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It is possible, and perhaps not very difficult, to invent a machine by the aid of which electors may vote for a candidate without its being discovered for whom they vote: it is less easy than the rabid and foaming Radical supposes; but I have no doubt it may be accomplished. In the dagger ballot box, which has been carried round the country by eminent patriots, you stab the card of your favorite candidate with a dagger. I have seen another, called the mousetrap ballot box, in which you poke your finger into the trap of the member you prefer, and are caught and detained till the trap clerk below (who knows by means of a wire when you are caught) marks your vote, pulls the liberator, and releases you. Which may be the most eligible of these two methods I do not pretend to determine; but, by some means or another, I have no doubt the thing may be done.
If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it at all clear that he would vote from any better motive than intimidation? If you make so tremendous an experiment, are you sure of attaining your object? The landlord has perhaps said a cross word to the tenant; the candidate for whom the tenant votes in opposition to his landlord has taken his second son for a footman, or his father knew the candidate’s grandfather: How many thousand votes, sheltered (as the ballotists suppose) from intimidation, would be given from such silly motives as these? How many would be given from the mere discontent of inferiority? Or from that strange simious schoolboy passion of giving pain to others, even when the author cannot be found out?—motives as pernicious as any which could proceed from intimidation. So that all voters screened by ballot would not be screened for any public good.
An abominable tyranny exercised by the ballot is that it compels those persons to conceal their votes who hate all concealment and who glory in the cause they support. If you are afraid to go in at the front door and to say in a clear voice what you have to say, go in at the back door, and say it in a whisper—but this is not enough for you; you make me, who am bold and honest, sneak in at the back door as well as yourself; you compel me to hide the best feelings of my heart and to lower myself down to your mean morals. It is as if a few cowards, who could only fight behind walls and houses, were to prevent the whole regiment from showing a bold front in the field. What right has the coward to degrade me who am no coward, and put me in the same shameful predicament with himself?