be granted? The French system is our nearest analogy-there they have the Préfet answering in station to our Lord-Lieutenants of counties, but differing from them in the important conditions of being salaried officers of the government, holding their places at pleasure, and being, in fact and in practice, changed whenever they happen to displease the minister of the day. The Préfet settles the lists, and his decree is final, unless the elector appeals to the Cour Royale (equivalent to our Queen's Bench), whose decision determines the right of the elector. Are we prepared to commit these questions to some creature of the ministry with an appeal to the Court of Queen's Bench? But this is not the whole difficulty. In France the Préfet's discretion is very narrow; the right of voting is, as we have stated, altogether dependant on the direct taxes paid; and (though innumerable questions may and do arise even on that simple point of fact) he is in general guided by the receipts of the tax collectors; and when a man produces receipts for two hundred francs of taxes he is placed on the list. Our electoral system proceeds on a different principle. An elector must indeed have paid his rates and taxes to a certain date, but that is not his qualification; the qualification is the nature and value of his property. Of these there can be no legal and tangible standard; the nature of the qualification is a point of law often very abstruse and difficult-the value a matter of accident or opinion extremely vague and indefinite. An English Préfet would have no guide on either of these points; and if they were to be determined in Westminster Hall, four courts of Queen's Bench would not suffice for the work. We see no extrication from these preliminary and practical difficulties, but to to change the qualification from value to taxation. Is Mr. Grote prepared to propose that? If not, we again request that in his next annual speech he will inform us by what machinery he proposes to ascertain the qualification of those who are to be admitted to the secret and irrevocable ballot. Again; How are the various incapacities which may take place subsequent to registry to be controlled and excluded - how changes of residence-how sale of the property or other defeasance of the title-how the acceptance of disqualifying office? How, again, is the fraudulent personification of the dead or absent to be guarded against? You might enact additional penal laws against unauthorised voters, but could you punish a man for an error on a point of law?-and even if you could punish the wrongous voter, how would that cure the wrongous ballot to which he had contributed, since you never could know for whom the fictitious suffrages had been given? Thus, Thus, then, before we can so much as arrive at the ballot, the material and legal apparatus of our present electoral system must be altered. We must have all the complicated machinery of the ballot-boxes to arrange, and all the officers who are to be employed about them to appoint, and all the regulations which are to guard them from abuse to enact. We must have laws to secure secrecy and to punish revelation; and then all the bribery laws must be repealed-the qualification of electors must be changed-the courts of registry must be changed-the House of Commons must resign one of its most cherished privileges. Practically speaking, the very attempt would be in itself a revolution, for there is no one detail or principle in our whole electoral system which must not be fundamentally altered; and if that should be accomplished (which we trust never could be accomplished), all the other objections stated in the former parts of this article would come into activity. We should then find that the ballot was inconsistent with reason, with liberty, with nature-and the people of England-if they should be mad enough to adopt it -would discover that, like the greedy and stupid clown in the fable, they had killed that CONSTITUTION which had enriched them with such long and unparalleled prosperity, and had rendered them the admiration, the envy, and the example of the rest of mankind! INDEX TO THE SIXTY-FIRST VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. - A. - Age, characteristics of the present, 205. Banditti of Spain, 362-prevalence of, 20 Bees, extraordinary rout by a swarm of, Bentham, Jeremy, his Deontology, or Bruce, James, Esq., vindicated from the Buonaparte, Napoleon, his military re- Burette, M. Theodore, his Musée His- -- torique de Versailles, 1. - C. Canada, 249-conduct of the whig min- report of the committee of the the king, ib.-and to Lord Gosford, - |