The Sun.
London, England, 1857-07-09 00:00:00

THE BALLOT.

Mr. Henry Berkeley's speech on the ballot
leaves us nothing to desire• in the way of argu-
ment, a happy use of examples and humorous
illustrations. He has made many good speeches
on the Abject, but never a better than the last.
We wish that the task of opposing the motion
had devolvei on some other than Lord John
Russell, whom it is not pleasant to se.-) placed
in the front of a battle for the foul influences.
It sounds strange and unnatural to hear from
his lips the arguments which used to be urged
ad nauseam against his own motions of old for
Parliamentary Reform. "It works well," was the
favourite plea of the old Tories, for the system
swept away by the Reform Bill, " the country has
grown to its greatness under it, and the liberties
of the people have made advances." But in those
days Lord John Russell would not consent to let
ill alone on the pretence that it was letting well
alone, and lie was char-sighted enough to see
that the country got on, not because of the rotten-
ness in its representative system, but notwithstand-
ing it, and he resolutely and boldly removed the
impediment to its better progress. Yet now we
find him adopting and turning against the Ballot
all the hackneyed pleas which he so ably confuted
when they were put forth in defence of sham re-
presentation. We seem almost to Lear the voice of
Croker again in these words delivered by Lord
John Russell :

\Ve have gone on a long time with this imperfect, and,
as it appears, corrupt mode of voting, under which we
have gained great liberty, and the system of secret
voting has only been proposed, or even thought of, within
late years. Liberty his made greater advances in this
country than in any nation of Europe, and I venture to
say that that there is more freedom in this country than
exists even in the United States of America.

This is the stereotyped defence of every abuse.
The same argument was held against Catholic
emancipation, against the repeal of the corn-laws,
against every beneficent change of our time. When
Sir Robert Peel establishel the metropolitan police,
a service all his own, and resolutely performed in
spite of much misrepresentation and clamour, he
was told that the public had been sufficiently well
protected under the infirm old night watch, and
that no change was needed or called for. And it
WAS true, undeniably, that Loudon had grown and
thriven, increased in wealth and population, not-
withstanding the insecurity of its streets at night ;
but Sir Robert Peel thought this fact noreasou for not
strengthening the protection of person and property,
and he did so accordingly. He did not say, h ere is a
sufficient general amount of safety, but he took such
measures as made every inhabitant of the metropo-
lis feel a degree of security that he had never en-
joyed before. Analogous to this is the case for the
protection of voters. No one asserts that all
electors are subjected to the foul influences, but,
on the other hand, it is unquestionable that a
very considerable number are in that unhappy
condition, and for them the only protection that
can be afforded is claimed. It is not enough fur
Lord John Russell to deny that so much intimida-
tion prevails as to render it impossible to ascertain
the opinions of the enfranchised classes. Mr. Henry
Berkeley justly contends that the legislature is
bound to afford protection where it imposes duties,
the upright discharge of which may be resented by
those whose wishes it disappoints, no matter
whether a brutal mob, as at Kidderminster, or a
dictatorial landlord, as upon the Waterford estate,
in Ireland. But then comes the stale fallacy that
the suffrage is confided in trust, and must be kept
under the view and control of public opinion.
First, it is to observed that the individual vote
never is under the view and control of public opi-
nion. Public opinion does not occupy itself about
John Thompson's vote at an election. Nor, if it did
take cognisance of John Thompson's vote, could it
form any judgment whether it was an honest or
corrupt vota, for the heart of John Thompson
cannot be searched, nor his motives scanned.
John Thompson's vote is watched only by those
whose passions or sinister interests are concerned
to sway or to resent it. To see how the man sots
would be alt very well, if in the process his ac.ti.on
was not liable to misdirection. The puMicity
only serves the intimidator or corruptor,
and when their work is accomplished it is
impossible to the general public to form a
judgment .on the particular case, if it could oc-
cupy its notice at all, which it does not, and eau-
not. The whole sum and substance of this, like
every other argument against the ballot, is that the
but thatm obs:ims else, land-
etobosdwyay his suf-
leolencit,opraitsronno,t
frage. Secret voting is the crypt where con-
tcustomer elect,
b,
science recovers freedom and power. Illicit pro-
mises are there annulled and duty holds its course.
Yet Lord John Russell professes surprise at the
doctrine that morality is served by the breach of
illicit engagements :
My hon. friend states that he has a high moral au-
thority for sayirg that a voter may will give his promise
to a candidate, and yet be at liberty, according to the
rules of a very sound morality, to break that promise.
I suppose I must accept that as sound morality. It may
be so, but I can only say that it is strange and new to
me.

