CHAPTER VI

“The cardinal fact always is the loss of contact with objective information. Public as well as private reason depends upon it. Not what somebody says, not what somebody wishes were true, but what is so beyond all our opining, constitutes the touchstone of our existence. And a society which lives at secondhand will commit incredible follies and countenance inconceivable brutalities if that contact is intermittent and untrustworthy. Demagoguery is a parasite that flourishes where discrimination fails, and only those who are at grips with things themselves are impervious to it. For, in the last analysis, the demagogue, whether of the Right or the Left, is, consciously or unconsciously, an undetected liar.”

For the purposes of this argument the point here is that not only the mere rabble but the unpropertied and impecunious from any cause, either from lack of interest or of capacity, live at secondhand in their relations to politics and are not themselves at “grips with things” and therefore easily become the prey of the demagogue, the undetected liar.

The practical value of the property qualification test thoughnot properly appreciated has not been entirely overlooked by previous writers. For example, Bagehot:

“Property indeed is a very imperfect test of intelligence; but it is some test. If it has been inherited it guarantees education; if acquired it guarantees ability; either way it assures us of something. In all countries where anything has prevailed short of manhood suffrage, the principal limitation has been founded on criteria derived from property. And it is very important to observe that there is a special appropriateness in this selection; property has not only a certain connection with general intelligence, but it has a peculiar connection withpoliticalintelligence. It is a great guide to a good judgment to have much to lose by a bad judgment; generally speaking, the welfare of the country will be most dear to those who are well off there.” (Parliamentary Reform, p. 320.)

Bagehot, like most political writers and speakers, while recognizing the educative value to the voter of property ownership and management, fails to give sufficient importance to the effect of a business training. He elsewhere dwells upon the beneficial influence upon the voter of leisure, of education, of lofty pursuits, of cultivated society; but he overlooks the obvious fact that all good government is a business enterprise, and that a business training is essential to the instruction of the electorate. This oversight was perhaps natural for two reasons: one the traditionary contempt in which all business was formerly held in England, and by the literary class everywhere. Dickens, for example, had not the least idea of business capacity or of the intelligent life of the business world of London, and Thackeray very little. Their business men are of varying degrees of stupidity. The fact is that the world of art and letters has always been over conceited and inclined on insufficient evidence to believe itself superior in intelligence to the world of work and business. The other reason for the oversight referred to is that in former days business training was far less thorough and extended than it has since become and is today.

Whatever may have been the case in days gone by, in ourown time a business training is necessary to enable a voter to make a proper choice of candidates for public office. The only way to secure competent officials is through the demand of the electorate for capable men and by close and intelligent scrutiny of the candidates. But this implies capacity on the part of the voters to pass on the candidates’ qualifications and to make a proper choice; in other words an electorate of trained minds, good judgment and knowledge of men. The voter needs not only understanding of the merits of public controversies and knowledge of the published records of candidates for office but also judgment to weigh their qualities. And just as some knowledge of music is necessary to enable a listener to judge of the ability of a musician, so the voter who is to choose men for office having proper business qualifications should himself have had fundamental business training and experience, and an educated sense of honesty and justice in such matters.

From all which it appears that business and the professions furnish a school of which all voters should be graduates. In this institution established by natural processes and everywhere in operation, citizens are being daily trained in prudence, foresight, self-denial, temperance, industry, frugality, and the capacity to reason. There is a continuous and automatic exclusion of the unfit. First the worthless, very stupid, defective, dishonest and lazy are eliminated. Either they refuse to enter, or from time to time as boys or young men they are rejected and discharged as incompetent; weeded out, and their places taken by the more competent. As years go on the more industrious, clear-headed, honest and frugal of these surpass the others and achieve success in proportion as they display those qualities, together with good judgment and farsightedness; while meantime they establish and maintain families, raise children and acquire more or less property, all the while gaining in training and experience in the affairs of life. They become members of business firms, employers, superintendents, business managers, etc. In agriculture they become successfulfarmers. In the professions they become known and established as reliable, and acquire and accumulate clients and patients, regular offices, books, equipment, furniture, together with some money or other property. In literature they write successful books. In teaching they become principals and college professors. There you have them, trained and graduated in the school of life’s affairs, the academy of evolution; a class of the fittest armed with Nature’s own credentials, certifying them to be of proper stuff from which to build a safe foundation for the democratic State, and thus has nature herself done the preparatory work of selecting material for an electorate by sifting out the inefficient, the non-social, the passive citizens; by separating and putting in plain sight the efficient members of the Social Commonwealth and stamping them with the seal of competency for active citizenship. So that a property qualification for voters appears upon a proper consideration to be fit, appropriate, practical, effective and in accordance with natural law.

Exceptions there probably are, instances of men of good parts and judgment who through misadventure have been reduced to such poverty that they would be debarred from voting under any fair property qualification rule. But the law cannot provide for such misfortunes any more than for unavoidable absence from the polls on election day. Such minor defaults will not affect the desired result, which is the production of a class of reliable voters, and not merely a few exceptional ones.

Not only property but the honest and intelligent desire for property should be represented in the councils of the State. This aspiration has been stigmatized by twaddlers as an “appetite”; but an appetite is a good thing; and essential to life. The desire for wealth is one of nature’s constructive forces and should be availed of by wise statesmen for the purpose of nation building. Nothing is more offensive to the intelligent thinking man than to hear hypocritical demagogic ranters denounce as “greed” the honest efforts of thrift to collect together a competence for old age, a provision for helpless children, or capital for a business enterprise. Politicians and the impudent followers of politicians, vile parasites on the body politic, scurvy knaves who have never earned an honest hundred dollars in their lives, make a trade of this kind of talk; preferring the business of flattering and cozening a constituency of wooden heads and uncontrolled emotions to earning a living honestly. The wish for property is a primal impulse like the love of life, the appetite for food and drink, and the desire for procreation; it is in the nature of every healthy man; the want of it is abnormal and detracts from capacity for constructive state work. Those who really lack it become in politics as dangerous as lunatics; they are dreamers, enthusiasts who ruin everything they control, such as were Robespierre and thousands of his followers. One would not trust one of these crackbrains to build a house, let alone a nation. In private life they are shiftless and burdensome on their friends and the public; in the lower classes they are often known as loafers or deadbeats; some of them become the “floaters” of politics, the cheap material for bandit political organizations. On the other hand this desire to create, to save, to preserve and to perpetuate useful and beautiful things, is a natural force which wise statesmen employ to the utmost in the service of the State; whose development they encourage in civics, in private life, in politics and in government, and which found in the character of the individual should be accorded its proper and legitimate, sane and steadying influence.

