Volume Ii Part 9 (2/2)

'Because I am poor and have a large family to keep; because I love peace and quietness; because I am a little older than you, know a little more of country life, and feel inclined to make the best of it what little time I have to live. If we are bound to run amuck at all we disapprove of, life, I fear, would be a burden too heavy to be borne. I may be slow, but, at any rate, I am sure.'

'So you are, old fellow. You were talking just the same way when I came here to preach-it seems to me ages ago-and a good deal has happened since then.'

'Just what I was going to say,' said the clerical brother. 'Politically we have made great progress. We are on the eve of extension of the franchise and vote by ballot, and whoever we return at Sloville-they are safe. I could have got up a pet.i.tion against bribery and corruption in the place. I ought, perhaps, you say, to have done so. Well, I should have had to spend hundreds of pounds, which I have not got; and if I had succeeded and got the borough disfranchised, I should never have been able to show my face in the town again.'

'But you would have had another call,' said Wentworth, with a touch of sarcasm.

'Not at my time of life. But that is a digression. You London newspaper men may write about bribery and corruption, and you can do good in that way, more even than if you get into Parliament.'

'I am of the same opinion,' said Wentworth; 'but, tell me, is the borough so very bad?'

'That it is. I can point you to no end of people who take money and are not ashamed. There are gangs of them who meet in public-houses, with whom each party negotiates, and who turn the scale. To-day they are Liberal, to-morrow they will be Conservative. The men are notorious, but they are useful to both parties. The only remedy for that is extension of the suffrage so as to include all householders, and to make bribery impossible by the increase of the number to be bribed.'

'I would go a step further,' said Wentworth. 'In our great cities few of our working cla.s.ses have that qualification. This raises a demand for a lodger franchise-that is, a fancy franchise-that will give a great opening for ingenuity and fraud, and will only work well for the lawyers, to whom such a state of things will bring plenty of business. No, we must fall back on manhood suffrage. It is the only real and direct qualification. Give the working man a vote, let him feel that he is part and parcel of the community, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh-not a pariah politically, but a brother man-and he will use his vote for his own advantage, and for that of the rest of the community. 'But, now I think of it, there is a better plan.'

'What is that?' said the parson.

'A money qualification. I was in Jersey last summer, and I found there were a large number of men who voluntarily paid a certain tax in order that they might get a vote. After all, what is Government but a limited liability company for the governing of the nation? In all limited liabilities every man has a vote, but the man who has a larger share than the others has more votes. I would give the vote to every man who cared enough about it to pay for it, and I think that a revenue might be thus raised for the relief of taxation.'

'Your scheme is excellent, but it will never take.'

'I fear so, and that is why I fall back on manhood suffrage.'

'Yes, I quite believe that, but he must have the ballot.'

'I fear so, though with the ballot we shall still have a good deal of intimidation and bullying. The rich employer, unless he be more Liberal than many of them, will try still to carry his friend or himself, as the case may be. It seems very degrading, however, for a man to vote by ballot, as if he were ashamed of his opinions. I always think of what the great American statesman said when he was in England on that subject.'

'And what was that? I never heard of it.'

'When asked at a dinner-party in London whether the ballot prevailed in his State of Virginia, he replied:

'”I can scarcely believe in all Virginia we have such a fool as to mention even the vote by ballot, and I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot would make a nation a set of scoundrels if it did not find them so.”'

'Rather hard, that, on the ballot, seeing that we shall have it very shortly.'

'Yes, the demand is a popular one with the Liberals, and they will carry it. There is one measure I should like to see, but I fear there is no chance of its coming yet.'

'What is that?'

'Annual Parliaments.'

'Oh,' exclaimed the parson, 'that will never do! As it is, the amount of mischief an election does in a borough like ours in the way of creating drunkenness, and bad feeling, and lying, and swearing, is incalculable.'

'Yes, but if we had an election once a year it would be quite different.

In the first place, an election would be a tamer and much more commonplace an affair than it is now. A man would not care to spend much money on elections if his seat was only good for a year, and all that time he would be on his good behaviour-attending in his place, helping on needful reforms.'

'Why not triennial Parliaments?'

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