“a decline in the quality of the members in general respect, in education, in social position, in morality, in public spirit, in care and deliberation, and, I think, I must add in integrity also.” He finds them subservient to the Boss rather than to public opinion and adds, “To account for this or to say how it is to be mended, is, I admit, very difficult. Few subjects have done more to baffle reformers and investigators. It is the great puzzle of the heartiest friends of Democracy.”
“a decline in the quality of the members in general respect, in education, in social position, in morality, in public spirit, in care and deliberation, and, I think, I must add in integrity also.” He finds them subservient to the Boss rather than to public opinion and adds, “To account for this or to say how it is to be mended, is, I admit, very difficult. Few subjects have done more to baffle reformers and investigators. It is the great puzzle of the heartiest friends of Democracy.”
Among people generally there is a failure to agree upon any specific cause for the sad inferiority of our political condition. Some attribute it to human frailty; some to American carelessness or good nature; some to the spirit of the age, some to the inherent weakness of democracy. In a very able and scholarly little book published as late as 1918 by Max Farrand of Yale University entitledThe Development of the United States, the writer, after referring to persistent and ineffectual attempts of reformers for the past generation to cleanse politics in this country, makes this significant statement (p. 293): “It is surprising that the people still retain faith in any remedies, but hope springs eternal and every new plan was able to rally ardent supporters. To the thoughtful observer, however, it was evident that the root of the trouble had not been found and that something more radical or something entirely different was necessary.” I find no hint in Farrand’s book as to what this “something” might be. One may suspect that the worthy professor had tracked the bear to his den but did not care to start him; that he preferred to avoid making his book the subject of controversy by giving his opinion as to what is in fact “the root of the trouble.”
However, he states the problem in a nutshell. All efforts to reform and cleanse our politics have failed, something new and different is needed, some remedy that will reach the very source of the political corruption of our time and country. But after all, there need be very little difficulty in finding the “root of the trouble”; it lies exposed, plain enough for all men to see and to stumble over as they pass to and fro. Many no doubt have identified it who prefer to be silent on the subject, though a few prominent men have spoken out. President Woolsey of Yale, for example, frankly says that “universal suffrage does not secure the government of the wisest nor even secures the liberties of a country placed in such a democratic situation,much less secures its order and stability.” (Pol. Science.Vol. I, Sec. 101). In Reemelin’sAmerican Politics(1881) the author says in his chapter on the ballot box that “thickly strewn around us lie the evidences, that governing by the ballot box, based on universal suffrage and universal qualification for office is a failure; but why this is so, and what remedy we should apply is not so intelligible.” (P. 168.) In 1871 theWestminster Review, a British radical magazine, published an article onThe American Republic, its Strength and Weaknessin which the dangers of manhood suffrage were plainly pointed out, and its institution attributed to the efforts of demagogues, and to a mistaken conception of suffrage as a right instead of as a privilege to be conferred upon those capable of exercising it. The writer sums up the topic by saying that:
“The elevation of the government, laws and institutions of a republic must necessarily depend upon the average intelligence and virtue of its voting population. Hence it is a most dangerous experiment for America to reduce the qualifications of its voters to the level of the lowest, instead of raising the latter to a certain definite standard at which the right of suffrage might with comparative safety be placed in their hands.”
“The elevation of the government, laws and institutions of a republic must necessarily depend upon the average intelligence and virtue of its voting population. Hence it is a most dangerous experiment for America to reduce the qualifications of its voters to the level of the lowest, instead of raising the latter to a certain definite standard at which the right of suffrage might with comparative safety be placed in their hands.”
Another writer thus expresses himself:
“It is perfectly idle to attempt to give political power to persons who have no political capacity, who are not intellectual enough to form opinions or who are not high minded enough to act on those opinions.... Lastly the events of the earlier part of the last century show us—demonstrate we may say, to us,—the necessity of retaining a very great share of power in the hands of the wealthier and more instructed classes, of the real rulers of public opinion.” (Bagehot,Parliamentary Reform, p. 316.)
“It is perfectly idle to attempt to give political power to persons who have no political capacity, who are not intellectual enough to form opinions or who are not high minded enough to act on those opinions.... Lastly the events of the earlier part of the last century show us—demonstrate we may say, to us,—the necessity of retaining a very great share of power in the hands of the wealthier and more instructed classes, of the real rulers of public opinion.” (Bagehot,Parliamentary Reform, p. 316.)
And Lecky predicts that the day will come when the adoption of the theory that the best way to improve the world and secure national progress is to place the government under thecontrol of the least enlightened classes will be regarded as one of the strangest facts in the history of human folly.