The possession of property is also a necessary qualification of a voter because it renders him pecuniarily independent. The voter in a democracy should be so situated as to be free from the need of yielding to the temptation of a bribe, either in the shape of cash or the salary attached to a small office. We pay judges large salaries, to lift them above the atmosphere of temptation. The voter is a judge, called upon to pass judgment upon the candidates whose names are on the ballot. Thatthe verdict of the polls upon these candidates for office should be rendered by paupers, by men whose means do not enable them to vote with independence, is monstrous. The shelter of secrecy afforded by the Australian ballot is no answer to this objection. The purchased voter is corrupted before he enters the booth; his soul is degraded as soon as he resolves to take the bribe. Why should he be false to his bargain? Surely not for patriotism or virtue, for the act of betraying his purchaser would not cleanse him; it would only prove him doubly recreant. To say that the elector besides being venal will perhaps become a perjured traitor is a poor plea for his admission to the suffrage. And yet, the tendency of manhood suffrage being forever downward is towards pauper voting. A New York newspaper of March 5, 1919, recorded that Lady Astor, a candidate for Parliament in Plymouth, England, had just visited the almshouses there in making her canvass for votes. In the short time England has been afflicted with an approximation to universal suffrage, this much has been accomplished. If it be right, it should go on, and great England’s Parliament, renowned for six centuries as the mother of all free representative assemblies, should become a club of chattering women, sent there by paupers and vagabonds. America should face the other way. In its political life it has no need for women nor for flabby and inefficient men; it needs honesty, frugality, virile force, courage and efficiency; it needs a constructive and conservative spirit to replace the reckless and wasteful temper now so prevalent. The electorate should include only active citizens, only those who have made good; the governmental state should correspond to the social state, representing not only the working and thrifty people, but their works, their homes, their property and their civilization.

The democratic advance thus proposed is a movement onward and upward to better things. The manhood suffrage movement was downward. In the next and succeeding chapters the reader will find briefly sketched some account of that descending progress into and through the muck of ignorance and corruption for the past one hundred years.

ORIGIN AND FIRST APPEARANCE OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AS PART OF THE FRENCH TERRORIST MACHINERY

Thefirst national legislature to be elected by manhood suffrage without distinctions or qualifications was the notorious red radical French Convention which met at Paris, September 20th, 1792. It is that body which has the infamous celebrity of establishing and prosecuting the bloody tyranny known as the Terror, under which tens of thousands of innocent men and women of France were put to death because of their supposed political opinions. Though manhood suffrage may not be entirely and solely responsible for the excesses of the convention, yet it is safe to say that it helped create the machinery for the perpetration of the crimes and follies of the Terror; and that none of these excesses would have been committed by a body selected by a fairly qualified electorate. All that was good in the French Revolution was accomplished through a propertied electorate; and all that was worst was done under a manhood suffrage régime.

The French Revolution began in 1789 as a peaceable and rational reform movement. None of the writings of Rousseau which did so much to prepare the way for the great change had directly discussed the suffrage question. The French National Assembly which met in May, 1789, at Versailles, was a sane and dignified body, chosen by a qualified electorate, and there was in its deliberations no mention and in its membership probably no thought of universal suffrage.

There was never any necessity for physical violence or revolution in order to secure the attainment of all such political reforms as even from the most liberal standpoint were neededby France at that time. The government like all other governments of that day was ignorant of economic laws, and the people had suffered under inequalities in rank and privilege, and an antiquated and inadequate financial system; but the king and the nobility were pacifist, and in the main humanitarian and inclined to liberal measures. Within three months after the Assembly convened, the nobility in open meeting voluntarily surrendered their historic privileges. At that same session of 1789 the Assembly undertook a number of reforms and the re-establishment of France upon a firm constitutional and conservative basis with proper security for all classes. Had the revolutionary movement stopped there, and the better classes been permitted to carry out their intelligent schemes, France, under a constitutional monarchy, would have embarked upon a new career of prosperity, and the wars which have since devastated her would probably have been avoided. But the Radicals got the upper hand; on pretence of remedying the embarrassments arising from poor harvests and bad financiering they established universal suffrage and the rule of the rabble, which increased the miseries of the French people five fold, and speedily evolved the Terror and precipitated the ruin of the nation. A great many, perhaps most, of these radicals were men of little experience, governed by mere sentiment and passion; others, who ultimately became the working majority were men of low moral character and defective reasoning powers; lacking in principle; demagogues and adventurers; cranks and scoundrels, who, claiming to be the champions of an ideal democracy, found it to their advantage to spout balderdash with which to gain the applause of the ignorant and emotional masses. Their stupidities, antics, vagaries, thefts, and other minor rascalities and follies; their guillotinings, drownings, arsons, street slaughters and other butcheries and outrages; their confiscations and banishments are matters of history, and have to some extent been duplicated by the Bolsheviki rabble in Russia in our own day. To the tune ofcrazy cries for liberty and more liberty, they attacked property, vested rights, commerce, business, the church and the Christian religion, and plunged France into chaos. They murdered and outlawed her nobility and her priests, besides tens of thousands of innocent people who were neither priests nor nobles, including farmers, artisans, tradesmen, poets, artists and professional men, the best of the land. Under the first Republic, it is computed that a million French died of famine and hardship, the direct result of Radical legislation and Radical tyranny, and chargeable to a great extent to the operation of manhood suffrage. Nor is this the total record of their mischief. Their misdeeds produced a violent reaction which resulted in the placing on the French throne of Bonaparte, whose ambitions deluged Europe with blood. A generation later he was followed by another Bonaparte, equally a result (though less directly) of the Revolution; and he plunged France into a war with Germany, which in 1871 cost her the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and out of which the recent great war of 1914 was born.

France therefore has never yet recovered from the injuries she suffered at the hands of the red radicals in the first Revolution. She may thank universal suffrage and the extremists of that time not only for the depopulation and misery inflicted upon her by the so-called republic from 1789 to 1798, and by the Napoleonic wars from 1798 to 1815, but also for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, for four invasions of her soil, for her recent sufferings from 1914 to 1918 and her reduction from the first rank to the third among the powers of Europe. In short, she has paid one hundred and thirty years of torment for the privilege of listening to the rhodomontade and vaporings of crackbrains and demagogues. Let America take warning.

