THE FAMILY VOTE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—The writer of the article in the Spectator of April 22nd, on "The Experiment in Belgium," seems to think that the credit of devising the double vote for married men belongs to M. Nyssen. It must be not far from thirty years since the idea of a double or plural vote for married men and fathers of families as a corrective of universal suffrage was first suggested to me by an old French school-friend, M. Girette, now President—if I recollect his title aright—of the Council of the vast establishment of the Messageries Nationales; and I do not feel sure that even he claimed the idea as originally his own. I, for one, have held to it ever since, and have men- tioned it repeatedly in conversations on the subject. M. Girette, I may observe, although he has never sought a seat in the French Parliament, occupied at one time, after the Commune, by express request of M. Thiers, for two or three years the very responsible post of Mayor of the arrondisse- ment of the Hotel de Ville,—at that time, at all events, the most important of all Paris mayoralties. The double vote given to graduates, on the other hand, by the new Belgian law, appears to me a complete mistake. In our days, at all events, few classes of men appear to me so apt to be visionary as young graduates.—I am, Sir, Sze., J. M. LUDLOW.
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