The question of greatest moment in regard to modes of voting is that
of secrecy or publicity, and to this we will at once address
ourselves.
It would be a great mistake to make the discussion turn on
sentimentalities about skulking or cowardice. Secrecy is justifiable
in many cases, imperative in some, and it is not cowardice to seek
protection against evils which are honestly avoidable. Nor can it be
reasonably maintained that no cases are conceivable in which secret
voting is preferable to public; but I must contend that these cases,
in affairs of a political character, are the exception, not the rule.
The present is one of the many instances in which, as I have already
had occasion to remark, the _spirit_ of an institution, the impression
it makes on the mind of the citizen, is one of the most important
parts of its operation. The spirit of vote by ballot--the
interpretation likely to be put on it in the mind of an elector, is
that the suffrage is given to him for himself--for his particular use
and benefit, and not as a trust for the public. For if it is indeed a
trust, if the public are entitled to his vote, are not they entitled
to know his vote? This false and pernicious impression may well be
made on the generality, since it has been made on most of those who of
late years have been conspicuous advocates of the ballot. The doctrine
was not so understood by its earlier promoters; but the effect of a
doctrine on the mind is best shown, not in those who form it, but in
those who are formed by it. Mr. Bright and his school of democrats
think themselves greatly concerned in maintaining that the franchise
is what they term a right, not a trust. Now this one idea, taking root
in the general mind, does a moral mischief outweighing all the good
that the ballot could do, at the highest possible estimate of it. In
whatever way we define or understand the idea of a right, no person
can have a right (except in the purely legal sense) to power over
others: every such power, which he is allowed to possess is morally,
in the fullest force of the term, a trust. But the exercise of any
political function, either as an elector or as a representative, is
power over others. Those who say that the suffrage is not a trust, but
a right, will scarcely accept the conclusions to which their doctrine
leads. If it is a right, if it belongs to the voter for his own sake,
on what ground can we blame him for selling it, or using it to
recommend himself to any one whom it is his interest to please? A
person is not expected to consult exclusively the public benefit in
the use he makes of his house, or his three per cent. stock, or any
thing else to which he really has a right. The suffrage is indeed due
to him, among other reasons, as a means to his own protection, but
only against treatment from which he is equally bound, so far as
depends on his vote, to protect every one of his fellow-citizens. His
vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do
with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. It is strictly
a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and
most conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever has any other
idea of it is unfit to have the suffrage; its effect on him is to
pervert, not to elevate his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an
exalted patriotism and the obligation of public duty, it awakens and
nourishes in him the disposition to use a public function for his own
interest, pleasure, or caprice; the same feelings and purposes, on a
humbler scale, which actuate a despot and oppressor. Now an ordinary
citizen in any public position, or on whom there devolves any social
function, is certain to think and feel, respecting the obligations it
imposes on him, exactly what society appears to think and feel in
conferring it. What seems to be expected from him by society forms a
standard which he may fall below, but which he will seldom rise above.
And the interpretation which he is almost sure to put upon secret
voting is that he is not bound to give his vote with any reference to
those who are not allowed to know how he gives it; but may bestow it
simply as he feels inclined.
This is the decisive reason why the argument does not hold, from the
use of the ballot in clubs and private societies to its adoption in
parliamentary elections. A member of a club is really, what the
elector falsely believes himself to be, under no obligation to
consider the wishes or interests of any one else. He declares nothing
by his vote but that he is or is not willing to associate, in a manner
more or less close, with a particular person. This is a matter on
which, by universal admission, his own pleasure or inclination is
entitled to decide; and that he should be able so to decide it without
risking a quarrel is best for every body, the rejected person
included. An additional reason rendering the ballot unobjectionable in
these cases is that it does not necessarily or naturally lead to
lying. The persons concerned are of the same class or rank, and it
would be considered improper in one of them to press another with
questions as to how he had voted. It is far otherwise in Parliamentary
elections, and is likely to remain so as long as the social relations
exist which produce the demand for the ballot--as long as one person
is sufficiently the superior of another to think himself entitled to
dictate his vote. And while this is the case, silence or an evasive
answer is certain to be construed as proof that the vote given has not
been that which was desired.