Right here seems to be a good place to make a cheerful contrast to the foregoing by comparing the radical French convention of 1792 with the conservative French Assembly of 1871. It was after Germany had triumphed over Napoleon III,that clay idol of the French populace; he was in exile, the empire was at an end, the army was destroyed, and France was without resources, credit, friends or prestige. She had to form a new government and try to re-establish herself as a nation, to raise five thousand millions of francs and to get the invader from her soil. The elections were had for a new National Assembly; the manhood of France went to the polls, but with sad and serious faces. All the frivolity and humbug of politics had disappeared. The masses were poor and hungry; the Germans were at Paris; the Commune was threatening the national existence. It was a time for the people to turn to the genuine patriots, the real leaders of men, the competent, the capable, the reliable. Did they go to the demagogues, the orators, the enthusiastic ranters, the ultra-radicals, the theorists, the politicians, the inspired blatherskites whose froth and flattery are so much to the taste of the populace? No, indeed. The fear of death being upon them, the masses bethought them seriously, and for once refrained from making fools of themselves at an election. The poorer classes, the peasants, the workingmen, turned eagerly and fearfully to the solid men among their neighbors for counsel and advice and followed it. Needless to say, the new Assembly was the most able, intelligent, honest and conservative legislature poor France had seen for many a day. It was composed of men of experience, property, education, integrity and reputation; men who were noted champions of society and of civilization. As soon as the world heard what France had done at her elections, the joyful word was passed along, “France is saved,” and saved she was from that day. Confidence was restored, the Commune was suppressed with a strong and vigorous hand; public and private credit was re-established; the Prussian enemy was paid off and his troops withdrawn; industry revived, plenty came again, and France once more took her place among the nations. It would be an insult to the reader’s intelligence to proceed to point the moral of this notable incident in the political history of the world.

The red radicals of the French revolution claimed to believe, and as they were a shallow lot, some of them probably did believe as the masses here believe today, that pure manhood suffrage is a development of the principle of equality. But they were fundamentally wrong, they were in conflict with nature’s laws, which cannot be trifled with. As equality of power or capacity does not exist in nature, all that can rightly be claimed in that direction is equality of opportunity, which includes recognition of the superior claims of merit and capacity, and therefore involves the divine principle of inequality of achievement. This the French radical revolutionary leaders failed to perceive. For instance, they objected to the old aristocratic régime because it was not founded on merit, and because its offices were allotted to influence without reference to qualifications; they wanted as they said “La carriere ouverte aux talents”; a career for talent, a very commendable object. But the operation of manhood suffrage is just the reverse of this; it denies the opportunity and the reward due to merit, to talent, to study, to diligence, to education. As far as possible it gives to ignorance and negligence the same weight and power as to intelligence and assiduity. To give power to electors unqualified by education or experience to overrule the wishes of the educated and experienced on political questions is to ignore merit and qualification, and that at the very foundation of government. But while the best thinkers of the French reform party at that time saw this plainly, the radical leaders overruled them, because what they wanted was a rabble constituency, since none other would give power to such a gang of fools and ruffians as they.

The world has made great progress in well-being in the last one hundred and thirty years, a progress due almost entirely to its inventors and discoverers and to the industry and frugality of its workers; and France has shared in that prosperity; but her miseries and misfortunes have also been great, and these were nearly all political, and due to one cause, the operation of manhood suffrage.

IMPORTANT INFLUENCE OF FRENCH RED RADICALISM IN PROPAGATING THE MANHOOD SUFFRAGE DOCTRINE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Thedoctrine of manhood suffrage was imported to America from France in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and began to infect American politics some twenty years after the Independence, though its final triumph was delayed another score of years. To some of us it seems almost incredible that any honest man could avoid being strongly prejudiced against a political institution which had produced such horrible results as manhood suffrage in France, and it would probably today be but a poor recommendation of any political scheme to an intelligent man that it was adopted by the French Revolutionary Convention of 1792. But a century ago the masses in the United States were not thinkers, and were even more inclined to be carried away by emotional crazes than they are at present; no doubt the success of the American Revolution had turned many heads. It was a time when young gentlemen were much afflicted by morbid sentimentality; when ladies did not fail to faint on proper occasion; when American gentlemen fought duels because of sham sentiment or to sustain a sham honor; when blood-curdling novels were devoured with gusto; when Byron’s all-defying pirate heroes were the rage; when young clerks went about gloomily brooding in turned-down collars and imagining that the whole world consisted of oppressors and the oppressed. To such a romantic and superficial young America the platitudes and empty sentimentalities of the French Radicals made a stronger appeal than the plain common sense talk of the British Tories. Besides all thisa large part of the American people at the close of the American Revolution in 1783 were deeply grateful to the French nation for its timely and effective assistance in the war for Independence. Without French aid, it was thought that the revolt might have failed, and of course they did not stop to reflect that Lafayette and Rochambeau were noblemen; that it was a French monarchy and not a republic which had been so helpful to America. And so when a few years later France became a Republic, largely owing, it was thought, to American influence and example, there was great enthusiasm in many American hearts for France and everything French, including the new political theories of the Rights of Man, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Even the Terrorists for a time had their sympathizers here, some of whom probably were unaware of the facts as the newspaper accounts of doings abroad were meagre and distorted. The French partisans here even believed and circulated slanders against the noble and spotless Washington. It is easy to believe interesting lies. Did not our fellow Americans in the South work themselves up in 1860 to a silly belief that they were or were about to be plundered and oppressed by the perfectly harmless rest of us? Did not the English and French make themselves believe and declare in January, 1865, that the Southern States were on the eve of final victory when they were obviously tottering to a final fall? Have not we Americans to the last deluded man of us gone about for the past century believing and swearing that we won a signal triumph in the war of 1812 and refusing to credit our own officers and historians to the contrary? How many Americans failed to go wrong in their sympathies at the beginning of the last Russian revolution? The American radicals therefore probably chose to believe that Marat, Robespierre, Danton and Co., instead of being humbugs, blackguards and miscreants, were wise and honest republicans, whose massacres of harmless prisoners and other similar performances were excusable ebullitions of patriotic zeal. When for instance the news of the defeat of Brunswickby Dumouriez came to America in December, 1792, there were great rejoicings among them. There were dinners, suppers, speeches, cannon firing and processions in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities. The inns and taverns were filled with those whose heads were turned by liquor and enthusiasm; some wearing liberty caps and cockades; all singing, shouting and drinking toasts. On December 27th in New York City the whole day was given up to public rejoicing, including a celebration by the Tammany Society.

The instinct of imitation is strong, especially among children, savages and the lower classes. We had been imitating the British; we now took to imitating the French. Everything French was popular; became the rage. When the French Minister Genet, representing the Terrorist government, arrived here in April, 1793, he landed at Charleston, whence he proceeded to Philadelphia, the seat of the Federal Government. He really represented a band of blood-stained scoundrels who had usurped power in France, who had just guillotined the king and most of whom were for sale, yet he was hailed by a faction here as a hero and the emissary of sages and patriots. There were receptions, escorts, processions and banquets, where “Citizen” Genet was glorified, our own government was denounced, and an American reign of terror threatened. At some of the banquets a red liberty cap was displayed; half drunken young American radicals danced about the table; the guillotine was toasted, and capitalists were threatened with death. At that time England, outraged and disgusted by the insults and bloody rapine of the French Terrorist government, had gone to war with France; our howling mobs therefore yelled for war with England, and mouthing politicians who had never smelt gunpowder pretended to be eager to fight Great Britain, although we had neither army, navy, transports nor money. Two American privateers were actually fitted out to sail under French colors and prey on English commerce in defiance of the law and of the Federal Government.

