THE BALLOT MAULED
A NEW argument against the Ballot!—Mr. Fox Maule has the credit of the contribution. His merit would have been doubled if he had contributed a good argument; but we are not to expect it at this day. France is his argument, and the election of Louis Napoleon, with all its accompanying and consequent atrocities! It is ill arguing from proximate causes : the ballot did not give France her unsettled theoretical opinions, whose idle conflict and impracticable bungling opened the way for Louis Napoleon ; it did not give France the utilitarian expediency which was impersonated in Louis Philippe, begotten by the scepticism of Egalite on the " useful knowle4e" of the French Edgeworth, De G enlis, and matured in a crowned French Whiggery—that low statesmanship which invited the renascent romance of statesmanship which opened the way for Louis Napoleon's melodrama of " order " ex machine.. The ballot did not give to France the reaction of Charles Dix, nor the military despotism of Napoleon, nor the anarchy of the Directory, nor—bat it is useless to recapitulate backwards all the successive causes which have brought Louis Napoleon on France, and would have done so, ballot or no ballot.
We might answer Mr. Maule with the experience of Massa- chusetts, which intelligent State is taking steps to enforce its somewhat relaxed use of the ballot : and if he were to rejoin that "the ballot, then, is not always observed, and is therefore useless," our surrejoinder would be, that the people of Massachusetts have at least the option, and can use it when the majority needs and desires so to do. But in truth this question has long been beyond the arguing stage. The public mind is made up on the subject; only it is not felt to be of vital urgency, and it is obstructed at present by official friends and half-enemies, who rely on the pre- valent spirit of apathy and compromise. We need not talk about it : there it stands, to be carried into effect some day, and never to be withdrawn from the roll of political claims till it has been tested by actual use.
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