Are :there, then, no promises "to be honoured
more in the breach than in the observance ?" Can
any voluntary engagement set aside an obligation
of duty ? If a man promise to tell a falsehood, is
he bound in honour and conscience to the lie ? Can
any one at will divest himself of a publio duty ?.Is
' an engagement with a corrupter or tyrant superior

in force lo the obligation to society and the state ?
Lord Joh❑ Russell regards Vie franchise as a trust,
add in his view dies a promise to aomm't a
breach of trust hod good against the duty to dis-
d,a7ge the trust honestly.

There is nothing startling in Mr. H. Berkeley's
assertion that high moral authority sans tions the
breach of illicit engagements. If Lord John Rus-
sell's servant were bribed to open his door to a mid-
night thief or cut-throat, on which side should fi-
delity prevail at the last moment, fidelity to the
master or fidelity to the robber or assassin ? Lord J.
Russell would see the true bearings of the more,l
doctrine clearly enough apart from the electoral
question, but he and most of his class lave from
custom contracted ver3 lax notions of the obliga-
tions of electors. A voter is in their view a vessel
having no more conscience concerned in what is
deposited in it than a pipkiu.
Lord John Russell lays much stress on the lia-
bility of electors to error. They are not infallible,
says he, and why should they be irresponsible?
They should be irresonsiblo simply becaus like the
sovereign, it isimpossible to make them responsible,
there not b!.irg any safe and competent tribunal to
discover their errors. Bribery, indeed, may be
detectel, but how is the vote extorted by intimida-
tion against the sincere conviction to be dis'..overed,
end how are the suffrages given for unreasonable
and discreditable causes to be found out? Tho
tribunal of public opinion is in this instance a fic-
tion or I-h er fud;e. Several boroughs have per-
sisted in returning men whose fraudulent offences
are notorious, and how has public opinion acted on
them ? Has it shamed or corrected them ? Not a
jot. They boast and glory in their prefe-
rence for what the Americans call " smart
men ;" and two of them are only likely to be de
prived of their worthy representative by process of
,criminal trials. Neither collectively nor individu-
ally is there any responsibility for the suffrage,
except the responsibility there ought tot to be to
the intimidator, the dictatorial individual, or the
savage mob. o one thinks of public opinion, or
what its judgment will I e in giving a vote, but
many have unpleasant reflections of what the con-
sequences may be, either from the resentment of a
landlord, patron or customer, or from the violence
of an excited rabble.

We agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer
that the Ballot has reached that mature and im-
portant epcch in the history of all great popular
questions, " the practical stage." All that was to
be done by argument was exhausted by Mr. Grote ;
all that ridicule could do in aid of reasoning has
been accomplished by Mr. Berkeley ; and the time
seems indeed come for the strenuous and combined
action of reformers necessary to prove that they are
in earnest and determined to carry their point.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis has done his best,
and without success, to roll the question back
to the didactic stage, which was certainly more in
his power than to reconquer its humorous position.
Had it been possible to laugh the truth down,
Lord Palmerston would have been the man for the
occasion, and would no doubt have been in his place
to do it ; but it was probably the opinion of the Cabinet
that their best chance was a little more dry discus-
sion, which accounts satisfactorily for their having
left the battle of Tuesday night to be fought by
their best master of that particular fence.
It is easy to imagine what the feeling of the
House of Commons must have been of a sultry
summer night to bear the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer state that " he wasslesirous toexamine the
question practically." He meant, of course, to con-
vey that Mr. H. Berkeley had left that mode of
treating it to him ; but to 114 it appears that Mr. Ber-
keley's speech was far the more pratical of the two.
How for example was it possible to argue in more busi-
ness-like way for secret voting than by producing a
long array of strikiing and notorious facts illustra-
tive of the evils of voting openly ? The practice of
intimidation will appear to most plain-thinking
people a strong practical reason for devising some
method of defeating it. Narratives of outrageous
things aro always exciting ; nay, there is always a
spring of humour in them, as there is in romances
that symbolise by giants and ogres the abuses of
strength and excesses of power.
When Sir Henry Ward brought torward this question
he cited the case of an estate which bad charged bands
three times in a very few years. It first belonged to a
Tory, then to a Whig, and then to a Tory again ; and at
every election during that time the tenantry upon it in-
variably voted in accordance with the politics of the
landlord for the time being. (A. laugh.) Again, in Lanark-
shire, during the life of the late Duke of Hamilton, who
was a Whig, his tenantry there always voted for a
Whig, but wren the present duke, who was a Tory, suc-
ceeded to the ti le, they turned round and voted for the
Tory candidate at every election. (Laughter.)
The mirth produced by such anecdotes as these
is due much more to the source we have just indi-
cated than to the speaker's agreeabie manner of
'elating them. The house laughed repeatedly
while Mr. Berkeley read the memorial presented to
the Marquis of Waterford, by his Irish tenantry
previous to the late general election, and the au-
dacious answer returned to it by the marquis's
agent. As there is light and fire in flint,
so there is a fun inseparable from mischief;
and the humour of Mr. Berkeley's speech, chiefly
flowing from his familiar acquaintance with the
monstrous details of his subject, was a hundred
times more practical than the gravity that followed
without answering it.
The division on the ballot in the new Parliament
is naturally a matter of interest both to the friends
and opponents of secret voting, and it is satis-
factory to find that no ground has been lost. The
number for Mr. ,11. Berkeley's motion was 189,
to which are to be added 24 pairs in favour,
making a total, including the two tellers, of 215,
which is within one of the largest division ever
mustered for the Ballot. The adverse majority
was composed of a strange jumble of 257 members,
about four-fifths of whom were inveterate anti-
Reformers. The fact that neatly a third of the
house is for the ballot, and that the adverse two-
thirds are mainly Tory, is full of significance.—
Examiner.