Meantime the American friends and enemies of the FrenchRevolution taunted and vilified each other in newspapers, pamphlets, and otherwise publicly and privately. Some of the American featherheads, in imitation of the antics of the French Republicans, addressed each other as “citizen” and “citess,” instead of Mr. and Mrs. this and that. Serious and sensible folk, including President Washington, looked askance at these follies, and by many they were treated with the ridicule they deserved. The rabble thereupon after their nature and in further imitation of the French democracy which they so admired, revenged themselves by flinging coarse insults at their unsympathetic fellow citizens, including Washington himself. In about three years’ time this wild craze passed away; but French influence continued. French dancing schools, fencing schools, dishes, names, expressions, customs, dress, music, and books were popular; French newspapers were published in all important cities, and some permanent progress was made by French Revolutionary influence and ideas.

We may here note that after the death of Robespierre and the overthrow of the Terror and on September 23rd, 1795, after a test of over three years, manhood suffrage was abolished in France almost without a protest. It was unanimously recognized that it was responsible for the Terror, for the disorder and insecurity of life and property which had prevailed since its adoption and for the complete financial and economic prostration of France, whose people were starving by thousands for need of that social order and confidence without which modern civilization is impossible. In the official report on the subject presented to the National Convention in 1795, and which was adopted after full discussion, we read these words: “We ought to be governed by the best; the best are the most highly educated, and those most interested in the maintenance of the laws. Now with very few exceptions you will only find such men among those who, possessing a freehold, are attached to the country which contains it, the laws which protect it, and the tranquillity which preserves it, and who owe to their property and their affluence the education whichhas fitted them to discuss with justice and understanding the advantages and disadvantages of the laws which determine the fate of their country.... A country governed by freeholders is in a social condition; a country in which the non-proprietors govern is in a state of nature.” Unfortunately the mischief that had been already done by the radicals has never been quite cured, and France has suffered many things since then; but that is another story. The extreme French Radicals did not for all this abandon their attachment to their revolutionary ideas; their influence in the United States continued to be very considerable, and the rapid spread of the new-fangled doctrine of manhood suffrage in the young American states after the death of Washington had removed his conservative influence was no doubt largely due to the effect of the plausible ranting and twaddle of the French Revolutionists and their followers.

Everything has to be paid for in this world, and for the help of France in the fight for independence, the United States had something to pay in the corruption, waste and deterioration caused by the adoption of the silly theory of the French radicals that in governmental matters one man’s judgment and intent are as good as another’s, those of the ignorant and thriftless equal to those of the frugal, industrious and well-informed.

THE SAFEGUARD OF A PROPERTY QUALIFICATION FOR VOTERS WAS DISCARDED BY A GENERATION OF AMERICANS WHO DID NOT REALIZE ITS VALUE OR THE DANGERS ATTENDANT UPON UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE

Thecircumstances of the adoption of the system of manhood suffrage by state after state a century ago are not such as to justify us of today in according much authority to their determination. The movement was one of weakness, ignorance and degeneracy, not part of an effort to further achieve the highest ideals of republican theories, but a reactionary yielding to cheap, selfish and opportunist politics. It was successful because the mass of the American people lacked both the experience and the foresight necessary to enable them to realize the probably fatal result of the proposed change.

We have already noted that following the establishment of the Federal Government in 1789, though the upper and educated classes, especially in the older American states, did not display much enthusiasm for French radical political ideas, and though Washington and the propertied class were openly hostile to them, they were acclaimed by the working classes, the poor farmers, the immigrants, and many of the romantic youths of the country; and were partly adopted by Jefferson and such others as like him were somewhat under French influence. We may add to the influences favoring manhood suffrage in the old and populous states that of the resident foreigners, which was considerable. It would be a mistake to suppose that at this early period there had been little immigration to this country. The fact is that the proportion of immigrants to the whole population was then probably greaterthan at any subsequent time; the foreign element at the time of the independence, including British and Irish, Germans, Dutch, Swedes and French, probably amounting to about one-third of the entire population. Another class of people who unquestioningly accepted the doctrine of manhood suffrage was that of the frontiersmen or pioneer western settlers. It is the fashion in these days to hail every political novelty as an “advance,” and accordingly the twaddlers, including writers of that ilk, tell us unctuously that the adoption of manhood suffrage was part of the “advance” of civilization. The truth is, however, that it was not the fruit of an improved civilization, but was first adopted when and where the population was coarse, rough and unlettered. In the new and sparsely settled states, New Hampshire, Vermont, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio, the principle of manhood suffrage was accepted almost as a matter of course and without any serious discussion. In those states there was at that time an approximation to practical equality among the inhabitants both in property and intelligence, the standard of both being low; political problems were simple and primitive; and an equal share in government to all men seemed natural and reasonable. There was but little property except land which was plenty and cheap; farming was the principal occupation; and the farmer was confined to the home market there being no railroads to carry his produce to distant places. The great differences between rich and poor existing in older communities were not present; none of the conditions which render manhood suffrage so objectionable in large cities were found in these new states. When Georgia adopted a low qualification in 1789 her population was less than two to the square mile; when Vermont entered the Union she had less than ten to the square mile; Kentucky had two; Ohio one; Tennessee two. There must have seemed little reason in attempting to create distinctions in rude and primitive communities where none actually existed.

Another consideration operating to lower the suffrage wasthe competition among the new states to get settlers on any terms. Nearly all of those who had land in the newer states had more than they could use and were not only very anxious to sell some of it, but to get new neighbors on any terms, since each new arrival measurably increased the value of their holdings. One of the baits to induce immigration was the right to vote and hold office offered to all new comers. Even in our own day a number of western states permit aliens to vote as an inducement to settle in their limits, and we have had in the last few years the curious spectacle of unnaturalized and presumably hostile Germans voting at elections. The right to vote was highly valued in those early communities, where fortunes were not easily made, and where political preferment was much sought after as the most available road to distinction. To close that avenue to ambition was to discourage new settlers. It was therefore inevitable that such of the original thirteen as were sparsely settled states with populations composed partly of frontiersmen, and also all the new states as they came in one by one, should be willing to waive property qualifications for voters. And thus it was that in 1789 Georgia reduced her suffrage qualification to a small annual tax requirement; that in 1791 Vermont and in 1792 Kentucky came into the Union under manhood suffrage constitutions; that in 1792 New Hampshire adopted manhood suffrage; that in 1803 Ohio entered with a minimum tax qualification and that Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818 and Missouri in 1820 were admitted as manhood suffrage states, while some of the others, such as Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, merely prescribed tax qualifications which were far from onerous.

