The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-07-30 00:00:00

THE BALLOT

How little we have heard, during the past election, of that
unfailing remedy for all the evils of the political body—the
ballot ! And why is this ? Do fewer cases of coercion by
" tyrannical landlords" or " dictatorial employers" occur
now than in days gone by ? Not at all. We have still men
amongst us who are willing to dictate to their servants, their
tradespeople, and their tenants, how they shall exercise their
franchises ; but such dictation has become a whig weapon.
The " high and palmy days " of his popularity gone by, it
is now the whig who uses " the screw" ; and, in conse-
quence, the ballot is no longer the favourite specific in whig
estimation. Were the practice of secret voting resorted to,
what would become of bludgeoneering? Of what avail the
influence of whig corporations, whig watch committees, and
Russell justices ? None. All these appliances to whig ends,
the ballot—if effectual at all to produce secret voting—must
extinguish. The great heart of the constituency, if left un-
influenced and uncoerced, beats now in unison with sound
constitutional and conservative feeling. The mist has passed
from before men's eyes ; they are no longer led away by
every bubble which whig philosophy blows unceasingly, to
delude and betray ; and hence, with the exception of a few
superannuated growlers, who have fiddled on this particular
string so long that they cannot change the note, the whigs
as a party seem quite inclined to back out of the ballot, as a
nostrum which is altogether unsuitable for their present dis-
ease.

We have indeed heard a few half-uttered prayers for this
un-English system of voting, when some county, upon which
whig affections were set, has been wrested out of the hands
of that faction by its loyal yeomanry. But the prayer has
been feeble indeed, and half choked in the utterance, by the
reflection probably of what would have been the issue in
some score or two of boroughs, had their constituencies been
permitted, by any practicable system, to escape from whig
(local or ministerial) coercion. Could such a system—
which, however, we trust never to see—have been applied to
the late borough elections throughout England, we do not
hesitate to say that full forty seats would have been lost to
the ministerial party upon the question of the new poor-law
alone ; and had the yeomanry of the counties been allowed
to express their unbiassed opinion of the anti-corn-law pro-
position of Lord John Russell, we are equally confident that
the entire county representation of England and Wales
would have been conservative!

The Breslau Gazette reports the following extraordinary
cure, performed lately at Grcefenberg :—" A person aged
48, who had been in the Austrian civil service, was brought,
from the loss of his wife and children, and other afflictions,
into an almost helpless state of nervous fever. Every other
remedy having been tried in vain, he went to Grcefenberg,
to place himself under the treatment of M. Preissnitz. He
had almost an unconquerable aversion to cold water, but
without first consulting M. Preissnitz, he was induced one
day, when the thermometer was at 24 degrees of Reaumur
(86 Fahrenheit), to take a cold bath. This brought on an
inflammation the brain, and the sufferer became so violent
that it required six men to hold him. In this state M. de
Preissnitz adopted the following system :—Though perfectly
delirious, he was bathed in the river for fifteen minutes, and
then carried by main force in a raving state to a bath, the
water of which was at a temperature of 12 degrees Reaumur
(59 Fahrenheit), and there detained nine hours, from 1 in the
day to 10 at night, M. Preissnitz remaining with him all the
time, and keeping his head constantly cooled with water at
74 Reaumur (48 Fahrenheit.) At the end of this period the
cold fit came on, and violent shivering ensued. In this state
the patient was carried to his bed, where he fell into a tran-
quil sleep, which lasted till next morning. On waking his
senses were perfectly recovered. An eruption came out
over the whole of his body, and terminated in pustules,
which discharged humours, and contributed to restore him
to a state of convalescence. The treatment was applied in
presence of an English, a Swedish, and an Austrian physi-
cian, all of whom declared the cure miraculous. On the
same day, M. Pereissnitz, by the same means, cured his own
daughter, a child, of a nervous fever, and next day she was
seen playing on the public promenade."