BIBLICAL AND CLASSICAL DEMONOLOGY; OR, THE SUPERHUMAN NOT THE SUPERNATURAL. THE PRELUDE.-"METHODS OF PREVENTING ELECTION FRAUDS." FOUR reforms appear to be necessary to prevent Washington, and the other fathers of our republic, from blushing over the success of their experiment in republican government. Popular suffrage, to be safe, must be intelligent, indeperdent, full, and fairly counted. Let either of these qualities be wanting, and universal suffrage will, in many places, bring rascality very frequently to the summit in municipal affairs, often in State legislatures, and sometimes in national concerns, especially in closely-contested elections, with great spoils at stake. When Macaulay was in India, in 1834, a paper on legislation was sent to him by a citizen of Madras, who remarked that the difficulty with India was that men swore falsely in that country. "Now," continued Macaulay's correspondent, "I can suggest to your honour a means of making men swear truly in India. If you will cut off the great toe on the right foot of every man who swears falsely, there will be reform in this country to your honour's glory." Macaulay regarded the suggestion as ludicrously futile, and yet he said that in India he had adopted certain rules as to legal evidence which would make the hair of the judges, and even of their wigs, in England, stand on end. In describing Mr. Bacon's famous Anti-Fraud Ballot-box, I hope you will not suppose that I think men can be made honest by machinery. Rascality at the polls cannot be abolished by any mechanical invention, but it may be embarrassed, and even practically arnulled. This ballot-box which I hold in my hand is the invention of Mr. Steuben T. Bacon, of 125, West Concord-street, Boston, and is now under consideration by a committee at the State House for adoption in the elections of this Commonwealth. It is, as you see, a square structure, with two glass sides and a movable top and bottom. Its essential parts are a long flat hook inside, on which ballots are strung like trout on a willow twig, and an enumerating apparatus which strikes a bell like that of a conductor's punch, and turns up a new number every time a ballot is put upon the wire. The hook is shaped like the letter "U," and the top of one branch of the “U” projects as an arrow-head through the two slides on which I place my ballot. Each ballot has a hole in it, and is strung on the projecting top of the hook, and pressed down by a washer. I place on this ballot a washer, and touching a portion of the machinery, the slides open, and the ballot by the weight of the washer drops into the box, while the bell is rung. That is nearly the whole of the operation of this beautiful invention, and yet you will notice that in spite of the simplicity of the mechanism, a dozen forms of fraud in ballot-boxes are prevented entirely, or certainly embarrassed by the use of this hook, the washers, the bell, and the enumerator. VOL, V. 217 B The box is sealed when brought to the polls. The names of the officers whose business it is to seal it are written over the seal. Only the duly authenticated officers at the polls have a right to break the seal and take out the screw which permits the opening of the ballot-slides. The registering apparatus, which is also under seal, and to be opened only by city or town officials after the election, is set so that the first vote which drops in will bring the number "one" to the front. Each vote is strung on the hook, with a washer above it. If, therefore, I take up several votes and try to put them in at once, I shall easily be detected in that process of stuffing. Here I have three ballots. Suppose that I try to vote them at once. I place them face downward on the machine, but only one washer goes over the three, and when I drop them the bell rings but once for the three, and the enumerator advances but a single unit for the three. These washers are not numbered. They might be, so as to correspond with the check list of the clerk, but that would in some measure destroy the secrecy of the voting. Secrecy is a great aid to independence in the ballot; and so the inventor, although he had a method of numbering the ballots as they were dropped in, has left out that portion of his mechanism in this second and improved form of his instrument. Notice that the enumerator, the washer, and the position of the ballot on the hook inside, prevent the counting of those three pieces of paper as three votes You have the enumerator, the position of the ballot on the hook, and the washer, to prove, by their joint testimony, the fact that stuffing has been practised. The polls now close, and we proceed to canvass the votes. I turn the box on its side, but I cannot open it until I break a seal affixed to the keyhole by an authorized official. The paper over the seal bears his name. After the box is opened, you find the ballots all hanging here on the hook, as trout on your willow withe, when you fish in the mountains, with only primitive arrangements for preserving your game. Every boy knows that he cannot put one trout beyond another on the same string; and so you know that you cannot put one ballot beyond another on this hook. The washers here prevent entirely the confusion of ballot with ballot. Your returning officers now sit before the open ballot-box, and representatives of the rival political parties are present while the canvass, count, record, and return of an election are being made. The enumerator shows how many men have voted. I now, as a returning officer, lift up a ballot without drawing it off the hook, and announce it to the recording clerk as a straight ticket for this or that party, or as an independent ticket, or as a scratched ticket, as the case may be, and leave