The difference in the two cases is constituted by the difference of the interests. In the one case, the voter has an interest in bad voting, and will vote ill, if he is not prevented. In the other case, the voter has an interest in voting well, and will vote well, if he is not prevented. The member of parliament, who has an interest in abusing, for his own advantage, the powers of government intrusted to him, needs to be restrained. Restraint is found in the power of publicity. The electors, who have an interest in good representatives, need to be saved from the influence of men, who, if returned under that influence, would not be good. They can be saved by secrecy.

To express the circumstances generally; we say, that in that set of circumstances, in which the voter's own interest would lead him to vote well, but other men are likely to create an interest for him which would lead him to vote ill, the vote should be given in secret : in that set of cases, in which the voter's own interest would lead him to vote ill, but public opinion would act upon him as an inducement to vote well, the vote should be given in public. The effect of secrecy in the two cases is perfectly contrary. In the one case it is protection for the operation of the sinister interest; in the other it is protection against it. In the one case it is the safeguard of the public interest; in the other it is the removal of that safeguard.

To maintain the pretence, that perfect secrecy in voting for members of parliament would not annul the power of influencing the vote, by annexing the prospect either of the matter of good to the giving it in one way, or the matter of evil to the giving it in another; it must be affirmed, in the one case, that the man who has received a bribe, or the promise of one, will vote contrary to his inclination, though the receipt of the bribe cannot in the least degree be affected by his voting according to his inclination; that is to say, he will vote against his inclination totally without a motive, which is a moral impossibility': And in all other, it must be affirmed, that the man who is threatened with evil, if he votes in a particular way, will vote against his inclination, though he knows that he is not in the smallest degree more likely to suffer the evil if he votes according to his inclination; that is to say, he will vote contrary to his inclination totally without a motive, which is the same moral impossibility as before. No reductio ad absurdum is more perfect than this.

The last resource, therefore, of these controvertists is, to deny the possibility of secrecy. How do they make that out? They do not make it out at all. They make out nothing; nor try to do so. That is not their way. They assert; sometimes more nakedly, sometimes more covertly, but still only assert. Please,

then, to inform us in what way the secrecy is to be violated; for if it be to be violated, there must be some mode of doing it. Voters will shew in what way they vote.

that

Your word shew has a double meaning; and is here employed in your usual, that is, equivocating way. It means either seeing or hearing. If you say, that the voter will let it be seen how he votes, we can take perfect security against that. If you say that the man would tell how he votes; we answer, the man may do so, as much as he pleases; but the secrecy of the vote will be just as perfect as ever; since it must for ever be a secret whether or not he speaks the truth. At any rate the man who proclaims the knavery of giving a prostitute vote, cannot be depended upon for speaking the truth.

We affirm, then, and upon ground which seems impregnable; 1st. that voting may be rendered perfectly secret; 2nd. that secret voting is a perfect security for independent voting; 3rd. that without independent voting all hope of good government is vain; and 4th, that in England there cannot be independent voting without secret voting. If so, we have a pretty complete argument for the ballot.

The language which is held by the enemies of the ballot is wonderful in almost every part of it; but we do not think there is any thing in it, which excites an odder mixture of feelings, in the intelligent mind, than what they say about the high moral consequences of the tumult and uproar of an election. The excitement, they tell us, produced in the people, by such proceedings, is of an admirable tendency. Their minds are thereby filled with the principles of virtue. Tumultuous elections are a kind of school, a gymnasium, for the training of patriots.

In the various pretexts which are made use of to decry secret voting, that indispensable foundation of a good representative system, in all countries in which the mass of the people are not in circumstances which place them above dependence; there is nothing which more deserves our attention than the animus displayed by them; the peculiar combination of intellectual and moral qualities, which alone seems competent to usher them into the world.

If what is thus affirmed were true, or if the men who affirm it believe it to be true, we should see them endeavouring to turn this admirable instrument of virtue to the greatest account. Every quiet election would, upon this principle, be an evil; it would defraud the country of so much virtue. Every close borough would not only be a blot in the constitution, but a principle of immorality; a cause why the standard of virtue, in the breasts of Englishmen, is so low as it is. Every compromise

