenantcy-at-
will franchise has so contrived matters that the voter's
dependence on his landlord is absolute, and neither pro•
duced nor increased by poverty; so far from it, that the
mot piosperons and solvent tenant, whose farm is of the
greaest size and value, has had the largest sums expended
on it, and Whose rent has been paid up to the latest
hour
of all others, in proportion to his prospe-
rity and by reason of it—he must of necessity be, above
All others, most at the mercy of a despotic land-
lord, the most perfect and abject slave ! It is, we
repeat, most monstrous and intolerable, that a class
of Englishmen, in all other respects so much to be
esteemed and looked up te--roen who must have acquired
knowledge and habits of reflection—men, moreover, who
must have been used to a course of independent action,
which it was not the interest, and therefore not the prac-
tice, of their lofty landlords to control--it is monstrous'
that a new badge of servitude should have been affixed to
the foreheads of men, like these, and thus a real degrada-
tion inflicted on, a vast body of the middle classes of
England. It would,. be infinitely less galling and cala-
mitous to have the poor, uneducated, and ignorant 'lrish
or English forty-shilling freeholders made subject by cir-
cumstances to the will of those above them, b_cause
they might in that case be guided by judgments superior
to their own; but to reduce high intelligence and
capacity to a state of bondage, was a strain at once of
cunning and remorseless cruelty, for which we trust that
the name of him who advised it will go down to after
ages unforgotten, Nor was the hypocrisy of the act less

odious than its tyranny. It was recommended by Lord
Chandos as a benefit, ft rsootb, to ' a respectable•class,of
farmers'—as a boon to those who nominally received the
franchise, instead of a grievous impost to be levied upon
them by those who would infallibly direct its exercise !
And after what fashion has it worked ? Mr. Western was
told, when he voted for the clause, that be would pay,
for it one day or other ; and he now admits it as one of
the chief causes of his defeat by Baring."
The Scotch are more decided Reformers than
the English, as is proved by the utter exclusion
of Tories or Corruptionists from all the Bo-
roughs. But in Scotland there will be, not-
withstanding, Tory Representatives from some
of the counties, in defiance of popular opinion,
by intimidating the tenantry. Intimidation has,
in fact, been more offensively practised in Scot-
land than in England. But in Scotland there
are no tenants at will. Every tenant holds his
lands by lease. In the passage we quoted yes-
terday from the Scotsman, regarding the Perth-
shire Election, it is stated " that Lord
has sent orders to all his tenants to meet on the
polling-day with the tenants of Kippenross, and
to march to Doune in cavalry order, and to vote
for Sir George only. is of opinion, that
when the tacks (leases) are out, Lord will
wreak his vengeance on those who do not obey
him. It is thus that the independent yeomen
of Perthshire are marched in gangs, under their
overseers, like slaves going to a market, to be
disposed of at the will and pleasure of their mas-
ters." In the Aberdeen Herald of Saturday,
received yesterday, it is said " it will be seen
that the Banffshire election has been carried by
the same disgraceful system of intimidation which
has been every day more and more extensively
adopted in this county (Aberdeen) and in that
of Kincardine. We shall next week have much
to say on this infamous practice." In the report
of the Banffshire election, it is stated—

" That the Sheriff closed the poll at 4 o'clock on Wed-
nesday, and the number of voters for each of the candidates
wid riot he announced until Friday. It is, however, cer-
tain that Colonel Gordon has lost the election, and the
Colonel does not appear at all surprised at the result. In-
deed, there could be little doubt of it, from the manner in
which the voters were dragged to the poll by the influ-
ence of his opponent's agents and friends, which has been
most shamefully abused, and calls loudly for the adoption
of the vote by ballot The circumstances
attending this erection, and the conduct of the Tory
Lairds in bringing their tenantry to the poll, we believe,
have not a parallel in that of any other election on this
ride the Tweed. Every day we bear of numerous in-
stances in which the electors have been threatened, either
directly or indirectly, by their landlords or factors, unless
they gave their vote to Pitfour ; and many of the tenants
themselves have openly declared, that, unless they did so,
they would be turned out of their farms."

We could fill the paper with such instances ;
but it is unnecessary. The tenant is the slave
of his landlord, whether he hold his possession
by lease or at will. In fact, there are times
when a tenantry by will are more independent
than a tenantry by lease. When the rent of land
was rising, the tenant at will was more dependent
on his landlord than if he had held by lease.
