The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-11 00:00:00

him rest."

Such, we doubt not, is the tone and spirit of the
remarks on both sides of the House when the Hon.
Member for Bristol's motion is really in sight. And
on the appointed day the wronged members who
must be troubled to vote for, as well as against the
motion, have their plan ready. Mr. BERKELEY thus
described it, with the remedy which he prescribes :
" If he was heard at five o'clock, probably his
speech and that of the seconder would work the
debate on till seven o'clock, which was about the
feeding time of the menagerie, and of course at that
time—as all animals are ravenous at their time for
feeding—there would be uncouth noises, and they
Would hear nobody else. Now, a young member,
especially one who wished to make an arguments
tive speech, did not like to hear roaring lions au
bears, and bucolic noises of all sorts made during
their speech, so they sat down. Nothing could be
more ungentlemanly than their treatment of Mr.
LAWSON when he had risen to make his maiden
speech. He must have had nerves of iron to have
stood what he did. He had suggested the course
of adjourning the house. At every interruption
some one should rise to move the adjournment, and
put the threat into execution."
This, he assures us, is the only mode of compel-
ling a different treatment of the subject in the
House, to that which we have so often seen of late
years, It has been the endeavour of the half-hearted
Liberals and the whole-hearted Tories to shirk a
debate, and to let Mr. BERKELEY have all the talk to
himself; but a determination to move the adjourn-
ment of the debate, if the subject were burked in
this way, would soon bring even the country mem-
bers to their senses, " lie might talk for an hour
and a half or two hours, and they would hear him
in the House, but they would not hear any one else
on the same side. That had been the mode of
operation lately. When such men as COBDEN, and
BRIGHT, and Woo D—who was now Vice-Chan-
cellor—and men of that calibre, who were resolute
in standing up for the ballot, addressed them, they
always wanted to adjourn the house if they:were not
heard. The only way to get a proper hearing for
the ballot would be to find him a certain number of
members who would say, " We will adjourn the
house, and bring yon gentleman out of your leather
bolts and breeches from hunting in the country

two or three times in the course of a month, in-
stead of once, to vote against the ballot. We will
bring you from your shooting boxes and from New-
market. If they found him a certain number of
members to do that, they would have a fair debate
on the ballot, but until then the matter must rest as
it did now."

We hope Mr. BERKELEY and his friends will
act on this advice in April, when the motion for
leave to introduce a bill comes on. Some 230
Liberal members and a large part of the
Ministry have voted for the ballot, and
a Reform which can muster so many votes is
not one which ought to be put down by the
cries of gentlemen, merely clamorous, to go to
dinner.

May we also counsel the earnest Parliamentary
friends of the Ballot a little on their tactics.
The subject, it is justly said, is settled so
far as argument can settle it. All the hypo-
critical cant of professed moral opponents, all. the
chatter about its being un-English, all the
pretences about failures in other countries, all
the nonsense about trusteeship for non-electors,
all the pretences against every elector's doing
\ his own voting, have no doubt been all scouted
(to the heart's content of all who had hearts
more yielding than SHYLOCKS -- but if the
fallacies and the replies to them have
become known to every one, the illustrations of the
necessity and value of the ballot as a means of free
and honest voting are endless. Now, cannot the
Ballot Society beat the dinner-men of the House
of Commons by a little arrangement. Suppose
they made a division of labour for their friends—
allotting to one the English counties, to another
the Welsh, to another the Irish ; suppose they
took a little travel, and assigned to a fourth member
the American ballot, to a fifth the Australian, to a
sixth the Belgian, Sardinian, and Genevan; to a
ssventh, the exposure of the vices of the Imperial
management of the ballot box, with the wonderful
fact that it would often, nevertheless, foil the cor-
ruption of '_Mires and Prefets, Suppose English
boroughs, and the evidence furnished before Com-
missioners, and before the House itself, formed
another branch. By a careful division of work of
this kind, and by pretty good briefs full of un-
deniable facts, put into the hands of men who
ronld not be daunted by the tactics above

described, we should think a fusillade even
from one side might be got up which

would give a good evening's entertainment to the
House, even if opponents should sit in silence to

hear it all. Let them sit, and sit till they were

tired if they pleased. They would find that they
could not prevent a good discussion of the Ballot,
however one-sided they might like to make it.
Probably before 12 o'clock their patience would
fail. Lord JOHN would pepper away a little

of his spite against what he once proposed, but now
hates as being the most real of reforms. Sir G. C.

LEWIS would bring out some of his heavy " Edin.
burgh Review" pages ; if they did, so much the
better, provided a speaker, ready at reply, had been
kept back as a reserve against a bringing up of
Cabinet forces. We do not underrate the difficul-
ties of a determined attack like this, but that it
would succeed, if resolutely made, we have not the
smallest doubt. The Corn-law Repealers, when
argument had long lost its novelty, found no diffi-
culty in providing abundant new illustrations of
old arguments to make a good and a dreaded dis-
play. Oar Ballot friends should do the same.
If there be Liberals disposed to complain of an
annual motion for the Ballot, the reply is, what
would you suggest to those who do not mean to
give up till they get what they want. Every
other important liberal measure has been thus
forced on the attention of the Legislature and the
public. What would opponents themselves say if
for a single year, in which no special obstruction
arose, a motion was not made, and a division taken
by the friends of free voting ? This year the pro-
posal is more than usually appropriate, because the
Corrupt Practices Act—An Act which Sir W. G.
HAYTER acknowledged to be worthless, is to be
proposed for renewal—if Cabinet Whigs can be
found perverse enough to do this after the revela-
tions at Gloucester, Wakefield, and Berwick, they
will, with an ill grace blame those who insist on
proposing the remedy which the most practical of
men—CorPocK—and such philosophical Liberals
as GROTE and MOLESWORTII, have alike asserted
to be the cure, and the only known cure for half
the mischief which the trumpery Whig
Act undeniably does not remedy. We
retort the charge of being bores, on the
men who plague the house with such solemn hy-
pocrisy as these bills designed merely to evade the
remedy they dread—a remedy which we reassert
has but one fault in the eyes of Lords PALMERSTON
and RUSSELL and Sir G. C. LEWIS, namely,—that
it would cure the disease. It would cure rich men
of buying what they could not be sure of; and
landlords and others who had power over their
neighbours from coercing their votes. We deem
it no want of charity to say that this is the only
reason why Lord J. RUSSELL, and Liberals like him,
hate the ballot so bitterly. They know it would do
its work too well for territorial ascendancy. They
know it would give reality to Representation, and
they want only a manageable and seeming repre-
sentation—a representation nominally of electors,
practically of landlords and their nominees. They
may, however, rest assured that, fence as long as
they will, the ballot will break their guard at last.
It will be the law of England. It is but a question
of time. And, as it is no party question, so, when
it is carried, as in Australia, all parties will join
in its praise, and wonder they were fools enough
to resist so long such a simple means of quiet and
honest polling.