Page:Ballot (Smith).djvu/30

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
26
BALLOT.

and he must do this, not only eundo, in his calm and prudential state, but redeundo from the market, warmed with beer and expanded by alcohol; and he must not only carry on his seven years of dissimulation before the world, but in the very bosom of his family, or he must expose himself to the dangerous garrulity of wife, children, and servants, from whose indiscretion every kind of evil report would be carried to the ears of the watchful steward. And when once the ballot is established, mere gentle, quiet lying will not do to hide the tenant who secretly votes against his landlord: the quiet passive liar will be suspected, and he will find, if he does not waive his bonnet and strain his throat in furtherance of his bad faith, that he has put in a false ball in the dark to very little purpose. I consider a long concealment of political opinion from the landlord to be nearly impossible for the tenant; and if you conceal from the landlord the only proof he can have of his tenant's sincerity, you are taking from the tenant the only means he has of living quietly upon his farm. You are increasing the jealousy and irascibility of the tyrant, and multiplying instead of lessening the number of his victims.