Indeed, but little political discernment is required to enable one to realize the fatal mischiefs attendant upon the plan of according a place in the electorate to females generally and to the ignorant, idle, unthrifty, purchasable, vicious and anti-social males. It is not difficult to see that such a scheme is erroneous in principle, antagonistic to civilization, and to society as the agent of civilization. History informs us that manhood suffrage is contrary to our best traditions; that it has been mischievous and unclean in practise; that it has filled the body politic with the foulest corruption; that it is largely responsible for the Civil War and other serious blunders and mischiefs; that it has cost thousands of millions to the American people in money stolen and squandered. Reason plainly teaches us that the suffrage is not a natural right, but a function in the social system belonging only to those who by the process of natural selection are qualified as men of education and property to take a part in government; that unlimited universal or manhood suffrage is dangerous for the future and if not overthrown may ultimately cause our national destruction. There is not therefore after all any real difficulty in determining that universal suffrage is the political disease under which America is suffering. Its specific cause is the virus of the rabble vote; men without character and destitute of achievement should be excluded from the suffrage; they are by nature political nonentities, and were they content to mark zero on their ballots thus indicating the real extent of their political value and sagacity they would be harmless; but they are too often the willing tools of scamps and demagogues, and though individually zeros they attach themselves to real figures to give them a fictitious and in this case a maleficent influence. Nor is the remedy far to seek, though so many political writers have been rather shy in hinting it. It is possible by very simple means, by a mere return to the original American principle and American practice of a property qualification for voters to so reform our entire governmental system from the foundation upwards that it will become efficient and enduring and capable of defying all the political madness of the times. The democratic theory would thus be retained, but it would be purified and strengthened by a return to the principles of the fathers of the republic. We have failed because we have attempted in defiance of those principles to create a democracy founded on numbers and on nothing but numbers. The resulting product has not been a true democracy; it has not properly represented and does not properly represent the American nation, which consists not merely of population but of American intelligence and industry. The manhood suffrage democracy of numbers merely is too narrow; it does not afford a broad enough foundation for the national superstructure; and that foundation should he widened to include the American character and American achievement.
The real difficulty in the case lies then not in ascertaining the source of American political ills, nor in prescribing the remedy; the difficulty lies in obtaining leadership or even advocacy of a movement which to most men appears to promise little in the way of personal advancement and much in the way of hostile criticism. As to the masses in private life, most are indifferent and the remainder voiceless. All the organs of public opinion are muzzled, controlled or terrified into silence by the politicians; and but few in public life whether newspaper men, clergymen, judges, politicians, teachers or public servants or officials; but few of those merely dependent upon or connected with politics or government, whether bankers, lawyers, physicians in hospitals, officers of public utilities or the like, have heretofore dared more than whisper to their closest friends their real hatred of the political despotism under which we are living today in the United States. Now, however, the present menace of the political madness known as Bolshevism affords a new and compelling motive to every true American to arouse himself, and there is a hope that in the presence of a new peril, good citizens may be moved to realize the inherentweakness and danger of our present political system, and to undertake the establishment of a suffrage based upon such qualifications as will insure the creation and continuance of a government in this country so strong, determined, intelligent and devoted to the interests of civilization that under it our whole political life may be purified and made efficient; one which may be relied upon not merely to crush Bolshevism in the United States but to extirpate it from this country forever.
The proposal to establish a property qualification for voters throughout the United States may seem novel and even startling to many Americans, but there is no other way out of the political mess in which we find ourselves. As will be shown in detail in subsequent pages the corrupt rule of the low professional politicians of this country is made secure by the vote of the thriftless and controllable class; until that vote is expurgated there can be no purification of the body politic; without purification there can be no efficiency; and unless the administration of our public affairs is purified and made efficient we cannot either answer the charges of the enemies of our institutions or repel their attacks. We cannot depend upon the electorate as at present made up; it has already shown its capacity to breed and encourage bad government; the thriftless classes are all ready to accept Bolshevism or any other economical and political absurdity; they are no more able to understand the scheme of civilization and the value and importance of accumulations of earnings and creation of property in furtherance of that scheme than they are able to understand a musical symphony or a problem in the higher mathematics. And after all there is nothing sacred about the doctrine of unlimited suffrage; it is only a political experiment like another; and the well known record of its complete and dismal failure is summarized in these pages where it is shown that it has not been an instrument of progress nor a means of freedom, but that its tendency has been and is towards reaction and despotism; that it is anti-social and hostile to civilization. The proposal to make property accumulations the basis ofgovernment, though it is sanctioned by ancient practise, is not reactionary; it is progressive, as every return to old and sound principles is progressive. Nor will it create or tend to create a narrow or exclusive electorate; it will on the contrary have a broadening effect and will tend to furnish a truly popular government, one resting directly on the consent and the votes of most of the population, and utilizing qualities of virtue and manhood now denied their proper effect in politics. It will represent directly or indirectly every element of value in the nation; everything on which a democratic government depends for its best support; namely, the industry, thrift, wealth, intelligence, character and honest independence of its people. The change will appear in the overthrow of the rule of brute force and the curbing of the present despotism of numbers. Do what we will, the passions and prejudices of the unthinking and uninstructed will always affect political action; but if our democracy is to survive their power must be checked and modified by associating with the sway of numbers the powers of intelligence, of character, and of industry which working together constitute efficiency.
Every generation has its problems which it must solve at its peril. Ours is before us and must shortly be met if the signs tell true. Like Edipus we must answer correctly or perish. And the question is, how to abolish the weak and corrupt rule of the politicians and re-establish a pure, firm, intelligent and truly republican government in the United States. The true answer must be by the reform and elevation of the electorate. Purify the source and the stream will be pure and sweet.
