delivered in circumstances far less favourable to accuracy. By combining the whole, and interpreting one thing by another, certain leading points are made out, and a philosophical acquaintance with human nature is the guide to the rest.

In

all history, the great, the public, notorious facts, alone, are known with certainty. The minute particulars almost always rest upon very indifferent evidence. The great, the leading facts, therefore, interpreted by a philosophical knowledge of human nature, comprehend the whole amount of the information which history bestows.

We have the very fortunate advantage of high authority upon this subject. M. Talleyrand, whose character will not be challenged as a practical man, even by those who misunderstand the value of what they distinguish by that application, passed, as is well known, a part of the time of his emigration in the United States. His testimony will be regarded by every body as possessing peculiar value. What is it that he tells us? That there are certain grand leading facts, known to all the world; and that he who is capable of interpreting these facts, knows more about the United States, in whatsoever part of the world he may be, than the ordinary man who is upon the spot, examining every thing with his five senses.

There is a letter which Madame de Genlis received from this extraordinary man, during his residence in the United States, from which we extract the following passage:

"Ce pays-ci est une terre où les honnêtes gens peuvent prosperer, pas cependant aussi bien que les fripons, qui comme de raison, ont beaucoup d'avantages. J'avois envie d'ecrire quelque chose sur l'Amerique et de vous l'envoyer; mais je me suis aperçu que c'etait un projet insensé. Je renvoie le peu d'observations que j'ai faites aux conversations que j'espere avoir quelque jour dans les longues soirées avec vous. L'Amerique est comme tous les autres pays : il y a quelques grands faits que tout le monde connaît, et avec les quels on peut d'un cabinet de Copenhague deviner l'Amerique toute entiere. Vous savez quelle est la forme du gouvernement; vous savez qu'il y a de grands et immenses terrains inhabités où chacun peut acquérir une propriété à un prix qui n'a aucun rapport avec les terres d'Europe: vous connoissez la nouveauté du pays, point de eapitaux, et beaucoup d'ardeur pour faire fortune; point de manufactures, parceque la main-d'œuvre y est et y sera encore long-temps trop chère. Combinez tout cela, et vous savez l'Amerique mieux que la majorité des voyageurs, y compris M. de L. — qui est ici faisant des notes, demandant des pièces, ecrivant des observations, et plus questionneur milles fois que le voyageur inquisitif dont parle Sterne."*

* Memoires de Madame de Genlis, t. 5. p. 55.

When certain persons, therefore, affirm to us, that the experiment of the ballot has been unsuccessful in the United States, our reply is, that we do not believe them. Why do we not believe them? Because, when we weigh the evidence which is contained in their assertions, and the evidence in opposition to them, we find the latter to preponderate. In the first place, with regard to the assertions, we know not how far those who make them do themselves rely upon them. House of Commons' morality does not imply the existence of many men who will keep back an assertion, useful for. their purpose, because they know little or nothing about the evidence on which it rests. In the next place, if we knew that they were sincere, we know not what sort of observers they are; but we do know that few observers are to be trusted. We know not from what circumstances they have deduced their inference; or, if they rest their assertions upon the declarations of other people, from what sort of people they received them. Any man, who pleases, may resort to a pretty certain test of the value which ought to be attached to what ordinary people deliver about the condition of a country. Let him but ask himself this question. To how many, of all the men he knows, would he confide the task of giving an account, on which he would rely, of the country in which they were born and bred? Of the uncertainty of men's observations, even when confined to a single point, the controversies of every day afford the most glaring evidence. Can we find a better example than that which we have all had recently before us? The people of England have been divided into two parties, about the distresses of the country. One would imagine that this was not one of those circumstances which it required eyes of an extraordinary keenness to discern. Yet if you asked a man of one of those parties, whether the country was in distress, he would affirm it; if you asked a man of the other, he would deny it; and both with equal confidence. Upon the experience of which are you to rely? Of neither; because the bulk of the persons who form opinions upon such subjects are led to them by partial observations. Men judge of an object by the things in it to which they direct their attention. A strong bias of the mind directs the attention to that part of the circumstances to which the bias inclines; and upon that part exclusively the opinions of ordinary men are formed.

What trifling, then, is it, to go to uncertain testimony, of which we know only that it is of no value, when the great circumstances of the case, decisive of the question, are perfectly known to us? We know well what secret voting is; and we know that it may be rendered a complete security against

external influence, in voting for members of parliament. If the Americans did use it badly, that would be no argument against the thing itself. The Americans have little motive to the accurate use of it, because, by two circumstances in their situation, the general wealth of the people, and the great rarity of large fortunes, the means are wanting of placing more than an insignificant portion of them in dependence. There would be no wonder, then, if the Americans were not very nice about the machinery of the ballot, and cared but little whether it was so used as to work with much, or with little accuracy. Their case and ours are in this respect diametrically opposite; they do not depend upon the ballot for independent voting, we cannot possibly obtain it by any other means.

