THE FIRST ELECTION UNDER THE BALLOT.
THE more carefully politicians study the result of the Pontefract Election, the less comfort will they derive from it as to the operation of the Ballot. The three a priori objections raised against that method of election—that it would diminish the total vote thrown—that is, the moral right of the Member to consider himself a representative—that it would break up the tacit understanding in favour of an old servant on which the attraction of a Parliamentary career depends ; and that it would release the electors from the healthy control of national opinion, have all been shown to be well founded. The election excited keen interest ; it was a fight between a considerable Minister and a strong hereditary influence, and it was watched hour by hour by all England, intent on seeing how the Ballot worked, and yet out of 1,960 electors only 1,230 went to the poll! One-third of the electors voluntarily disfranchised themselves, and Mr. Childers, though returned, cannot be sure that he is the choice of a majority of the people. That is a great evil, because it directly diminishes the force of the House of Commons, and because also it must introduce a kind of jerkiness into all poli- tical arrangements. Who is to know whether some accident, some whim, some local cause may not at any election call the voters now passive to the booths, and so derange every kind of calculation?
The certainty of electoral arrangements is evidently gone, or at all events seriously diminished. Lord Shaftesbury, a politician of experience, who often becomes wise when his moral nature is deeply stirred, pointed out this danger, and he was right. Mr. Childers' re-election under any systeni of open voting was a certainty. He had represented the borough to its entire satisfaction for twelve years, had become a Member of the Cabinet, and had earned all that consideration which in England is given to those who work for the country, which, for example, renders it impossible for any candidate to contest the Speaker's seat. It was felt by the best Conservatives in Pontefract that to contest his return when asking their suffrages only because he had been selected to advise the Crown, was an unwise and unfair thing ; four of their leading men were on his Committee ; many reading Conservatives are believed to have voted for him, and though we know neither his secrets nor those of his ancient opponents, we can. scarcely doubt, on the face of the evidence, that there had existed for years an agreement to divide the borough. And yet Mr. Childers was within an ace of losing his seat, would have lost it had his opponent been a stronger man, would have discovered that length of tenure and national service and recognised ability for politics could not guarantee a politician from having his career snapped short in middle age. Such an example must tend, and if repeated, as we expect it will be in other cases, must tend strongly, to increase the disinclination of strong men for Parliamentary life,—that is, to diminish year by year the capacity, the brain, the power of deliberating and governing in the House of Commons, the only living institution we have left. Statesmen will endure work, obloquy, exile from office, but they will not endure ostracism from public life, inflicted capriciously by the will of an unknown multitude, acting from unknown motives. The capricious Sovereign never has good servants, for the strong either avoid his service, or debase themselves by the effort to satisfy him. Mr. Childers is a firm man, but the temptation to make all certain by enormous pledges, say to the six or seven hundred labourers in the borough on whom his opponent relied, must have been unreasonably strong.
And lastly, opinion, sound, healthy opinion, had evidently no influence, or there could not have been so close a contest. All competent Englishmen of both parties would have held Pontefract disgraced had it rejected a candidate like Mr. Childers for a candidate like Lord Pollington, a mature states- man for a political child, and a child of no promise either. Mr. Childers, in the heat of the contest, may have made too much of private talk—a Minister must always hear a good deal he had better not use—but it is quite clear, from Lord Pollington's own defence and his speeches and his letter asking Mr. Childers for employment, that he has no political opinions at all, and no political knowledge ; that he obeys his father's wishes, and would as soon register himself on one side as the other. He is clearly a man of a kind becoming not infrequent in his class,—a man who writes a book because it is a credit- able thing to do, without thinking for a moment if he has anything to say ; who enters politics because he will be a Peer, without knowing anything about them ; and who catches up the first oratorical weapon that comes to hand—witness his nonsensical charge of atheistic sympathies against Mr. Gladstone—just as a street boy throws stones. To pit such a candidate against Mr. Childers, a hard-hitting, clear-thinking man of the world, would under open voting have been impossible. The party would have been ashamed of it, and Lord Pollington would have retired under the pressure of universal and healthy political opinion. That pressure was lifted off by secrecy, and the country was very near losing a competent Minister to obtain a young man who could add nothing to her wisdom, her experience, or her force. There is nothing pleasant, that we see, in the result of the election, except that Mr. Childers kept his seat ; that the election was very quietly conducted, and that nobody seems to have thought it of any use to resort either to bribery or intimidation. The secrecy, it is clear, was pretty perfect, the voters, according to the admiring reporter of the Daily News, even after the election lying triumphantly about their votes. He heard the same men within five minutes crowing over their own virtue in having voted on sides which they each time differently described. If that kind of secrecy gratifies the Liberals, we have nothing to say, except that they may as well, for decency's sake, hold their tongues about American corruption.
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