If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it at all clear that he would vote from any better motive than intimidation? If you make so tremendous an experiment, are you sure of attaining your object? The landlord has perhaps said a cross word to the tenant; the candidate for whom the tenant votes in opposition to his landlord has taken his second son for a footman, or his father knew the candidate's grandfather, how many thousand votes sheltered (as the ballotists suppose from intimidation) would be given from such silly motives as these? how many would be given from the mere discontent of inferiority? or from that strange simious schoolboy passion of giving pain to others, even when the author cannot be found out?—motives as pernicious as any which could proceed from intimidation. So that all voters screened by ballot would not be screened for any public good.
The Radicals (I do not use this word in any offensive sense, for I know many honest and excellent men of this way of thinking), but the Radicals praise and admit the lawful influence of wealth, and power. They are quite satisfied if a rich man of popular