it hanging in the box. I bring next to the front of the hook this stuffed group of ballots; but I find that there are more ballots here than washers. The fraud is at once revealed. This washer proves, and so does the enumerator, that only one man voted; but here are three ballots on the hook. I leave the ballots hanging, and with my scissors cut through diagonally, and destroy the lower half of two of them, and count only one; but I do not tear off the stumps of these two fraudulent votes. Suppose that I am a rascal, and have a ring on my finger with something like a McKinnon pen in the nob of it. Cannot I erase a few names here, if they are distasteful to me? Yes; but you are likely to see me if I undertake to commit such a fraud. The ink, too, will not flow on a horizontal line. But fraud can be committed by sleight of hand, you think, when men's backs are turned, or when they are gone to dinner, or when they are half drunk. The ballots are not taken off the hook; and it is almost impossible to mark them, as they hang freely, without any backing behind them. If I were to use my hand for a back ing, I should probably be discovered. Even if I were to succeed, I should be very likely to mark the ballots in such a way that the uniformity in shape of my scratches would show that they were made by one man while the ballots are on the hook. The similarity of the marking will be the means of detecting my rascality. In New York City, when the number of ballots found in a ballot-box is greater than the number checked as having been voted, the officers put back the ballots into the box, shuffle them, and then put their hands behind them and draw out as many as the excess requires. But there are men with very light fingers, who can feel the difference between a long ballot and a short one, a thick one and a thin one, and thus be enabled to draw their rival's ballot. Some of the shrewdest kinds of fraud have been practised in this sifting of the votes. Nothing of the sort can be effected when the Anti-Fraud Ballot-box is used. After the canvass, the box is sealed again, and the votes and washers kept on the hook for a sufficient time to allow the rectification of mistakes. When the election has wholly passed by, the proper officer empties the box, sets back the enumerator to a cipher, seals the box, and it is then ready to be used in a new election. Who are petitioning Massachusetts for the legalization of this Anti-Fraud Ballot-box? Boston, March 19th, 1879. Having examined the device presented by Steuben T. Bacon for securing honest voting and counting of ballots at elections, we give it our cordial approbation, and desire its adoption by the Legislature of this State, for use at all elections held therein. I. INGERSOLL BOWDITCH, WM. LLOYD GARRISON, WENDELL PHILLIPS. George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Alexander H. Rice, and last but not least, William Lloyd Garrison, have strongly commended this invention in autograph letters, which I now hold in my hand. These names ought to secure attention on the part of politicians and practical men in public affairs to this instrument. Who knows but that the next presidential election may turn upon one or two States, perhaps one or two cities? Who knows but that one hundred and ten thousand appointive offices being at stake, practised politicians inside the machine may not be willing to adopt such an instrument as this for the embarrassing of rascalities at the polls. I hear that publicists who are statesmen are in favour of this instrument, and that publicists who are mere party men are opposed to it, although they admit its efficacy-and on that very ground are shy of it. Let us be shy of politicians who are shy of Anti-Fraud Ballot-boxes. Somewhere and somehow there can be brought into existence by American ingenuity methods of largely purifying our ballot, and certainly the best instrument that I have seen for that purpose is the one now before you. Secrecy in voting is promoted by making all ballots alike in form and complexion, as they are intended to be when used with this instrument. After the ballots have been dropped into the box, and when they hang there on the long hook, you cannot tell one vote from another unless you are near enough to read the print, and that is out of sight, as the 219 R 2 ballot is voted face downwards. Secrecy is maintained in this way very effectually. I do not know what more I need say concerning this machine, except that it costs only fifteen dollars. I have no interest in the financial results of the patent. It is worth while to give time to the counting of votes, and you therefore ought not to object that the votes in this ballot-box cannot be counted until after the closing of the polls. A slight change in the construction of the instrumeut would remove this objection. A box of this size will hold as many votes as are usually cast in a precinct in New York City. It cannot be denied that great mistakes are made sometimes in counting votes by honest but careless and hurried officials. You had better wait an hour or two longer and have your return authentic. It would be no objection to this machine if it were to take, as it does not, more time than the old way, for it saves time at the other end of the process, when investigating committees are needed to ascertain whether fraud has occurred or not. State Legislatures and Congress ought to examine carefully and promptly, and adopt this brilliant invention for embarrassing and annulling fraud in elections. A ballot fairly counted will be efficient, but not sufficient to save universal suffrage from wreck. We must have an intelligent ballot, and for the purpose of securing proper knowledge on the part of the voter, I for one am in favour