Page:Ballot (Smith).djvu/21

 would recur to the accommodating convenience of ballot. A member of Parliament who votes against government can get nothing in the army, navy, or church, or at the bar, for his children or himself: they are placed on the north wall, and starved for their honesty. Judges, too, suffer for their unpopularity—Lord Kilwarden was murdered, Lord Mansfield burnt down; but voters, forgetting that they are only trustees for those who have no vote, require that they themselves should be virtuous with impunity, and that all the penalties of austerity and Catonism should fall upon others, I am aware that it is of the greatest consequence to the constituent that he should be made acquainted with the conduct of his representative; but I maintain, that to know, without the fear of mistake, what the conduct of individuals has been in their fulfilment of the great trust of electing members of Parliament, is also of the greatest importance in the formation of public opinion; and that, when men acted in the dark, the power of distinguishing between the bad and the good would be at an end.

To institute ballot is to apply a very dangerous innovation to a temporary evil; for it is seldom,