under compulsion of the evil which disobedience would bring upon them. Let us rest our thoughts, for a moment, upon the qualities of this social order,-upon such a relation of human beings to one another in the political union.

Let us first observe the obligations of those, to whom the function of voting is consigned. They are elected, and set apart from the rest of their fellow citizens, for the performance of a service to their country, upon which its vital interests depend. They are Trustees for the Community to which they belong; and in a Trust, importing the greatest good or evil, to the vast majority of their countrymen. Can there be a more sacred obligation? Is there any thing binding upon the conscience of man, if this is not to be considered binding in the highest degree? Is it not an act of virtue to be faithful to this Trust? Not an act of vice, to be unfaithful to it? Is there any thing in any conceivable act of treachery to render it odious, which is not in this act? Is not the habitual consciousness of treacherous acts, the perpetual feeling that a man is a villain? Is not the habitual consciousness of having been, and being now a villain, with the intention of continuing to be so, a complete perversion of the moral faculty? Is not such a man completely degraded from the rank of a moral being?

Let us now apply our serious thoughts to the condition of the men who are vested with this trust in our own country. It is matter of fact, notorious, and undisputed, that a certain number of opulent men hold the great majority of them in such a state of dependence, that they command their votes. Whatever may

be the opinion of any individual of this large majority respecting the superior fitness of one of two candidates, he will vote for the other, if the man on whom his fears or hopes depend commands him, to what degree soever he may deem him unfit for the exercise of the power, with which he so contributes to invest him. The nature and quality of the proceeding are obvious to all men's perception. The opulent man applies to the voting man the means which are in his power to make him commit an act in the highest degree criminal,—to betray a trust of unspeakable importance, committed to him by his country.

We are told that the voters ought not to be guilty of such criminal compliance. True. So say we. They ought to perish rather. And so they would, under a social order morally constituted. But what is to be expected, in a state of things which has no tendency to generate the high feelings of public virtue; a state of things in which the hollow pretence of public virtue is indeed in sufficient repute, but any effective display of the

reality excites only feelings of hatred; a state of things in which the interests of the men who have the lead in the country, and who set the fashion, in morals, as in clothes, are habitually pursued in opposition to the interests of the country; a state of things in which not only the morals of the people (at least any morals except those which are cultivated for the benefit of Priests and Masters) are neglected from their infancy, but the means are withheld by which even the seeds of morality could be sown in their breasts ? Does their country in this manner abandon the care of the people's morals; and does it reproach them with the want of them? Inconsistency here is not all ;-the inconsistency has dishonesty for the cause of it. The people are placed in circumstances in which they cannot have morals-the grand morals we now speak of-the enobling sentiment in the breast of every man to regard the public interest as his own. We upbraid them with this; and what next? What is the inference we draw? Only this-that the care of the public ought to be abandoned; and a few men ought to have the power placed in their hands of sacrificing, according to their discretion, the interests of their country to their own. Is the inference fairly drawn? Is it supported by the premises? The virtue of the people, you say, is weak. Unhappily it is so, deplorably weak; What then? Would it not be good to take all possible means to prevent it from being exposed to strong temptation? So say the men, who recommend the ballot. This is denied by the men, who resist the ballot, and who of course desire that the bad morals of the people, and all their pernicious consequences, should remain; as he who rejects the remedy, clings to the disease. Who are the men who profit by these bad morals? The men in whose hands, through that odious instrumentality, the powers of government are placed. Have they any interest in improving the morals, by the badness of which they derive advantage of such importance ?-Is it not a dreadful state into which a nation is brought, when its leading men have an interest in the badness of the morals of the people? Is it in the nature of things that, so situated, the morals of the people should be good?

Acknowledging, as we do most fully, the criminality of the voters; deeply sensible of the degree to which they are demoralized and degraded, by the part they act in returning members to parliament, let us now turn to the men who influence their votes, and endeavour to make an honest estimate of their virtues.

Let us first look at their conduct in its essence, and afterwards consider it in its circumstances. What is the nature of

the act, when a man attains the end he has in view, by being the cause of the criminal act of another person? Suppose the object, is to avoid the payment of a just debt; and that the man in question hires a person to make a false oath, which secures him that advantage; he is of course regarded as guilty of the perjury, in a higher degree, if possible, than the man by whose lips it is performed. Suppose the object is, to obtain possession of a fortune by the death of the person who holds it; and that the man we are supposing hires an assassin who executes his purpose is not he who hires the assassin the real author of the murder?

Who is there that has not already made the application to the case which it is our present business to illustrate? The voter for a member of parliament has a trust placed in his hands, on the discharge of which the highest interests of his country depend. Moral obligation is without a meaning, if the faithful discharge of this is not among the highest of all moral acts; the faithless discharge one of the basest of all immoral ones. To render this high obligation more binding still, the sanction of an oath is added. The voter solemnly swears, that he will not betray, but will faithfully execute, his trust. What happens? The unfortunate voter is in the power of some opulent man; the opulent man informs him how he must vote. Conscience, virtue, moral obligation, religion, all cry to him, that he ought to consult his own judgment, and faithfully follow its dictates. The consequences of pleasing, or offending, the opulent man, stare him in the face; the oath is violated, the moral obligation is disregarded, a faithless, a prostitute, a pernicious vote is given. Who is the author of this perjury, this prostitution, this treachery? There are two odious criminals; but assuredly the voter is the least criminal, and the least odious of the two.