In the older states the advance of the manhood suffrage movement was aided by the influences already referred to; by the French Revolutionary party, including many foreigners; the city laboring classes, the thriftless and discontented, and the restless horde of theorists, dreamers, penny-a-liners, political adventurers, demagogues, agitators, radicals of everystripe, and many of that numerous class who had more facility in talking than in thinking. There is even yet among people of small intelligence a widespread belief in the miraculous efficiency of voting; and that belief is no doubt accountable for some of the eagerness with which the suffrage was demanded by superficial men who thought to better their condition by politics, and who, though plainly lacking in efficiency, unable even to get together a few hundred dollars in property to qualify them as voters, nevertheless rated high their own capacity to decide problems of state. We may add to this as helping the movement the plausibility to shallow minds of the assertion that all men are equal; and the prestige given it by its being quite unnecessarily put by Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence. Another cause which has been said to have contributed, was the severe financial panic of 1819 which brought widespread distress and consequent discontent with things as they were. Why not try a change? is an argument which has more or less success at every election. Then too the American easy good nature and hospitality of character must have helped along; that softness which makes many dislike to refuse a boon which will not cost anything in cash or its equivalent. It must have seemed to many men easy and pleasant to vote to allow their neighbors to vote, especially when to a dull man the reasons to the contrary were not altogether obvious.

Nor is it altogether strange that even in New York and Massachusetts few except the best trained minds had any real understanding of the dangers of letting in the ignorant and the thriftless classes to a voice in government. The American people had no experience of a political machine or of demagogues in power, and to most of them the operation of government seemed comparatively simple and within easy comprehension. Even in the old states the population was mostly rural; there were no railroads or telegraphs, comparatively little machinery, and none operated by steam. The property of the country consisted of houses,lands, farms, cattle and sheep; living was very plain, and the expenses of government comparatively small. Life was not then the complicated affair that it is at present, specialization was rare, efficiency in any branch of business was not near so difficult to achieve as it has since become. Under the election system then in practice, and following the old colonial traditions then still extant, the candidates for office had usually been men of distinction whose reputations were well known in the community, and who were personally known at least by sight and speech to most of the voters. The people had had no real experience of government by election in large constituencies. There were few large cities, the largest in 1820 being New York, with a population of 125,000, while Philadelphia had but 65,000 and Boston 45,000 population. Probably it was comparatively safe in most urban communities to leave the street door unguarded at night, a practice scarcely recommendable in New York or Chicago in these times. Their governors had previously either been sent from England or chosen by their state legislatures, and their high state officials had been appointed by the crown, the governor, the proprietor or the legislature. Their only real experience with the suffrage had been in small local elections, parishes, boroughs and towns, where the prizes of office were small and everyone knew his neighbor. Most of the voters were substantial American farmers and tradesmen, who anticipated as the result of the granting of manhood suffrage nothing worse than that the roll of new voters would include their own sons, the village schoolmaster, together with a few poor artisans and farm hands who had no class prejudices, who could be depended upon to vote with their well-to-do neighbors, and whose numbers were not sufficient to seriously affect election results.

To the extent to which the manhood suffrage movement was conscious of its own tendencies, it was a revolt led by political adventurers against government by the intelligence of the country, and above all and beyond all the forces operating in furtherance of the movement for manhood suffrage in the older states was the new influence of the politicians and political office seekers, who by 1820 began, though in a comparatively small way, to appear as a real political power in the land. Though many of our ancestors early distrusted and later learned to hate and despise the politicians, the people have never organized to oppose them and in the beginning failed to realize the insidious growth of their sway. The politicians then as now clamored for an extended electorate, the more ignorant, simple, emotional and easily influenced the better. They welcomed the uninstructed male vote of that day for the same reason that they welcome the still more ignorant female vote of this day. The ears of the masses were open to them because they could talk and bellow the political cant and jargon in which the rabble delight. Then as now they wanted all the offices made elective; suffrage for everybody, even aliens, and especially the ignorant and shiftless; and they kept up their efforts in the old states until the bars were let down, and every man had a vote.

Most of the old populous states began the change by lowering the qualification, changing it from the actual ownership of property to the payment of a tax, usually a small one, sometimes merely nominal. Pennsylvania, a state tainted with French radical sympathies, had already reduced the qualification to the payment of a state or county tax; this standard was adopted by Delaware in 1792. In 1809 Maryland adopted manhood suffrage. In 1810 South Carolina and in 1819 Connecticut reduced the qualification to an almost nominal tax rate. In 1829 Virginia reduced the property requirement and finally abolished it in 1850. New Jersey held out till 1844.

The great battles, however, and those which finally decided the controversy in the United States were fought in Massachusetts and in New York in 1820 and 1821, though in both states the success of the manhood suffrage party was a foregone conclusion before the final test was made. The situation was much the same as it has since been in relation to woman suffrage. As long as woman suffrage partisans had no votes anywhere the politicians gave them but scant courtesy. Even after they gained one or two states they were not much considered. But as soon as they had four or five states to their credit the politicians began to flock to their standard; the weaker and more unscrupulous going over first. The reason is plain. Every politician of note has his eye on the presidency either for himself or for his leader and his party. Under our system where the presidential vote is by states a single state may turn the election, and a woman suffrage state as well as another. Mr. Wilson for instance and Mr. Roosevelt, though on opposite sides on everything else, were united in patriotism, in burning desire for office and in devotion to democracy. Of course they both became champions of woman suffrage just as soon as a few states had been captured by the women and also of course their party followers took their cue accordingly. So it undoubtedly was in 1820. By that time there were nine new states west of the Alleghany Mountains. When it was seen that in all these new states manhood suffrage was in vogue, no presidential possibility dared oppose manhood suffrage anywhere, nor dared his followers differ from him on this point. It was a rush to get on the band wagon. And why should the professional politicians oppose a measure so obviously in their interest as a degradation of the ballot? Naturally therefore, in the New York Constitutional Convention of 1821 we had Martin Van Buren, a Jackson politician, leading the battle for extension of the suffrage and carrying all before him.

