AN UNQUALIFIED NUMERICAL MAJORITY RULE IS NOT IN ACCORD WITH GOOD
STATESMANSHIP
_For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is
the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life; and few there
be that find it._--Matthew, vii: 13, 14.
A specious argument in favor of manhood suffrage is sometimes condensed
into the expression “Let the majority rule”; a popular catchword,
misleading like most catchwords, and far from expressing a sound
principle in politics. That our national polity does to a large extent
recognize the legitimacy of a numerical majority power is true enough;
but it neither does, nor ought it, declare the numerical majority
opinion to be the only, nor even the final arbiter. No thoroughly
enlightened scheme of government of a great nation can do so, for pure
majority government is merely the rule of brute force. Wisdom and
ability are usually in the minority in this world; and a better saying
would seem to be “let the minority rule”; in other words, let patriotic
intelligence, justice and efficiency bear sway, and let them as far as
possible lead the majority into a better way. In the practical affairs
of every day life, people do not seek to learn of the majority, but of
the few. In the administration of justice the better opinion is that
majority verdicts of juries should not be received; such verdicts are
apt to be hasty and careless, and to lack that element of care and
deliberation which the requirement of unanimity tends to produce. In a
casual group of fifty men, the opinion of twenty-five, properly
selected, or a majority of them, is worth far more than the opinion of
a chance majority of the total fifty. In nothing except politics is an
appeal to the majority ever made; everyone turns to a small minority of
men, or even to one single man, for guidance in every important
conjuncture of life. When a serious disease attacks a man, he does not
take a vote of the public or of his family, friends and neighbors as to
the course of treatment to be adopted to save his life; he turns to one
learned and trustworthy man, and puts himself in his hands. So in the
navigation of a ship, whether in tempest or fair weather; the trained
and experienced mind of the captain controls at every moment of the
voyage; it is the same in the conduct of a law suit; of a business
enterprise; of the construction of dwellings, bridges, railroads and
tunnels; in military campaigns; in all the serious undertakings of life,
guidance is never sought in the voices of the many, but in the opinion
of a select few or of a still more selected one.
It is a fatal error in the manhood suffrage theory that it assumes that
numbers rule, and are capable of giving the final sanction. Such is not
the fact. Despite all that demagogues may do or say, no amount of
vociferation, resolutioning, applauding, cheering, registering, and
voting will serve to prevent or delay the operation of natural law. Mind
and reason must govern in politics as elsewhere. The power that is best
capable of establishing and sustaining governments and governmental
systems is a combination of forces; including principally energy,
intelligence and numbers, producing a sum total of effectiveness. When
allowed free play to its powers, as in India for instance, an energetic
and intelligent minority will often control an inert and ignorant
majority. The basic cause for the recognition of the majority principle
in government, is not a belief in majority opinion, but an assumption
that the majority actually possesses sufficient physical force to master
the minority, and that therefore in the last appeal the majority must
rule. But true statesmanship distrusts majority opinion in everything;
seeks to escape its interference, and to educate and guide it in the
right direction. It yields to it at last with reluctance, and only as
we all yield to any of the overpowering forces of Nature; to darkness,
to the deadly frost of the poles, to torrid heat, to the desert; to each
of which we give way only to the extent to which we are unable to
circumvent them, and to prevent their interference with our enterprises.
And so, astute politicians are often active in seeking expedients, to
compel the often blind will of majorities to conform to reason and the
inevitable. It is the ambition of real statesmen to drive the state
coach; while the mere politician is content to climb up behind, or to
run up and down at the heels of the populace, like a servile flunkey
after a demented master, whose follies he dares not correct, and out of
whose worst extravagances he is ready to profit. Political leaders
realize that a majority vote does not always, perhaps not often,
represent the weight of the effective public opinion of the state; that
such a vote frequently not only lacks understanding, but also lacks any
guarantee of future support for the politician who shall rely upon it.
And so it is the part of statesmanship to mitigate or prevent pure
majority rule; to manage public opinion; to muzzle, assuage or pacify
it; to create and guide majorities; to soothe and placate them for the
time being; and sometimes to divert their attention, till they melt away
and disappear and reason resumes her sway.
The necessity of effectively curbing, moderating and checking majority
action, was well understood by the framers of the Constitution, who
erected various anti-majority or one might say anti-snap-judgment
barriers. First, there was the existing property qualification for
voters; Second, the fundamental guarantees for personal property rights,
contained in the Constitution and intended to protect minorities against
hasty majority legislation; Third, the immutable constitutional
provision for the equal representation of the states in the Senate. This
last is a clear flouting of the majority theory, since it gives a small
state the same representation as a large one, and conceivably enables a
minority to defeat a majority. Fourth, the creation of an electoral
college to select the president; thus intending to deprive the people
of all direct voice in his election; Fifth, the veto placed in the hands
of a president not elected by popular vote; Sixth, the election of
federal senators by the state legislatures instead of by the people;
Seventh, the creation of a supreme court with power to nullify
unconstitutional legislation; Eighth, the system of appointment instead
of election of all federal officials.
