Page:Mr. John Stuart Mill and the ballot.djvu/7

5 —the duty of exercising that right for the public benefit. The task, however, of judging how to exercise his vote belongs to the individual voter, uninfluenced by any other considerations than those of reason and justice. It is not by exciting the fears, but by cultivating the feeling of responsibility, that selfishness is to be cured. This may be done far more effectually by means of secret than by open voting. In the former case, the community says, in effect, we have entrusted you with a vote; you must use that vote according to your conscience; here are our reasons for this or that course; judge, decide, and act according to the convictions they produce. The question whether the voter has a tendency to go right or wrong has not any bearing on the object of secret voting, which is to secure freedom of choice. Moreover, on the principle that men are held innocent till proved guilty, it is to be assumed that an unbiassed [sic] voter will do right to the best of his convictions. A jury does not act dishonestly because its deliberations are secret; it has yet to be proved that secret voting will encourage selfish and corrupt influences.

It is not, as Mr. Mill asserts, for the reason above quoted that no one approves of vote by ballot in Parliament itself. The representative and the represented occupy different positions; the former is the servant of the latter (or ought to be—open voting in many instances changes their relative position), and is directly responsible, for every vote, to those in whose behalf he acts. Publicity is not necessary, in this case, that the member of Parliament may be influenced by "the opinion which will be formed of his conduct by other people," but in order that his employers may know how he fulfils his trust, and may exercise their legitimate influence upon