CHAP. XXXIL] ELECTION OF JUDGES. 213 



relation to their rich employers, that the chief argu 

 ments relied upon in England in favour of secret 

 voting, would seem to be inapplicable. 



The dependence of the judges, for their election, on 

 the popular suffrage, appears to have been carried 

 farther in Mississippi than in any other State. I was 

 told that rival candidates for the bench and chan 

 cellorship, have been known to canvass for votes in 

 taverns, and have been asked what construction they 

 put on certain statutes relating to banks chartered 

 by the State, just as, in an ordinary election for re 

 presentatives, men are asked what are their opinions, 

 and how they would vote on certain questions. I 

 met with more men of property in Mississippi who 

 spoke as if they belonged to an oppressed class, go 

 verned by a rude, ignorant, and coarse democracy, 

 than in any other part of my tour. &quot; Many of our 

 poorest citizens, they said, would freely admit, that 

 nothing is so difficult, for the individual, as self- 

 government, and yet hold that nothing is so easy and 

 safe as self-government for the million, even where 

 education has been carried no farther than here, 

 where there are still seven counties without a single 

 school-house, and large districts where the inhabit 

 ants have but recently been converted to Christianity 

 by itinerant Methodists. They forget that even 

 honourable and enlightened men will sometimes do, 

 in their corporate capacity, what each individual 

 would be ashamed to do if he acted singly. &quot; When 

 I heard these remarks, and reflected that even in 

 those parts of the State where the whites are most 

 advanced, as in Adams county, more than half the 



