Page:Mr. John Stuart Mill and the ballot.djvu/4

The following pages were in type prior to the late General Election, but were withheld from publication, from a sense of the necessity for thorough unanimity in support of Mr. Mill. To secure his re-election seemed so important on many considerations, that it was felt advisable to waive even some important points of difference. The experience of the recent elections has not rendered the demand for the ballot unnecessary. It appears that corruption on an extensive scale is beginning to operate in constituencies hitherto regarded as free from that evil, while intimidation, especially in the counties, has assumed proportions previously unknown. As a preventive of such unconstitutional practices, and also of that lavish expenditure which, though not perhaps strictly illegal, is contrary to the spirit of the constitution and destructive of freedom of election, the writer knows no remedy equal to the ballot. He therefore ventures, as a supporter of Mr. Mill in 1865 and 1868, to submit his reasons for dissenting from Mr. Mill's conclusions respecting the ballot.