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Leader (1850-1860), 18th December 1858, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1387, Untitled Article

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      not in reality lessen their power of controlling the votes of the poor and dependent . Pressure on the elector is of two kinds—that of the many around him when they get angry or excited , and that of the few who , as landlords , creditors , customers , or lawyers , in cold blood put on the " screw . " The two kinds- of intimidation not only are different , but have a direct tendency to counteract each other . Whatever the faults of the ballot may be it goes directly against both , and in so far has the merit of fair play . But the system of

      votingpapers does not , and is not intended to , do anything of the kind . Its avowed object is to put an end to the means and opportunities of influence on the part of the many , while it leaves unchecked and untouched the various modes of quiet and silent pressure on the part of the few . That this is the view of its operation and tendency entertained by the class that desires to retain its unconstitutional power over votes at elections , will be made very plain by a brief reference to the history of the question .

      voters' dwellings ? In Lambeth two tradesmen , who . were themselves candidates for the office of Guardians , were brought before the magistrates on a charge of having gone to a voter ' s house , and , on his wife ' s authority , changing the voting-paper he had left signed . The charge was proved , and they were sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment . In the Union of West Bromwich , in 1854 , five ' agents were indicted for tampering with the votingpapers in no less than 342 cases ; they were found guilty , and sentenced to three months' imprisonment . At Bridport , in the same year , 49 cases were established in which the collector had either failed to collect the papers or to preserve them , and the commissioners declared the election void . At Bridgend , in Glamorganshire , candidates themselves were found to have obtained the votingpapers and kept them back , and the election was consequently set aside . In a single ward at Leeds , in 1852 , it was found upon inquiry that 111 cases were t ainted with forgery , as proved by affidavits . Again , in 1857 , similar frauds had been discovered in sixty instances , and

      many more were suspected . It was no answer to say that detection and punishment followed upon complaint being made . M any complaints of grievous abuse were preferred , which failed of being legally substantiated ; the proof was necessarily difficult , and the prosecution of such an inquiry took time and money . Six , nine , and even twelve months sometimes elapsed between the fraudulent return and its being finally declared void . In uncontested places the system of course worked without scandal or harm , but wherever it was exposed to the strain and tug of conflict it had proved wholly worthless

      and unreliable . Sir JFitzroy Kelly , Lord Ebrington , and others , endeavoured to weaken the effect produced by the facts above quoted , and the arguments by which they were enforced . But Lord Stanley and Sir George Grey having spoken iii support of Mr . M'Cullagh ' s amendment . Lord R . Cecil deemed it imprudent to go to a division . The evil was thus , for the time , averted , but it were rash to infer that it has therefore been finally got rid of . The scheme is too plausible in theory , and practically too apt for its purpose , to be readily abandoned . It recommends itself to all the kid-gloved class of politicians

      — . n . . m 1 , 1 ¦ 1 1 as an effectual way of putting down the vulgar din and dust of popular elections . It would enable them to record their perfumed votes through the intervention of their footmen , instead of being obliged to take the trouble of sauntering down three streets and a half to a polling-booth , or riding three miles and a half to a neigh bouring market-town , in order to tender their suffrage . Fov the rest of the community it would be the prolific parent of incurable distrust , intolerable espionage , infinite fraud , and irremediable oppression . The countervailing influence of popular feeling being absolutely

      withdrawn , the timid and the venal would yield without a struggle to the seductions of the tempter and the threats of the intimidator . The arts of corruption and menace would be plied unchecked and unobserved by the humble man ' s fireside ; and when he had put his namo to a political lie , he need not even fear the reproachful look of a neighbour , for his vote would be only known to the bailiff , or ( he briber , who had stood at his elbow , and the collector who received it at his hand . A more dctestnble or demoralising system never was invented by the selfish perversity of man .