Observe the horrid spectacle; two sets of men, the one comparatively rich, the other poor, so placed with respect to one another, that they act upon one another, for mutual corruption; that they gain their ends upon one another, only by a renunciation of the most sacred obligations, and the commission of the greatest crimes; that, in order to have inward peace, in such a course of acting, they must succeed in obliterating every trace of the higher morals from their minds. The sense of obligation to the community to which they belong, the regard due to a trust, are not compatible with their situation. The men who have occasion for the prostitution, the perjury, the faithlessness of voters, and the most perfect indifference on their part to the interests of their country, must beware how they appear to have any regard for morality before such persons, or any regard for country.

The appearance they put on is a curious one: it is that of a feigned scorn for all the public virtues, and a real hatred. This mixture of feeling gives a curious character even to the countenances of persons of the higher ranks in this country, distinguishable in most, and very marked in some.

When men have renounced the real virtues, they look out for substitutes, to conceal the state of their character, and, if possible, make its outside fair. It would be inconvenient, in almost any state of the world, for a set of men to proclaim their indifference to the good of the community in which they live; even where they are exerting themselves with the utmost energy to place the interests of the community permanently in a state of sacrifice to their own. What do they do? They find out whereon to display their zeal something which may be made to appear the interest of the community, but is in reality their own. Thus, under the old monarchy of France, the privileged classes possessed Loyalty in a high degree-an ardent love of the grand monarque; in other words, an ardent love of seeing placed as much as possible of other men's property at the disposal of the king, which he with royal bounty distributed among them. Our own gentry have a still better cry. It is the constitution-the British constitution! When trampling on every moral obligation in their way to their object, they still claim to be patriots, on the strength of a love to the constitution. Their actions interpret their words. Their love of the constitution is a love of suborned and prostituted votes ; a love of the power, thus placed in their hands, of raising taxes without limit upon the community, and dividing the proceeds among themselves. Loyalty, constitution, are pretty sounds. But what they mean is, Plunder.

The prostituted voter, we said, is less criminal, than his corrupter. Not only is he less criminal in the principal act; he being to a great degree the passive tool, the other the active agent; his crime being single, that of the suborner multiplied in every individual whose villainy he has secured; he is also less criminal in the circumstances of his act, they almost all in his case being extenuating, almost all in his suborner's case aggravating circumstances, of the guilt.

For what is the object of the suborner ?—To seat himself in parliament. This may be for a public purpose, or a selfish one. The public purpose is not that of the majority of candidates. No man, even a member of parliament, out of the House of Commons, will pretend that it is. No man, who knows his countrymen, and who means not to counterfeit or deceive, will deny, that those who go into the House constitute two classes; those who

go in for the vanity of the thing; and those who go in for plunder: and that the rest, at the highest estimate, constitute a miserable exception. Take the most favourable case, that of the man who goes into the House with a virtuous intention; this is not one of those motives, which urging a man with vehemence in a particular direction, takes off from the odiousness of a bad action. But pass this case, and go to those which so nearly include the whole body. Take one of the men whose object is mere vanity—the distinction of being a member of parliament. Is there any thing, in this petty, vulgar, motive, to extenuate the guilt of an enormous crime? The motive of that proportion of candidates who seek admission for the sake of plunder, is itself wicked, and of course adds to the wickedness of the conduct by which the admission is procured.

Contrast with these motives that of the voter on whom the immoral influence of property takes its effect. His situation, most commonly, is that of an occupant of the land, or of a house, of the man by whom his vote is suborned. His prospect is that of being turned out of such occupation, if he does not lend himself to the designs of his suborner. In general this is a calamity of the severest kind. Often it is ruin, or something little short of it. In most cases, it is a great revolution in the circumstances of the man, and his family; full of anxiety, full of labour, full of risk. Not to incur such a catastrophe must always be among the strongest desires, the most overpowering motives, of a human being. It is a crime in any one, even for such a motive as this, to betray his trust, to violate his faith pledged to his country, and, as far as he is concerned, to deliver it up to misgovernment and plunder. But assuredly, if temptation makes any difference in the degree of crime, and every system of law in the world assumes that it makes the greatest, there is no comparison between the turpitude of the man who gives a dishonest vote in such circumstances, and the turpitude of him who suborns it.

Another tremendous accusation lies upon the class of suborners. They are the class by whom chiefly the moral character of the voting classes is formed. The opinions which they spread of what is honourable, and what dishonourable, become the governing opinions. But the habits of thinking, about what is right and wrong, what is shameful, what the contrary, diffused among any people, constitute the moral character of that people. If pains are successfully taken with them to prevent their thinking a certain course of action shameful, though it really be so, they lose by degrees all moral feeling on the subject; in other words, are reduced to the most frightful state of