THE OLDEST AND BEST AMERICAN TRADITIONS FAVOR A RESTRICTED SUFFRAGE
Many of 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 and they 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 its
extent 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 generally assumed 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 by the 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 all
freemen. 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
in office 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 opinion as
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 meant for 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 latter being 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.