Sydney Smith

“ 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 the evil that is expected from it; and that the people may fairly be indulged in such an innocent piece of legislation. Never was there such folly and madness as this: ballot will be the cause of interminable hatred and jealousy among the different orders of mankind; it will familiarise the English people to a long tenor of deceit ”

“ The answer of the House of Commons is, "One of you is undoubtedly the rightful member, but we have so framed our laws of election, that it is impossible to find out which that man is; the loss and penalties ought only to fall upon one, but they must fall upon both; we put the well-doer and the evil-doer precisely in the same situation, there shall be no election;" ”

“ What a flood of deceit and villany comes in with ballot! I admit there are great moral faults under the present system. It is a serious violation of duty to vote for A. when you think B. the more worthy representative; but the open voter, acting under the influence of his landlord, commits only this one fault, great as it is:—if he vote for his candidate, the landlord is satisfied, and asks no other sacrifice of truth and opinion; but if the tenant votes against his landlord under the ballot, he is practising every day some fraud to conceal his first deviation from truth. ”

“ Nineteen tenants out of twenty care nothing about their votes, and pull off their opinions as easily to their landlords as they do their hats. As far as the great majority of tenants are concerned, these histories of persecution are mere declamatory nonsense; they have no more predilection for whom they vote than organ pipes have for what tunes they are to play. A tenant dismissed for a fair and just cause, often attributes his dismissal to political motives, and endeavours to make himself a martyr with the public: a man who ploughs badly, or who pays badly, says he is dismissed for his vote. ”

“ Many are persuaded by their superiors, 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, a few are threatened and controlled. The election, in different ways, is affected 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 ”

“ The real object is to vote for the good politician, not for the kind-hearted, or agreeable man: the mischief is just the same to the country whether I am smiled into a corrupt choice, or frowned into a corrupt choice,—what is it to me whether my landlord is the best of landlords, or the most agreeable of men? ”

“ The noise and jollity of a ballot mob must be such as the very devils would look on with delight. A set of deceitful wretches wearing the wrong colours, 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. ”

“ The ballot would fail: it would be found neither to prevent intimidation nor bribery. Universal suffrage would cure both, as a teaspoonful of prussic acid is a certain cure for the most formidable diseases; but universal suffrage would in all probability be the next step. "The 200 richest voters of Bridport shall not beat the 400 poorest voters. Every body who has a house shall vote, or every body who is twenty-one shall vote, and then the people will be sure to have their way—we will blackball every member standing for Bridgewater who does not promise to vote for universal suffrage." ”

“ In clubs, ballot preserves secrecy; but in clubs, after the barrister has blackballed the colonel, he most likely never hears of the colonel again: he does not live among people who are calling out for seven years the colonel for ever; nor is there any one who, thinking he has a right to the barrister's suffrage, exercises the most incessant vigilance to detect whether or not he has been defrauded of it. I do not say that ballot never can in any instance be made a mean of secrecy and safety, but that it cannot be so in popular elections. ”

“ Shopkeepers, too, are very apt to cry out before they are hurt; a man who sees after an election one of his customers buying a pair of gloves on the opposite side of the way, roars out that his honesty will make him a bankrupt, and the county papers are filled with letters from Brutus, Publicola, Hampden, and Pym.
This interference with the freedom of voting, bad as it is, produces no political delibration; it does not make the Tories stronger than the Whigs, nor the Whigs than the Tories, for both are equally guilty of this species of tyranny ”

“ In the open voting, the law leaves you fairly to choose between the dangers of giving an honest, or the convenience of giving a dishonest vote; but the ballot law opens a booth and asylum for fraud, calling upon all men to lie by beat of drum, forbidding open honesty, promising impunity for the most scandalous deceit, and encouraging men to take no other view of virtue than whether it pays or does not pay ”

“ Not only you do not protect the tenant who wishes to deceive his landlord, by promising one way and voting another, but you expose all the other tenants who have no intention of deceiving, to all the evils of mistake and misrepresentation. The steward hates a tenant, and a rival wants his farm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the same manner, there are instances of shopkeepers being materially injured in their business from the votes they have given; but the facts themselves, as well as the consequences, are grossly exaggerated. If shopkeepers lose Tory they gain Whig customers; and it is not always the vote which does the mischief, but the low vulgar impertinence, and the unbridled scurrility of a man who thinks that by dividing to mankind their rations of butter and of cheese, he has qualified himself for legislation, and that he can hold the rod of empire because he has wielded the yard of mensuration. ”

“ When two great parties in the empire are combating for the supreme power, does Mr. Grote imagine, that the men of woods, forests, and rivers,—that they who have the strength of the hills,—are to be baffled by bumpkins thrusting a little pin into a little card in a little box? ”

“ Even in elections, a consummate hypocrite who was unmarried, and drank water, might perhaps exercise his timid patriotism with impunity; but the instances would be so rare, as to render ballot utterly inefficient as a general protection against the abuses of power.
In America, ballot is nearly a dead letter; no protection is wanted: if the ballot protects any one it is the master, not the man. Some of the states have no ballot,—some have exchanged the ballot for open voting. ”

“ But if landlords could be prevented from influencing their tenants in voting, by threatening them with the loss of farms;—if public opinion were too strong to allow of such threats, what would prevent a landlord from refusing to take, as a tenant, a man whose political opinion did not agree with his own? ”

“ Purity of election, the fair choice of representatives, must be guarded either by the coercing power of the House of Commons exercised upon petitions, or it must be guarded by the watchful jealousy of opposite parties at the registrations; but if (as the Radicals suppose) ballot gives a power of perfect concealment, whose interest is it to watch the registrations? If I despair of distinguishing my friends from my foes, why should I take any trouble about registrations? ”

“ Is not public opinion formed by such feelings? and is it not a dark and demoralising system to draw this veil over human actions, to say to the mass, be base, and you will not be despised; be virtuous, and you will not be honoured? ”

“ Of course there would be no pay till after the election, and the man who having one vote had put himself down on two lists, or having two votes had put himself down on three lists, could hardly fail to be detected, and would of course lose his political aceldama. There must be honour among thieves; the mob regularly inured to bribery under the canopy of the ballot, would for their own sake soon introduce rules for the distribution of the plunder, and infuse, with their customary energy, the morality of not being sold more than once at every election. ”

“ Landed proprietors imagine they have a right to the votes of their tenants; and instances, in every election, are numerous where tenants have been dismissed for voting contrary to the wishes of their landlords. In the same manner strong combinations are made against tradesmen who have chosen to think, and act for themselves in political matters, rather than yield their opinions to the solicitations of their customers. ”

“ Now, the tendency of ballot would be to destroy all the Pelhams, Johnsons, Rogers', and Smiths, to sow a universal mistrust, and to exterminate the natural guides, and leaders of the people: political influence, founded upon honour and ancient honesty in politics, could not grow up under such a system. No man's declaration could get believed. It would be easy to whisper away the character of the best men ”