One naturally turns for enlightenment on the merits of the question to the records giving the arguments used pro and con in the discussions on the suffrage extension propositions of that time, but they are more interesting than important, because the debaters lacked the light of modern experience. Our political bosses and machines had not yet arrived, and America had then no immense populations of millions accustomed tolive on daily wages, lacking the slightest knowledge of the principles or practical operation of finance, banking, trade and commerce; ignorant of the very elements of political economy, and yet ready to vote on all these matters under the direction of demagogues, themselves in the employ of bosses and machines. There were then no such divisions of classes as now; no large criminal and pauper population; no masses of foreigners herded together in tenement house life and ignorant of our problems and conditions. Our ancestors of a century ago were not gifted with imagination or prevision sufficient to enable them to foresee the enormous future immigration from Europe; the factory and tenement house systems; the vote market; the absolute and corrupt oligarchy of politicians, the political ring, machine and boss. Had they been gifted with this foresight it is safe to say that instead of lowering the suffrage qualifications they would have put the bars up so high that the disgraceful record of American politics for the last eighty years would never have been made.

In Massachusetts the Convention included as members, John Adams, Webster, Judge Joseph Story of the United States Supreme Court, Samuel Hoar and Josiah Quincy. The importance of protecting property interests had been recognized in that state ever since long prior to the Revolution, both by a suffrage qualification and in a provision whereby membership in the State Senate was apportioned according to the total taxes paid in each senatorial district. This system was continued by the Convention of 1820 but was subsequently abolished. Its sole importance was in its recognition of a principle; as a barrier against the rising tide of suffrage extension it was useless. The suffrage previously limited to owners of a moderate amount of property, real or personal, was by this Convention extended to all male citizens having paid any state or county tax. Adams, Webster and Story voted and spoke against the extension, but the writer has not seen a report of their arguments. Such of the speeches on the subject as are reported are not illuminative. They do not go deeply into the matter;those in favor of an extension have the tone of the perfunctory advocacy of a majority assured of success, those in opposition that of a hopeless protest. In favor of the extension it was argued that there was a popular demand for it; that it had been enacted in other states; that the existing Massachusetts qualification was in practice merely nominal; that it was easily evaded by perjury and sham transfers; that the sentiment of patriotism does not depend upon the possession of property; that the right to vote goes with the levy of a tax and that on principle all subject to even a poll tax were entitled to vote, and were unjustly degraded when the right was denied them. In opposition it was argued that property is the foundation of the social state; that there is no natural right to vote, and that the question is one of expediency; that the property qualification was necessary as a moral force and a check on demagoguery; that it encouraged industry, prudence and economy, was a protection against waste, elevated the standard of civil institutions and gave dignity and character to voter and candidate; that very few beside vagabonds were actually excluded from the polls, and while the qualification required was attainable by every efficient man, yet the principle was an important one and should be retained in the Constitution even though its enforcement had been somewhat lax and ineffective. The majority both in the Convention and at the polls in Massachusetts was decisive in favor of the proposed extension.

In New York the Convention was practically committed to the new measure before it met. The State Assembly had previously reported in its favor solely on the ground that the property qualification excluded many of the militia; referring probably to that large body of young militiamen who were too young to have acquired property. The report said, “On that part of our Constitution which relates to the qualification of voters at election, your committee have to remark that although its provisions when applied to the State of New York may be salutary and necessary it excludes from a participation in the choice of the principal officers of our government, that part of the population on which in case of war you are dependent for protection, viz., the most efficient part of the militia of our state.” This meaningless “straddle” is very suggestive of Van Buren. As an argument for manhood suffrage it is worthless. It is of course absurd to say that because a man has served or may serve in the militia he should therefore be intrusted with any part of the functions of government irrespective of his lack of other qualifications. Were the argument good it would require the extension of the vote to boys of eighteen and upwards, and would call in question the right to vote of any man incompetent to bear arms because of age or infirmity. The business of government is one thing, and the business of fighting in the field is another and very different thing. But this flimsy argument was capable of being used in an emotional manner and no doubt was so employed in the Convention with considerable effect; and though some of the militia had certainly failed to cover themselves with glory in the war of 1812, and many commands had done nothing but parade, no politician cared to offend them or even to appear to have done so. Another so-called argument was that of the Convention Committee on the Elective Franchise which handed in a report in favor of the change, containing the meaningless assertion that property distinctions were of British origin, but that here all interests are identical. The true theory that voting is the exercise of a governmental function was not suggested by the Committee.

Manhood suffrage was opposed in the New York Convention by three of our ablest jurists, Judges Spencer and Platt of the Supreme Court and Chancellor Kent, the learned author of theCommentaries on American Lawand one of the most eminent lawyers of the world. Judge Platt truly said that the “elective privilege is neither a right nor a franchise, but is more properly speaking an office. A citizen has no more right to claim the privilege of voting than of being elected. The office of voting must be considered in the light of a public trust, and the electors are public functionaries, who have certain duties to perform for the benefit of the whole community.” Chancellor Kent strongly and forcibly said “I cannot but think that considerate men who have studied the history of republics or are read in lessons of experience, must look with concern upon our apparent disposition to vibrate from a well balanced government to the extremes of the democratic doctrines.” Of the principle of universal suffrage he said that it “has been regarded with terror by the wise men of every age, because in every European republic, ancient and modern, in which it has been tried, it has terminated disastrously and been productive of corruption, injustice, violence and tyranny.... The tendency of universal suffrage is to jeopardize the rights of property and the principle of liberty.”

The vote in the convention in favor of the extension was 100 to 19. The people of the State subsequently approved it by a substantial vote. The majority in New York City favoring it was 4608. On March 4th, 1822, the Legislature took the oath under the revised Constitution. Flags were displayed, church bells rung, there were salutes of cannon and an illumination in New York City. Some slight vestiges of the property qualification still remained after the adoption of the Constitution of 1822 but they were abolished in New York State in 1826 by a vote of 104,900 to 3901.

