INCREASE OF THE CONSTITUENCY BY FAGOT VOTES. TO THE EDITOR
OF THE SPECTATOR.
Merton, slurry, 8th October 1839.
DEAR SPECTATOR—In your last Number, there is an article headed" Fagot Votes: Extension of the Suffrage ;" in which, it appears to me, there is one great omission. You state that the practice of fagot votes should not be en- tirely left to the landowner, but should be followed by others. Now the emission in this article is that you do not lay sufficient stress upon the voters so made being entirely dependent upon their maker. To increase the constituency is very well, but not to make voters that can be driven up to the poll like sheep to the slaughter. Better let the vote.maker vote himself 227 times, in pre. ference to his having the power to command 227 persons. Fagot.voting ought to be deprecated to the uttermost; otherwise (unless the present system be altered) the two factions will make as many dependents as they can, and then the longest puree will settle the affairs of state. I am awaie that I am stating nothing remarkable for its novelty ; and you, am sure, did not intend to encourage nomination-1 have not been a reader of your paper for five or six years for nothing: but the article in question is liable to mislead. Not only did it occur to me, but to several others of my friends, and they deputed me to write to you on the subject. I am in principle a decided Uetvensettsr, and therefore hail with pleasure any attempt to increase the franchise: but let us have no fagot voters. You will not, I trust, consider my remarks as dictating to you : but in my anxiety for the ameliora- tion of all mankind, I could not allow our (almost) only advocate, the Spectator, to be misunderstood.
1 am, dear Spectator, your constant reader and admirer,
CH A IMES SPA REES.
:Our correspondent and his friends evidently lacked not the shrewdness to perceive that the Spect«tor did not seriously recommend the swamping of independent constituencies by the creation of "fagot votes." Since, however, the fraud is practised—since, as we said, the law is "legally circumvented," and there is no legal remedy for it—we should like very well to see the abuse speedily attain to such enormity as to force the remedy of a large, just, and simplified extension of the frauchise.—Eml,
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