But ever since the hill of prices, the tenant at
will has had the best of it. By most of the
local customs of England, the tenant at will is
entitled to receive from his successor, whether
landlord or tenant, a variety of compensations
for outlays on the land ; and no landlord who is
not a fool, will incur this loss without some
strong reason. The land of Scotland has never
yet fallen to its proper level, and the tenantry are
understood to be, in various ways, in the power of
their landlords. On the expiration of their lease,
they have no compensation of any sort from suc-
cessors. They remove from the houses and pasture
lands at Whitsunday (Whitsuntide) and from the
arable lands on the separation of the crop from
the ground. The English tenant at will, of late
years, has had comparative security from his
landlord, with the choice of cutting the connec-
tion when he himself chose. The Globe of last
night, in commenting on the result of the Ber-
wickshire election, has attributed it to other
causes than the real ones :
" The Scotch landlords (says our contemporary) have
long let their lands to the best tenants they could find,
at the highest prices, never supposing that they should re-
quire the exercise of political influence over the oc-
cupiers ; and, in fact, they were not so unreasonable
as to imagine that they bad any right to call upon
those who benefited the owner of the soil as much as
themselves by its cultivation, for the sacrifice of their con-
sciences, because they happened to give a value to the
soil by their skill and industry, and not to be the
tenants] of the Crown, or the hereditary owners of the fee.
In proof of the small degree of influence which the
landlords of Scotland now have over their tenantry
in their choice of representatives, it may be men-
tioned, that whilst the valued rental of property in
Berwickshire belonging to the friends of Sir A. Maitland
was 78,0001., that of those who voted for the successful
candidate, Mr. Marjoribanks, was only 7,0001. Let the
English tenants manifest the same spirit of independence,
let them think and act for themselves, and so manage
their farms as that their landlords shall as soon expect to
be asked for their votes to please their tenants, as the
tenants be required to vote for unpopular or unworthy can-
didates to please their landlords."

It is quite true that the Scotch landlords
have long let their lands to the best tenants they
could find, at the highest prices ; but it does
not follow that these tenants are independent.
In fact, in Berwickshire, the farmers, with
hardly an exception, voted as their landlords
voted. But in Berwickshire there are a number
of small towns, as Dunse, Lander, Coldstream,
Eyemouth, Coldingham, Earlstown, Clurnside,
Aylon, &c. &c. A very large proportion of
the voters belonged to these towns, and they
were almost to a man Reformers. Besides,
several large proprietors of Berwickshire, and
in particular one, wno has more than double
the rental of any other (15,0001. a year) at
the commencement of the canvass, gave his
tenantry leave to vote as they pleased. Had.
the election depended on the farmers, the voters
of Sir Anthony Maitland would have quad-
rupled those of Mr. Marjoribanks. In the
neighbouring county of East Lothian, in which
the farmers are more decidedly Reformers than
in Berwickshire, the Conservatives carried
through intimidation. The cause of the diffe-
rence is, that there is only in Berwickshire one
small Royal Burgh, Lander ; whereas in East
Lothian there are three—Haddington, Dun-
bar, and North Berwick ; and these being nearly
all the towns in the county, are cut off from it.
The fact is, that every man who occupies the land
of another is, and always has been, a slave. The
effect of Lord Chandos' motion merely was to in-
crease the number of slaves ; and in that respect it
has done good rather than evil, because, by making
the calamity more extensive, it has rendered the
remedy of the ballot more imperatively neces-
sary. Wherever in the county elections in Eng-
land the Reformers have been successful, the
victory has been achieved, not by means of the
tenantry, but in spite of the tenantry. Thus,
for instance, in the Norwich East Anglian, of
Tuesday last, it is observed, " We have achieved
a glorious victory in East Norfolk ; the strong cita-
del—the very Anttverp of the Tories'—has fallen.
We expected it ; fully expected as large a ma-
jority as we actually obtained, because we could
reckon up the large landlords and the number
of their tenantry with the utmost exactness, and
we know too, that there was another body of
voters, whom neither bribes, nor threats, nor
promises would ttyluence. Here lay the mis.