In any political election, even by universal suffrage (and still more
obviously in the case of a restricted suffrage), the voter is under an
absolute moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not
his private advantage, and give his vote, to the best of his judgment,
exactly as he would be bound to do if he were the sole voter, and the
election depended upon him alone. This being admitted, it is at least
a _primâ facie_ consequence that the duty of voting, like any other
public duty, should be performed under the eye and criticism of the
public; every one of whom has not only an interest in its performance,
but a good title to consider himself wronged if it is performed
otherwise than honestly and carefully. Undoubtedly neither this nor
any other maxim of political morality is absolutely inviolable; it may
be overruled by still more cogent considerations. But its weight is
such that the cases which admit of a departure from it must be of a
strikingly exceptional character.
It may unquestionably be the fact, that if we attempt, by publicity,
to make the voter responsible to the public for his vote, he will
practically be made responsible for it to some powerful individual,
whose interest is more opposed to the general interest of the
community than that of the voter himself would be, if, by the shield
of secrecy, he were released from responsibility altogether. When this
is the condition, in a high degree, of a large proportion of the
voters, the ballot may be the smaller evil. When the voters are
slaves, any thing may be tolerated which enables them to throw off the
yoke. The strongest case for the ballot is when the mischievous power
of the Few over the Many is increasing. In the decline of the Roman
republic, the reasons for the ballot were irresistible. The oligarchy
was yearly becoming richer and more tyrannical, the people poorer and
more dependent, and it was necessary to erect stronger and stronger
barriers against such abuse of the franchise as rendered it but an
instrument the more in the hands of unprincipled persons of
consequence. As little can it be doubted that the ballot, so far as it
existed, had a beneficial operation in the Athenian constitution. Even
in the least unstable of the Grecian commonwealths, freedom might be
for the time destroyed by a single unfairly obtained popular vote; and
though the Athenian voter was not sufficiently dependent to be
habitually coerced, he might have been bribed or intimidated by the
lawless outrages of some knot of individuals, such as were not
uncommon even at Athens among the youth of rank and fortune. The
ballot was in these cases a valuable instrument of order, and conduced
to the Eunomia by which Athens was distinguished among the ancient
commonwealths.
But in the more advanced states of modern Europe, and especially in
this country, the power of coercing voters has declined and is
declining; and bad voting is now less to be apprehended from the
influences to which the voter is subject at the hands of others, than
from the sinister interests and discreditable feelings which belong to
himself, either individually or as a member of a class. To secure him
against the first, at the cost of removing all restraint from the
last, would be to exchange a smaller and a diminishing evil for a
greater and increasing one. On this topic, and on the question
generally as applicable to England at the present date, I have, in a
pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform, expressed myself in terms which, as
I do not feel that I can improve upon, I will venture here to
transcribe.
"Thirty years ago it was still true that in the election of members of
Parliament the main evil to be guarded against was that which the
ballot would exclude--coercion by landlords, employers, and customers.
At present, I conceive, a much greater source of evil is the
selfishness, or the selfish partialities of the voter himself. A base
and mischievous vote is now, I am convinced, much oftener given from
the voter's personal interest, or class interest, or some mean feeling
in his own mind, than from any fear of consequences at the hands of
others; and to these influences the ballot would enable him to yield
himself up, free from all sense of shame or responsibility.
"In times not long gone by, the higher and richer classes were in
complete possession of the government. Their power was the master
grievance of the country. The habit of voting at the bidding of an
employer or of a landlord was so firmly established that hardly any
thing was capable of shaking it but a strong popular enthusiasm,
seldom known to exist but in a good cause. A vote given in opposition
to those influences was therefore, in general, an honest, a
public-spirited vote; but in any case, and by whatever motive
dictated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was a vote
against the monster evil, the overruling influence of oligarchy. Could
the voter at that time have been enabled, with safety to himself, to
exercise his privilege freely, even though neither honestly nor
intelligently, it would have been a great gain to reform, for it would
have broken the yoke of the then ruling power in the country--the
power which had created and which maintained all that was bad in the
institutions and the administration of the state--the power of
landlords and boroughmongers.