But beside all this, we know upon better evidence than the assertions made in parliament, that the Americans do esteem the ballot. It is evidence enough that they continue to use it. Why should they, unless they liked it? The Americans are not in our miserable condition. They cannot have institutions, under which they suffer, fastened upon them for ages in spite of their inclinations. What, then, is the fact? So far from being diminished, the use of the ballot has been continually extended in America. Some of the States, in which, originally, it was not employed, have, upon the revision of their constitutions, introduced it; and in not one, in which it has ever been used, has the thought been entertained of discontinuing it. Nothing can be more worthless, therefore, than the pretence that America affords experience against the benefit of secret voting.

Of all the assertions, however, adventured in parliament, to oppose the argument for the ballot, there is certainly not one, the audacity of which is more worthy of our admiration, than what we are next to mention;-that secret voting has no tendency to ensure independent voting. This is an infallible test of character. We strongly recommend the use of it, in the case of public men, to all who desire to understand them. We may be perfectly certain, that the man who makes this assertion will make any other assertion whatsoever, if he believes it useful to his purpose; that twice two, for example, make not four, but four hundred. Take either supposition, that he does not see the truth, or that he sees it and belies it. You, probably, will not affirm, that the man who sees the truth and belies it, in one instance, because it suits his purpose, will not, when it suits his purpose, do so again. And, if any man's intellect be in such a state that he cannot perceive the connection between secret voting and independent voting, either from its native weakness, or its readiness to be blinded by the feeling of interest, we really see

no security against a similar effect from similar causes, in the case of a simple arithmetical proposition.

What we have already said upon this subject contains all the evidence necessary to determine the question. An independent vote is a vote, given in such circumstances, that good or evil, at the will of another, does not depend upon the manner of giving it. A man votes as he pleases, when nothing good is to come to him from his voting in one way, nothing evil from his voting in another. Such, necessarily, is the effect of voting in secrecy. If a man promises, or gives, a bribe to another who votes in secret, he clearly sees what he purchases; he gives his money for a certain chance that the man will vote for him; to the man who votes, the case is the same, whether he votes the one way or the other. The man who would inflict evil for a vote given against him, cannot inflict evil for its being given against him, when he cannot know but it was given for him. In these circumstances, the independence of the vote is complete, and we have already seen, that upon independent voting all the blessings of good government, and deliverance from all the unspeakable evils of bad government, inseparably depend.

It is of no consequence to tell us of certain combinations of circumstances, in which the happy and natural effect of secret voting would be eluded. We know them. We know also that under the present distribution of the suffrage in England, there are cases in which the secrecy would have no effect. Take Old Sarum for an example. Wherever the electors are so few, that good can be extended to the whole body, if the result is in one way, evil if it is in another, independence may be prevented in spite of secrecy. But these cases are a very insignificant proportion. In all counties, and in most boroughs, no such power can be pretended. Wherever the voters consist of thousands, or even of a good many hundreds, a sum to each sufficiently large to secure their votes, would exceed the share of the national plunder which any individual could hope to attain; and the power of evil over larger numbers is more limited still. No man can afford to turn out the numerous tenants, either of his lands or his houses, without a serious calamity to himself.

This being the nature of the case, as all men cannot but see, those of our representatives who tell us, that bribery and intimidation would just as much prevail under secret as open voting, must be prepared to affirm, that Englishmen will choose to be slaves, when they may be free; that they will choose to send men to parliament, who will perpetuate the evils of misrule, rather than men who would remove them; even when they can derive no advantage individually from sending the first sort, nor

evil individually from sending the latter. They who can believe this, if any such there be, and they who pretend to believe it, are clearly beyond the reach of argument.

A certain set of cases, however, are held forth to countenance this monstrous pretension; which are so far from being cases in point, that they are mere examples of a gross abuse, the employment of secrecy in circumstances in which it is a protection, not to pure, but to impure voting. This is a point, upon the elucidation of which a few words will be not ill-bestowed; as it is one of the principal sources of obscurity, and hence of sophistry, on the subject of the ballot. There are two sets of circumstances in which votes are given. These two sets of circumstances are so very different in their nature, that in the one of them open voting always tends to good, secret voting tends to evil; in the other secret voting alone tends to good, open voting tends to evil. These two sets of circumstances were not very difficult to discover, and yet we do not know that they were ever distinctly pointed out, till Mr. Mill found the explanation necessary in his History of British India.*

There is one set of circumstances in which, if men voted free from external influence, they would vote well; another set of circumstances in which, if they voted free from external influence, they would vote ill. We see that in one of the most recent discussions on the subject of the ballot in parliament, Sir Robert Peel tried the effect of a sophism which rested on the confounding these two sets of circumstances together. He brought forward a case of the ill-effect of the ballot in that set of circumstances in which its tendency is to produce evil, whence to infer that it could produce none but ill effects in that set of cases in which its tendency is to produce good. He adduced an instance of the corrupt use of secret voting, by members of parliament in the business of parliament, in order to prove that electors would make a bad use of it in choosing the representatives of the nation.

He was ignorant, so we are willing to believe, that the circumstances of the two cases were not only not the same, but diametrically opposite. In the case of members of parliament in the business of parliament there is no security for good voting without the publicity of the voting. In the case of electors voting for representatives the only security for good voting is the secrecy of the voting.

* The distinction has been subsequently presented to view in an admirable pamphlet, entitled "Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform," and published by Baldwin, Cradock, and Co. in 1821.