212 VOTE BY BALLOT. [CHAP. XXXII. 



having to go to Baton Rouge. They could show 

 me, they said, the swamp on the Pearl River, which 

 must have been alluded to. That river, though 

 now only boatable, might, they declared, be made 

 navigable to steam-boats, when the rafts of drift 

 timber were cleared away, and they might then 

 have a direct commercial intercourse with the Gulf 

 of Mexico. The soil, also, surrounding Jackson, 

 had proved to be very fertile, and the railway had 

 brought the place within three or four hours of 

 Natchez, now their port. In short, their town 

 was flourishing, by aid of natural advantages, and 

 the patronage of the Legislature and Law Courts. 

 Next day, after a geological excursion, I was taken 

 to see the State House and Governor s mansion, both 

 handsome and commodious, and built in a good style 

 of architecture, but at great expense, at a time when 

 the price of labour happened to be unusually high. 

 I heard much regret expressed at the debts they had 

 incurred, and at the refusal to acknowledge them in 

 1841. One lawyer, a member of the Legislature, 

 declared his conviction that the repudiation of the 

 State debt would not have been carried in his 

 county, but for the facility afforded by secret voting. 

 The same individuals, he said, who openly professed 

 a more honourable line of conduct, must, out of self 

 ishness, have taken advantage of the ballot-box to 

 evade an increase of taxation, otherwise there could 

 not have been a majority in favour of disowning their 

 liabilities. This was one of the few instances in 

 which I heard the ballot condemned in the United 

 States ; yet the position of the labouring and middle 

 classes is, comparatively, so independent here, in 



