moral corruption; they obey every temptation to any vicious act of the kind supposed, without the smallest self-condemnation or moral repugnance; the most feeble, the most contemptible of motives, therefore, is always adequate to the production of the crime.

Those who desire to get possession in their own country of the powers of government, exempt from all real responsibility, that is, for the purposes of plunder-for in such circumstances the motives to public plunder are irresistible-have no stronger interest, than in preventing, as far as they can, the existence of any such opinion as that public plunder is disgraceful; that is to say, public plunder in the essence of the thing; for as to certain forms of it-if such as they have no occasion to practise -they care not to what degree public opinion may be turned against them; nay, are ready with their aid to heap disgrace upon them, as a convenient method of diverting attention from the forms in which they indulge and preventing them from being duly considered and understood. If they have such an interest in preventing public plunder from being reputed disgraceful, they have no less an interest in saving from such moral condemnation all the crimes which minister to that result, and are necessary to its attainment. Among these the most important by far is the prostitution of votes. And, accordingly, no more remarkable instance can be produced of the power of the leading classes over the moral sentiments of mankind; the efficacy with which the successful prosecution of their sinister interests generates moral corruption in the body of the people; than the utter extinction of moral feeling in England with regard to voting for members of parliament. Shallow, thoughtless men, even if they are not corrupt, can hardly be made to conceive the extent of this calamity; for, along with the extinction of the moral feeling in regard to voting, must go the moral feeling in regard to acts in general, by which the common good and evil rarely are affected; the very notion of virtue and vice therefore becomes divorced from the thought of public acts as such; and men may be wicked to the highest degree in public transactions, without becoming disgraceful. This is nearly the last stage of public calamity for there remains but one alternative ;-the eternal existence of the misrule;-or a convulsion to obtain deliverance from it.

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We conceive that little more remains, to demonstrate the utility and the necessity of the ballot : For we affirm, and think we shall be able in a few words to prove, that the ballot is a remedy for a great portion of all this evil; easy of application,

and of all remedies, possible to be applied, the most unexceptionable, on account of any evil consequences arising out of itself. We reason thus:-If it be proved that any where an enormous amount of evil exists, that an agency may be applied which will remove, if not the whole, a great part, of all this evil, and that to this agency no hurtful consequences are attached, which can be reputed an equivalent for one of the millions of evils which it will remove, the argument for its application seems to be as complete as demonstration can in moral subjects be. We know but one objection which can be made to it-that it is too complete, This is an objection. not unlikely to be made. There are people who, precisely because it is complete, and, being complete, is not conducive to their ends, may call it an a priori argument, or by some such unpopular name; and will, on that ground, with much briskness, infer, that it is good for nothing. People who have their reasons for not liking a conclusion to which demonstration leads, have nothing for it but to decry demonstration. They indeed obtain credit only among the blockheads. But then the blockheads are the greatest both in number and power. It is not every man's ambition that goes higher than this.

We suppose ourselves to be arguing with persons, who really hold that there is a difference between one government and another that it is of great importance to the community, whether the persons, to whom the management of their affairs is confided, do or do not act under an efficient responsibility to them. We suppose that we are arguing with persons who hold the British constitution to be something more than a name. All the eulogies we hear pronounced upon it proceed upon the assumption, that there is an immeasurable distance between a good government and a bad; that in the good government there are securities for the good conduct of those to whom the management of the public affairs is confided; and that in the bad government there is a want of those securities.

Representative government is a contrivance for affording those securities, by giving to the public the choice of the persons who have the management or at least a perfect control over the management of the public affairs. But where are those securities, if the people have not this choice-if they have nothing but the name of choosing, with some vain and fraudulent formalities; while the real power of choosing is exercised uniformly and steadily by the same small number of men. This small number of men are really, then, the governors, under no responsibility at all. Is it possible that in these circumstances the public affairs should not be mismanaged ;—that they should

not be managed under a perfect subserviency to the interests of that small number; in other words, that the interests of the governed should not, under a government so constituted, be habitually sacrificed to the interest of the governors? Does badness of government consist in any thing else than this?

Now is not the time to enter upon the display of all that is contained under the dreadful term, badness of government; or of the items in the shocking catalogue which are most remarkable in the government of our own country; though nothing is more important than the frequent recounting of those evils, which they who suffer them always know, but of which they lose the accurate and pungent sense, if the thought of them is not frequently and vividly renewed.

The question we have to resolve will now be seen to be easy, because it turns upon a single point. All the evils of misgovernment, which we suffer, and to which we are liable, cumulated with all the evils of that horrid immorality which results from the giving and suborning prostitute votes, arise from this;—that the people of England do not choose the members of parliament, that the majority of them are chosen by a small number of men.

