THE STATE AS THE DEPUTY OF SOCIETY POSSESSES THE JUST POWER OF ORDAINING
FRANCHISE QUALIFICATIONS
_Yes, for it was not Zeus who gave them forth,_
_Nor Justice, dwelling with the gods below,_
_Who traced these laws for all the sons of men;_
_The unwritten laws of God that know no change,_
_They are not of today nor yesterday,_
_But live forever, nor can man assign,_
_When first they sprang to being._
(SOPHOCLES: “Antigone”)
At the end of the last chapter was suggested a question which troubles
many superficial but honest and sympathetic thinkers. How, say they, can
a democratic State justly refuse the suffrage to any citizen? They see
plainly the policy of such refusal in many cases; they realize the
mischief of permitting discordant voices to mar the democracy of the
cultivated choir of good citizenship, the danger of allowing rotten
timbers in the structure of the ship of State; they wish for some
superior power to silence the one or remove the other; but they cannot
see that such a power exists. Can a man or any group of men in a
democracy justly assume such superiority of judgment as the exercise of
this power would imply? If the State be as democracy asserts, the
creature, the agent of the people, how can it by refusing the franchise
to any of its citizens rightfully deprive them of a voice in its
deliberations? Is not such refusal in its essence a tyranny and a
negation of democracy? No doubt some such feeling as above expressed,
though perhaps more vaguely formulated, actuated many who, with more or
less reluctance made the blunder of acquiescing in the establishment of
white manhood suffrage in the first quarter of the nineteenth century,
and also many of those who forty years later made the still greater
blunder of accepting negro suffrage.
An answer to all these scruples familiar to all sound lawyers and quite
sufficient for most intelligent men, is found in the law of self
preservation. Before any law or rule of a state or community can be
enacted, the state or community must have existence, and the enactment
implies that the state’s continuance is to be secured. The original law
of its being must first be satisfied, and must ever remain superior to
all other of its enactments. It is sufficient reason therefore for the
suppression of the votes of the unworthy that they are prejudicial to
the State, and the State in its struggle for existence may rightfully
suppress them.
But there is still another complete answer to the questions above
propounded, and one perhaps still more satisfying to some minds than
that of the primal right of self preservation; and that is, that there
does exist a higher warrant for the disfranchisement of unworthy voters,
and for all suffrage regulations, conditions and qualifications than the
mere precept of the State. This higher sanction is that which authorized
men in the beginning to found the commonwealth in which we live. What
was that authority? Imagine if you please the foundation of a state. By
what rightful authority did the first white settlers in Virginia or
Massachusetts establish a government and proceed by its agency to deal
with the property, lives and liberty of the members of their little
company and of all new comers? By what rightful authority did they for
instance execute the first malefactor? The answer is, by the mandate of
Society. For even if it be true, as many insist, that the State has no
original power, but is a mere created agency of limited authority, it
yet does not follow that that authority has no basis but the fiat of the
electorate and no justification beyond certain election certificates and
its own statutes. There is a mighty mundane power in constant operation
amongst men, one far superior and anterior to the State; a part indeed
or manifestation of that almighty persistent and mysterious force which
maketh for righteousness in this world; a potentate with whose
operations we are all perfectly familiar and whom we may here, for want
of a better word, designate by the name “Society.” The idea intended
here to be represented by that word is somewhat difficult of definition.
We may approximately indicate our meaning by defining “Society” as
Humanity self organized for the promotion of civilization; but we can
best identify her by noting some of her operations and attributes. She
finds her original source as all true authority must in the Eternal
Verities, and her sovereignty is mysterious in its deepest origin as is
everything vital in the universe. Her forms and methods are fine and
subtle beyond description. She is not the State; she antedates the
State; she was the source of the authority of our first American
ancestors to establish governments and to execute justice, and was the
founder and is the mistress and director of all states and governments
that ever were or ever will be. Nor can she be identified with the
population or body of citizenship of the nation or community; she is
something which remains outside and independent of all these; possessing
a separate organism, life and growth of her own. Society is the
Overlord, the vital essence of which the State is the manifestation; she
is to the State what the spirit is to the human body; and for her the
State exists and was created. Her membership is not confined to any
class, but includes all those who voluntarily submit to her decrees.
These she organizes in a way peculiar to herself, assigning to them
rights, obligations, influence and power without regard to laws or
statutes except those of her own original promulgation, disregarding
entirely the shallow and false modern notion of equality between men.