This object is of such consequence that every American ought to be willing to devote strong efforts to its accomplishment. And first, the intelligent and patriotic people of the country need to be aroused to a sense of its importance and instructed in the merits of the case. They must be made not merely to know but to realize vividly the main features of the argument for a property qualification, which may be summarized in ten points, namely: (1) That this government was not originally founded on the principle of universal suffrage but on that of a propertied electorate. (2) That the permanency of the corrupt and inefficient rule of the political oligarchy in the United States is due to the operation of universal suffrage. (3) That there is no natural right to vote; but that voting is a function of government to be exercised only for the benefit of society and never merely for that of the individual. (4) That government in our day is a highly specialized business institution requiring from its members expert knowledge rather than oratorical gifts. (5) That good government in a democracy requires a worthy and intelligent electorate. (6) That the franchise laws must deal with classes, not with individuals. (7) That the franchise should be confined to those who are socially qualified, as proven by lives of successful social endeavor, resulting in the solid acquisition of substantial property. (8) That book or school education is insufficient to constitute by itself a franchise qualification. (9) That the body or mass of men are better fitted than that of women to exercise all political functions, voting included, and that therefore women should be denied the suffrage. (10) That the elevation of the franchise is absolutely necessary to purify our politics, strengthen our government and protect property and civilization from threatened anarchy.
It is with the hope of assisting in this work that this book has been written and published. It is not within its plan and scope to propose and discuss in minute detail the exact qualifications of voters and suffrage restrictions under the proposed new system. The basic principles herein advocated once recognized, the detailed regulations for their enforcement may properly be left to such state legislatures or conventions as may undertake to deal with the matter. They would obviously differ in different states and possibly in different communities. They should be such as would tend to insure a contribution by the voter of such a quota of intelligence, independence and good judgment in casting his vote as willgreatly decrease bribery in elections; as will raise the standard of candidates for office, reduce the influence of demagogues and “yellow” journals, elevate the tone of public service, and incidentally encourage good citizenship by making the voting power a badge of honor and manhood and a privilege to be sought after and valued. There is no place in this scheme for an educational qualification; such a requirement would be inconsistent with the theory of this book which is that the school of business life is the appropriate preparation for the voting booth. The class of men of good education who are unable to acquire a modest competence in this country are obviously so lacking in either interest in, or judgment of, practical affairs as to be unfit to pass upon those business questions which form the main part of the problems of government. The world of books on the one hand is a totally different realm from the world of business and of politics on the other hand. Further, an educational qualification for voters is absolutely impracticable; it could not possibly be enforced. But this subject will be discussed more at length in the twenty-ninth chapter. Meanwhile let us briefly examine the history and operations of the voting system in the United States.
THE OLDEST AND BEST AMERICAN TRADITIONS FAVOR A RESTRICTED SUFFRAGE
THE OLDEST AND BEST AMERICAN TRADITIONS FAVOR A RESTRICTED SUFFRAGE
Manyof us have been accustomed to regard the principle of manhood suffrage as a part of the original American ideal. The contrary is the fact. The doctrine that voters should be qualified for their duties is not novel in America. It came to the country with its first settlers; the colonists believed in it and retained it; it was part of the settled policy of all the colonies for over one hundred and fifty progressive and flourishing years; under that policy they built up the country; raised the finest crop of statesmen and patriots it has ever produced; fought the war of Independence; wrote the Constitution; established the Union and created the United States of America.
The species of a democracy which we now have, where capacity is unrecognized and unrepresented, and where the votes of men without standing in the community may and do offset and defeat the votes of men of property, of business experience and sagacity was not the creation of the Fathers of the American Republic and was not tolerated by them. In no sense is manhood suffrage or a democracy of numbers an integration of their spirit. They sought rather to establish a system of government by capacity and intelligence, and desired that the measures thereby enacted from time to time should be the result not of an appeal to numerical superiority but of wise and careful discussion and deliberation by bodies containing the most capable and disinterested men in the community. Most of them no doubt expected a property qualification for voters materially to contribute to this result andthey saw no injustice or tyranny in demanding a qualification which any man might acquire by industry and thrift. It was not the men of 1776 who established the doctrine of manhood suffrage in the United States; and though in some of the more sparsely settled or mountainous states, such as Vermont, Kentucky and New Hampshire, the population was so small and conditions were so primitive that suffrage qualifications seemed superfluous and were never adopted, yet the country as a whole, including the great states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia, stood for the principle of a properly qualified electorate long after American independence.
It was not till the period of a generation after the death of George Washington, when the most prominent of those who stood for pure conservative government were no more, and Washington, himself the greatest single obstacle to political humbug in the country, was but a memory, that the barriers were finally removed so that the army of professional politicians were enabled to get possession of every government in the United States. Commencing with that time the political control which the fathers had endeavored to place permanently in the hands of the best, most enlightened and most efficient was gradually transferred to the hands of some of the worst, most ignorant and incompetent. This mischievous transfer was due mostly to the operation of manhood suffrage. It is by the admission to the electorate of the poorest quality of material that politics has been degraded to its present low level; that it has become a business to be conducted for profit; that professional politicians have obtained and retained power; that the intelligence and manhood of the nation have been deprived of their rightful control over its destiny; and that the country has been handed over to gangs of sordid rascals to be plundered. That it has been plundered cannot be denied. The plundering has been conducted so openly, scandalously and notoriously that there is hardly a reader of this book who is not more or less familiar with some of the details, though itsextent is so great that no one not a student of the subject can be familiar with it all.
