1G2 VOTE BY BALLOT. [CHAP. XXXIT. 



under which the New Orleans Whigs were smarting, in 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 beatable, might, they declared, be 

 made navigable to steamboats, when the rafts of drift timber 

 were cleared away, and they might then have a direct commer 

 cial intercourse with the Gulf of Mexico. The soil, also, sur 

 rounding 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 wras taken to see the 

 State House and Governor s Mansion, both handsome and com 

 modious, arid built in a good style of architecture, but at great 

 expense, at a time when the price of labor happened to be un 

 usually 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 honorable 

 line of conduct, must, out of selfishness, have taken advantage of 

 the ballot-box to evade an increase of taxation, otherwise there 

 could riot have been a majority in favor of disowning their liabil 

 ities. This w r as one of the few instances in which I heard the 

 ballot condemned in the United States ; yet the position of the 

 laboring and middle classes is, comparatively, so independent 

 here, in relation to their rich employers, that the chief arguments 

 relied upon in England in favor 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 chancellorship, 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 representatives, men are asked what 



