ANSWER TO THE PLEA THAT THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFRAGE BE GRANTED TO ALL
AS A MEANS OF POLITICAL EDUCATION; AND HEREIN OF SILK PURSES MADE
FROM SOWS’ EARS AND OF AMATEUR HARPING
Strange as it may seem to any one who has given any serious thought to
the subject, the proposition has been, if not urged, at least put
forward, by respectable writers, that the suffrage should be granted to
all citizens without distinction, solely for the educational benefit
they will receive from it. The voting booths are evidently viewed by
these easy-going minds not as they really are, as judgment seats, as the
beginnings and sources of actual government, but as schools for all
comers in politics and patriotism; as practise grounds; experimental
stations; where every clumsy dunce may try his hand, hit or miss. The
author has not been able to find any well-worked-out argument in favor
of this fantastic proposition, but it has been seriously presented by
men who evidently thought they were uttering sense. The strongest plea
in its favor heretofore published appears to be the following from
Maccunn, which is quoted in full because the notion is such a queer one
that it cannot safely be paraphrased.
“Doubters about democratic franchise are apt to insist that no man
should have a vote till he is fit to use it. The necessary
rejoinder, however, is that men can only become fit to have votes
by first using them. There is no other way. Preparation there may
be, in the home, in school, in industrial organization, in the
conduct of business. But these will not suffice. Not so easily is
the citizen made. It is as Aristotle has it; the harper is not made
otherwise than by harping, nor the just man otherwise than by the
doing of just deeds. How can it be otherwise here, how can the
capable voter be made except by voting capably? Citizenship is,
after all, but a larger art; and to teach men to do their duties to
the State, the only finally effective plan is to give them duties
to the State to do. It is for this reason that many a believer in
Democracy is ready with an equanimity wrongly construed by his
critics as levity or simplicity, to sit unmoved under the warning
that a raw Democracy may mismanage; or that even an experienced
Democracy may not be the best machine for governing.” (_Ethics of
Citizenship_, p. 81.)
And again as stated by Professor Woodburn:
“It is the old truth that one learns to do by doing. There is no
other way. Here is seen the unreason of the contention that no man
is entitled to the enjoyment of political rights till he is proved
fit to exercise them. It is an impossible requirement. Before he
has political rights no man’s fitness for them can be proved. There
are certain tests, educational and economic, which may be accepted
as securities, but there is only one proof of fitness--the
experimental proof which shows how men use their rights after they
have them....”
“The ethical argument for a wide suffrage--as wide as personality
and manhood--is that voting is involved in the right of
self-government; that it promotes patriotism and leads to an
interest in public affairs; that it tends to remove discontent and
promote a feeling of partnership and responsibility; that civil and
religious liberty depend upon power, and that the community or body
of men who have no political power have no security for their
political liberty; that the suffrage is an enlightening and
educational agency and that only by active citizenship can the
political virtues be developed.” (_Political Parties_, p. 342.)
This, which may be called the “harper theory,” is directly contrary to
the doctrine herein advocated, that voting is a function of government
to be operated solely for the benefit of the state, and by means of
machinery as perfect and efficient as art and science can make it; the
“harper” theory being that the election power house is a practise school
for amateurs and blockheads, to be operated in the vague hope that the
use of it may somehow improve their natures and understandings. The mere
statement of this proposition ought to make its gross absurdity manifest
to everybody. It would justify giving the suffrage to children sixteen
years of age. As well propose to let boys snowball the passers by,
because it would tend to give them exercise and raise their spirits; or
to let the hens scratch in the garden, because they get such benefit
from it.
The reasoning of the extracts above given strangely ignores the public
interests directly involved, the mischiefs of unwise and corrupt voting
and the real purpose and history of public elections in this country.
Not a word as to the importance of selecting honest and competent men
for office; not a hint at the notorious political scandals heretofore
caused by the frequent election of fools and knaves; nothing said about
the systematic use of the low voting class as organized political
banditti. The notedly unfit must continue to vote knavery and folly into
high places, and the honest and capable must be discredited and sent to
the rear; peculation and blundering must continue indefinitely, in the
hope that a set of ignorant, idle, shiftless, dissipated and worthless
men may learn to do well by being trained by politicians to do evil. No
doubt the act of voting will make even an incapable man think for a few
minutes; possibly he may be tempted to wonder what it all means; his
mind may be instructed as that of the small child who experiments with a
hammer and a looking glass. We are told that the “harper is not made
otherwise than by harping,” but his practising is conducted under the
control of a master, and not at a public function. A better illustration
than Aristotle’s harper would be the Irishman in company, who had never
played the violin but was willing he said to do his best if desired.
“How can the capable voter be made except by voting capably?” What is
complained of is that he is voting not capably but incapably; and is
being trained for that purpose. The assertion that men cannot be trained
for any function except by the exercise of it is absurd. The universal
practice of mankind is to the contrary. According to the “harper”
theory, lawyers, doctors and engineers should be admitted to practise,
and army officers granted commissions without preparation; since no man
can prove his ability in anything until he has attempted its exercise.
While it is perfectly true that no man’s fitness for any enterprise,
profession or work can be finally ascertained except by actual test, and
not always then, yet preparation may be required and preliminary tests
made whereby the capacity of classes of men can be judged in advance;
and the fear of the mischiefs that the ignorant or unskilled
practitioner may do calls for the requirement of these wise precautions.
