SATURDAY NIGHT.
In reference to the practice of creating fictitious votes and oppress sing tenants in Scotland, who refuse to support their landlords' can- didate, the Courier publishes a letter from a Scotch tenant, whose aecess to correct information is guaranteed by that journal. The writer appears also to know perfectly well where the effectual preventive and remedy for such practices is to be found. He says- " Government must either bring forward the Ballot, or leave it an open 9nevtion. Voters must be protected, for the Tories care nothing for ruining oil those who decline to support them. Can any thing be mote atrocious than that the freeholders of a peat county are to have the exercise of their franchise set at naught by a corps of trained and well organized Edinburgh writers or lawyers, who travel post-haste through the counties to decide every election? Par lament cannot surely decline to interfere in so flagrant a case. " I beg of you to represent to the Government the necessity of protecting us, and preserving the freedom of election, while it is yet in their power. They slimly do not know the extent of the evil, nor how cruelly it bears on the tenantry. It is not reasonable that individuals should ruin themselves and families without any prospect of doing their country any good. I could point out many hard cases.
" I confess it was long ere I could be reconciled to the Ballot; but necessity has no law ; and if 1 still had any doubts, Sir Hubert Peel at Glasgow com- pletely answered them."
Previous page
