The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-13 00:00:00

THE BALLOT.

Mr. H. BERKELEY, in rising to move for leave to bring
in a bill to cause the votes of Parliamentary electors of Great
Britain and Ireland to be taken by way of ballot, said that
the first thing that would probably strike the house with re-
spect to his motion would be that the present was rather ah
inopportune time for bringing it forward. The question had
already been started on a previous night, and a partial divi-
sion had taken place, but no argument had been used, nor
if there had would it have been listened to at such a time.
(Hear.) And yet the present appeared to him to be an
extremely proper time for bringing the question before the
house, or rather, he should say, the country, which was so
soon to be appealed to on the whole question of the franchise.
Once before, and once only, had he stood in the same position
as regarded this question as that inwhich he stood at the pre-
sent moment, and that was just previously to the election of
1852, when ParliaMent was about to be dissolved under cir-
cumstances similar to those which were now about to send
them all back to their constituents. Then humbly and
feebly, but zealously, did he lay before the house the state
of things which would arise in consequence of the coming
' dissolution. He told them that the country was about to
be plunged into a saturnalia, in which every vicious prin-
ciple would be encouraged, when intimidation would stalk
and drunkenness would stagger through the land, and
when in consequence the electors of the country would
stand before the world as a set of debased and degraded
voting machines. That prophecy of his was fully realised
by the election that followed. (Hear, hear.) Indeed, so
; bad was the state of things in 1852, that even Lord Aber=
deen admitted that the condition of our electoral system
was such as that no man could be enamoured of it. But
exactly the same influences prevailed then which were
threatened now. The two great factions of the State had
had a dispute and a division which had terminated in
favour of one of them. The objects of the assault
' had been Whitehall and Downing-street, and both
• attack and defence had exhibited extraordinary valour
and perseverance, but the result must be a dis-
,
• solution of Parliament, and he asked the house
whether that dissolution would not place the
country in exactly the position which it held in the year
1852 ? The result of the election of 1852 was, that the house
determined upon doing something, but was equally bent
upon doing nothing effectually. They appointed a committee
unfortunately the usual scapegoat in that house, and that
committee investigated the corruption which had been made
so manifest at the election. It finished with a report ; and,
strange to say, that report was acted upon by the house.
But how was it acted upon ? By the production of Corrupt
Practices at Elections Prevention Act, which in his opinion
should have been called the Corrupt Practices Encourage-
ment Act. Under that act, intended to prevent, but which
really encouraged corrupt practices, they were now going
to the eountry. Let them read the statement in the Times of
that morning, that already £50,000 a day had begun to be
spent on electioneering. (Hear, hear.) They should be told
that the money would be spent honourably by the candi-
dates ; but would the people of England believe them ?
Such was the state of things under which he was then ad-
dressing the house, and for the twelfth time, annually and
successively was he there to urge upon the house the consi-
deration of the means by which alone they could hope to
escape the giant evils of their electoral system. If they
should not be able altogether to remove the stumbling
block of bribery, they might at least alleviate the evils which
were such a scandal and a disgrace to the electors. He
congratulated such honourable friends of his as had always
supported the ballot upon the position in which the question
now stood. It had been demanded in the house and out of
the house, and was that question of reform which above all
, others was most sought for by the people, and was more
earnestly demanded by them than any other. He might
refer to the gratifying fact that the majority had steadily
increased year by year, until at the present moment there
were 238 members who had recorded their votes in favour
of the ballot during the present Parliament. In the elec-
tion which was approaching, he believed that the question
would be urged upon every candidate, and therefore he
trusted the house would bear with him while he endea-
voured to dispel certain delusions, and to correct certain
fallacies which had been indulged in by those who opposed
secret voting, and advocated the present system. He had
' before stated that the constituencies one and all cried out
for the ballot, and he hoped he was not then over sanguine
in expressing his earnest hope that many leading statesmen
in that house who had hitherto turned their back upon it
would at no distant period consent to become its advocates.