Calhoun discussed the subject of majority vote in a very interesting way
in his _Disquisition on Government_. He there distinguishes between the
sense of the majority of the community and the sense of the entire
community; he recognizes the tendency to misgovernment by a numerical
majority, and the necessity of checking that tendency by some means, and
he proposes the creation of a countervailing “Organism” by which would
be called into operation the sense of the community as a whole. This
would merely amount to the adoption of an additional constitutional
check on majority rule; and such checks are of course useful; but they
are insufficient; they are directed against the operation of the
mischief, but not against its root and origin. The political machine
should be so constructed that the constitutional checks on its operation
would only be needed on rare occasions, like the stops in an elevator,
which come into play only in cases of accident when the machine gets
beyond ordinary control. A vital error in the scheme of majority rule is
pointed out by John Stuart Mill in his “System of Logic”; it lies in the
vicious extreme to which it has been carried. All excess is mischievous.
All systems of government are bound to be defective in results, and
therefore none should be radically enforced. The so called French
extreme logical application of general rules tends to aggravate
imperfections. “In these, and many other cases, we set in motion a
principle from which, while it is under control we derive signal
advantage, but which, if it breaks loose and follows its own tendencies
unchecked, is highly dangerous: of which we may say, as of fire, that it
is a good servant but a bad master.” (_Lewis on Authority_, p. 239.) In
other words the doctrine of majority rule represents only one principle
applicable to government: it contains only a part of the truth; and
should not in practise be applied to excess, or as if it were the only
principle involved; but its original operation should be combined at the
very outset with that of other steadying forces such as intelligence,
experience and morality. “The mere counting of votes (says one writer)
is insufficient when parts of the nation are electing representatives
for the whole. The parts must be arranged according to quality so as to
guarantee the election of the best men, and to give due proportion to
the intellectual, moral and material elements of the nation.”
(Bluntschli; _Theory of the State_.)
The foregoing may serve to clear up the difficulty in the minds of many
people, who have thought of the construction of a governmental machine
as of a problem in mathematics, where only numbers are to be considered.
As Mills the logician points out, the doctrine of pure numerical
majority rule is not logical, and other considerations besides mere
numbers must be given value in weighing the national verdict in
political questions. In determining what those other considerations
should be, it is obvious that property rights, and the qualities which
create and preserve property, are of first availability and importance,
and that the neglect and oversight of these rights and qualities
constitute the most glaring defects of popular government. The property
qualification is obviously that most readily applied to the electorate
and its institution is a return to the natural and original practice of
the American people.
The use of the property qualification as a corrective of the excesses
attendant upon pure majority government is also recommendable on the
ground of efficiency and practicability. It will effect a needed check
on hasty, emotional, prejudiced and unsocial measures more easily and
with less jar and racking than any of the other expedients in practise
or suggested for that purpose. The marginal vote between right and
wrong, between wisdom and folly, is often very small; sometimes five or
ten per cent. It is safe to assume that a propertied electorate would
give enlightened verdicts in many cases, where the present inferior
voting body renders barbarous ones; and such decisions would carry with
them all the prestige of a popular vote. The constitutional expedients
now in force to check majority action, or any which may be invented,
should not be subjected to every day use, for they have serious
drawbacks. They are not preventive; they are not final; at best they
effect no more than delay, and they irritate the masses by opposing a
technical and inferior power to theirs; a mere obstruction as it were,
and that interposed by those whom they assume to call their servants.
There can be no doubt that the logical and safe thing is to avoid and
prevent mistakes of the electorate, rather than to allow them to be
made, and afterward to attempt by extraneous means to offset them or to
thwart their operation; and this especially when these means are such as
to the masses may seem obstructive and oppressive. As the real
difficulty in the case lies in this vicious constitution of the
electorate, why not meet it there? The object is to prevent foolish,
oppressive and fluctuating majority decisions. To effectuate this, the
property qualification scheme, while accepting the fact that voting
power rule is one necessary factor in republican government, creates at
the outset a majority body of voters from which it has eliminated the
politically worthless element. It thus furnishes an electorate
containing, and capable of producing out of itself, a numerical majority
which will also carry a preponderance in property, intelligence, public
spirit and in political weight, prestige and power. Such a majority will
never attempt to rule in defiance of justice and good policy; and the
assurance furnished by its very existence will promote business
confidence and general prosperity.