of a reading test. I would not take the vote away from any man who has it now, but I would adopt the advice of our late Chief Executive; I would open the doors of the common school and make the approach to them an inclined plane strewn with roses; and then I would proclaim by public law, not that the ballot shall be taken from any one who has it to-day, but that all who are born after a certain date, say 1900 or 1925, and do not learn to read and write, shall not have a vote until they do learn. Even with the ballot fairly counted, and with the ballot intelligent, I should not have hope for the republic unless it were possible to secure a ballot independent of the machine in party politics. But even with the ballot fairly counted and intelligent and independent, I should not have hope for universal suffrage were the ballot not made full. What do I mean by a full ballot? The State of Missouri lately had a proposal brought before its legislature to the effect that every man who neglects to vote for two or three years should lose the right of suffrage. Theodore Woolsey tells us that in our colonial days there were portions of New England in which votes were sent to householders, and if they did not use them they were fined. Over and over I have called attention to the red cord used at Athens to drive men to the polls. A rope chalked red was carried by two men along the market-place and through the most crowded streets, and thus the voters were driven up to the voting assemblies before the bema of Demosthenes and Pericles; and if any man received cn his toga a mark of this red cord, he was fined. We have compulsory jury service, compulsory education, compulsory military enlistment, and we must have compulsory voting. If in some way we can secure a full vote in the United States, we shall be amazed at the difference between a torpid and an aroused America-between a fragment of our suffrage and the whole of it. I am not & female suffragist; but in order to have a full vote, I am willing to try the experiment of giving women the ballot on questions of local option under the temperance laws. The Massachusetts State House dome looked lately on a most suggestive scene. It was my fortune last year, in this lectureship, to venture much before Conservative opinion by defending woman's right to vote in cases of local option in temperance. I was asked to defend the same cause before a committee in the Green Room at the State House, and I remember what a thin and sorry company came together on that occasion. The topic was somewhat new; we were all in danger of being called erratics. Last week the chief legislative hall under your dome was not large enough to admit those who assembled at noon to listen to the urging of the appeal for woman's temperance vote. The cause has gone forward, and it has gone now, I think, into such a position that even Conservative sneers will not greatly injure it. My hope is that in Massachusetts, before five years shall end, the experiment will be tried of making a vote full by giving woman a right to utter her voice at the polls for home protection against the WhiskeyRing. A full ballot, an intelligent ballot, a ballot independent of political partizanship, a ballot fairly counted-these reforms and nothing less will prevent Republican Governments under universal suffrage from perishing off the face of the earth! Machinery to embarrass rascality may be efficient, but let us remember that only the uprooting of rascality itself will be sufficient to save our Republic. It is fitting that on this birthday of Washington we should teach ourselves to depend upon nothing for the salvation of the nation except on character like his, diffused through the masses of the population, and holding all tricksters in awe. I stood, in a moment of leisure, in Independence Hall in Philadelphia one morning when the sunlight flooded the place, and I came suddenly upon a cast of Washington's face taken just after his death. The likeness was different from any I had ever seen, and probably much more authentic. What breadth of forehead, what balance of organization, what massiveness, and yet what sensitiveness! What equilibrium of soul, what force, what calmness, what integrity, what unflinching and unfathomable genuineness were in every line of that countenance! The repose of the whole expression was to me more moving than I had supposed it possible for any traits of even a living face to be to me. The transfigured, heroic, almost classical, perfectly honest countenance, was an inspiration and a benediction, because it was a biography. Let the character of Washington be the character of the nation, and the Republic may justly contemplate the future with confidence; otherwise not. Let Lincoln and Washington lock their mighty palms, as a deadly and unapologetic garrote, around the neck of the current and crescent scoundrelism which undermines the purity of our ballot-boxes; and government of the people, for the people and by the people, will not perish from the earth! THE LECTURE. IF modern mysteries can be scientifically explained and exposed, why may not ancient be, and even the Christian miracles? Let clear thought prevail, you say, even if Christianity and the heavens fall; and so say I. Whatever explanation we adopt concerning modern mysteries, will ultimately be carried through ancient; and whatever we adopt concerning ancient, will ultimately be carried through modern. The world is all of one piece. There is a Greek fable which represents two strutting fowls, sons of the same mother, as fighting. One cock called in a fox to aid him, and crowed while his competitor was being devoured. He afterward suffered the same fate. Christianity and what is called spiritism are more or less in |