For just as no two individuals have exactly the same appearance or
physical power, so in the whole social domain there are no two members
who are in every respect or indeed in any respect the social equals of
each other. Her membership has its own traditions, rules and standards
which she promulgates by silent and subtle methods, often finally
compelling their formal adoption by the State. Her mandates are more
powerful than those of governments; and all political decrees are
subordinate to the constitutions of civilized society. Her honors and
powers are often more valued than those of the State, and are conferred
not as in our politics at the command of mere numbers, as prizes for
oratory or rewards for intrigue, but in consideration of social
aptitudes and energies; so that in any given community you will find the
social development of each individual to correspond with his or her
compliance with the rules and mandates of Society.
Thus is constituted what may be called the Social Commonwealth,
_imperium in imperio_, composed of all those who take up the cause of
civilization; a number which does not necessarily represent a majority
or any definite proportion of the people of the community, but does
represent and include the community’s mental and moral force and
civilizing influence. Its leaders or captains are comparatively few;
they are readily distinguishable as active champions of social progress;
spending time and effort for the cause; zealous in the establishment of
public order; in advancing public health, in creating and maintaining
beauty in public and private life; in forwarding enterprises of
religion, art, education, science and benevolence; in promoting
civilizing institutions, such as libraries, hospitals, churches; also
operas, music, dancing and all the refinements of life; in creating
parks and flower gardens, in beautifying cities and villages; in
elevating the standards of dress, manners and private living, and in
furthering all civilizing and humanizing influences. Following these
leaders at greater or less social distance are the great body of the
membership of the Social Commonwealth composed of all classes of rich
and poor and between, the great mass of the socially loyal, themselves
originating and initiating nothing of social importance, but faithfully
keeping up year by year with the steadily advancing procession;
directing their children in the way of sweetness and light, that so they
may reach the places where the social leaders stood a generation
before. So that a basis for the establishment of a qualified electorate
and for the exclusion therefrom of the disqualified is found in the
primary fact of the existence of two classes of humanity, the one
including the socially fit, the socially organized, the members of the
Social Commonwealth; and the others the non-members of that
organization. As already stated, not all the inhabitants of our borders
are the lieges of Society; there is the considerable body of the
unsocial; comprising those cold and indifferent to the social cause, the
socially worthless, the nondescript and the rabble; also the
anti-social; the openly hostile, the criminals and malefactors of the
community. The existence of these two divisions of men, the social and
the unsocial, justifies and requires the State to distinguish between
them in granting the voting franchise. The primary test of voting
capacity is and must be allegiance to the social commonwealth.
Society was born when humanity emerged from savagery, and will endure
while civilization continues in the world. The Jacobins of France of
1790, like the present Bolsheviki of Russia, got possession of the State
machinery and turning it against Society swore to destroy her forever;
after a dozen years of strife she emerged from the conflict stronger
than before. She accompanied the first immigrants to Massachusetts Bay,
to Jamestown and to every other American settlement. There she was on
the very first day and ever after with her customs, traditions, beliefs,
classes, prejudices, dress, manners and standards of conduct, ready to
enforce them in America with the same despotic authority exercised long
before in the England of the Plantagenets, Normans, Saxons and Romans.
And then and there in the fields and forests of the new world, Society
established governments as her agents to enforce her mandates, imposing
her will upon the States which she thus created. Since then, by Society
has the onward course of the nation at all times been directed.
Governments may change; peace may follow war; the monarchy may give way
to a republic or dictatorship and that to a democracy, or vice versa;
laws may be enacted and repealed, constitutions established and
abolished, but the rule of the Social Commonwealth goes on forever.
It is to Society, the champion of civilization, that the enlightened
civilized man considers his allegiance is ultimately due, and only to
the State as the agent of Society. A law to be valid and enforceable
must conform to social mandates. The late James C. Carter, a noted New
York lawyer, is the author of a philosophical treatise on Law in which
he clearly establishes this principle. He says (p. 120); “That to which
we give the name of Law always has been, still is, and will forever
continue to be Custom.” But customs are merely the ordinances of
Society. When the State forgets its duty to Society it does so at its
peril; let it enact for example, a Fugitive Slave Law and the Emersons,
Thoreaus, Beechers and other social leaders refuse obedience and defy
the State. In like manner, wars are justified when decreed by Society
against unsocial sovereign states in the interests of civilization, as
for instance, some of the modern wars of civilized powers against
Turkey. Consider the actual political power and operations of Society.
