abusing their friends, pelting the man for whom they voted, drinking their enemies' punch, knocking down persons with whom they entirely agreed, and roaring out eternal duration to principles they abhorred. A scene of wholesale bacchanalian fraud, a posse comitatus of liars, which would disgust any man with a free government, and make him sigh for the monocracy of Constantinople.
All the arguments which apply to suspected tenants, apply to suspected shopkeepers. Their condition under the ballot would be infinitely worse than under the present system; the veracious shopkeeper would be suspected, perhaps without having his vote to appeal to for his protection, and the shopkeeper who meant to deceive must prop up his fraud, by accommodating his whole life to the first deceit, or he would have told a disgraceful falsehood in vain. The political persecutors would not be baffled by the ballot: customers, who think they have a right to persecute tradesmen now, would do it then; the only difference would be that more would be persecuted then on suspicion, than are persecuted now from a full knowledge of every man's vote. Inquisitors would be
