her evils which
are not to be found in corruption, I was naturally led to consider
whether it was possible to prevent it by any process similar to that by
which corruption is restrained. Corruption, you all know, is the subject
of penal laws. If it is brought home to the parties, they are liable to
severe punishment. Although it is not often that it can be brought
home, yet there are instances. I remember several men of large property
confined in Newgate for corruption. Penalties have been awarded
against offenders to the amount of five hundred pounds. Many members of
Parliament have been unseated on account of the malpractices of their
agents. But you cannot, I am afraid, repress intimidation by penal laws.
Such laws would infringe the most sacred rights of property. How can I
require a man to deal with tradesmen who have voted against him, or to
renew the leases of tenants who have voted against him? What is it that
the Jew says in the play?

"I'll not answer that,
But say it is my humour."

Or, as a Christian of our own time has expressed himself, "I have a
right to do what I will with my own." There is a great deal of weight
in the reasoning of Shylock and the Duke of Newcastle. There would be
an end of the right of property if you were to interdict a landlord
from ejecting a tenant, if you were to force a gentleman to employ a
particular butcher, and to take as much beef this year as last year.
The principle of the right of property is that a man is not only to
be allowed to dispose of his wealth rationally and usefully, but to
be allowed to indulge his passions and caprices, to employ whatever
tradesmen and labourers he chooses, and to let, or refuse to let, his
land according to his own pleasure, without giving any reason or asking
anybody's leave. I remember that, on one of the first evenings on which
I sate in the House of Commons, Mr Poulett Thompson proposed a censure
on the Duke of Newcastle for His Grace's conduct towards the electors of
Newark. Sir Robert Peel opposed the motion, not only with considerable
ability, but with really unanswerable reasons. He asked if it was meant
that a tenant who voted against his landlord was to keep his lease for
ever. If so, tenants would vote against a landlord to secure themselves,
as they now vote with a landlord to secure themselves. I thought, and
think, this argument unanswerable; but then it is unanswerable in favour
of the ballot; for, if it be impossi