A CHANGE OF FRONT.

Too many voters in the United States today consider the ballot but an immediate opportunity to express their personal feelings on this or that question which comes to the polls. A flagrant and disgraceful example of thoughtless vacillation in the use of the franchise is seen in the result of the recent vote of the town meetings of Massachusetts. Last year the inhabitants of nearly every town within forty miles of Boston voted "dry" by a large margin, when the question of prohibition was considered. On Monday these same towns polled not only a marginal plurality but in nearly every case an actual majority of wet votes. This cannot mean, as some maintain, that the "drys", feeling that this year the issue no longer exists, remained away from the polls; some may have done so, but the majorities were everywhere so large that had the uncounted voters all cast their ballots "dry" the plurality must still have been anti-prohibition. As long as the townsmen could keep their cellars supplied from Boston, they voted to keep their back yards free from the saloon. It was really not a moral objection that caused them to vote "dry", as is shown by their reversal of opinion after prohibition had taken effect in Boston. A practical lesson in the ethics of voting should be drawn from this weak policy of moral vacillation, that another such mistake may not be made.