of Bridport shall not beat the 400 | gratuity of five pounds, promises his poorest voters. Everybody who has own vote, and that of the chaste a house shall vote, or everybody who Arabella his wife, to the Tory candiis twenty-one shall vote, and then the date; he, Walter Wiggins, having also people will be sure to have their way sold, for one sovereign, the vote of the we will blackball every member before-named Arabella to the Whigs. standing for Bridgewater who does Mr. John Wiggins, a tailor, the male not promise to vote for universal suff-progeny of Walter and Arabella, at rage.' the solicitation of his master, promises The ballot and universal suffrage his vote to the Whigs, and persuades are never mentioned by the Radicals his sister Honoria to make a similar without being coupled together. No- promise in the same cause. Arabella, body ever thinks of separating them. the wife, yields implicitly to the wishes Any person who attempted to separate of her husband. In this way, before them at torchlight or sunlight meet- the election, stand committed the ings would be hooted down. It is highly moral family of Mr. Wiggins. professedly avowed that ballot is only The period for lying arrives, and the wanted for ulterior purposes, and no mendacity machine is exhibited to the one makes a secret of what those view of the Wigginses. What hapulterior purposes are: not only would pens? Arabella, who has in the the gift of ballot, if universal suffrage interim been chastised by her drunken were refused, not be received with husband, votes secretly for the Radigratitude, but it would be received cals, having been sold both to Whig with furious indignation and con- and Tory. Mr. John Wiggins, pledged tempt, and universal suffrage be speedily extorted from you.

There would be this argument also for universal suffrage, to which I do not think it very easy to find an answer. The son of a man who rents a house of ten pounds a year is often a much cleverer man than his father; the wife more intelligent than the husband. Under the system of open voting, these persons are not excluded from want of intellect, but for want of independence, for they would necessarily vote with their principal; but the moment the ballot is established, according to the reasoning of the Grote school, one man is as independent as another, because all are concealed, and so all are equally entitled to offer their suffrages. This cannot sow dissensions in families; for how, ballotically reasoning, can the father find it out? or, if he did find it out, how has any father, ballotically speaking, a right to control the votes of his family? I have often drawn a picture in my own mind of a Balloto-Grotical family voting and promising under the new system. There is one vacancy, and three candidates, Tory, Whig, and Radical. Walter Wiggins, a small artificer of shoes, for the moderate

beyond redemption to Whigs, votes for the Tory; and Honoria, extrinsically furious in the cause of Whigs, is persuaded by her lover to vote for the Radical member. The following Table exhibits the state of this moral family, before and after the election:

Walter Wiggins sells himself once and his wife twice.

Arabella Wiggins, sold to Tory and Whig,
votes for Radical.

John Wiggins, promised to Whig, votes for
Tory.

Honoria Wiggins, promised to Whig, votes
for Radical.

In this way the families of the poor, under the legislation of Mr. Grote, will become schools for good faith, openness, and truth! What are Chrysippus and Crantor, and all the moralists of the whole world, compared to Mr. Grote?

It is urged that the lower order of voters, proud of such a distinction, will not be anxious to extend it to others: but the lower order of voters will often find that they possess this distinction in vain-that wealth and education are too strong for them; and they will call in the multitude as auxiliaries, firmly believing that they can curb their inferiors and conquer

their superiors. Ballot is a mere illu- | lousy and interference of no importsion, but universal suffrage is not an ance? illusion. The common people will to hold get nothing by the one, but they will gain everything, and ruin everything, by the last.

If ballot, after all, be found out a real protection to the voter, is universal lying of no importance? I can understand what is meant by calling ballot a great good, or a great evil; but, in the mighty contention for power which is raging in this country, to call it indifferent, appears to me extremely foolish in all those in whom it is not extremely dishonest.

Some members of Parliament who mean to vote for ballot, in the fear of losing their seats, and who are desirous of reconciling to their conscience such an act of disloyalty to mankind, are fond of saying that ballot is harmless; that it will neither do the good nor If the ballot did succeed in enabling the evil that is expected from it; and the lower order of voters to conquer that the people may fairly be indulged their betters, so much the worse. In in such an innocent piece of legisla- a town consisting of 700 voters, the tion. Never was such folly and mad- 300 most opulent and powerful (and ness as this: ballot will be the cause therefore probably the best instructed) of interminable hatred and jealousy would make a much better choice than among the different orders of man- the remaining 400; and the ballot kind; it will familiarise the English would, in that case, do more harm people to a long tenor of deceit; it than good. In nineteen cases out of will not answer its purpose of protect-twenty, the most numerous party ing the independent voter, and the would be in the wrong. If this be people, exasperated and disappointed the case, why give the franchise to by the failure, will indemnify themselves by insisting upon unlimited suffrage. And then it is talked of as an experiment, as if men were talking of acids and alkalies, and the galvanic pile; as if Lord John could get on the hustings and say, "Gentlemen, you see this ballot does not answer; do me the favour to give it up, and to allow yourselves to be replaced in the same situation as the ballot found you." Such, no doubt, is the history of nations and the march of human affairs; and, in this way, the error of a sudden and foolish largess of power to the people might, no doubt, be easily retrieved! The most unpleasant of all bodily feelings is a cold sweat: nothing brings it on so surely as perilous nonsense in politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily frame when I hear the ballot talked of as an experiment.

