The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The Reform Question is just now re
ceiving some very apt illustrations from the other
side of the Atlantic. Without passion or prejudice,
and with evident impartiality, our American Cor-
respondent describes the actual operation of the
very system to which England is now hounded on
by the chief agitator of the day. We also can safely
say of ourselves that we are without passion or pre-
judice in the matter, and that as to political impar-
tiality we have not the slightest doubt that Whigs
and Tories, Liberals and Conservatives, Church and
Dissent, will always use the directest and most
efficient means to power. Our Correspondent ob-
serves that the American Conservatives are now only
doing for the support of President Johnson what
the Radicals did for his election to the second office
in the Union, and that at this moment there is
nothing to choose between the tactics of the two
sides. The President and his friends are doing
what all their predecessors have done before, and
what is now sanctioned by the prescription of an
entire political history. They give all their employes,
from the highest to the lowest, to understand that
their continuance in office depends on their vote.
Every postman, every tidewaiter, every Government
shipwright or dockyard labourer knows that he must
vote for his present masters or be sent to the right-
about. Six vessels have been ordered to Philadelphia
for repairs, and 4,000 carpenters are kept in tow by
the job.
On the other baud, the municipalities in
the Radical interest are employing legions of men in
the streets, taking up the roads, watering, laying
gas and water pipes. The manufacturers lay their
commands on their operatives and dependents, and
under one screw or another the entire population
suffers an equal pressure. It is hard to say who
there is that can call his soul his own—so far,
at least, as regards a question believed to be
of the highest moral and political importance.
All this, of course, we can understand in
this country, where personal influence and
even intimidation have prevailed time out of
mind, and where they have been met with con-
stitutional guarantees and the much more important
practice of bribery. The disposition to abuse power
is universal, and so far there is nothing to boast in
the comparison between the new and the old country.
But here comes the difficulty which somebody is
called on to explain. In this country all this takes
place—at least, we will admit for the present that it
does—under a system of open voting, and among
electors who may consider the franchise a privilege
to be turned to account. In the United States it
takes place—but that it might raise a needless con-
troversy we would say that it is far surpassed—under
the ballot and manhood suffrage. But while intimi-
dation and influence are features common to the two
countries—very accountable here, but very unac-
countable in the United States—the new country has
a fve things peculiar to itself, as new as its own
institutions, and, except in a few isolated and extra-
ordinary cases, unknown in this country. The elec-
toral districts are there very small, which is a great
convenience for the electors, and still more for the
bold and clever men who conduct the election for
them. in every district there is a committee—of
course there is ;so there is at home. But the Amen-
can committee has a much larger field of enterprise,
and far more choice of weapons, than the little body
of respectable humdrums or fiery partisans that meet
at the Blue Boar in one of our country towns to fur-
ther Mr. So and So's election. In American Utopia,
it seems, the election committee has to conduct a
system of " colonisation," and to supply. itself for
that purpose with a store of army clothing. Be-
sides the 500 or 600 real and legitimate voters
whom it has to organise and train, it has also to
create and manoeuvre another force, who, by rapi-
dity of movement and some decency of disguise,
are to vote several times over, by presenting them-
selves at so many polling-booths. As both parties
do the same, the election thus far is reduced to a
trial of courage and skill—no slight elements in all
political struggles. Just now the best disguise for a
" colonist," or, as we should call him, a " personator,"
is a worn-out uniform, as people don't like to ques-
tion the honesty—that is, the identity—of a man in
that garb. There are plenty of old uniforms to be
got, and it is evident that whole armies o f impostors
will march up to the ballot-box, proving nothing
but the superior audacity and cunning of the party
which brings most to the field of battle. %V hatever
the constitutional securities for theproof of identity,
they are found much more ineffective than our own
agaiust bribery ; and as to the provisions for secret