It is so clear as not to admit of being rendered clearer by argument, that what gives this small number of men the power of choosing, is the openness of the voting. It is the openness, therefore, of the voting that corrupts the government of England, and corrupts the morals of the people of England. That which enables the men, who hold the voters in dependence, to suborn the votes, is their knowing how the vote is given. Render it impossible for them to know how any vote is given, and their power over it is gone. The power either of rewarding a prostitute vote, or punishing an honest one, is useless, whenever it has been made impossible to be known whether the prostitute or the honest vote has been given. Effect this impossibility; take away the power of knowing how the man who votes for a member of parliament has bestowed his vote, and see the consequences. You give effectual securities to the public, that the affairs of the public will be managed for their interest, not sacrificed to the interest of their rulers;

and you take away at the same time one of the most terrible engines of moral depravation, which ever was wielded for the pollution and degradation of any portion of mankind. Are not these important effects to be derived from so simple a cause? And is not the cause which produces such effects the more to be cherished and esteemed because of its simplicity?

The men in parliament who allow themselves to speak without repugnance of parliamentary reform at all, generally confine

their favour to moderate reform. If the actions of these men corresponded with their words, we should have them with us on the question of the ballot. For can there be any change more moderate, than that of converting an open vote into a secret one? Allow every thing else to remain as it is. Keep to the same voters exactly, and distribute them after the same manner. Do not even alter the duration of parliaments. Not that these things are as they should be. They might be altered, we think, for the better. But the ballot would operate so powerfully as an instrument of good, that the inconveniences which might still arise from these defects, if we had the ballot, would be far less severely felt.

This moderate, very moderate reform, could obviously have none of those effects, which are commonly painted in tragic colours, to frighten weak, fearful people, from every thought of reform. It cannot possibly have any farther effect, than that of bringing the practice of the English constitution into a conformity with its theory-that theory, which renders it "the envy of surrounding nations, and the admiration of the world." That theory, undoubtedly, is, that the people choose. The practice is, that they do not choose. The ballot, and that alone, can enable them to choose, and render the British constitution in reality what it now is only in pretence.

There is another important argument in favour of the ballot. Nothing else can render the constitution of England conformable to the conception and expectations of its kings. When they, upon some great emergency, have recourse to a new, as a fitter instrument than an old, parliament, they declare that they have recourse to the sense of their people; meaning, of course, that the sense of their people is expressed in the choice of members of parliament. They know not, it seems, that it is not the sense of their people which is so expressed, but the sense of a small number of suborners of votes.

There are two blemishes in our representative system, as it stands, which even those who admire it as it stands, allow to be blemishes; and on which they are often pleased to descant as great and horrible evils. These are-expense of elections, and bribery in corrupt boroughs. Often have they tried their hands at legislating for a remedy of those evils. Notwithstanding the greatness of their efforts, notwithstanding the magnitude of the expended power,-the difficulties have still overmatched them. The collective wisdom of the nation has been baffled in a contest with cost, and corruption; and these blemishes still remain. It ought, with such parties, to be a strong recommendation of the ballot, and would be, if they were honest and sincere in what they VOL. XIII.-Westminster Review.

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say, that it would radically cure these acknowledged diseases of the parliament. See how clearly and immediately the result appears. With regard to bribery, who would go to the expense of paying any man for a vote, when, for aught he knew, it was given against himself? As money for votes rendered in secret can have no effect whatever to secure the vote for which it is given, the man would be mad, who would throw it away in that

manner.

Let us next attend to the cost incurred at elections, without regarding what it consists in, expense of conveying distant voters, entertainments; or favours of other description, money, or money's worth; the ballot would put an end to it all. Men will not incur expense for the attainment of an object, when it is clear that such expense can have no effect whatever in procuring the object. This is most indubitably the case with money spent on account of a vote given in such secrecy, that whether it is given for you or against you, you never can know. Under such a system the practical consequences would be, that only those men would vote who could do so free of expense, or were willing to defray their own charges.

We observed, toward the beginning of this article, that the enemies of the ballot in parliament are divided into two classes: one, that of the men who admit the limited number of real choosers, and defend it as the perfect state of the British constitution; the other, that of the men who, though they partly admit, partly also deny, the limitation of the number of real choosers by the operation of open voting, but who loudly express their conviction that voting ought to be free, and ought not to be perverted from its honesty by either of the two instruments of corruption, dread of evil, or prospect of reward. The former class are a very small minority in parliament, and the ground they take so very untenable, that they deserve no more of our regard. The latter class may be considered as making up the body of parliament. To them we now address ourselves, with an assurance of accomplishing one or other of two objects; either gaining their co-operation; or covering them with the shame of holding a language which their actions belie. By what pretence, we ask them, can you attempt to resist our conclusions? Will not the ballot render voting independent and honest; which you allow it is not at present, so perfectly at least as were to be wished. Will it not effectually annihilate expense of elections, as well as bribery and corruption? Will it not, in this manner, effect all which you conceive to be necessary to render the representative system of England perfect? It is, if your conception be right, a perfectly radical reform of