I cannot at all understand what is meant by this indolent opinion. Votes are coerced now; if votes are free, will the elected be the same? if not, will the difference of the elected be unimportant? Will not the ballot stimulate the upper orders to fresh exertions? and is their increased jea

all? why not confine it to the first
division? because even with all the
abuses which occur, and in spite of
them, the great mass of the people are
much more satisfied with having a vote
occasionally controlled, than with having
none. Many agree with their supe-
riors, and therefore feel no control.
Many are persuaded by their supe-
riors, and not controlled. Some are
indifferent which way they exercise
the power, though they would not
like to be utterly deprived of it.
Some guzzle away their vote, some
sell it, some brave their superiors, if
they are threatened and controlled.
The election, in different ways, is af-
fected by the superior influence of the
upper orders; and the great mass
(occasionally and justly complaining)
are, beyond all doubt, better pleased
than if they had no votes at all. The
lower orders always have it in their
power to rebel against their superiors;
and occasionally they will do so, and
have done so, and occasionally and
justly carried elections* against gold,

*The 400 or 500 voting against the 200 are right about as often as juries are right in differing from judges; and that is very seldom.

and birth, and education. But it is who pretend to foresee all the consemadness to make laws of society quences to which they would give birth. which attempt to shake off the great When I speak of the tolerable state of laws of nature. As long as men love happiness in which we live in England, bread, and mutton, and broad cloth, I do not speak merely of nobles, squires, wealth, in a long series of years, must and canons of St. Paul's, but of drivers have enormous effects upon human of coaches, clerks in offices, carpenters, affairs, and the strong box will beat blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and the ballot box. Mr. Grote has both, most men who do not marry upon nobut he miscalculates their respective thing, and become burdened with large powers. Mr. Grote knows the relative families before they have arrived at values of gold and silver; but by what years of maturity. The earth is not moral rate of exchange is he able to sufficiently fertile for this: tell us the relative values of liberty Difficilem victum fundit durissima tellus. and truth?

It is hardly necessary to say anyAfter all, the great art in politics thing about universal suffrage, as there and war is to choose a good position is no act of folly or madness which it for making a stand. The Duke of may not in the beginning produce. Wellington examined and fortified the There would be the greatest risk that lines of Torres Vedras a year before the monarchy, as at present constituted, he had any occasion to make use of the funded debt, the established church, them, and he had previously marked titles, and hereditary peerage, would out Waterloo as the probable scene of give way before it. Many really honest some future exploit. The people seem men may wish for these changes; I to be hurrying on through all the know, or at least believe, that wheat and barley would grow if there were no Archbishop of Canterbury, and domestic fowls would breed if our Viscount Melbourne was again called Mr. Lamb; but they have stronger nerves than I have who would venture to bring these changes about. So few nations have been free, it is so difficult to guard freedom from kings, and mobs, and patriotic gentlemen; and we are in such a very tolerable state of happiness in England, that I think such changes would be very rash; and I have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and penetration of political reasoners

well known steps to anarchy; they
must be stopped at some pass or an-
other: the first is the best and the most
easily defended, The people have a
right to ballot or to anything else which
will make them happy; and they have
a right to nothing which will make them
unhappy. They are the best judges
of their immediate gratifications, and
the worst judges of what would best
conduce to their interests for a series
of years. Most earnestly and conscien-
tiously wishing their good, I say,
NO BALLOT.

SYDNEY SMITH.

LETTER

TO

LEONARD HORNER, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR,

You desire me to commit to paper my recollections of your brother, Francis Horner. I think that the many years which have elapsed since his death have not at all impaired my memory of his virtues, at the same time that they have afforded me more ample means of comparing him with other important human beings with whom I have become acquainted since that period.

degree of credit to any evidence against him: there was in his look a calm settled love of all that was honourable and good-an air of wisdom and of sweetness; you saw at once that he was a great man, whom nature had intended for a leader of human beings; you ranged yourself willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his sway.

