After the promise of the baronetage her anxiety redoubled, for it became an object of the utmost importance that Cornleigh should be returned once more to Parliament. Even supposing his party did not enter into power, still they retained great influence in a high quarter, and it was morally certain that he would become Sir Edward.
Bitterness therefore was heaped upon the abominable Ballot Act: it was the symbol of all things vile in the eyes of the Cornleigh party, it was un-English, it was directed against the dearest traditions of our country; in short, the Ballot Act, as Gambetta said of something else, was the Enemy.
The Ballot Act is the Act which enables every person to go and record his vote without fear of after-consequences from the vengeance of any party whose wishes he has crossed.
The Ballot Act is the Magna Charta of modern days.
Under it a man can act as he thinks and feels, and knows to be right, and is not to be overawed by any threat, fear, or authority.
It secures to every Englishman genuine liberty, and under it free voting took place for the first time in all English history.
The boast of Britain is freedom, but there was no freedom till the Ballot became law.
I went as a boy to an election to see the fighting. Boys like to see fighting; it is their nature. There was a crowd about the polling booths armed with stout sticks, and all wearing a certain colour. If any man dared to so much as pass by whose colour was not their colour, he was set upon and beaten.
I retain a vivid mental picture of one man on a white horse, who boldly rode up to record his vote with his colour—not the crowd’s colour—in his buttonhole. They swarmed round him, these noble freeborn people armed with sticks; they beat him on his horse, and they beat his horse; they dragged him off his horse and beat him, holding him up for the purpose; at last he fell down and they beat him on the ground, and presently began to drag and haul him along like a sack, helpless and insensible as he was. I lost sight of him in the surging mass of freeborn electors, and what became of him I do not know.
This was fine fun for boys to look at. Now I went to see the fighting, but I never forgot the man on the white horse.
To call this freedom appeared to me ever afterwards as simply a deliberate lie.
Instead of freedom it was despotism of the worst and most tyrannous description.
Under the Ballot Act the man on the white horse, if still living, can go up and record his vote in perfect safety; the vote he has given will never be known; and no Robert Godwin can harass him for acting according to his conscience.
So deep is the impression made on the popular mind by the oppressions visited on those who dared to vote as they thought, that even now at this day, people have but partly rid themselves of the fear that someone will seek private and secret vengeance on them for doing as they believe right. Those who desire to uphold the cause of liberty should see that the secrecy of the Ballot is really secrecy, for suspicions have got about that it is not always so even now.
You can now understand how an enormous power was taken from the hands of Robert Godwin when the new Magna Charta was passed, and why Letitia, clever woman as she was, dreaded the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer.
The view taken by the Cornleigh party was that the Ballot (which secures freedom) was demoralising (now just think!) in its action on the people, who had always hitherto been accustomed to an atmosphere of freedom.
Is not this a deliberate lie?
This sentence written out by Letitia was acquired by heart by the Squire, and introduced as a climax upon every public occasion. The respectable inhabitants of Maasbury applauded it to the echo.
This deliberate lie became the motto of the Cornleigh party. It is a lie so flagrant—so palpable—so coarse and unscrupulous, that it is a marvel any English gentleman can make up his mind to utter it.
Though there was no special trade in Maasbury—and not many shoemakers with their radical awls—still there were large workshops, there was a railway station and its attendant workmen, there were bricklayers (fearfully wicked, self-willed people, bricklayers—nearly as bad as shoemakers), and some very large brickfields, the home of desperation, according to the Cornleigh creed.
At the last election these folk, voting at last without fear of Robert Godwin and his agents (wonderful it is that such men should find so many willing tools in the practice of oppression), these men ran Cornleigh Cornleigh, Esq., very hard indeed, and reduced his usual majority to a mere handful.
Was it not natural then that Letitia, with the title of “My Lady” hanging before her eyes, should be fearful of the next election?
Even if the next election came and found the agricultural labourers still without the right to vote, it must not be forgotten that it would be Cornleigh’s final chance. The labourers’ claims could not be postponed any longer; if not at the next election, at the next after that they would be sure to vote, and how then with Cornleigh Cornleigh?
And there was another consideration. An election is a costly matter: if he was secure of return, the money was well spent; but if Cornleigh’s narrow majority melted away and he lost it, the money would be wasted.
The diabolical Ballot Act—the abominable Ballot Act—with its demoralising influence on a people hitherto accustomed to an atmosphere of freedom!
There had been rumours flying about for some time that in despite
