tions have reached the lowest depths of inefficiency and infamy,
these but remind us that the work which 1852 has bravely carried on is
not yet achieved."--I would wish carefully to guard against being
understood to endorse the violent language employed by the _New York
Herald_. I am aware how unsafe a guide the Press ever is in times of
political excitement; but after making every reasonable allowance,
enough remains to prove the tendency of the secret ballot, corroborated
as it is by the authoritative message of the Governor of the State.

Let us now turn for a moment to that most witty and amusing writer,
Sydney Smith. In speaking of Mr. Grote's proposal for the ballot, the
author says, "He tells us that the bold cannot be free, and bids us
seek for liberty by clothing ourselves in the mask of falsehood, and
trampling on the cross of truth;"--and further on, towards the end of
the pamphlet, he quotes an authority that Americans must respect--"Old
John Randolph, the American orator, was asked one day, at a dinner-party
in London, whether the ballot prevailed in his State of Virginia? 'I
scarcely believe,' he said, 'we have such a fool in all Virginia as to
mention even the vote by ballot; and I do not hesitate to say that the
adoption of the ballot would make any nation a set of scoundrels if it
did not find them so.'"--John Randolph was right; he felt that it was
not necessary that a people should be false in order to be free.
Universal hypocrisy would be the consequence of ballot. We should soon
say, on deliberation, what David only asserted in his haste, that "all
men are liars."[CC]--How strangely prophetic the opinion of John
Randolph appears, when read by the light of the _New York Herald_ of
1852.

It has always appeared to me that the argument in favour of ballot which
is drawn from its use in clubs, if it prove anything at all, is rather
against than for it; its value there arises from the fact of the
independence of the members, which enables any member if asked by the
rejected candidate how he had voted, to decline giving any answer
without fear of consequences. Were he dependent, he must either deny the
black-ball he gave, had he so voted, or, confessing the fact, he must
suffer for it, and silence would be sure to be construed into a
black-ball: therefore, before ballot could be of any value to a
constituency, they must be independent; and if independent, there would
be no need of the ballot. Of course s