He had an intense love of knowledge; he wasted very little of the portion of I first made the acquaintance of life conceded to him, and was always Francis Horner at Edinburgh, where improving himself, not in the most he was among the most conspicuous foolish of all schemes of education, in young men in that energetic and in- making long and short verses and fragrant city. My desire to know scanning Greek choruses, but in the him proceeded first of all from being masculine pursuits of the philosophy cautioned against him by some excel- of legislation, of political economy, of lent and feeble people to whom I had the constitutional history of the country, brought letters of introduction, and and of the history and changes of who represented him to me as a person Ancient and Modern Europe. He had of violent political opinions; I inter-read so much, and so well, that he preted this to mean a person who was a contemporary of all men, and a thought for himself— who had firmness citizen of all states. enough to take his own line in life, and who loved truth better than he loved Dundas, at that time the tyrant of Scotland. I found my interpretation to be just, and from thence till the period of his death we lived in constant society and friendship with each other.

I never saw any person who took such a lively interest in the daily happiness of his friends. If you were unwell, if there was a sick child in the nursery, if any death happened in your family, he never forgot you for an instant! You always found there was a man with a good heart who was never far from you.

He loved truth so much, that he never could bear any jesting upon important subjects. I remember one evening the late Lord Dudley and myself pretended to justify the conduct of the government in stealing the Danish fleet; we carried

on the argument with some wickedness | tion, I never observed that his fatne against our graver friend; he could produced the slightest alteration in his not stand it, but bolted indignantly out deportment: he was as affable to me, of the room; we flung up the sash, and, and to all his old friends, as when we with loud peals of laughter, professed were debating metaphysics in a garret ourselves decided Scandinavians; we in Edinburgh. I don't think it was offered him not only the ships, but all in the power of ermine, or mace, or the shot, powder, cordage, and even the seals, or lawn, or lace, or of any of biscuit, if he would come back: but those emblems and ornaments with nothing could turn him; he went home; which power loves to decorate itself, and it took us a fortnight of serious to have destroyed the simplicity of his behaviour before we were forgiven. character. I believe it would have Francis Horner was a very modest defied all the corrupting appellations person, which men of great under- of human vanity: Serene, Honourable, standing seldom are. It was his habit | Right Honourable, Sacred, Reverend, to confirm his opinion by the opinions Right Reverend, Lord High, Earl, of others; and often to form them from the same source.

His success in the House of Commons was decided and immediate, and went on increasing to the last day of his life. Though put into Parliament by some of the Great Borough Lords, every one saw that he represented his own real opinions: without hereditary wealth, and known as a writer in the Edinburgh Review, his independence was never questioned: his integrity, sincerity, and moderation, were acknowledged by all sides, and respected even by those impudent assassins who live only to discourage honesty and traduce virtue. The House of Commons, as a near relation of mine* once

observed, has more good taste than any man in it. Horner, from his manners, his ability, and his integrity, became a general favourite with the House; they suspended for him their habitual dislike of lawyers, of political adventurers, and of young men of conseederable taalents from the North.

Marquis, Lord Mayor, Your Grace, Your Honour, and every other vocable which folly has invented and idolatry cherished, would all have been lavished on him in vain.

The character of his understanding was the exercise of vigorous reasoning, in pursuit of important and difficult truth. He had no wit; nor did he condescend to that inferior variety of this electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of Wut, is so infinitely distressing to persons of good taste: he had no very ardent and poetical imagination, but he had that innate force, which,

Suasit, et induxit noctes vigilare serenas
Quemvis perferre laborem
Quærentem dictis quibus, et quo carmine

demum

Clara suæ possit præpandere lumina menti.

Your late excellent father, though a very well informed person, was not what would be called a literary man, Your brother was wholly without and you will readily concede to me pretensions or affectation. I have that none of his family would pretend lived a long time in Scotland, and to rival your brother in point of talents. have seen very few affected Scotch-I never saw more constant and high men; of those few he certainly was not one. In the ordinary course of life, he never bestowed a thought upon the effect he was producing; he trusted to his own good nature and good intentions, and left the rest to chance.

principled attention to parents than in his instance; more habitual and respectful deference to their opinions and wishes. I never saw brothers and sisters, over whom he might have assumed a family sovereignty, treated with more cheerful, and endearing

Having known him well before he had acquired a great London reputa-equality. Mr. Sydney Smith's brother, the late

Mr. Robert Smith.

I mention these things, because men who do good things are so much more valuable than those who