t ike of our opponents ; the success of Lord
Stormont and Sir James Scarlett gave them an
inconsiderate confidence. The city was bought,
and they reckoned upon the practicability of
buying the county too." From the Shetland
Islands to the Land's End there is but one
.voice with respect to the tenant franchise. As
the East Anglian well observes, " Every one
must call aloud for the ballot, as a protection
against the usurpation of a tenant's franchise by
his landlord."—Morning. Chronicle.
Antwerp has surrendered, notwithstanding all
the anticipations of our Conservative contempo-
raries to the contrary—the Tete de Flandres is
included in the capitulation—Chasse and his
garrison are prisoners of war until the forts of
Lillo and Liefkenshoek shall have been given
up—and given tip they will and must be—and
thus terminates that " Dutch war," as it was de-
nominated by the Conservatives, which was to
involve all Europe in contention and bloodshed !
Were not the columns of our evening contem-
poraries before us, we should have been inclined
to pity them, on two grounds—the first, the
falsification of their honest predictions, as well
at heartfelt wishes, respecting Antwerp, and the
slaughter of the French army, in an assault
upon it—and the second, the difficulty to
which they would be reduced in supplying the
vacuum which has been created, by the almost
bloodless surrender of the citadel, by any other
foreign matter on which they might expatiate at
equal length, and with equal fury. Iliumfuit—we
might have said, had we not seen them, and
have closed'our compassionate bewailing for their
disappointment with the regret that nothing was
left them but to mourn their inestimable loss—
igfandunz renovare dolorem. But we have
seen their columns, and although there be some
ground for our sympathizing with their dis-
appointed hopes, we find none for compassion
on the score of having lost a good subject
for conservative discussion, and would-be mi-
nisterial annoyance. On the contrary, the
conservative darling, which, according to general
report, as well as general opinion, was supposed
to have died a natural death in their hands, has
grown all at once into a fine child, as full of
quips and cranks, and oddities, as any of the
harlequins who exhibited last night at the different
theatres of this pantomime-loving metropolis.
Antwerp, they allow, has surrendered—its
garrison and chief become prisoners of war, and,
we believe, they add, that forts Lillo and Lief-
kenshoek will be given up as a matter of course,
in order that the prisoners of war may be re-
leased ; but then they ask " What next ?" Aye,
that is an important and ingenious question.
" What next" would pose any man, out of any
million of people, to answer upon any given
subject; and " What next," upon a question
involved in so much mystery and obscurity as
the Dutch and Belgian, might not unfairly be
allowed to be a poser to all Europe. " What
next," indeed ! A wise man would answer the
question by asking another, " Is not the day
sufficient for the evil thereof?" No, say our
Conservative contemporaries—there has been evil
enough, but the evil that has happened is only the
foundation and forerunner of greater evils, the
nature and extent of which no one knoweth. It
requires no great extent of political charity to
believe that our Conservative contemporaries are
really in terror lest the ultimo dies be at hand ;
for they have, for sonic time past, been greatly
out of their latitude in reckoning, and repeated
occurrences of this kind, as every one knows, are
apt to engender a species of wandering which
there is scarcely a possibility of correcting by
any other means than actual demonstration.
But let us ask them in sober earnestness, what
proof is there that their fears are well grounded ?
What probability is there that greater evils will
follow the surrender of the citadel of Antwerp
than that of the surrender itself? It is true
that the delivery of Antwerp to the French, for
the purpose of being restored to its proper
owners—the Belgians, does not settle all the
important questions pending between Holland
and Belgium ; but it does settle all those on
account of which a combined English and
French fleet was equipped, arid a French
army was permitted to march into Belgium.
France and England have nothing more to
do with the matter—they have acquitted them-
selves of their engagements to the full—and
with regard to all the remanets, they are either
Dutch and Belgian questions, which the Dutch
and Belgians must settle, or decline to settle,
among themselves, as they think fit, or Euro-
pean questions, of the settlement of which
France and England will treat, in conjunction
with the other Powers of Europe. In a word,
the greatest "stumbling block in the way of pre-
serving the general peace has been removed ;
and if our Conservative contemporaries be in-
clined to ask again, " What next ?" we know of
no better reply than that which we have given,
except the following, which we borrow from one
of their clique—the tail of their rump—if we
may use the expression—to wit, oracularly as
followeth :—" The policy of the King of Hol-
land is altogether so inexplicable on ordinary
grounds—the utility of the defence of the citadel
of Antwerp is so questionable, and the whole
matter so mysterious, that we must leave to time,
the great expounder of mysteries, to resolve the
enigma."—Morning Advertiser.
