practice to an incalculable degree. Why should it not do so ? The organisation for controlling elections we see is at hand. What is to prevent a candidate from stipulating that his payment shall depend on his success. He need not inquire who votes for him or who does not. It is sufficient that all the leaders know that their reward depends upon their skilful and resolute conduct in placing a certain candidate at the head of the poll. It is not possible to conceive anything more desperate, or more unprincipled, than such a contest may become. The system of individual independence preserves a record of every vote, with the name of the elector by whom it is given, and it prevents any struggle, by depriving every elector both of the motive and power of conquering or overruling the will of another by the force of a majority.
The ballot proposes to protect the conscience of the elector, when that conscience is called into action by a predominant sense of the superior merit of any candidate. In the larger constituencies only fifty-five per cent of the voters, at the utmost, interfere at all, and have, therefore, any conscientious motive one way or the other.[1] The system of individual independence calls the conscience into action in the case of every elector, by making him feel that he has a personal interest and power, which he cannot misuse or neglect, without knowing that he has tailed in his duty.
The ballot proposes to secure the uncontrolled exercise of
- ↑ Mr. Kinglake lately, at Bridgewater, mentioned the benefit that accrued to a voter who had lost his employment by his vote, and had procured, through his aid, a better situation at Woolwich. It suggests the value of investigating all such cases, and of procuring, by agency easily found, ample indemnity to every one who may be in danger of suffering from such a cause. Not only would the voter have the sympathy of all persons of his own opinion, but all would be anxious to receive him for their own sakes,—every landlord and every master knowing the inestimable value of a conscientious tenant or workman. It would at once bo individual profit, economical advantage, and political amelioration, without the degradation of the ballot.