THE GLASGOW POISONING( CASE.]

EIGHTH DAY.

EDINBURGH, JULY 8.
The Dean of Faculty made an able speech for the
prisoner, contending that it was not proved that
the prisoner and L'Angelier met on tha 19th of
February, and particularly that it was not proved
the prisoner possessed arsenic until the 21st of
February, though all the druggists' shops in Glas-
gow had been searched, and the prisoner's pur-
chases had been openly and frankly made. The
Crown must therefore choose between the horns of
this dilemma ;—lf L'Angelier was then ill from
arsenic some other hand than the prisoner's
must have administered it ; if he was not, the
whole foundation of the case was shaken. After
maintaining that the evidence disproved their
having met on the 22d ef February, the second oc-
casion on which she was charged with attempting
to poison, lie referred to the absence of all proof
whatever that they had mat the night before the
death of L'Angelier. The appointment was made
for Saturday, not Sunday. Prisoner went to her
bed late that night with her sister, and there
was not a tittle of evidence that the house
was disturbed or approached in the course of the
night. She could have had no motive to destroy
D'Angelier while he had such letters in his posses-
sion, and every circumstance in the case spoke
strongly against the probability of her committing
a foul and deliberate murder. After referring to
the probability of L'Angelier's death being the re-
sult of suicide or arising from other causes, he called
on the jury • not rashly to tear aside the veil of
mystery in which Providence had wrapped this
prayed them to bring their hearts as well as their
man, and in an eloquent and affecting peroration
minds into judgment in this case.
The Lord Justice Clerk commenced his charge
to the jury. He said, poisoning by arsenic was
almost always a secret crime, and was generally to
be proved by circumstantial evidence.; that evi-
dence, however, must be complete, distinct, and
satisfactory, and must exclude the possibility of
innocence or of unexplained mystery, and
not supply
they must any defect in the
usapro-
secutor's case by suspicion or presumption against
the acchd eci
the purpose
They ntuasntdbtehesatoispfipoedrttuhnaitty; thet
Lcy
ac-
cusedmust be satisfied the parties met that night.
They might have a strong suspicion they did so, or
the probabilities of the case might favour that
view ; but unless they could by just, satisfactory,
and inevitable inference conclude that they did
meet, a link remained wanting in the case, and the
catastrophe and its alleged cause were not found
together. The numerous theories for the defence
might not be of much value,but their failure could
in no way strengthen the case for the prosecution,
which must be of itself complete and conclusive,.
and carry conviction to their minds. His lordship
had read over nearly a half of the parole evidence,
when the Court adjourned at six o'clock till to-
morrow (this day).

ETON COLLEGE.—A resignation has just arrived at
the Provost's Loilge, Eton College, from the Provost of
King's College, Cambridge, occasioned by tte marriage
of the Rev. Mr. Talnian. Mr. Austen Leigh, captain
of the school, will consequently take his departure for
Cambridge. Mr. Austen Leigh is the fifth son of the
Vicar of Bray, and has distinguished himself whilst at
Eon by gaining the declamation prize, Christmas, 1856,
and Easter, 1857. Mr. Austen Leigh is succeeded by
Mr. Willis as captain of the school.
THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY.—The result of the
poll has been unfavourable to the preference share-
helders. The directors' motion was declared carried by
a majority of 13,597 votes, representing 1443,5011. 15s.
stock.