      The first occasion on which the voting-paper system was proposed in Parliament was the 8 th of July , 1853 , when Lord Shaftesbury , in the Upper House , introduced a bill for that purpose . He explained its provisions thus : —in every city and borough papers containing the names of Parliamentary candidates should so many days before the election he left at the dwelling of each voter , and should on the following day be called for and taken by the collector to the returning officer ; the voter should mark with , his initials the name or uames of the candidates whom lie desired to vote for , and if so minded he might refuse to return the paper at authenticate his vote

      all ; his signature was to * and once returned to the collector he was not to be suffered to change or recal it . Lord Shaftesbury , who had voted against all reform in 1 S 32 , and who had invariably voted against every subsequent effort to extend the franchise or to protect the voter in the twenty years that followed , did not hesitate to commend " this notable scheme to the adoption of the Peers . Lord Aberdeen was then Premier ; he made no objection to the introduction of the measure , and when it came on for second reading said , that though he hoped it would not be pressed pending a promised Reform Bill , it possessed , he thought , great merit , and would in the preparation of the Government measure have the

      most favourable consideration of Ministers . Lord Hardwicke was sure that many persons of station would vote in the way proposed , who are now deterred by the turmoil of elections . Lord Wharucliffe praised the plan as the very best that was Sossibfe . The Marquis of Lansdowne and Earl " ortescue signified their approval , and Lord Grey would like to sec the system extended to counties as well as towns , though he admitted the drawbacks and dangers involved in it . Content with the general approval of the Peers and the promise of Lord Aberdeen , Lord Shaft csbury agreed not to press the bill any further that session . The Russian war broke out the following year , and the excuse was availed of to put aside all schemes of

      domestic amelioration . Soon after the new Parliament assembled in 1 S 57 , the voting-paper scheme was revived ; Lord llobert Cecil giving not ice in the Commons of his intention to move for a Committee to inquire into the best mode of carrying it into operation in county elections . This motion was opposed on the 4 th of June by Mr . Torrcns M'Culiagli , who wont at great length into an examination of the practical working of the system under the Poor-law , and showed that even where political passions and temptations could not bq supposed 1 o provail , it was accompanied by every species of corruption , forgery , and fraud , Ho cited various instances which hacf come before the public tribunals , in different places and

      at different tunes , in illustration of tho genoriu fact . At Swansea complaints were made in 1855 of gross irregularities in the election of guardians ; an inspector went down from tho Contra ! Board , and after much inquirv reported that gross improprieties had been committed , no fowor than seventy-three persons having never hnd any yoting-pnpora served upon them at all , and the motive assigned for such partisanship being that tho locality in question was inhabited for the most part by the " enemy . " The election was thereupon sot aside . Liko complaints were-next year made at Banbury , and for similar reasons there also the oleel ion was declared void . But oven if all tho voting-papers wore duly delivered to tho electors , who could prevent their hoing tamnorod with while thoy romainod in the

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      Electors have been , for a long succession of years , but one uninterrupted career of crime , tyranny , and unbounded licentiousness . They have freely bespattered themselves with every description of immoral filth . They have made their names famous , as the torturers of their people , as traders in the blood of their subjects , as vampires preying on the national life of Germany . Who is there that is ignorant of the sale of Hessian troops to the Tory Government of this country at the time when the rising republican freedom in America had to be bludgeoned to please our oliearchs at home ? The Elector sold these men to

      England with as little compunction as if they had been so many heads of cattle , and coolly pocketed by the transaction upwards of 21 , 000 , 000 of thalers . This peculiar trading was conducted after a curious fashion : it being stipulated that the Hessian Prince was to be indemnified by a regular graduated scale for the casualties that might happen among the men he farmed out to » fight other people ' s battles . Thus he received for a wounded subject so many thalers , whilst one downright killed , and done for , brought more still into the bereaved hands of this paternal prince . This clause in the dignified convention made it , of

      course , the interest of the Elector to let as many as possible of his dearly-loved subjects get knocked on . the head by the American republicans . There is a-hcmd-lillet , or autograph letter , of the Elector " Frederick H . still in existence , in which he expresses tlie charitable hope that "these d—d fellows , " his own troops , " will get themselves shot in sufficient numbers not to rob their own sovereign of his due profit from the treaty . " The system of thus selling the lives and services of their troopshas been a recognised system at the court bf Hesse-Cassel since the Thirty Years' War . Not a campaign was undertaken on the continent of Europebut the Elector there found a good opportunity for ¦

