The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-06-01 00:00:00

THE BALLOT.

Among many extravagant absurdities, the advocates of the
Ballot have proposed that the secrecy which no mode of voting
can secure, shall be enforced by the indictment and punishment
of the person who divulges the name of the candidate in whose
favour he recorded his vote. The following amusing report of
a supposed case, gives a just and intelligible view of what would
be the practical result of any statutable attempt to enforce the
the secrecy of the ballot. We take it from the last number of
the Quarterly Review :

THE QUEEN V. A. B.
For revealing his Vote at the last Election for the City.
Attorney-General (to wit ness) —Do you know A.B. an elector
of the City of London ?
Witness—Yes; that's he at the bar.
Attorney-General—Had you ever any conversation with him
about his vote at the last election ?
Witness—Yes : on the Saturday night after the election,
after, we had drank three pots of porter each at the " Devil
and the Bag o'Nails," behind the Mansion House, I asked him
haw he had voted.
Attorney-General—Well, and what answer did be make ?
Witness—He said he had voted as I did.
Attornev-General—How did you vote?
Chief Justice--Stop Mr. Attorney : you are really asking the
witness to commit the offence you are prosecuting.
Attorney-General—Then, my lord, I wave the question, but
I submit that I have already proved that the prisoner revealed
his vote; for, as the witness must have known which way he
himself had voted, he must also, ex necessitate, know how the
prisoner had _voted.
Chief Jsistice—l beg your pardon, Mr. Attorney, but you
have not vet proved that the prisoner could have known how
the witness had voted, so that what he said may have been mere
random talk. Yriu must go a little further.
Attorney-General (to witness)—Did he make any reply when
he said that he had voted as you did?
Witness—l said, " What then, you voted for Grote ?"
Chief Justice—Really, M r. Attorney, this is very irregular.
—You are snaking your own witness subject himself to an
indictment.
Attorney General—l submit, my lord, that lam quite regu-
lar. The witness had a right to state, at his own peril, what
passed; but, moreover, this expression—" What, then, you
voted for Grote ?" is not an assertion, but a mere interrogation.
Nothing like such a confession as the witness could be indicted
on.

Chief .Tustice—Very well; go on.
Attorney-General—Now, I ask you, sir, by virtue of the
solemn oath you. have taken, and in the face of the country,
which has its eyes fixed on this great cause; I ask you what
answer did he make?

Witness—He made none at all. (A laugh.)
Attorney-General—What! Did he say nothing?
Witness—Not a word ! (Renewed laughter.)
Here Mr Croucher, the agent for the prosecution, whis-
pered the learned cousel.l
Attorney-General—Ay, ay, said nothing; but did be do no-
thing ?
Witness—Yes; he winked his eye.
Attorney-General—l thought so; he winked his eye. Your
lordship will take a note of that—he winked his eye. What fol-
lowed his eye ?
Witness—l asked him what he meant by that?
Attorney-General—And what did he say ?
Witness—Why he laughed, and said that a wink was as good
as a nod to a blind horse.

Attorney-General—My lord, that's our case.
Chief Justice—Then, gentlemen of the jury, it becomes my
duty to observe to vou that it is no case at ail. The only ap-
proachto proof is, that the prisoner said he had voted as the
witness did; but the witness's vote was a secret which the pri-
soner could not legally know—which you cannot legally know,
and therefore these words, so far from amounting to a revelation,
seem to me rather to increase the mystery—iynotain per iynotius
—particularly, gentlemen, when you recollect that the assertion
might he false as well as true; and indeed the legal presumption
would be that it was false—because falsehood is, under this soli-
tary statute, no offence at all—whereas truth would be a
transportable misdemeanour; and the law will therefore presume
innocence—that is' falsehood—until guilt—that is, truth—shall
be incontestibly proved. As to the phrase on which so much
stress has been laid, about a blind horse winking—
Attorney-General—l beg your lordship's pardon; but the
evidence said, "a wink To a blind horse." The distinction is
of the greatest importance, and will be duly appreciated by such
a jury as I now see in the box. [Here the learned gentleman
winked at the jurv.—A laugh.]
Chief Justice (looking over his note-book.)—Mr. Attorney is
right. The words, as I find them in my notes, are—a 'wink
as ,good as a nod to a blind horse ;" but I confess, gentlemen,
whichever way you take them, I cannot discover that these
words can have any relation to the last general election, norin-
deed any meaning whatsoever; so that 1 think, vou may safely
dismiss them from your consideration, and on the whole,. gen-
tlemen, 1, presume that you will have no hesitation in acquitting
the prisoner.

The jury, after a short deliberation, and without leaving the
box, returned a verdict of guilty.
Chief Justice—How gentlemen—guilty?
Foreman.—Yes, my lord, we are unanimously of opinion the
prisoner knew very well how the prisoner voted; and that giv-
ing a wink after saying "a wink was as good as a nod to a blind
horse," amounted to giving a nod—that is, to a confession that
he had voted for Grote, '
_ _

Chief Justice.—Well, gentlemen, 'tis your verdict, not mine
—record the.verdict. Prisoner at the bar—you have been con-
victed, after a patient trial, by an enlightened jury of your
country, on evidence which, although it might not satisfy my
mind, owing to my ignorance of the language in which the
offence was committed, was sufficient to the twelve intelligent
gentlemen whose province it is to decide the question. The
offence itself is of the gravest constitutional character, and one
which, I grieve to say, is becoming of very frequent occurrence
—nothing less than a blow at that great palladium of British
liberty, the secrecy of the ballot. lam happy to persuade my-
self that you had no deliberate intention of violating the law,
and that something may be attributed to the quantity of liquor
von had drunk—which, though it cannot extenuate the abstract
guilt, hut rather, iu fact, aggravates it, yet may be admitted as
a proof that there was not that degree of premeditation and wil-
ful infraction of a great constitutional principle as would call
for the infliction of the extreme penalties of the act. Hoping,
therefore, that your future conduct in the exercise of the great
and solemn trust confided to you by the constitution, may jus-
tify my indulgence, I shall only sentence you to the lowest
punishment provided by the act, that you be kept to hard la-
bour in Bridewell for three calendar months.
Prisoner—My lord, 'tis all an infamous conspiracy against
me, trumped up only because every body knows that I refused
to vote for Grote, and balloted Palmer.

SOMETHING NEW FRoM YANKEE LAND.—A splendid bou-
quet of flowers, brought over from New York in the Great
Western, was presented to a lady of Bristol by one of the pas-
sengers On the morning of the ship's arrival in King-road. The
flowers were in a high state of freshness and beauty, as if they
had just been gathered from their parent earth. It is expected
that American fruits and flowers will be abundantly supplied
to Covent-garden Market before the end of the present sum-
mer.