One may naturally ask how comes it that the American people not only submit to such a vile despotism, but never seem seriously to question its right to exist. The answer is that the case is similar to that of the recent German militarist domination; the country is in the clutches of a political oligarchy which controls a large organized body of those who live by the operation of universal suffrage; the masses are taught to believe in it, and the most of those who are sufficiently instructed to fully understand its stupidity and villainy are silent in public because of fear, indifference or self-interest. The newspapers have not cloaked the rascalities of the politicians, except those of their own party, because political sensations help to sustain their circulation; but they have not undertaken to attack the political system which is responsible for those rascalities; they have neither opposed manhood suffrage nor exposed its sinister operations; they have never published one-fourth of the available details of the rogueries and stupidities of our political masters, and indeed, why should they publish more? The actually published scandals are quite sufficient to condemn any system yet the public makes no sign of revolt. Ephraim is wedded to his idols; let him alone. The newspapers cannot afford to attack popular abuses. They depend for their circulation on the favor of the same populace which yearly goes like silly sheep to the polling place bleating its pride at being driven there by its bosses, and their advertising in turn depends on their circulation. No single newspaper can afford to antagonize at once the uninstructed populace and the powerful class of politicians, office holders and political leaders who not only control a very valuable advertising patronage but include among themselves nearly all the public speakers in the country and thus possess the ear of the masses.
Nor can private individuals, however wise and patriotic, be expected in the present state of public opinion to assail a system so powerful and well established. It is in fact generallyassumed that manhood suffrage is a necessary part of the American policy, that its overthrow is hopeless; that to denounce it would be to court unpopularity; and in a country at once democratic and commercial, the number of those who dare to be unpopular is extremely few, and find it difficult to obtain even a hearing. And though in private conversation people frequently criticise governmental incapacity, and say that politics is rotten, and that politicians and office holders are corrupt, they seldom or never go as far as to question the principle of manhood suffrage, but seem to think that political corruption and incapacity are necessary incidents of all government, or at least of all democratic government.
Strange as it may seem, the doctrine of manhood suffrage has never been established in the minds of the American people by argument or discussion; originally adopted without serious reflection, it has since been largely taken for granted. It is curious to see how the most important measures may be adopted in a democratic community without even an approach to thorough consideration on the part of the majority. Take the case of woman suffrage adopted by the State of New York in 1917; only a small proportion of the men of the State had ever seriously considered the subject, and of the several millions of women of the State, probably not more than ten thousand really concerned themselves about it. National prohibition of the use of alcoholic beverages, which seemed impossible in 1908, was enacted in 1918 without real discussion by the electorate. The prohibition vote for President in 1916 was about 200,000 out of 18,000,000, or a little more than one per cent. But the prohibitionists were in bitter earnest; the others were careless or indifferent, a moment favorable to prohibition came, and the thing was done. Something like this is the story of the adoption of manhood suffrage in New York and the other large States; while it was being adopted the majority scarcely realized what was going on; after it was done they were indifferent to the change because it did not affect their daily lives. Since its adoption its theory has been very little discussed bythe American people; it has not been openly attacked or questioned by newspaper or political orator for over two generations; its validity is usually taken as a matter of course; the masses are not even aware that there is anything questionable about it; and but one American writer, Prof. Hyslop of New York, has had the vision to see its enormity and the courage and patriotism to describe it in print. (Democracy.) His powerful book was never replied to and it is significant that not a well considered argument in favor of manhood or universal suffrage can be found in our libraries. Most of what has been printed on the subject is mere twaddle; a few authors lacking practical experience in active life, such as teachers or sociologists, have alluded to it in their class books or political treatises, but the little they say on the subject is usually confined to commonplace laudation of political liberty or other weak sentimentalism or else to the routine conventional assumption that manhood suffrage is what they call in their pretentious slang part of the “advance movement” of the nineteenth century.
A very short sketch of the history of manhood suffrage in this country may be useful here as a preliminary to a brief review of its actual operations. Though some traces of a belief in the abstract right of all men to vote may be found in the England of the middle ages, yet our English ancestors prior to the Protestant Reformation had, generally speaking, no idea of a vote not founded on property or on such a recognized business standing as might give an assurance of stability of character or of a substantial interest in the affairs of the community or nation. The first English public utterance in favor of manhood suffrage that has come to the writer’s attention was made in 1647 by some of the sect of Congregationalists or Independents. That body was divided in opinion on the subject. Those who favored it were called “Levellers,” and in so doing were opposed by the other Independents as well as by the Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians. The Levellers claimed that the right to vote was conferred by natural law upon allfreemen. Cromwell and Ireton of the Puritan leaders opposed them, and insisted that no man had a right to vote on the affairs of the country or the choice of lawmakers who had not a property or a business interest; saying that those who have “noe interest butt the interest of breathing” should have no voice in elections.