(Hear.) When the question was first handed over to him
by Sir Henry Ward, and for a long time after, it was
treated with a sort of sneering contempt, and more espe-
cially by the Times newspaper. They were then told that
the ballot came in with green peas and early gooseberries,
but now they saw leading articles by the yard arguing seri-
' ously against the proposed system, articles which were grin-
' cipally remarkable for the violence of their tone and the
6 weakness of their reasoning. What he complained of gentle-
men who opposed him was, that they wore a mask when
arguing the question, that was to say they ostensibly op-
posed the ballot on grounds which were widely different
from those which really influenced their conduct. The
hon. member here quoted at some length one of the Times
articles against the ballot, the purport of which was, that
as lords, farmers, superior shopkeepers, and the clergy must
always govern those they employed, the ballot would be
liable to create differences between masters and men, and to
originate conspiracies amongst the latter to oppose the wants,
opinions, and wishes of their natural superiors. Here, then,
he said, was the true cause of opposition stated, but was
there any hon. member who would propound such arguments
to the house. If this were sound constitutional doctrine,
he wondered what the legislature of this country had been
doing for so many years. They had been defining the duty
of the electors to be to vote freely and indifferently, uninti-
midated and unpurchased ; and now they were suddenly
told that they were so many cyphers, and must always look
to their superiors to govern and direct them. This was a
most despicable style of reasoning. There was nothing like
it in fact except the passage in the " Tempest," in which
twe drunken sailors were regulating the government of an
island. Trinculo was to be the governor of the island, but
Stephano was to be viceroy over him. In the same way it
appeared the electors were to-exercise the franchise, but the
squires, and millowners, and shopkeepers, were to be vice-
roys over them. A newspaper might venture to propound
such a doctrine, but it was language which should only be
addressed to slaves, and no candidate would dare to pro-
pound it to a constituency of 100 members. (Hear, hear.)
Having quoted and criticised oae of Mr. S. G. Osborne's
letters, the hon. member contended that the arguments of
the rev. writer against the ballot were unsound, and that
it-would be a protection and not an inconvenience to small
tradesmen. Mr. Mill contended that open voting was ne-
cessary to contend against the excessive selfishness of the
electors of 1838, but he (Mr. Berkeley) could tell Mr. Mill
that secret voting was necessary to contend against the cor-
ruption practised by the candidates of the same period. He
remembered Grote's committee on the malversation of the
elective franchise thirty years ago, when bribery, treating,
and intimidation were proved to prevail to a frightful ex-
tent. Then, again, at the election of 1837, when her Majes-
ty came to the throne, there were 120 election petitions, and
so late as 1852 special legislative interference was found to
be necessary. He need not go further than the Notting-
hamshire and Northamptonshire cases, in which the elec-
tors were driven by their landlords like sheep to the poll.
And were they now to be told that the squirearchy and the
nobility had become more pure and virtuous ? He contended
he had made out a case which completely upset that of Mr.
Mill. A right hon. gentleman opposite, a friend of his, for
whom he entertained great respect (Mr. Walpole), on a
former occasion expressed an opimon that if the ballot were
established personation and fraud would be perpetrated
under the cover of secrecy, and that there would be no means
of detection. He need scarcely, he was sure, reply to such
a charge against the ballot, nor would he had it not been
advanced by one he so highly respected. But really such
an accusation was ridiculous. Under a system of secret
voting, if proper securities were adopted—and he did not
propose that the ballot should be adopted without such se-
curities—personation would be as easily detected as under
open voting. They did not want to know for whom the
man voted in order to detect personation. All that they re-
quired to know was that he did vote. If he presented him-
self at the polling place, and described himself as so and so
of such a place, and desired to vote, where was the differ-
ence in the matter of detection between that and open
voting ; and if the man passed himself off for somebody else,
and voted as somebody else, what difficulty could there be
of detecting or punishing him for the fraud afterwards ? He
should say that the mode of proceeding should be that at
the close of the election the ballot-box would be counted,
and a return would be made ; and if the return were ob-
jected to, the record of the voter would be kept a certain
time, to be forthcoming before an election committee, or
other tribunal, for examination. It was very far from his
intention to prevent an appeal in the event of a false elec-
tion, and, of course, in providing for the appeal, there must
be the necessary machinery for bringing forward. evidence.
A great deal of froth had been poured forth about the ballot
in Australia, without one tangible objection being advanced
against the mode of voting there in operation. I t had been
said by one of the candidates at a late election there that
secrecy was not effectually preserved by the mode in which
the votes were taken. Now he (Mr. H. Berkeley) had a
letter from Mr. Wilson, the proprietor of the Melbourne
Argus, which was the Times of Australia, contradicting
this statement, and adding, that he was prepared to prove
before any committee, or other tribunal of inquiry, that so
far from the ballot having failed in Australia it had per-
fectly succeeded, that secrecy of voting was for all prac-
tical purposes secured, while bribery and corruption were
practically put an end to, and that the introduction of the
ballot in Australia was a brilliant success, which chal-
lenged comparison with any political experiment of re-
cent times. On one occasion when he (Mr. H. Ber-
keley) brought this subject under the notice of the house,
an hon. gentleman, the member for Salisbury, stated that
the result of the ballot in Australia had been to introduce
into the Assembly most improper persons, and that most
blackguardly scenes were in consequence frequently
enacted there. This statement had, it appeared, given
umbrage on the other side of the water, especially as
coming from a man who was stated to have been u suc-
cessful squatter, and Mr. Henry Downing, the mayor of