as to their real ultimate interests, and too honest in feeling to accept a bribe; still, intimidation, in the hands of those unprincipled enough to use such means, is an engine of irresistible power: who that has his bread, and the bread of his children to earn, although his sturdy spirit might have spurned a bribe, can nerve his imagination to view undaunted the long perspective of indefinite ills, and gradual decay, with which he is threatened by insolent power, rendered malignant by the mockery of law which forbids it to crush at once, the rebel against its imperious will.

How unsparingly, how unblushingly, and, unhappily, how effectually this engine of intimidation has been used, and is used at all elections, the almost personal experience of every individual in Great Britain can testify.

It may be attempted to be retorted, that the evil influences of bribery and intimidation are used on both sides; but even granting that the avowed advocates of honest measures were likely, in general, to be found as active in the use of dishonest means, as the avowed supporters of old abuses; still, those who have long profited by corruption, must necessarily have more wealth both to give as canvassers, and to withhold as customers, or landlords, than those whose sense of justice has, possibly, been sharpened by the very fact of their being, on the score of wealth, the victims of injustice.

X

Nay, the abettors of corruption are not ashamed to boast openly, that they can stand the expenses of repeated elections longer than their opponents can. In other words, that they consider it a good speculation, to purchase the power of perpetuating wrong, with a part of the wealth they have accumulated by perpetrating wrong!

Are the liberties of the nation then put up to auction, and are they to be knocked down to the highest bidder? Poor John Bull! Must he first have his pockets picked; and when, in consequence, he is short of cash, his estate bought up with his own money, by the self same knights of the nimble fingered trade who had extracted it from his pockets?

As to the objection, that there is something ungenerous, and "unenglish," in the concealment of the ballot it is quite absurd coming from a class of Englishmen, who use the prudent mystery of the said unenglish mask, in all their own club and pleasure arrangements. If men of liberal education, and independent circumstances, think there is no dishonour in screening themselves, while performing a fancied duty to exclusive society, from soreness of feeling, and possibly hostile encounters beneath the convenient shelter of the ballot, why should the self-same cloak be considered too shabby, or too unenglish a costume, to be worn by the shopkeeper, or the tenant, in cases of serious necessity, to preserve himself, his wife, and his chil

dren, from the utter ruin held in terrorem over him, by some wealthy but unprincipled customer or landlord, for his honest performance of a real duty to his country.

MUNICIPAL REFORM.

One thing more is indispensable to honest representation that is the completion of a thorough municipal reform, having for its basis the principle, that corporation privileges are a trust for the benefit of the people at large; and that those privileges, therefore, must be placed on a system of real representation, subject to the control of their constituencies. Until this be effected, corporations will not only retain their own gross local abuses, which in the aggregate constitute a great national abuse, but they will also be the strong holds of remaining corruption in Parliament; they being, from the undue and unconstitutional influence, which the abuse of the said privileges enables them to use at elections, a mischievous remnant of the close borough system.

CHAPTER XXI.

ON THE AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY OF VOTING IN

PARLIAMENT.

THE awful responsibility, in addition to the dishonesty, of giving a vote in Parliament on individual authority, is, unhappily seldom, if ever appreciated as it ought to be. Were the remodellers of our penal code, to place murders, robberies, and careless, or interested votes in Parliament on the same catalogue of guilty deeds, the justness of the classification would doubtless be questioned; yet few, in modern times, have been the victims of direct crime, compared with the many who have died of broken hearts, broken constitutions, and lack of food, shelter, and raiment; or pined, through a lingering existence, in hopeless poverty, in consequence of unwise regulations, made laws by insufficiently considered votes, given with a view to enhance the wealth of the already rich of this country; few, if any one of whom, it is to be presumed, would have directly

deprived of life or of property a single fellow creature, to have been possessed of the wealth of worlds! But this is not sufficient: beings gifted with reasoning and reflecting powers are surely bound to examine into the most remote tendencies, as well as the more immediate consequences of their actions; and must not hope that, having been instrumental in producing circumstances out of which have arisen deaths or unjust transfers of property, they can continue innocent of the frightful and disgraceful crimes of murder or of robbery, merely because the operation of the causes which brought these inflictions on their fellow men, was indirect. If a vote carelessly given in merely following the lead of party, tend, at any distance of time, to enrich one class, or one individual, unjustly, at the expense of another class or individual, or to shorten, through misery, or unnecessary (that is to say, not strictly defensive) warfare, or any other cause, the life of a fellow creature, if the tendency be one that was within the reach of human foresight to have perceived on the most strict and severe examination of the subject, he who gives his vote without this strict and severe examination is guilty of murder, or of robbery, or of both, as the case may be. To plead hasty or mistaken views is no apology; the neglect of that study which would have mastered the science of legislation, and brought within the scope of his mental vision the ultimate consequences of mea