"The ballot was not adopted; but the progress of circumstances has
done and is doing more and more, in this respect, the work of the
ballot. Both the political and the social state of the country, as
they affect this question, have greatly changed, and are changing
every day. The higher classes are not now masters of the country. A
person must be blind to all the signs of the times who could think
that the middle classes are as subservient to the higher, or the
working classes as dependent on the higher and middle, as they were a
quarter of a century ago. The events of that quarter of a century have
not only taught each class to know its own collective strength, but
have put the individuals of a lower class in a condition to show a
much bolder front to those of a higher. In a majority of cases, the
vote of the electors, whether in opposition to or in accordance with
the wishes of their superiors, is not now the effect of coercion,
which there are no longer the same means of applying, but the
expression of their own personal or political partialities. The very
vices of the present electoral system are a proof of this. The growth
of bribery, so loudly complained of, and the spread of the contagion
to places formerly free from it, are evidence that the local
influences are no longer paramount; that the electors now vote to
please themselves, and not other people. There is, no doubt, in
counties and in the smaller boroughs, a large amount of servile
dependence still remaining; but the temper of the times is adverse to
it, and the force of events is constantly tending to diminish it. A
good tenant can now feel that he is as valuable to his landlord as his
landlord is to him; a prosperous tradesman can afford to feel
independent of any particular customer. At every election the votes
are more and more the voter's own. It is their minds, far more than
their personal circumstances, that now require to be emancipated. They
are no longer passive instruments of other men's will--mere organs for
putting power into the hands of a controlling oligarchy. The electors
themselves are becoming the oligarchy.
"Exactly in proportion as the vote of the elector is determined by his
own will, and not by that of somebody who is his master, his position
is similar to that of a member of Parliament, and publicity is
indispensable. So long as any portion of the community are
unrepresented, the argument of the Chartists against ballot in
conjunction with a restricted suffrage is unassailable. The present
electors, and the bulk of those whom any probable Reform Bill would
add to the number, are the middle class, and have as much a class
interest, distinct from the working classes, as landlords or great
manufacturers. Were the suffrage extended to all skilled laborers,
even these would, or might, still have a class interest distinct from
the unskilled. Suppose it extended to all men--suppose that what was
formerly called by the misapplied name of universal suffrage, and now
by the silly title of manhood suffrage, became the law; the voters
would still have a class interest as distinguished from women. Suppose
that there were a question before the Legislature specially affecting
women--as whether women should be allowed to graduate at universities;
whether the mild penalties inflicted on ruffians who beat their wives
daily almost to death's door should be exchanged for something more
effectual; or suppose that any one should propose in the British
Parliament what one state after another in America is enacting, not by
a mere law, but by a provision of their revised Constitutions; that
married women should have a right to their own property--are not a
man's wife and daughters entitled to know whether he votes for or
against a candidate who will support these propositions?
"It will of course be objected that these arguments' derive all their
weight from the supposition of an unjust state of the suffrage: that
if the opinion of the non-electors is likely to make the elector vote
more honestly or more beneficially than he would vote if left to
himself, they are more fit to be electors than he is, and ought to
have the franchise; that whoever is fit to influence electors is fit
to be an elector; that those to whom voters ought to be responsible
should be themselves voters, and, being such, should have the
safeguard of the ballot, to shield them from the undue influence of
powerful individuals or classes to whom they ought not to be
responsible.