      • % * ^^ f c «¦ ^ ^ m- ^^^^* — — - — — - — — — - . j j ^ t ^ f stepping in and doing a little bit of business in the man-selling line , haggling for the price of his subjects' blood , and finally handing over his eligible lot of Hessian combatants to bidders on either side . This was no unprofitable game in those daysof dynastic contentions ; and considerable , indeed ,, were the revenues brought in by these very legitimate mercantile transactions . The millions thusacquired were , appropriately enough , expended in maintaining troops of harlots , and in providing for the multitudinous offspring of the many Mormonunions of the reigning house . The people , as may be well supposed , rebelled frequently against this

      tyranny . Several mutinies broke out in the ranks-6 f those who were thus unceremoniously sold asfighting machines to any customer willing to buy them . The Court , however , had a means ^ as simple as efficacious of dealing with , any exhibition of dissatisfaction . The approved custom on such occasions was to instantly shoot down those who made manifest their objections to the commercial arrangements of their Prince- There is one horrible passage in Schiller ' s p lay referring to thesedoings . lit is that in which Lady Milford , the-Elector ' s mistress , shudders at the sight of thediamonds presented her when she is told that they are the produce of the sale of thousands of citizens * some of whom had their brains blown out for

      refusing to be trafficked away into foreign service . The late Elector , as well as the present one , are after the approved pattern of their race . They have both been famous for the free-and-easy life they have led ; for the nonchalance with which they havo ridden down the people ; for the many political victims they have imprisoned or driven into exile ; and for tho amount of execration m which they are hold by the -whole country . We will not pollute our pen with a recital of the mode of life indulged' in by tho old profligate Elector . Tho worst days of the Regency in France , during the minority of Louis Xy ., were equalled , if not surpassed , in their enormity , at the Court of that

      BIOGRAPHIES OF GERMAN PRINCES . No . VI . FREDERICK WILLIAM I ., ELECTOR OF HESSECASSEL . The reigning family in Hcsse-Casscl are distinguished , even in Germany , by their self-willed and libidinous character , as well ns by tho grasping propensities which havo for centuries urged them on to tho committal of the most intolerable exactions , and to tho practising of downright frauds on the public exchequer . lXcsso-Casscl is tho classic soil of petty princely despots of tho fino old type . Its history has furnished the materials for that terrible tragedy of Schiller which is known in this country ns Louisa Miller , and in Germany , since Ifiland's day , under the title of Cabctlo und liebe . ¦ Not only lias tho groat poot laid the scene of his exciting drama at tho court of tho Elcotor , but the most stirring opisodos , tho most appalling situutions ho lias there introduced , aro but a faithful roflox , of Cvcnts as thoy passed in the unhallowed oirolo of that profligate dynasty . Tho livos of tho

      Princepetty fifth-rate prince . Ills liaison with tha " Countess Reichenbach , " the details of whion would not afford very edify ing matter for porusal , has furnished tho burden of many a seditious song in his principality . It is not our intention , for indeed tho task would bo an interminable one , togive any chronicle of tho many " morganatic ana " left-hand" unions , and other varieties of polygamy *' in which tho old Eleetor whippod Bngham Young or any othor dignitary of tho Mormon oroation . To suoli an extent , indood , had his oxcesses arrived , that the lady who was unfortunate enough to bo his lcgitimato wife fled tho country . Tho various , incidents of the " union" of the present ruler will *

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      No 456 , December 18 , 1858 . 1 THELEADE . E . 1387

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 18, 1858, page 1387, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2273/page/19/