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    sought from its operation ; because if that chance is but slender , we are bound to consider the price paid . This inquiry , therefore , resolves itself into three : —1 . Will the Ballot protect the voter ? 2 . Will it produce mischief , whether it succeeds or fails in giving protection ? 3 . If it protects the voter , is that benefit sufficient to outweigh the mischiefs it occasions V

    We shall endeavour to follow the writer through his arguments on these questions . He may have all the advantage of his own statement of the subject , and selection of topics . It will not be difficult to show the futility of his opposition on the ground and with the weapons of his own choice . The discussion of the first question is preceded by the observation , that the expedient

    in question has of late assumed a form entirely new as regards its importance / It is made a charge against Tory landlords , that € to them assuredly it is owing that we are now engaged seriously in discussing what a year ago we should hardly have deemed worth any argument . ' This complaint does not tell much for the writer ' s perspicacity , or for his memory . Did he really expect a

    year ago that Tory landlords would change their conduct and their natures ? Was he so unsuspecting as to believe that when once the Reform Bill was passed , pride , oppression , and cupidity , would instantly and spontaneously reform themselves , in order to be in harmony therewith ? There is nothing in what has occurred which need have taken anyone by surprise . The evil was old

    enough , and notorious enough . It was one which the Reform Bill was neither framed , nor intended to reach ; which in the particular case of tenants-at-will it directly increased ; and which , by the extension of the suffrage , but still keeping that suffrage a limited one , as compared with the mass of the population , it could not but increase incidentally ; nor is it fair , to charge the

    mischief exclusively on Tory landlords ; the question of influence is not between Whig and Tory , but between power and weakness , wealth and poverty , the aristocracy and the people . The Whigs have been under less temptation than the Tories , because they have usually been in opposition , and therefore on the popular side . A coincidence , by the way , which shows what the political

    condition of the country has been , and is sufficiently condemnatory of the mode in which it has been governed . Nor can we allow , that the Whigs come into court with clean hands . It was by that party that corruption in the House of Commons was matured and systematized , nor has its conduct in relation to the electors been any exception to the general rule , that the amount of crime bears

    a direct ratio to the force of the temptation . Usually both parties have played the same game , by the same means . Never had the Whigs so little occasion for the employment of influence as at the late elections : and yet the private history of some contests , and the obvious character of others , ( Chatham , for instance , ) shows that there was no indisposition to resort to it when it was

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    The Edinburgh Review and the Ballot . 75

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 75, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/3/