"This argument is specious, and I once thought it conclusive. It now
appears to me fallacious. All who are fit to influence electors are
not, for that reason, fit to be themselves electors. This last is a
much greater power than the former, and those may be ripe for the
minor political function who could not as yet be safely trusted with
the superior. The opinions and wishes of the poorest and rudest class
of laborers may be very useful as one influence among others on the
minds of the voters, as well as on those of the Legislature, and yet
it might be highly mischievous to give them the preponderant
influence, by admitting them, in their present state of morals and
intelligence, to the full exercise of the suffrage. It is precisely
this indirect influence of those who have not the suffrage over those
who have, which, by its progressive growth, softens the transition to
every fresh extension of the franchise, and is the means by which,
when the time is ripe, the extension is peacefully brought about. But
there is another and a still deeper consideration, which should never
be left out of the account in political speculations. The notion is
itself unfounded that publicity, and the sense of being answerable to
the public, are of no use unless the public are qualified to form a
sound judgment. It is a very superficial view of the utility of public
opinion to suppose that it does good only when it succeeds in
enforcing a servile conformity to itself. To be under the eyes of
others--to have to defend oneself to others--is never more important
than to those who act in opposition to the opinion of others, for it
obliges them to have sure ground of their own. Nothing has so
steadying an influence as working against pressure. Unless when under
the temporary sway of passionate excitement, no one will do that which
he expects to be greatly blamed for, unless from a preconceived and
fixed purpose of his own, which is always evidence of a thoughtful and
deliberate character, and, except in radically bad men, generally
proceeds from sincere and strong personal convictions. Even the bare
fact of having to give an account of their conduct is a powerful
inducement to adhere to conduct of which at least some decent account
can be given. If any one thinks that the mere obligation of preserving
decency is not a very considerable check on the abuse of power, he has
never had his attention called to the conduct of those who do not feel
under the necessity of observing that restraint. Publicity is
inappreciable, even when it does no more than prevent that which can
by no possibility be plausibly defended--than compel deliberation, and
force every one to determine, before he acts, what he shall say if
called to account for his actions.
"But, if not now (it may be said), at least hereafter, when all are
fit to have votes, and when all men and women are admitted to vote in
virtue of their fitness, _then_ there can no longer be danger of class
legislation; then the electors, being the nation, can have no interest
apart from the general interest: even if individuals still vote
according to private or class inducements, the majority will have no
such inducement; and as there will then be no non-electors to whom
they ought to be responsible, the effect of the ballot, excluding none
but the sinister influences, will be wholly beneficial.
"Even in this I do not agree. I can not think that even if the people
were fit for, and had obtained universal suffrage, the ballot would be
desirable. First, because it could not, in such circumstances, be
supposed to be needful. Let us only conceive the state of things which
the hypothesis implies: a people universally educated, and every
grown-up human being possessed of a vote. If, even when only a small
proportion are electors, and the majority of the population almost
uneducated, public opinion is already, as every one now sees that it
is, the ruling power in the last resort, it is a chimera to suppose
that over a community who all read, and who all have votes, any power
could be exercised by landlords and rich people against their own
inclination, which it would be at all difficult for them to throw off.
But, though the protection of secrecy would then be needless, the
control of publicity would be as needful as ever. The universal
observation of mankind has been very fallacious, if the mere fact of
being one of the community, and not being in a position of pronounced
contrariety of interest to the public at large, is enough to insure
the performance of a public duty, without either the stimulus or the
restraint derived from the opinion of our fellow-creatures. A man's
own particular share of the public interest, even though he may have
no private interest drawing him in the opposite direction, is not, as
a general rule, found sufficient to make him do his duty to the public
without other external inducements. Neither can it be admitted that,
even if all had votes, they would give their votes as honestly in
secret as in public.
"The proposition that the electors, when they compose the whole of the
community, can not have an interest in voting against the interest of
the community, will be found, on examination, to have more sound than
meaning in it. Though the community, as a whole, can have (as the
terms imply) no other interest than its collective interest, any or
every individual in it may. A man's interest consists of whatever he
takes an interest _in_. Every body has as many different interests as
he has feelings; likings or dislikings, either of a selfish or of a
better kind. It can not be said that any of these, taken by itself,
constitutes 'his interest:' he is a good man or a bad according as he
prefers one class of his interests or another. A man who is a tyrant
at home will be apt to sympathize with tyranny (when not exercised
over himself); he will be almost certain not to sympathize with
resistance to tyranny. An envious man will vote against Aristides
because he is called the Just. A selfish man will prefer even a
trifling individual benefit to his share of the advantage which his
country would derive from a good law, because interests peculiar to
himself are those which the habits of his mind both dispose him to
dwell on and make him best able to estimate. A great number of the
electors will have two sets of preferences--those on private and those
on public grounds. The last are the only ones which the elector would
like to avow. The best side of their character is that which people
are anxious to show, even to those who are no better than themselves.