in a county, by which, for avoiding of contests, a whig member and a tory member step quietly in, would, in truth, be a flagitious conspiracy against the virtue of the country. If the men who are parties to such compromise should defend it, as they commonly do, by saying that it preserves the peace of the county; that it avoids the excitement of hostile affections, which render men bad neighbours, bad relations, bad landlords, bad tenants, bad magistrates, bad masters, and bad servants; that it saves. from those scenes of profligacy, that intemperance, that ferocity, that falsehood, that perjury, that prostitution, that open contempt of all moral ties, which are the grand features of a contested election; if, we say, the men who find all these advantages in what they call the peace of the county, are the very men who tell us the ballot ought to be rejected, because it tends to prevent the golden virtues which are generated by a contested election,-they will not, at any rate, we hope, pretend to be consistent. If contested and exciting elections were thus efficacious in elevating the standard of public morality, the opulent men of the nation ought to have no object nearer their hearts, than to take effectual measures for preventing any election from ever being peaceable. This would be one of the highest services they could render to their country. Nor is this all. If contested, and exciting elections, made to be universal in the country, by the virtue of our opulent men, would produce so much virtue in the people, occurring, as they do, but once in seven years; how much higher would our virtue be raised, if we had the benefit of them every year? There are other elections, too, in the country, beside the elections for members of parliament. They ought undoubtedly all of them to be made to contain as much as possible of that which, in elections for members of parliament, is found to be the cause of such admirable effects; namely, their tumultuousness. All parish vestries ought to be open vestries. Yet here again we have occasion to deplore the little care of their consistency which is taken by our public men. There is nothing which they are more attached to than select vestries; which attachment has misled them so far, notwithstanding their love of tumultuous elections, that they have made the House of Commons the perfect model of a select vestry. The same thing nearly may be said, of all elections of magistrates in corporate towns. These elections please our public men, in proportion as they are on the plan of a select vestry. Yet of how much virtue is the nation thus deprived, which would be surely generated in it, according to the same theory of our public men, if all these elections were tumultuous? We cannot avoid carrying our views even farther. There are

various states and conditions, to which men are raised by various incidents, most improperly, if the process of tumultuous elections are so salutary upon the public mind. The appointment of clergymen, for example, not only for parochial duties, but to all the dignities, and all the riches, which some of them enjoy, ought to be made in the way which is most conducive to virtue. The peerage, so great a prize, ought assuredly not to be thrown away, by depending either upon individual choice, or the accident of birth, if so much benefit might be derived from it, in making it depend upon a tumultuous election. Nay the sovereignty itself ought to be elective, since, if the virtue generated by the small contest for a member of parliament be an object of any value, that generated by a choice of such ineffable importance to the nation, would be of infinitely greater value.

So much for the argumentum ad hominem; which, in this particular case, all discerning men will see to be of much more importance, than that sort of argument generally is. The intrinsic merits of the question are immediately seen, by a recurrence to the actual business done. There are two parties at an election; one, that of those who give prostitute votes; the other, that of those who suborn them. It is of no use to tell us that there are honest votes at elections; there might be more than any body will pretend there are, without affecting the truth of our description. The honest votes, taking the country as a whole, are a miserable exception. Now, then, draw the consequence. A scene got up for the most deeply immoral and degrading of all human purposes, for the perpetration of a great act of treachery to the nation, for delivering it into the hands of a small number of men, interested in all the abuses of misrule, contrary to the most solemn of all engagements, in the midst of fraud, perjury, and every other abomination, there are men who tell us is a scene, in which Englishmen have to learn their public virtue, and of which, from consideration of their virtues, it would be most dangerous to deprive them.-Those virtues in them, which fit them for the purposes of their suborners, they do learn there in great perfection. That is a truth beyond all dispute. No wonder the school should have patrons, in a class of men so deeply interested in its success.

One objection still remains, which, though we shall be able to shew that it rests entirely on misapprehension, we regard with far more respect than any of those which we have previously noticed; because the point of morality to which it refers is of the utmost importance, and because we know that it affects the minds of some men, who, on account both of their intellectual and moral qualities, are entitled to our highest esteem. These

men say, that secret voting, to make it answer its end, supposes mendacity. The man who is bribed, promises to vote one way, and actually votes another. The man who may be turned out of his house, or his farm, or suffer any other evil, votes one way, while he says that he votes another. This violation of truth, they say, is so odious, that it renders odious and ineligible whatever is necessarily combined with it.

This objection requires the more words to shew the nature of it truly, because the evil which it points at is all upon the surface, and is easily seen; the evil which is prevented lies deep, and can only be seen by an attentive observer.-Of two evils choose the least,-is, nevertheless, the proper rule, in this, every other case of human deliberation.

as in

Of so much importance is it to mankind, that they should be able to confide in what is said to them by one another, that no violation of the truth which would affect that end, can be justified.

There are circumstances, however, in which another man is not entitled to the truth; and these circumstances create a radical distinction. The cases in which men are not entitled to the truth constitute a class by themselves; subject to rules. altogether different from the class of cases in which they are entitled to the truth.

When

Men are not entitled to the truth, when they would make a bad use of it. This is a maxim sanctioned by the moral judgment and the practice of all ages and nations. men withhold the truth from such parties, they in fact do not violate the rule of veracity; they neither feel conscious of any guilt in themselves, nor is any ever imputed to them by others. The rule of veracity does not consist in giving information to a villain which he will employ in forwarding his villainous ends. Wrong information, for the prevention of evil, and, in certain circumstances, for the promotion of good, has rarely been classed among forbidden means by any set of men, civilized or barbarian. Who that saw a fellow-creature hiding himself from his intruding murderer, but would say to the ruffian whatever was most likely to mislead him in his pursuit? Instances might be multiplied without end. Take one of an ordinary sort. The Physician is not blamed, he does not consider himself as violating the sacred rule of veracity, when he assures his patient that he is in no danger, though he knows him to be in the greatest.

In no instance is wrong information conducive to the prevention of evil of such magnitude, as when it is conducive to the prevention of misrule. In no instance is any man less entitled to VOL. XIII.-Westminster Review.

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