It is well known that appropriate preparatory instruction and discipline
tend to qualify men for certain duties, and the lack of them to
disqualify them therefor; that a class of men trained for law,
engineering, medicine, surgery, or the army will probably become
competent officers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc., while untrained
men will be absolutely incompetent. Laymen are not put on the bench,
there to learn the law at the expense of a series of blunders. The same
theory which is applied in licensing men for the professions and in
selections for the judiciary is that which should be applied in
establishing suffrage tests. Those who desire to be allowed to meddle
with government should first be required to think; and if ignorant, to
learn in some other way than at the expense of the public weal. The
training of men as voters should be carried on in the school of life,
where their mistakes will injure only themselves, and that to a small
degree, and not the whole community or nation to a great degree. To
permit people who have never practised thinking, to begin by
experimenting in the making of laws to govern their neighbors, or in the
appointment of officials, is preposterous. The late war and a hundred
other similar experiences ought surely to have taught the most silly of
our doctrinaires, and the most absurd of our demagogues, how dangerous
it is for fools to meddle with the affairs of government, and how
reprehensible it is for sensible people to permit the fools to do so.
What these writers above quoted must mean if they mean anything
practicable, is that those who are already capable voters are stimulated
by the actual exercise of the franchise into greater curiosity and
knowledge of public affairs. This is undoubtedly true; the young doctor
learns by practice, but only after he is qualified to practise. An
untrained man would never become a competent physician by killing
patients. The argument for the “harper” theory confuses the question; it
ignores the difference in capacity between classes of citizens, and thus
misses the point. It urges the educational value of the suffrage to all
voters without making a proper distinction between the intelligent and
propertied men and the unintelligent floaters and other controllable
voters. But it is not proposed to disfranchise the former, and they do
not need the suffrage for educational purposes. The question then is
entirely confined to the venal and otherwise dangerous residuum, whether
they shall be invited to take part in government merely in order to
stimulate them to think on state questions. The answer cannot be
doubtful. We may recognize the fact that the interest in politics of an
already capable voter is probably stimulated by his taking part in an
election; but the proposal that a dishonest or incapable man’s vote
should be invited merely for the purpose of starting his dormant
interest in politics, or in the hope of stimulating him to be more of a
patriot and less of a rascal is ridiculous.
There is as already pointed out in a previous chapter a school of
preparation and a test for voters in full operation, of whose valuable
instruction the state may take the benefit; namely the school of
business and the test of business success. In that school all may aspire
to earn the certificate of diligence, industry and good judgment, which
in the shape of a fair amount of material prosperity is given to all
successful aspirants. This method will not be infallible any more than
the graduate professional examinations; but it will establish the
principle of fitness; it will purify and elevate politics and will
afford a fairer test than any other at present known to the world.
In the foregoing discussion it has been conceded for the sake of
argument, that voting might possibly be a means of moral or mental
development to the voter. But the assumption is unwarranted and contrary
to the facts. There is no healthy stimulus of any kind to be gained in
manhood suffrage politics. The spectacle of popular elections as at
present conducted, and the display of fraud and humbug which they
present, is demoralizing to the whole nation, and especially to its
young men. The moral injury to the voter caused by the operation of
universal suffrage, and by the immoral attitude of the nation solemnly
asserting the falsity that the vote of the ignorant and disorderly is as
valuable as that of the orderly and educated man was recognized by John
Stuart Mill in his work on _Representative Government_, where he says
that equal voting is “in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong
standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter’s mind. It is not
useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare
ignorance to be entitled to as much political “power as knowledge.” (P.
188.) That the practical influence of political life as at present
conducted tends rather to degrade than to elevate the masses is the
universal testimony of all having knowledge on the subject. The pursuit
of politics as a business is vile, and its continued practice must have
a deteriorating effect on those engaged in it. As for the influence of
ordinary political activity upon the average voter, it is in no way
beneficial; if anything it is injurious. For generations, worthless men
have been in the enjoyment of the suffrage in the United States. It has
never made an intellectual man out of an ignorant one, nor reformed a
drunkard, but it has created many drunkards and loafers, and has had the
effect of training many to sell their votes and to spend their time in
low and disreputable local political intrigues. As for the majority,
those who confine their political activities to voting for one of two
candidates without any strong convictions in his favor, they cannot be
said to receive thereby any ethical or intellectual exercise or benefit
whatever.
“Mere existence” (says Bagehot) “under a good government is more
instructive than the power of now and then contributing to a bad
government.” (_Parliamentary Reform_, p. 340.) The mere act of voting
for a man or a measure without proper knowledge is demoralizing to the
mind and deadening to the conscience. Nor is there moral stimulus in the
exercise of a trifling privilege, which is also enjoyed by the meanest
and the least worthy, and the employment whereof is usually at best a
mere futility, and frequently a farce. What moral elevation can be
gained from voting to put in place either a humbug whom you know, or a
non-entity whom you don’t know? And yet this is about what the exercise
of the franchise usually amounts to in every village, city and town in
the United States.
The “harper” suffrage doctrine in its entirety was in the decade from
1865 to 1875 applied to the Southern states, when the negroes were
granted the suffrage in compliance with the hysterical demands of
demagogues, fanatics, and sentimentalists, who made the American people
believe that all a man had to do to become a harper was to get a harp
and keep harping. The disastrous results were told in a previous chapter
of this book. The history of that experiment with its sordid incidents,
ought to be sufficient to convince the most credulous believer in
popular rule, that our Revolutionary ancestors were right in insisting
that “a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow’s ear,” that there should
be no harping except under the supervision of a competent master, and
that an untrained musical performer at a concert is certain to spoil the
performance, disgrace himself, and benefit nobody.