And what will be very important also, if you have the ballot,
your elections will be tranquil, without disorder and without riot. Last
week, or the week before, there was an election in one of your great
counties. Well, making every allowance that can be made for the
exaggerations circulated by the writers of the two parties, it is quite
clear to everybody that the circumstances of that election, though not
absolutely uncommon in Ireland, were still such as to be utterly
discreditable to a real representative system. And you must bear in mind
that there is no other people in the world that considers that it has a
fair representative system unless it has the ballot. The ballot is
universal almost in the United States. It is almost universal in the
colonies, at any rate in the Australian colonies; it is almost universal
on the continent of Europe, and in the new Parliament of North Germany,
which is about soon to be assembled, every man of twenty-five years of
age is to be allowed to vote, and to vote by ballot.
Now, I hold, without any fear of contradiction, that the intelligence
and the virtues of the people of Ireland are not represented in the
Parliament.
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