The establishment of qualifications for voters in the American Colonies during the Colonial period was left entirely in the hands of the Colonies themselves; Great Britain not interfering. The first colonists were without any settled policy on the subject. Massachusetts had a religious qualification and some of the Puritans who wished to establish a theocracy or a church government in New England on the basis of the Independent or Congregational polity were in favor of making church membership the only qualification. The first settlers being without holdings in the colony, probably dispensed with a property qualification at first or waived it as impracticable. But very soon it was decided that only those having an interest in the colony should have a voice in its affairs; and the rule of a property qualification for voters was speedily established in all the colonies; in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut in 1630; in Rhode Island in 1658; in New Jersey in 1665 and North Carolina in 1663; in Maryland and in Virginia in 1670; in Pennsylvania in 1682; in South Carolina in 1692; in New York about 1701; in Delaware 1734; and in Georgia in 1761. In five colonies, namely, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, the property held might be either real or personal; in all the others it was required to be land. Some American theorists at the time of the Revolution held a belief or a half belief in manhood suffrage but they were few in number. In certain political declarations published not long prior to 1776 we find propositions that all men are naturally entitled to vote, while in others a suffrage qualification is suggested. But by the time the Revolution arrived the doctrine of manhood suffrage had practically disappeared from the colonies; and the practice of putting inoffice only the most prominent and best equipped was universal and apparently universally accepted.
The success of the Revolution in no way affected the suffrage. It had not been a democratic movement nor intended as such. At first it was designed to merely curtail without actually terminating British interference in American affairs; later as the estrangement increased it was determined to entirely get rid of British rule. But the Revolution was in spirit a conservative movement, whereby it was not intended to interfere with existing colonial laws relating to suffrage nor to alter the political or social structure of society nor to materially change aught in government beyond terminating the British connection. In this respect it materially differed from the French Revolution which developed into an attempt to completely reorganize the social and political fabrics. The American revolutionists were well satisfied with their local laws and customs, and the separation from Great Britain once accomplished, the conservative policy adopted at the beginning of the struggle still continued till the generation which had carried through the Revolution had finally passed away.
The Declaration of Independence has nothing to say about the right of suffrage. Although composed by Jefferson, who was influenced by the sentimentalities of the French theorists of the time it contains only two brief statements which can possibly be quoted as favoring the principle of manhood suffrage. One is “that all men are created equal.” This statement could not have been intended to be understood without qualification because it is notoriously false. Men are not created equal either in size, health, affections, virtues, social station, capacity, prospects in life, opportunities, nor in anything else. In his own country thousands were then held in bondage, some by Jefferson himself, and a considerable part of the colonial population were without political rights. He could not therefore have even meant that all men were entitled to be considered as politically equal unless he intended merely to express a private opinion of his own. Public opinionas expressed in the laws and customs of the time was exactly to the contrary. The other statement of the Declaration that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is equally absurd, if applied to individuals. It may be that a government is a usurper if it exists in defiance of society at large, but it may properly dispense with the consent of an unlimited number of the individuals whom it governs. It cannot be supposed that Jefferson and his associates intended to imply that none of the governmental powers on the earth including those of the colonies themselves were just; yet none of them derived their powers from the consent of all those under their authority. Most of the colonies were founded on charters granted by the British crown. The consent of the native Indians, of aliens, women, minors, negroes and the unpropertied class had not been given to any government in this country, nor was it proposed at that time that any such consent should be asked for. More than this, neither Jefferson nor any one else proposed that the consent of the minority at any election, even were it forty-nine per cent of the whole, should be required to establish the new government. The most that Jefferson pretended to mean by these fine phrases was to claim that a majority of the qualified voters of the colonies should govern the country through their representatives duly elected. But in practice even this was a sham; the Revolutionists were probably in a minority of from one-fifth to a third of the whole people; they never troubled themselves to obtain the consent of the Tories or the indifferent; and what Jefferson really intended was to get his faction together on the basis of that Declaration as a party platform, to fight for the result and to beat or intimidate the majority into subjection or acquiescence. This is what was actually done; both sides resorted to force, the neutrals were silenced, and the Americans of tory principles were soon taught to their sorrow that Jefferson and his associates intended to govern them with or without their consent and pretty harshly at that. No vote was ever taken on the question of separation from Great Britain, and the consent of the objectors to what was done was rendered unnecessary by the efficient process of killing them or driving them into exile and confiscating their property.
The Revolution therefore was not the establishment of the rule of the majority in numbers, but of the sway of those qualified to govern, because the strongest, the most daring and the most fortunate. And the property qualification principle also assuring the rule of those believed to be the best qualified to govern was in force in every one of the thirteen states at and immediately after the Revolution by the will of the colonists themselves. Voters’ qualifications varied in different States, but in all there was some kind of a property qualification. In some the actual ownership of real property was required; in others a voter was required either to pay a property tax, to lease real property or to have a substantial yearly income. The payment of direct taxes in some form or other was in the minds of the founders of the American republic an essential qualification of the voter. The revolt against Great Britain had been generally and publicly defended on the theory of no taxation without representation; and the converse of this principle was popularly assumed, namely, that there should be no representation without taxation; in other words, that no man should be permitted to aid in shaping the policy of the country who did not directly contribute to the expense of its government, or, in the language of the time, “who had not a stake in the country.” For example, Virginia from 1670 restricted the suffrage “to such as by their estates, real or personal, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavor of the public good,” and later excluded all but freeholders. In the Virginia Bill of Rights of June 12, 1776, the statement is “That all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to the community have the right of suffrage.” In New Haven in 1784, out of about 600 adult males, only 343 were qualified to be freemen and vote for the mayor, who being once elected held his office during the pleasure of the General Assembly which usually meantfor life. (Levermore, New Haven.) The payment of taxes and the right to representation were so much united in the public mind at that time that in some states, for instance in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the number of senators was apportioned among the counties according to the amount of taxation paid and not according to the population. Within the State of New York, representation was granted not according to the number of inhabitants, but to that of actual voters; in other words, of propertied citizens. When the word “people” was used in public documents what was really meant was the citizens or voters of the State.
