The advocates of the B. used to maintain that it would prevent bribery, intimidation, and undue influence. They regarded its reputed failure in America as being beside the question as to its suitability for this country, because in America what the voter has to contend against. is the pressure of the many, while with us he seeks to resist coercion by individuals. The tenants, for instance, they said, want security. through concealment, arrainst the loss of their farms, should they vote against the wishes of their landlord, believed it would prevent bribery, through the uncertainty that the bribed party would vote as he promised. And as a candidate would not give bribes, because he could not trust that he would get value for his money, so intimidation would not be attempted in the absence of any security that it would be of effect. To this it was answered, on the other side, that the case of America was in point, inasmuch as intimidation might arise here, as there, from a majority, and that the case of a shopkeeper and his patrons was that of many against one all over the world. If the B. failed to protect the unit against the crowd iu one country, how could it succeed in another? As. to the undue influence of individuals over many—as of a landlord over his tenants—it could only be prevented providing the many, in all their public acts, contradict their secret votes. If the many acted publicly as if they agreed with the few, and privately voted against them, we should have had a state of things in which the professed public opinion would have been in antagonism with the public policy, supported by private votes—a stateof things justly regarded as being impossible to be produced. The influence of individuals, then, must remain—i.e., the secret voting would be of no use, since, short of lifelong hypoc risy, it must fail to be a protection. As to bribery, the opponents of the B. thought better of human nature than those who would purify it by machinery. "Honor among
thieves," they said: "he wlio takes a bribe, either has no principle left in hint for which to vote contrary to his promise, or will be guided by his deceased sense of honor." On the other view, they put it, you secure the vote of a rogue, through his playing the knave doubly, by the public in taking the bribe, and by the briber in not fulfilling his pledge. That men will be inclined to give and take bribes as formerly, despite the somewhat diminished security, they appeared not to doubt.
An element in the controversy was the question whether the franchise was to be regarded as a public trust, or a private power to be used at the individual's discretion. The opponents of the B. maintained the franchise to be a trust, on which view, cer tainly-. it should he openly exercised. Its advocates, on the other view, held the object of the franchise to be the ascertainment of the conscientious opinions of the people. The fact is, the right partakes of both characters: it is a power of expressing opinion by the agent under a sense of responsibility. The B. gives greater security for independ ence of thought; but the public vote is attended by the greater security for sense of responsibility. It used to be common to sprinkle pleas against the B. with high praise of the whole scheme of British politics, as open, manly, and candid, and with expres sions of contempt for the B., as sneaking., and dissonant with that scheme. But the advocates of the B. were not unprepared with a ready and obvious retort to such argu ments. Public feeling was kept alive on this question by annual motions in parliament. From 1835, its introdletion was an open question with the whirrs. The radicals, in 1859, were greatly pleased to find lord John Russell expressing himself as being almost &convert to their views. The controversy was put an end to in July. 1872. when voting at parliamentary and municipal elections in Great Britain and Ireland was decreed to be by ballot.