People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from
pique, from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of
class or sect, more readily in secret than in public. And cases
exist--they may come to be more frequent--in which almost the only
restraint upon a majority of knaves consists in their involuntary
respect for the opinion of an honest minority. In such a case as that
of the repudiating states of North America, is there not some check to
the unprincipled voter in the shame of looking an honest man in the
face? Since all this good would be sacrificed by the ballot, even in
the circumstances most favorable to it, a much stronger case is
requisite than can now be made out for its necessity (and the case is
continually becoming still weaker) to make its adoption desirable."
[4]
On the other debateable points connected with the mode of voting, it
is not necessary to expend so many words. The system of personal
representation, as organized by Mr. Hare, renders necessary the
employment of voting papers. But it appears to me indispensable that
the signature of the elector should be affixed to the paper at a
public polling-place, or if there be no such place conveniently
accessible, at some office open to all the world, and in the presence
of a responsible public officer. The proposal which has been thrown
out of allowing the voting papers to be filled up at the voter's own
residence, and sent by the post, or called for by a public officer, I
should regard as fatal. The act would be done in the absence of the
salutary and the presence of all the pernicious influences. The briber
might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with his own eyes his
bargain fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted
obedience rendered irrevocably on the spot; while the beneficent
counter-influence of the presence of those who knew the voter's real
sentiments, and the inspiring effect of the sympathy of those of his
own party or opinion, would be shut out. [5]
The polling places should be so numerous as to be within easy reach of
every voter, and no expenses of conveyance, at the cost of the
candidate, should be tolerated under any pretext. The infirm, and they
only on medical certificate, should have the right of claiming
suitable carriage conveyance at the cost of the state or of the
locality. Hustings, poll clerks, and all the necessary machinery of
elections, should be at the public charge. Not only the candidate
should not be required, he should not be permitted to incur any but a
limited and trifling expense for his election. Mr. Hare thinks it
desirable that a sum of £50 should be required from every one who
places his name on the list of candidates, to prevent persons who have
no chance of success, and no real intention of attempting it, from
becoming candidates in wantonness or from mere love of notoriety, and
perhaps carrying off a few votes which are needed for the return of
more serious aspirants. There is one expense which a candidate or his
supporters can not help incurring, and which it can hardly be expected
that the public should defray for every one who may choose to demand
it--that of making his claims known to the electors, by
advertisements, placards, and circulars. For all necessary expenses of
this kind the £50 proposed by Mr. Hare, if allowed to be drawn upon
for these purposes (it might be made £100 if requisite), ought to be
sufficient. If the friends of the candidate choose to go to expense
for committees and canvassing, there are no means of preventing them;
but such expenses out of the candidates's own pocket, or any expenses
whatever beyond the deposit of £50 (or £100), should be illegal and
punishable. If there appeared any likelihood that opinion would refuse
to connive at falsehood, a declaration on oath or honor should be
required from every member, on taking his seat, that he had not
expended, nor would expend, money or money's worth beyond the £50,
directly or indirectly, for the purposes of his election; and if the
assertion were proved to be false or the pledge to have been broken,
he should be liable to the penalties of perjury. It is probable that
those penalties, by showing that the Legislature was in earnest, would
turn the course of opinion in the same direction, and would hinder it
from regarding, as has hitherto done, this most serious crime against
society as a venial peccadillo. When once this effect has been
produced, there need be no doubt that the declaration on oath or honor
would be considered binding. [6] "Opinion tolerates a false
disclaimer only when it already tolerates the thing disclaimed." This
is notoriously the case with regard to electoral corruption. There has
never yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to
prevent bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections
should not be costly. Their costliness is an advantage to those who
can afford the expense by excluding a multitude of competitors; and
any thing, however noxious, is cherished as having a conservative
tendency, if it limits the access to Parliament to rich men. This is a
rooted feeling among our legislators of both political parties, and is
almost the only point on which I believe them to be really
ill-intentioned. They care comparatively little who votes, as long as
they feel assured that none but persons of their own class can be
voted for. They know that they can rely on the fellow-feeling of one
of their class with another, while the subservience of _nouveaux
enrichis_ who are knocking at the door of the class is a still surer
reliance; and that nothing very hostile to the class interests or
feelings of the rich need be apprehended under the most democratic
suffrage, as long as democratic persons can be prevented from being
elected to Parliament. But, even from their own point of view, this
balancing of evil by evil, instead of combining good with good, is a
wretched policy. The object should be to bring together the best
members of both classes, under such a tenure as shall induce them to
lay aside their class preferences, and pursue jointly the path traced
by the common interest, instead of allowing the class feelings of the
Many to have full swing in the constituencies, subject to the
impediment of having to act through persons imbued with the class
feelings of the Few.