In those days the obscure and ignorant political adventurers who now adorn our legislative halls, had no chance of getting themselves into the seats of the mighty, or their ravenous fingers into the public purse. As for judicial and administrative officers their selection was entirely withdrawn from the electorate. Our colonial and revolutionary ancestors believed that the members of the State Legislature who were personally acquainted with the candidates for high office were better able to select them than the mass of voters who only knew them by sight or reputation. The electorate might only choose the legislature, and that body usually elected the governor and appointed and removed judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other administrative officers. The voters chose the men who made the laws, but not the officials charged with their interpretation and execution; and the actual administration of government was so arranged for that honest, competent and responsible agents might be employed therein and was as far removed from the people as was conveniently possible.
Therefore the popular belief that the founders of our government believed in a democracy of numbers is a mistaken one. They maintained that both official and voter should be qualified men and they saw to it that they were such. And look at the result; the ablest and best men were put forward. Every nation has superior, mediocre, and inferior men; the latterbeing often the most greedy for office. One of the tests of a system of government is which of these classes it brings to the political front. Judged by this, the old colonial and revolutionary system was far superior to the present one. It put in power and kept there, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, the Adamses, Jefferson, and a number of their subordinates of great superiority to men in corresponding places in the present days of manhood and female suffrage. By their fruits you may know them. It is probable that the female suffragists firmly believe that their shallow platform ranters are superior to anything that earth can show; but with that exception no one will pretend that the present day methods have produced or can produce for the public service the equal of that revolutionary stock. Indeed we have more reason than some of us fully realize to be thankful that the governing class of that time in this country were men of substance; for the opposition to the proposed Federal Constitution in 1788 was very strong among the poorer classes; and it is considered certain by those who have looked carefully into the matter that had that instrument been at that time submitted to a vote based on manhood suffrage it would have been overwhelmingly defeated. This is not to be wondered at, since lack of experience in dealing with any but the simplest matters left those people incapable of understanding the provisions of the constitution or of realizing its beneficent import. One can hardly imagine what that defeat would have cost to mankind; the deplorable results of the indefinite postponement of the American Union with all its blessings of peace and prosperity, and the perpetuation here on this continent of the tariffs, strifes, petty wars and tyrannies of Europe and South America. When one tries to imagine the world without the United States of America as a beneficent enlightening force, one is appalled at the bare possibility that such a calamity might have been allowed to fall upon the world; and yet it was possible had it not been that Hamilton, Washington and the other leaders in that business were eighteenth century statesmen, staunch, efficient and determined, and not a bunch of twentieth century cowardly, spineless, brainless, heartless politicians, the product of machine and boss rule, such as would probably be in charge of any similar movement in the present year of grace, 1920.
THE SUFFRAGE IS NOT A NATURAL RIGHT BUT A FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT AND MAY THEREFORE PROPERLY BE RESTRICTED TO THOSE COMPETENT TO EXERCISE IT.
THE SUFFRAGE IS NOT A NATURAL RIGHT BUT A FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT AND MAY THEREFORE PROPERLY BE RESTRICTED TO THOSE COMPETENT TO EXERCISE IT.
Thosecitizens who think that they have or anybody has or can have a natural right to vote are absolutely mistaken. There is a general impression that such a right exists, created partly by the twaddlers who write on politics for schools and colleges; but it is a false one, and it is seriously misleading, because it negatives in advance all effort to elevate the standard of the electorate by excluding the notoriously unfit from its membership. The citizen votes not in the exercise of a right or a privilege, but in performance of a governmental function, involving the execution of a trust which should be confined to those competent to exercise it.
Political voting for candidates for office is part of the process of the creation of a governing power, and it is itself an act, part and function of government; by it the voter declares his judgment as well as proposes agents or representatives to enact and to execute the law. Society therefore has a right to regulate its exercise, and to see that it is entrusted into proper and competent hands. This theory of the right of Society or the State to control and limit the suffrage has been adopted not only by European nations in dealing with inferior races but also by ourselves at home. We do not for instance permit the Chinese to vote; we exclude from the suffrage youths under twenty-one years of age and unnaturalized aliens, notwithstanding that they may pay large amounts in taxes and be perfectly honorable and well meaning members of the community; also tramps, paupers and the insane. So the policyof excluding the colored race from full participation in the government of the country is thoroughly established in the United States. Negroes are not actually allowed to vote except where they are in a safe minority. In the States of California, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington and Wyoming there is a nominal educational qualification by which at least a pretence has been made of excluding ignorant whites from the franchise, and which has been effectively used in some of these States to exclude thousands of colored voters. The suffrage has been denied to non-taxpaying Indians in all parts of the United States, notwithstanding that many of them may be decent and intelligent people. One Northern State, New Hampshire, and eleven Southern States make payment of a poll tax a necessary prerequisite to voting. A certain period of preliminary residence is prescribed in all the States. In thirty-eight states a previous registration is required; and this provision every year disfranchises thousands of travelling salesmen and others. Thirty-two States exclude women from all or specified elections, and though the expediency of this exclusion has been seriously challenged, the right to enact it is unquestioned by most people.
