Owing to the large number of officials chosen at one time in American elections, the form and appearance of the ballot used is very different from that in Great Britain. At the quadrennial presidential election in New York state, for example, the officers to be voted for by each elector are thirty-six presidential electors, one congressman, state-governor, lieutenant-governor and five other state officers, a member for each house of the state legislature, several judges, a sheriff, county-clerk and other county officers. The column with the list of the candidates of each party for all of these offices is 2 to 3 ft. in length; and as there are often eight to ten party-tickets in the field, the ballot-paper is usually from 18 to 20 in. in width. Each voter receives one of these "blanket" ballots on entering the polling-place, and retires to a booth to mark either a party column or the individual candidates in different columns for whom he wishes to vote. Where, as in Massachusetts, the names of candidates are arranged by offices instead of in party-lists, every voter must mark the name of each individual candidate for whom he wishes to vote. Connecticut, New Jersey, Missouri, North and South Carolina, Georgia and New Mexico use the system of separate party ballots. (See also Voting, Voting Machines, Election, Representation.)
[1] For a description of Grote's card-frame, in which the card was punctured through a hole, and was thus never in the voter's hands, see Spectator, 25th February 1837.
BALLOU, HOSEA (1771-1852), American Universalist clergyman, was born in Richmond, New Hampshire, on the 30th of April 1771. He was a son of Maturin Ballou, a Baptist minister, was self-educated, early devoted himself to the ministry, became a convert to Universalism in 1789, and in 1794 became a pastor of a congregation at Dana, Massachusetts. He preached at Barnard, Vermont, and the surrounding towns in 1801-1807; at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1807-1815; at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1815-1817; and as pastor of the Second Universalist Church in Boston from December 1817 until his death there on the 7th of June 1852. He founded and edited The Universalist Magazine (1819; later called The Trumpet) and The Universalist Expositor (1831; later The Universalist Quarterly Review); wrote about 10,000 sermons, many hymns, essays and polemic theological works; and is best known for Notes on the Parables (1804), A Treatise on Atonement (1805) and Examination of the Doctrine of a Future Retribution (1834); in these, especially the second, he showed himself the principal American expositor of Universalism. His great contribution to his Church was the body of denominational literature he left. From the theology of John Murray, who like Ballou has been called "the father of American Universalism," he differed in that he divested Universalism of every trace of Calvinism and opposed legalism and trinitarian views.
Consult the biography by Thomas Whittemore (4 vols., Boston, 1854-1855) and that by Oscar F. Safford (Boston, 1889); and J. C. Adams, Hosea Ballou and the Gospel Renaissance (Boston, 1904).
His grand-nephew, Hosea Ballou (1796-1861), born in Halifax, Vermont, on the 18th of October 1796, preached to Universalists in Stafford, Connecticut (1815-1821); and in Massachusetts, in Roxbury (1821-1838) and in Medford (1838-1853); and in 1853 was elected first president of Tufts College at Medford, serving in that office until shortly before his death, which took place at Somerville, Massachusetts, on the 27th of May 1861. He was the first (1847) to urge the necessity of a Universalist denominational college, and this did much towards the establishment of Tufts. He was associated with the elder Hosea Ballou in editing The Universalist Quarterly Review; edited an edition of Sismondi's History of the Crusades (1833); and wrote the Ancient History of Universalism, down to A.D. 553 (1829; 2nd ed., 1842).
Maturin Murray Ballou (1820-1895), son of the first Hosea, was a pioneer in American illustrated journalism, edited Gleason's Pictorial and Ballou's Monthly and many collections of quotations, and in 1872 became editor-in-chief of the Boston Daily Globe, of which he was one of the founders. He wrote a life of his father (1860), and a History of Cuba (1854).
BALLSTON SPA, a village and the county-seat of Saratoga county, New York, U.S.A., about 7 m. S. of Saratoga Springs. Pop. (1890) 3527; (1900) 3923; (1910 U.S. Census) 4138. It is served by the Delaware & Hudson railway, and is connected with Saratoga Springs, Albany, and Schenectady by electric lines. There are several manufacturing establishments, among which are one of the largest manufactories of paper-bags in the United States and a large tannery. It is, however, as a popular summer resort that Ballston Spa is best known. Many fine chalybeate and other springs rising through solid rock from a depth of about 650 ft. furnish a highly effervescent water of considerable medicinal and commercial value. The village has the Ballston Spa public library, the Saratoga county law library and the Saratoga county court house. Ballston Spa, which was named in honour of the Rev. Eliphalet Ball, an early settler, was settled about 1787 by the grandfather of Stephen A. Douglas, and was incorporated in 1855.
See E. F. Prose, Centennial Hist. of Ballston Spa, 1908.
BALLYCASTLE, a seaport and watering-place on the north coast of Co. Antrim, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, situated on a bay of the same name opposite Rathlin Island. Pop. (1901) 1481. It is connected with the Northern Counties (Midland) railway at Ballymoney by the Ballycastle light railway. The town consists of two divisions, about a quarter of a mile apart and connected by a fine avenue. Towards the close of the 18th century Mr Hugh Boyd, obtaining the estate, devoted himself to the extension and improvement of the town, establishing manufactures, endowing charities and building churches; and succeeded in producing a temporary vitality. Upwards of £150,000, including a large government grant, is said to have been expended upon the pier and harbour; but the violence of the sea overthrew the one and the other became filled with sand. To the east of the town are the remains of Bonamargy Abbey, the burial-place of many of the MacDonnell family. The Carey brook, by the side of which the abbey stands, was formerly called the Margy, and on its waters according to tradition dwelt the four children of Lir, changed to swans by their step-mother until St Columba released them from enchantment. (See P. W. Joyce, Old Celtic Romances.) With this well-known romance is connected the wide-spread belief in Ireland of ill-fortune following the killing of a swan. Coal-seams, formerly extensively worked, and from an unknown
period of antiquity, appear in the cliffs towards Fair Head, and the fisheries are important. The coast-scenery and the view from the hill of Knocklayd are notable.