Now that the siege of Antwerp is brought to
a conclusion, the sympathies of mankind, which
have hitherto been so naturally and deeply en-
gaged in the situation of the -handful of brave
men who have been struggling with so much
determination and- perseverance, in the just
cause of their country, against the powerful
assailants of her honour and her rights, will
give place to reflections upon the probable
consequences of the fall of this citadel, so
well and gloriously defended, or in anticipations
rather as to the further progress of the miserable
drama of which the siege of Antwerp can only
be considered as an episode—an episode of need-
less misery and bloodshed—contributing as it
does nothing whatever to the main action.
The cessation of useless slaughter is in itself a
circumstance which must afford gratification to
every humane heart ; and what can be imagined
more useless than that which the assailants of
Antwerp have inflicted and suffered, when the
whole object, as described by the aggressive
Governments of France and England, was to
smooth the way for future negotiation, to the
immediate progress of which nflotuyt, Power
ure and
when
negotia-
tion, brit
theth pointsemselves
tiontehreposseetdtleadnyhyditffihicsu
which, for some unfathomable purpose, they
had determined to initiate in blood, were of no
higher importance than a florin, or some fraction
of a florin, more or less, of tonnage duty on the
Scheldt, and of toll on the road by Limburg ?
By the surrender of Antwerp a fraction of one-
half of the object of the Convention between
France and Great Britain •is accomplished.
When the other portion of this half, the half
in which the "dignity and interests of France"

are peculiarly concerned, .may be attained is
yet uncertain. There is no doubt, indeed,
that whatever measures may be necessary for en-
forcing this entire half of the purpose of the
two confederate Powers will be prosecuted with
sufficient vigour, and that the occupation of the
remaining territory and fortresses included in it
will, if not quietly surrendered, be wrested even-
tually from Holland by the strong arm of mili-
tary power. As to the accomplishment of the
other half of the declared purpose of the Con-
vention, which relates to surrenders to be made
not to, but by, the son-in-law of the Citizen
King, and in which therefore, " the dignity and
interests of France" are not by any means so
deeply involved, we are not quite so certain that
this will be prosecuted with the same energy and
deterinination. It is a circumstance not un-
worthy of note in connect* with this part
of the subject that, a day or two only
before the acquisition of Antwerp, Belgian
engineers of eminence were sent to Venloo for
the purpose of strengthening its fortifications.
It never was nor could have been expected,
either by Holland or by any of those who took
an interest in her destiny and sympathized in
her gallant resistance to foul wrong, that, un-
assisted, she could oppose an effectual resistance
to the arms of France. Yet was her Proud and
gallant resistance to her oppressors a duty pre-
scribed alike by honour and policy ; nor has it
proved unavailing. It has availed to disperse
the mist and fogs of diplomatic hypocrisy and
intrigue; it has availed to reinstate the great
Powers of Europe in their natural position,
from which several of them, in their character
of mediators, had permitted themselves to be
drawn away ; it has availed to show the other
Powers of Europe that the revolutionary Govern-
ment of France is a self-willed and imperious Go-
vernment, with which the less intimate their rela-
tions the better, since it can be deterred from the
perpetration of no crime by any protests or dissua-
sions of its allies; it has availed to call forth
from the British people so loud and unanimous
an expression of their sentiments as must compel
their Government, however devoted to " the
dignity and interests of France," to bear always
steadily in mind for the future that the' honour
and independence of' Holland are objects a
thousand times dearer to the hearts of the
English nation
_than the dignity and interests of
France ; it has availed to alienate the policy of
Europe from that of France, and to tear to
pieces the meshes of that net in which the arti-
fices of French diplomacy had been able to en-
tangle the other great Continental Powers ; it has
availed, in fine, to reduce revolutionary France,
so far as she is the enemy of Holland, to revo-
lutionary France merely, and to secure to Hol-
land the immediate restoration of that aid and
protection upon which she had always a right to
rely from all the other Powers of Europe, her
natural fiiends.—Morning Post.