THE BALLOT.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1921, 2 July 1869, Page 2

THE BALLOT.

{To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sir —As an advocate of the Ballot of some years standing, I was much pleased with your recognition of Mr Reynolds’s efforts to confer that jiolitical blessing upon ns in New Zealand; and I'also read with much pleasure the extract you printed from a work recently printed at Home, and which extract clearly indicated that the prospect of the Ballot becoming the law of England, is certainly far more bright than it has been for some years past. I have since read the whole work from which you quoted, and was exceedingly glad to find other portions of it even more encouraging to the ardent admirers of the Ballot than was the one you quoted, I was, however, hardly prepared just yet for the announcement made in the morning’s Daily Times, in the following words ; —“The Ballot is regarded by its advocates .as the only effectual means of checking corrupt practices, just as it is the only means of preventing intimidation. It has at last been adopted in England, not only because it preserves the freedom of the voter, but’from U conviction no Acts of Parliament however stringent--can prevent bribery” ! Sir, having read the above announcement, I hastily bolted the remaining half of my unfinished roll, scalded my throat with my last cup of coffee, and rushed into town to congratulate my friends, and be congratulated by them, on this happy event; when, lo ! I found I had been sold !

I again had recourse (not in tho most genial mood, I confess) to my unfinished leader--alas, that I con'd not also have recourse to my “unfinished” breakfast; —and reading on some two-thirds of a column, I at last stumble upon another statement as follows:—“It is not true, as stated by Mr Fitzherbert, that it is a disputed point, in America and Australia, whether the Ballot has been advantageous or not. There is no dispute abmt if—and there never has been - in those countries since it was adapted by thorn. It is a subject of dispute in these

countries only where it has not been adopted —England for instance.” Now, Sir, I do think, for a—or rather the— 44 leading” journal this is really too bad. Of coarse it would compromise the dignity of the Time* to admit an error, or correct a mistake, and therefore I am anxious that the enemies of the Ballot should not be armed by its avowed friends with so powerful a weapon of ridicule as would be supplied in the supposed argument for the adoption of the Ballot in New Zealand, —“ It has at last been adopted in England.”

From the many paragraphs which appear between the two I nave quoted above, there occurs a small one of some four lines, which seems to me to explain if it does not excuse the discrepancy. It is as follows 44 Ballot is not an experiment. It is not an attempt to gain by doubtful means some Utopian blessing. It is simply a piece of machinery, the construction and operation of whieh are just as familiar to us as those of a tea-kettle.” Good gracious me J only to think of “ a teakettle” being a species of machinery, the construction and operation of which are just as familiar to us as those of 44 the Ballot.”

Now, sir, to me this unhappy “tea-kettle” appears to be clearly chargeable with the whole of the blunder. For d# I not see the Editor, happy dog ! comfortably esconced in his easy chair, his comfortably slippered feet upon the fender in front of his blazing fire ? do I not see on the table, at his elbow, all the concomitants of a comfortable glass of toddy—but, alas! 44 that confounded kettle, it won’t boil ! ” and under suoh circumstances I should like to know what editor could possibly be expected to write anything worthy of being read ? There is really nothing for it but to study the 4 4 construetion and operation” of that villianous 44 machinery,” the kettle ! But at length it boils, and the Editor is— 44 refreshed,” let us say? no—“himself again.”—Yours, tc , Voteb.