THE BALLOT—THE TIMES—AND THE UNITED STATES.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 364, 19 April 1861, Page 4

THE BALLOT—THE TIMES—AND THE UNITED STATES.

To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Sir—lt occurs to me that as nature in many cases takes care that the antidote shall not be far distant from the poison; as the red man, indigenous with the rattlesnake, becomes acquainted with the means of rendering its bits innocuous; as, in the -vicinity of the irritating nettle, the lowly dock plant furnishes its sedative leaf—so let us be content to know that a remedy for the_ unhealthy secretions and pestilent exhalations of Printing House-square, as disseminated in the Times, is to be found in the^ writings of their correspondents, and the faithful statements of those engaged to report for that paper. Thus, after I have read in the Times some unblushing fallacy, such as that nobody ever knew a parson who actually wanted the ballot, I have at once applied the balsam of truth to the poisoned spot, as supplied by some reporter who has given the details of malversation of the franchise and violation of the rights of conscience in some election which had just taken place; the reporter of the Times thus refuting and rebuking the leading articles written by some gentleman ambushed in Printing House-square.

If you would look back at the leaders of the Times put forth with a view to bully down the ballot question, you will see that for the last twelve months or more the determination of that paper has been to draw the ugliest and least faithful picture possible of America, her statesmen, and her institutions, whether social or political, for the purpose of forcing the following inference upon the public mind. The Americans use the ballot in elections. There is nothing

sufficiently attractive in their political and social condition to induce us to Americanise England, as Mr. Berkeley desires, so we won't have the ballot. Small Tory lords take up the shallow cry, and barking Tory candidates mouth it on the hustings. " And so," says the Times, "we decide that the ballot is dead." Now, nothing could shake off the Times' grasp on America. It signified nothing that I had never quoted America as furnishing the best illustration of the working of the ballot. On the contrary, I had strongly recommended the example of our Australian colonies. That was not of the slightest consequence. The Times ignores Australia, and sticks to America—to bowie knives, lynch law, spitting dishes, and revolvers. Lo, there! See the social condition of the people. Behold, it is produced by their political status. Beware! oh beware, my friends, of universal expectoration, bowie difficulties, and the ballot. Never for an instant does the Times drop its swagger, or ask itself whether open voting would relieve the social condition of the country. It is enough to know that AmeJca has the ballot—to assume that her condition, polically and socially, is low—and to rail at 230 members of the House of Commons, amongst them the Presidents of the Board of Trade and Poor Law Board, the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, who set the humble individual who now addresses you in the front of their battle, and are determined to drag down England to the condition of America.

In this key has the Times, for nearly two years, taken up its song. Why has it suddenly ceased? The old story. The special correspondent of the Times in America has exploded a shell among the conclave at home, and knocked their rubbish to atoms. The special correspondent of the Times presents a picture of social order and national refinement, which he candidly admits to be unequalled in any part of the world—in its worth and grandeur, possible in America alone. Here was a people whose institutions worked so gloriously that, while millions were congregating together, they never for an instant assumed the attitude of a mob—a people presenting to our astonished Prince of Wales an army excellently disciplined, and no constabulary to keep the peace, the army being unpaid, and the people acting as constables to ihe nation.

In Paris—says the special correspondent, not of the Ballot Society, but of the Times —it would have been a Government affair of ■ soldiers and gendarms; in London it would have been a mob, with an immense police force to control it; in America it was such a welcome as only a whole people and a free people could ever give. Quiet and demure, continues this impartial writer, as are the English people, there are yet few Englishmen who can realise the fact of the inhabitants of an immense city turning out to witness a spectacle, entrusted at the same time with the duty of keeping order among themselves. In Philadelphia the Prince of Wales had an opportunity of witnessing the conduct of the second city of the Union during an election, " the very crisis of the long and fierce struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats," and the special correspondent of the Times tells the world that this election by ballot was conducted with peace, order, and regularity perfectly startling to us Englishmen, who certainly would not select a general election as a moment in which social order is particularly remarkable, either in Great Britain or Ireland. In Philadelphia there was nothing to tell the Prince of Wales a contested election was going forward, so orderly, so quietly, so regularly, were the proceedings carried on. The people looked at the Prince, and cheered him. The Prince looked at the people, and took his hat off kindly and respectfully :

The many rend the skies with vast applause. At the Opera, in the evening, the Times' special correspondent tells that the creme de la creme of American society was present; and that, although the audience rose en masse when the Prince of Wales entered, and stood during the National anthem, yet not an opera-glass was directed towards him. Goodness gracious! as my old friend Buckstone might exclaim—what parks of opera artillery have I not seen levelled at Royal boxes in England, from the milliner to the marchioness, from the shopboy to the highest peer in the realm! But then, we are an old nation, and so well bred that we may do anything. America has long been the cheval de latailk of the Times against the ballot.

The gentleman who has written such dishonest chaff now lies on his back, placed there by the special correspondent of his own paper; and, although lam trespassing fearfully on your valuable space, you let me offer to you the following specimen of the way in which the Times will eat up its own words, and slink out of its former positions. Either the Times must allow that its writer on the ballot scribbles nonsense, or that its special correspondent's statements are false. So the editor throws over our old ballot friend and stands by the special, and thus he writes ex cathedra :•—

"Happy is the prince who governs a nation which has learned in the ordinary affairs of life to govern itself; that can be its own police, its own army; that can frame its own laws and recognise the duty of obeying them, without fear, and without compulsion. Of the machinery of government of course the Prince could see little or nothing, but of the external manifestation of the two forms of popular sovereignty which exist side by side in Canada and the United States, he has seen more than ever one person saw before. We hope and believe the lesson will not he lost, and that the future King of England will bring to the throne of his ancestors, whenever Providence may call him to it, a wide and generous sympathy with his fellow creatures,

and a noble confidence in the destinies of a race which extorts in the east and in the west the wonder of mankind at institutions which they cannot imitate, and at progress and prosperity to which they find it impossible to attain."—l am, &c, F. Henry F. Berkeley. November 23rd, 1860.