Although the action of New York in 1821 following Massachusetts in 1820 practically insured the triumph of manhood suffrage in the United States, yet the most interesting and ablest discussion upon the subject was yet to take place at Richmond, Virginia, in the State Convention of 1829. The State of Virginia had still clung to the old freehold suffrage qualification; in that Commonwealth prior to 1829 it was not enough that a voter should have property or business experience; he must be the owner of land or a freehold interest therein. The standard was not high, from $25 to $50 according to circumstances, but it established the principle and excluded the most degraded. Unfortunately, it also excluded many thrifty and intelligent citizens whose holdings did not happen to be in the form of real estate. On the demand then made for extension of the franchise, an opportunity to consider and discuss the theory of suffrage was naturally presented to the Constitutional Convention. That body was composed of about one hundred members, including the ablest political thinkers and most skilful and aggressive debaters of Virginia. In point of statesmanship and forensic ability its membership has probably never been surpassed in the history of the United States. It included ex-Presidents Madison and Monroe, Chief Justice John Marshall, John Tyler, John Randolph, William Giles and Alexander Campbell. The convention sat for over three months and in the course of the discussion on matters connected with the suffrage dozens of speeches were made, the perusal whereof is very interesting to the political student. Unfortunately, it so happened that though the debates were able, the consideration of the whole matter was biased by local rivalries and by the slavery question, then beginning to confuse and prejudice the Southern mind, and the most distinguished of the delegates took only a minor part in the proceedings. Between the Blue Ridge and the sea was Eastern Virginia, the Old Dominion, where tobacco raising flourished, white labor was scarce and all influential white men were freeholders. West of the Blue Ridge lay a new region, where the industrial situation was similar to that of the free states, and where there was a large body of non-freeholding white working men of the borderland type, who for years had been agitating for the abolition of the old freehold qualification. It was a clash between the Old East and the New West; between free labor and slave proprietorship. The Convention not only undertook the individual suffrage controversy, but entered into the question which also divided the two sections of the State, whether the basis of county representation in the legislature or in either branch thereof should continue as heretofore to be property values rather than population; thusbringing up the fundamental question of whether numbers only should govern without regard to intelligence, creative power or value to civilization. In this controversy Eastern Virginia, having the greater share of wealth and of conservative ideas, stood for property rights, and the West stood for what it dubbed “progress” and the “rights of man.” The dispute threatened the disruption of the Commonwealth, which actually came to pass a generation later in 1863. The final action of the Convention was satisfactory to neither section. The question of county representation was finally settled by an elaborate compromise by which each county and region was given an arbitrary proportion. The champions of an extension of the suffrage were victorious by a vote of 51 to 37, Madison and Marshall voting with the majority and Monroe with the minority; and thus the suffrage which had theretofore been confined to owners of land was extended to such heads of families as were housekeepers and paid taxes. While the only immediate effect was to let in a class of owners of personal property, yet it was generally realized at the time that the new measure would practically open the door to all heads of families however limited their means, and that universal suffrage was but a short step further off.

One interested in Virginia history can hardly help wishing that he might have witnessed the Convention in session. Some of those present had taken part in the American Revolution; all had breathed the Revolutionary atmosphere. Monroe, old and feeble, presided as long as he could hold the gavel, but finally was compelled by weakness to retire. He was able to tell the Convention of a visit to another Convention in Paris over thirty years before, and of witnessing (an ominous spectacle) the murder of one of its members in the convention hall. Madison, another ex-President, was seventy-eight years of age; he spoke two or three times during the session, but his voice was so low that he could not be heard beyond a distance of a few feet. When he arose to speak the members left their seats and grouped themselves respectfullyabout him. Randolph, who bitterly opposed the suffrage extension scheme, had been the most popular speaker in the state; he was at that time stricken and shriveled by disease, but the older delegates remembered him as one who in his youth had been described as beautiful, fascinating, and even as lovely. Alexander Campbell was there, a young man destined in later years to be the founder of a great religious denomination.

These Virginia Convention debates were the last, the ablest, and the most exhaustive public discussions of the suffrage question in the United States and must be considered as having included all the arguments on either side which were strongly present to the minds of American politicians and publicists of the time. They were opened with great ability by Judge Upshur in a very forcible argument lasting several days in favor of property representation. Many of the superficial minded among the delegates favoring extension had come to Richmond relying upon the proposition that suffrage is a natural right. Upshur shattered this notion right at the beginning, and it was but little heard of in the Convention afterwards. The absurdity of a savage being born with a natural right to participate in a government which was not even imagined until thousands of years afterwards was easily made apparent. “Is it not a solecism” (said Barbour) “to say that rights which have their very being only as a consequence of government, are to be controlled by principles applying exclusively to a state of things when there was no government?” Some of the delegates were evidently familiar with Rousseau, and with his theory of a social compact. They discussed at length, but without result, the question whether suffrage is or is not a right derived from this supposed agreement; and if so, whether it was strictly personal or individual, or whether property rights were also included within the contract, and might therefore properly be considered in allotting suffrage privileges. This naturally raised the question also inconclusively debated whether property as such is a constituent element of society; or whether it is not rather a result of society action,and its acquisition one of the principal inducements to enter social bonds.

Although the doctrine that governments were instituted and maintained for the protection of private property as well as life and limb was prominent in the minds of all the conservatives and was acknowledged by nearly every delegate in the Virginia Convention, yet the undoubted fact that the act of political voting is a responsible public function needing special preparation and qualification was not in Richmond any more than previously in Boston realized by the body of delegates; nor was the fact that government is a business organization, needing the services of expert business men, suggested among them; nor the manifest expediency of using the practice of business as a school for the voter. The philosophy of the delegates did not go beyond the theory of government as an agency for the protection of private property rights and the kindred belief that a permanent and tangible interest in the State was a necessary requirement of a voter. We have seen that in the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted in 1776, the right of suffrage was expressly limited to men having “sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to the community.” In 1829 the principal, and with most of the Virginia delegates the only objects aimed at in imposing a qualification upon the voters were the protection of property and the creation of an electorate interested in the prosperity of the state; the right of society to demand that the voter bring to the polls a trained and disciplined mind was lost sight of altogether.

The narrowing effect of sectionalism and prejudice on the human mind is curiously illustrated by the remarkable fact that in the Convention debates it was assumed on both sides that the entire benefit of the protection of private property by the Commonwealth inured to its individual owners. West Virginia delegates, therefore, insisted that the rich automatically received a preponderant share in the blessings of government; for example, said they, ten Virginians each owning$20,000 of property receive in all $200,000 of protection, which is double the total benefit received by one hundred citizens owning $1,000 each; thus one group of ten men get twice as much aggregate benefit from the state as another group of a hundred men. Over and over again it was urged that government protection of property was principally for the benefit of the rich minority. According to this absurd theory, the State of Virginia had no interest in the preservation of the accumulated private property within its borders; and would not be damaged if its dwellings, furniture, barns, stock, crops, vehicles and vessels of every description were destroyed. The Virginia clerks, laborers and hired workers of every description would not suffer in such case by being deprived of employment; possibly they could subsist on air, ruins or radical doctrines. The lack of business training and of business conceptions among the exceptionally able men of that Convention, and the need of such training for the membership of similar bodies today is strongly brought to our attention by the circumstance that such foolish reasoning passed unchallenged. The fact that all property is of common utility; that it constitutes a vast store from which all, rich, poor and middling are alike supported; that the workman needs the factory at least as much as the proprietor, was not in the mind of the Convention; the probability that the destruction of the entire property of the ten rich men above referred to would injure the community at large even more than the owners was apparently not appreciated by the Virginia delegates in 1829 any more than it would be by the members of one of our aldermanic boards today.