Thus it will be seen that in the American polity the principle is practically well recognized that voting is not a natural right but a function of government which may properly be restricted, either to property holders as in fact it was by our ancestors restricted, or to any other class as the State may ordain. There is however, reason to believe that the general public has not reflected enough on the subject to assimilate or even to accept this proposition. The American masses take most of their so-called opinions ready made, and as far as any popular theory upon the subject or conception thereof is to be found among them, it is apparently a vague loose notion of a natural equality among men; an understanding that it is part of the original American tradition that every man has an equal natural right to take part in government or at least to “express himself” byhis vote. We have seen in the last chapter that the original American tradition is just to the contrary, and demands a substantial property qualification for all voters. In a subsequent chapter it will appear how that original American tradition was foolishly and thoughtlessly abandoned, when manhood suffrage and the spoils system were together foisted upon us in the time of Andrew Jackson.
As already stated, an examination of the libraries does not disclose any strong authority or well reasoned argument in favor of the practice of giving a vote to every adult man or woman. The doctrine of the natural right to vote which was first practised by the French radicals of the eighteenth century appears to have been accepted as a piece of popular sentimentality; apparently it has not been adopted by any great thinker or writer. Those writers who favor it are generally superficialists, and are content to refer to it vaguely as a step in the progress of the age without any close examination of its merits. As for the theories of natural equality between men, and of the right to vote as a means of self expression neither of them will stand a moment’s serious reflection. No equality of any kind whatsoever exists or ever can exist between men. It is impossible even to imagine a tolerable existence under the crushing weight of the monotony of equality. Along with variety would perish love, hope and joy; ambition, the great source of initiative and the most powerful stimulus to effort would be destroyed; life would lose its picturesqueness, and instead of a bright running stream it would become a stagnant pool. Equality means death; its domain is the cemetery. The champions of manhood suffrage therefore will have to look elsewhere for its justification than in an assertion of an equality which cannot exist.
But we will be told that there is an “equality of rights.” Here is another absurd phrase, which as generally applied is false or meaningless. By equality of rights people generally refer to personal rights such as the right to life, to personalliberty, etc. But there is no point of resemblance, no analogy even, between the character of such a right and of the asserted right to suffrage. The latter is a claim to share with others, and therefore acquired and artificial. The right of a man to his life, however, is not one in which others can share; and all natural rights are of the same general character, absolute, strictly personal and exclusive. The claim to vote rests on an entirely different basis from such; it is social, and involves others and the rights of others, it is a claim to govern; it vitally affects every one else and therefore no man can assert it without the others being consulted, since to do so would infringe upontheirsocial rights. No such right can possibly be an original or natural right; for natural rights are of course common to all men; and the absurdity of every man having the natural right to impose his will upon another man is manifest. To say that there exists a natural right common to all men involving power over others, or that one man has a natural right to interfere with the actions of others, or of a society formed of others, or a natural right whose exercise by some would deprive other men of their own similar rights is nonsense; since these last would have the same power over the first and the result would be chaos. Such a proposition involves a complete contradiction of itself, and an impossibility.
Society and political organizations are artificially created, and all rights under them are artificially acquired. The result of the exercise of some power, or founded upon an agreement of some kind, express or implied, they are in the nature of gifts or functions conferred by society upon the individual. Of this character is the voting franchise. There can be no natural right to the control of society or even to take part in society against its will, both of which as social and legal, not natural rights, are asserted and employed by every voter. The only natural right that a man can have towards society is to escape from it altogether to a place not occupied by other men.
These considerations dispose of the sentimental twaddle uttered sometimes by shallow magazine writers and unsophisticated college professors that every man has a natural right to what they call “political self expression.” Self expression by political voting always involves in some way the exercise of power over others; and no one can have a natural right to such power.
The above reasoning applies of course to the exercise of the voting power where it affects the property of others as well as where it directly affects only the person. No man can have a natural right to dispose of another’s property or any part of it by voting or otherwise. To talk of a natural right to vote away another man’s property is downright nonsense. Imagine a small independent island inhabited by one hundred families each with property honestly acquired. Would an immigrant body of five hundred have a natural right by a vote to confiscate this property? The proposition is monstrous, yet it is all implied in the theory of a natural right to vote.
Our Courts and Judges have never held suffrage to be a natural right, and it has never been treated as such in our legislation. Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, says: “The granting of the franchise has always been regarded in the practice of nations as a matter of expediency and not as an inherent right.” And Judge Cooley: “Suffrage cannot be the natural right of the individual because it does not exist for the benefit of the individual but for the benefit of the State itself.” (Principles of Constitutional Law, p. 249.) So on our statute books voting is not treated as a natural right, nor is the citizen mass considered as the supreme power in the state; but the constitution and functions of the electorate are created and determined by the legislative body, or under its direction, and its capacity is fixed by law and derived from the law just as truly as that of any other body exercising political powers in the government.