There is scarcely any mode in which political institutions are more
morally mischievous--work greater evil through their spirit--than by
representing political functions as a favor to be conferred, a thing
which the depositary is to ask for as desiring it for himself, and
even pay for as if it were designed for his pecuniary benefit. Men are
not fond of paying large sums for leave to perform a laborious duty.
Plato had a much juster view of the conditions of good government when
he asserted that the persons who should be sought out to be invested
with political power are those who are personally most averse to it,
and that the only motive which can be relied on for inducing the
fittest men to take upon themselves the toils of government is the
fear of being governed by worse men. What must an elector think when
he sees three or four gentlemen, none of them previously observed to
be lavish of their money on projects of disinterested beneficence,
vying with one another in the sums they expend to be enabled to write
M.P. after their names? Is it likely he will suppose that it is for
_his_ interest they incur all this cost? And if he form an
uncomplimentary opinion of their part in the affair, what moral
obligation is he likely to feel as to his own? Politicians are fond of
treating it as the dream of enthusiasts that the electoral body will
ever be uncorrupt: truly enough, until they are willing to become so
themselves; for the electors, assuredly, will take their moral tone
from the candidates. So long as the elected member, in any shape or
manner, pays for his seat, all endeavours will fail to make the
business of election any thing but a selfish bargain on all sides. "So
long as the candidate himself, and the customs of the world, seem to
regard the function of a member of Parliament less as a duty to be
discharged than a personal favor to be solicited, no effort will avail
to implant in an ordinary voter the feeling that the election of a
member of Parliament is also a matter of duty, and that he is not at
liberty to bestow his vote on any other consideration than that of
personal fitness."
The same principle which demands that no payment of money for election
purposes should be either required or tolerated on the part of the
person elected, dictates another conclusion, apparently of contrary
tendency, but really directed to the same object. It negatives what
has often been proposed as a means of rendering Parliament accessible
to persons of all ranks and circumstances--the payment of members of
Parliament. If, as in some of our colonies, there are scarcely any fit
persons who can afford to attend to an unpaid occupation, the payment
should be an indemnity for loss of time or money, not a salary. The
greater latitude of choice which a salary would give is an illusory
advantage. No remuneration which any one would think of attaching to
the post would attract to it those who were seriously engaged in other
lucrative professions, with a prospect of succeeding in them. The
occupation of a member of Parliament would therefore become an
occupation in itself, carried on, like other professions, with a view
chiefly to its pecuniary returns, and under the demoralizing
influences of an occupation essentially precarious. It would become an
object of desire to adventurers of a low class; and 658 persons in
possession, with ten or twenty times as many in expectancy, would be
incessantly bidding to attract or retain the suffrages of the
electors, by promising all things, honest or dishonest, possible or
impossible, and rivaling each other in pandering to the meanest
feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest part of the
crowd. The auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in
Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on.
Such an institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most
peccant parts of human nature. It amounts to offering 658 prizes for
the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of
his fellow-countrymen. Under no despotism has there been such an
organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious
courtiership. [7] When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications
(as may at any time happen to be the case), it is desirable that a
person entirely without independent means, either derived from
property or from a trade or profession, should be brought into
Parliament to render services which no other person accessible can
render as well, there is the resource of a public subscription; he may
be supported while in Parliament, like Andrew Marvel, by the
contributions of his constituents. This mode is unobjectionable for
such an honor will never be paid to mere subserviency: bodies of men
do not care so much for the difference between one sycophant and
another as to go to the expense of his maintenance in order to be
flattered by that particular individual. Such a support will only be
given in consideration of striking and impressive personal qualities,
which, though no absolute proof of fitness to be a national
representative, are some presumption of it, and, at all events, some
guaranty for the possession of an independent opinion and will.