The principal arguments urged in the Virginia Convention in favor of manhood suffrage were, (1) the difficulty of applying any standard of property qualification; (2) that in the ship of state all are passengers, and the poor among them have the same interest in protection from the elements as the rich; (3) that gratitude requires that old soldiers, though poor, should be given a vote by the country they have served; (4) that manhood suffrage had worked well in other communities; (5) thatmen are naturally not robbers of each other but are inclined to be affectionate, social, patriotic, conscientious and religious; (6) that all men either have or desire property and are, therefore, natural supporters of property rights. The answer to these propositions is obvious, (1) the difficulty of making the standard of qualifications for any employment or function an absolutely perfect one is never considered a sufficient reason for failing to establish any standard whatever. Witness the arbitrary standards of age and residence for voters and office holders, the qualifications of teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.; (2) in no ship is the management, whether in fair weather or foul, left to the untrained or those without pecuniary interest in the voyage; (3) suffrage should never be given or accepted by the unqualified as an expression of gratitude; the veterans might as well demand to be licensed as dentists as to be allowed to meddle with state affairs; (4) experience shows that manhood suffrage has not worked well but evil all over the world; (5) some men are robbers and still others lack capacity to select agents or rulers who are honest. The main question is one of capacity to exercise the voting function to the advantage of the state. (6) That all men do not sufficiently desire property to enable them to act prudently and justly in their property dealings is shown by the immense number of spendthrifts, wasters, idlers, cheats, rogues, gamblers and vagabonds in the world.

Some of those who then and there favored the extension would probably oppose it today in our thickly populated communities. Eugenius Wilson, for instance, an advocate of extension, admitted that suffrage should be restricted in an inferior, corrupt or uninstructed constituency.

The convention was, of course, regaled by the radicals with the usual popular sing-song cant. It was told that the suffrage was “an inestimable privilege of the individual citizen,” a proposition which is in flat contradiction to the experience of every voter and to the plain facts. This proposition Leigh had the courage to deny, saying that good government for all and nota mere right to individuals to vote is the real desideratum. The majority leaders talked of the “original principles” of government, among them being that each citizen may vote, etc. Upshur denied that there were any original principles of government, because he said “political principles do not precede, they spring out of government.” He further said that property as well as persons is a constituent element of Society; that the very idea of Society carries with it that of property as its necessary and inseparable attendant, and that when man entered Society it was to procure protection for his property; take away all protection to property and our next business is to cut each other’s throats; the great bulk of legislation affects property rather than persons, and without property government cannot move an inch. Leigh uttered some things worth quoting, among them these true and forcible words: “Power and property” (said he) “may be separated for a time by force or fraud but divorced never. For so soon as the pang of separation is felt, if there be truth in history, if there be any certainty in the experience of ages, if all pretensions to knowledge of the human heart be not vanity and folly, property will purchase power, or power will take property. And either way, there must be an end of free government. If property buy power, the very process is corruption. If power ravish property the sword must be drawn, so essential is property to the very being of civilized society, and so certain that civilized man will never consent to return to a savage state.”

The proposal to continue the freehold basis of suffrage was defeated by a vote of 37 to 51, Monroe voting yea and Madison and Marshall voting nay, and by a similar vote the right of suffrage was extended to housekeepers, being heads of families and paying any tax whatever. The reader may be curious to know how the people of Virginia themselves stood on the question, but it is impossible to say. The vote on the adoption of the constitution was 26,055 in favor, to 15,563 opposed; but this vote was not a measure of Virginia popular opinionin regard to a property qualification. The election went off on a different question and curiously enough, the new constitution which extended the suffrage was adopted by the votes of those opposed to the extension. The western counties though favoring, were disappointed because they were not given the legislative representation they claimed; in that respect the new constitution was considered favorable to the east, which though opposed to suffrage extension, voted for ratification, while West Virginia voted to defeat it. Of the total vote in opposition, 13,337, or over five-sixths, came from the region west of the Blue Ridge.

Thus the Virginia discussion of the suffrage question, which engaged the ablest public men of the state for a generation and which ought to have produced a valuable result, came after all to nothing but compromise forced by clamor. Though property qualifications were reduced by the convention, the true principle involved was not presented or passed upon. The champions of good government unfortunately took their stand, not on the broad ground of property rights and political efficiency, but on the narrow claim of landholders and slave owners to control the legislature of the state; they permitted themselves to be placed in the false position of attempting to deny to the most enterprising and successful business man the vote which they offered to the shiftless proprietor of a log cabin in the backwoods. They stood on no sound principle and they were defeated.

And now, looking back after a century and considering the immense importance of the subject, one cannot help regretting that the fruits of the convention labors were merely local and temporary; that it met after suffrage extension had been practically allowed to go by default throughout the Union, and that the Virginia delegates came to Richmond pledged each to one side of a sectional dispute, instead of prepared to take part in a philosophical or statesmanlike search for political truth. Very different might have been the result had the Virginia political mind taken up this question freed from local and slaveryprejudice, and had the political talent wasted in a struggle for sectional control been employed in the useful work of studying the real foundation principles of suffrage in a democracy and presenting the conclusions to the Virginia electorate and to the world. In such case it might have reached such a result and brought out such a declaration of principles as would have saved the country and the world centuries of wallowing in the slough of political corruption and despond.

To complete the record it may be added, that in 1850, by a vote of 75 to 33, another Virginia convention further extended the suffrage to all male adult residents. As before, the question was confused with the old dispute over the apportionment of the respective claims of the east and west to representation in the legislature; this was again settled by a compromise after a prolonged deadlock and the settlement was approved by a popular vote of 75,748 to 11,060. This may be said to be the final close of the property qualification controversy in Virginia and in the Union, though it had been substantially decided a generation before; and since 1850 there has been nowhere any serious discussion of the question of the right of property to direct representation in government and it has been generally regarded since that time as forever disposed of. But nothing is finally settled till it is settled right.

And so, after a survey of the entire history of the establishment of manhood suffrage in the United States, we see that this great experiment was originally undertaken by the American people, with but little realization of its importance and almost no foresight of its calamitous results. We have here another of the numerous instances of the truth of the dictum that “Often the greatest changes are those introduced with the least notion of their consequence, and the most fatal are those which encountered least resistance.”

The majorities in favor of manhood suffrage, wherever the question was tested, were overwhelming, but they prove nothing; they merely illustrate once more the well known human lack of vision. Many other equally foolish measures havebeen adopted by similar majorities and attended by similar popular manifestations of satisfaction. The vote in South Carolina for secession was unanimous and the popular rejoicing thereat was unbounded. Yet we all now see that that secession vote was a stupendous blunder made without moral or political justification or ground for hope of success. Many of the French Revolutionary lunatic performances were almost unanimously decreed and approved by popular vote. In like manner the American people in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were blinded into the acceptance of manhood suffrage or into comparative indifference concerning it, little realizing that in place of thereby securing as they were told for themselves and their descendants a greater measure of political liberty, they were thereby fast riveting upon them the chains of political bondage.

Back to Index Next