If suffrage were a natural right, the voter might exercise it to please himself or solely for his own interest. But nobody pretends that this is the case. It is conceded that the function of the voter is not to gratify himself nor to practise experiments, nor to express his own personal ideas, nor primarily nor mainly to foster his own interests or those of his class, but to propose the best men and measures for the country at large. He is not to seek direct personal benefit or gain by his vote but is expected thereby to contribute his opinion, his wisdom, his experience, to the promotion of the general welfare. He is not to vote for a judge because he expects him to decide a lawsuit in his favor; nor for a congressman because he hopes that he will help to secure him a contract or a pension or a tariff rate favorable to his business; but it is his duty to vote for judges and congressmen who will decide and legislate justly, that is, with due regard for all. This makes it clear that the franchise is not a gift of nature, but a trust or function created by society for its own high purposes; that the voter comes to the polls to take part in that function not as a master but as a servant of the State in obedience to her mandate; and must be clad with such qualifications as she prescribes. The voters are not masters or rulers as is so often erroneously said, they are merely called upon to designate the real rulers and masters of the land. When the citizen approaches the polls on election day he there finds in operation a formidable electoral machine which he is sometimes told is a contrivance whose object is to establish the rule of the people. But this is a superficial understanding of the matter; the people cannot possibly rule themselves; the existence of any rule whatever implies rulers as well as those ruled over; to talk of the people ruling is nonsense, or at best a mere figure of speech to indicate that they have a choice of rulers. Here as elsewhere there is and must be a government ruling by force; here as elsewhere that government is a human machine wielding or intended to wield irresistible power over its subjects, and constantly menacing the disobedient with deprivation of property, liberty and life. Our elective system is really a means for sustaining this tremendous apparatus and of keeping it in operation and effective. It is that all powerful governmental organism and not the people which rules the country. EveryAmerican is just as much under the control of the authority thus created as the subject of any ruler whatever. Freedom in the sense of liberty to the individual to thwart or neglect governmental authority is not within the American scheme. This is why resident foreigners, deceived by the silly newspaper cant about the “people” ruling are frequently surprised to find themselves more restricted in some respects than they were in their own native monarchical countries.
This view of the matter whereby it appears that an election is the first step in the process of the creation of a government requires the manhood suffrage question to be presented in a different form from the usual one which is, “Has a man as such a right to vote?” He has no such inherent or natural right, and the real question is whether he is of the proper material for use in the first process of democratic government making. It follows too that the burden is on the would-be voter to show that he is fit for that purpose. The mere fact that he is a dweller in the land cannot possibly confer upon him the right to inject poor material into the government-making process, any more than one of a number interested in a cider press would have the right to insist on putting decayed apples into the hopper.
But even if there was a natural right to vote Society would still have the power to regulate its exercise and to establish conditions thereof. Certainly Society would have the right to prohibit that exercise and it would be its duty to do so when the same would operate against the welfare of the community at large; or against the welfare of every other person in it except the voter himself; or even against the welfare of the majority of the citizens of the community. A man can no more have a natural right to injure his neighbor by his vote than by any other means; and just as he is free to use his personal liberty only to the extent to which his actions are harmless or beneficial to the community, so as a matter of natural right he should be only free to vote or legislate and take part in government affairs, great or small, to the extent to which hisacts in that capacity are harmless or beneficial. In any aspect of the matter therefore Society has the right to limit the suffrage to such as are likely to exercise it for the benefit of the commonwealth.
Thus by disposing of the vague idea of a natural right to vote, the way is cleared for a consideration of the proper qualifications which Society should require from voters. That there are men and classes of men naturally incapable of exercising the judgment necessary to cast a ballot helpful to the community is known to all of us. Says Amiel in his Journal:
“The pretension that every man has the necessary qualities of a citizen simply because he was born twenty-one years ago, is as much as to say that labor, merit, virtue, character and experience are to count for nothing.”
Not only has the country the right to exclude incapables from the suffrage, but it is the patriotic duty of the good citizen to place a voluntary limitation on himself, and to refrain altogether from voting where through ignorance of the candidates or subject matter his vote cannot be intelligently cast. For, just as the voter is peremptorily called upon in casting his vote to disregard entirely his own interest and pleasure, and even to vote contrary to his interests and prejudices for the benefit of his country, so surely he can also be required in the public interest to surrender his privilege of voting, to remain altogether silent, and to allow the choice of men and measures to be made by his more intelligent neighbors. And it further follows, that where the ignorant voter knowingly and wilfully insists upon expressing his own opinion or prejudice at the polls in opposition to the judgment of another better qualified than he, his act is immoral and unpatriotic; and equally immoral and unpatriotic is the conduct of the legislator, writer or voter who knowingly countenances or assists in the enfranchisement of a class of people who are incompetent to vote on the questions to be presented to them, or to select the proper candidates for public offices.
Voting at a political election being an act of government,the proper test of the voter is that of capacity to govern. As Bagehot puts it:—