Compare the statute books of today with those of fifty or a hundred
years ago and note the changes she has dictated in that period. History
is sad and bloody with the story of the efforts of the State to modify
the religious practices of men; they have all failed; but Society does
not fail to change these practices year by year. Commerce, manufactures,
transportation, the arts, education, customs, manners, all human
institutions are in turn created and destroyed by Society, and law and
the State are powerless to defeat permanently her decrees, while their
own are only valid when stamped with her approval.
Here then we find in the inherent powers of Society, in powers which are
God-given or Nature-given if you prefer, an answer to the scruples of
those who seek a source of authority in the State to protect its life by
preserving its own machinery. It is this supreme potentate acting by and
through the State that we invoke to settle the structure of the State
on the foundations of capacity and intelligence.
Consider now the interest of Society in the proper regulation of the
suffrage as the source and foundation of the State. Not alone is she
vitally interested in the maintenance of the present civilizing forces
which are sending us forward day by day on the march to higher planes of
life; but also in preserving the material and intellectual inheritance
of all the ages. This inheritance includes all the accumulated
acquisitions of the civilized human race; its property, treasures,
achievements and traditions; all the products of its mental and physical
endeavor, the fruits of its art, literature, science and industry. These
constitute the body of civilization in which its soul and mind are
preserved, nourished and kept alive; they form a social trust for
ourselves and for posterity. “Civilization,” said Burke, is “a triple
contract between the noble dead, the “living and the unborn.” And by
that contract we are forbidden to live or to legislate so as to cheat
those who come after.
Society’s process for the preservation of our intellectual inheritance
is called education; her method for the preservation of our material
inheritance is the institution of private property rights. Humanity,
property and education combined, constitute the material endowment of
society, wherewith she works for the advancement of the human race, or
as otherwise expressed for the promotion of civilization. Obviously she
is justified in adopting all possible precautions to guard and preserve
this precious deposit committed to her charge, nor can it be doubted
that she should carefully select its custodians and overseers. Equally
plain is it that since the civilization of the nation is and has been
produced entirely by the thrifty members of the Social Commonwealth and
remains in their guardianship, they and they alone, as constituting the
class who have produced and cared for the same should be continued in
its care as the representatives of Society and in her behalf; and should
be authorized to formulate the laws and measures which make for its
protection and advancement. To this end and purpose Society is
constantly endeavoring. A volume could be written illustrating the
exercise of her steady and mighty influence in placing the scepter in
the hands of her chosen ones. Rome was the ancient conservator of
civilization, and to her was given sway for centuries; England of all
modern nations has been most devoted to preserving the best of the
product of the generations as they pass on, and she and her race were
made foremost among nations and peoples. Look at the community where you
live and you will easily note how Society bestows influence, authority,
distinction and esteem upon her own workers, the builders and creators
of civilization and upon their children, and passes contemptuously by
the unsocial and anti-social. You cannot fail to observe her disdain of
the mere talkers and wasters and how she brings to naught the works and
cheap distinctions of a manhood suffrage constituency. To the silly
French Jacobin scheme of ascertaining the best by counting noses,
Society opposes her own never failing system of continuous study,
training and selection. She does not favor, on the contrary, she
discourages the absurd and impossible purpose of modern liberalism of
giving expression to ignorant individual wills with all their clashing
selfishness and brutality. She does not favor the politician’s purpose
of perpetuating moral feebleness and incapacity, nor of forwarding the
foolish aims and ideas of the weak and the worthless. She is far from
giving office or power to such or from even hearkening to their prattle
and humbug. She has much to overcome. The power that makes for
righteousness is not permitted to operate without the opposition of
fools and charlatans; and it is within Society’s function to master this
opposition, which she invariably does in the end. She constantly refuses
to descend as manhood suffrage does to the level of the ignoble; on the
contrary when they presume to oppose her in her momentous business she
undertakes either to conquer them by reclamation or to see that they are
hanged or otherwise removed out of her implacable path.
It is the crime of manhood suffrage that it constantly endeavors to
oppose and thwart this all beneficent social tendency; that it pushes to
the front and seeks to give power in civic affairs to the non-social and
anti-social classes, consisting of men devoid of the instinct for the
creation and preservation of the useful and the beautiful, and who
cannot safely be trusted as their guardians. In so doing it perverts the
State from its proper functions. The State has no rightful authority
over men’s lives except as the deputy of Society, and its every
legitimate act should and must be for the promotion of beneficial social
objects. It is its clear duty as such deputy to place political control
in the hands of those gifted with distinguished social attributes; and
an essential and the first step in that direction is the discarding of
manhood suffrage and all similar unnatural political stupidities which
inevitably lead to Jacobinism, Bolshevism, anarchy, ruin and death.