Such a representative democracy as has now been
sketched--representative of all, and not solely of the majority--in
which the interests, the opinions, the grades of intellect which are
outnumbered would nevertheless be heard, and would have a chance of
obtaining by weight of character and strength of argument an influence
which would not belong to their numerical force--this democracy, which
is alone equal, alone impartial, alone the government of all by all,
the only true type of democracy, would be free from the greatest evils
of the falsely-called democracies which now prevail, and from which
the current idea of democracy is exclusively derived. But even in this
democracy, absolute power, if they chose to exercise it, would rest
with the numerical majority, and these would be composed exclusively
of a single class, alike in biases, prepossessions, and general modes
of thinking, and a class, to say no more, not the most highly
cultivated. The constitution would therefore still be liable to the
characteristic evils of class government; in a far less degree,
assuredly, than that exclusive government by a class which now usurps
the name of democracy, but still under no effective restraint except
what might be found in the good sense, moderation, and forbearance of
the class itself. If checks of this description are sufficient, the
philosophy of constitutional government is but solemn trifling. All
trust in constitutions is grounded on the assurance they may afford,
not that the depositaries of power will not, but that they can not
misemploy it. Democracy is not the ideally best form of government
unless this weak side of it can be strengthened; unless it can be so
organized that no class, not even the most numerous, shall be able to
reduce all but itself to political insignificance, and direct the
course of legislation and administration by its exclusive class
interest. The problem is to find the means of preventing this abuse
without sacrificing the characteristic advantages of popular
government.
These twofold requisites are not fulfilled by the expedient of a
limitation of the suffrage, involving the compulsory exclusion of any
portion of the citizens from a voice in the representation. Among the
foremost benefits of free government is that education of the
intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very
lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts
which directly affect the great interests of their country. On this
topic I have already dwelt so emphatically that I only return to it
because there are few who seem to attach to this effect of popular
institutions all the importance to which it is entitled. People think
it fanciful to expect so much from what seems so slight a cause--to
recognize a potent instrument of mental improvement in the exercise of
political franchises by manual laborers. Yet, unless substantial
mental cultivation in the mass of mankind is to be a mere vision, this
is the road by which it must come. If any one supposes that this road
will not bring it, I call to witness the entire contents of M. de
Tocqueville's great work, and especially his estimate of the
Americans. Almost all travelers are struck by the fact that every
American is in some sense both a patriot and a person of cultivated
intelligence; and M. de Tocqueville has shown how close the connection
is between these qualities and their democratic institutions. No such
wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds
has ever been seen elsewhere, or even conceived as attainable. Yet
this is nothing to what we might look for in a government equally
democratic in its unexclusiveness, but better organized in other
important points. For political life is indeed in America a most
valuable school, but it is a school from which the ablest teachers are
excluded; the first minds in the country being as effectually shut out
from the national representation, and from public functions generally,
as if they were under a formal disqualification. The Demos, too, being
in America the one source of power, all the selfish ambition of the
country gravitates towards it, as it does in despotic countries
towards the monarch; the People, like the despot, is pursued with
adulation and sycophancy, and the corrupting effects of power fully
keep pace with its improving and ennobling influences. If, even with
this alloy, democratic institutions produce so marked a superiority of
mental development in the lowest class of Americans, compared with the
corresponding classes in England and elsewhere, what would it be if
the good portion of the influence could be retained without the bad?
And this, to a certain extent, may be done, but not by excluding that
portion of the people who have fewest intellectual stimuli of other
kinds from so inestimable an introduction to large, distant, and
complicated interests as is afforded by the attention they may be
induced to bestow on political affairs. It is by political discussion
that the manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and whose way
of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions,
circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events
which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his
personal interests; and it is from political discussion and collective
political action that one whose daily occupations concentrate his
interests in a small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with
his fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great
community. But political discussions fly over the heads of those who
have no votes, and are not endeavouring to acquire them. Their
position, in comparison with the electors, is that of the audience in
a court of justice compared with the twelve men in the jury-box. It is
not _their_ suffrages that are asked, it is not their opinion that is
sought to be influenced; the appeals are made, the arguments
addressed, to others than them; nothing depends on the decision _they_
may arrive at, and there is no necessity and very little inducement to
them to come to any. Whoever, in an otherwise popular government, has
no vote, and no prospect of obtaining it, will either be a permanent
malcontent, or will feel as one whom the general affairs of society do
not concern; for whom they are to be managed by others; who "has no
business with the laws except to obey them," nor with public interests
and concerns except as a looker-on. What he will know or care about
them from this position may partly be measured by what an average
woman of the middle class knows and cares about politics compared with
her husband or brothers.
Independently of all these considerations, it is a personal injustice
to withhold from any one, unless for the prevention of greater evils,
the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of
affairs in which he has the same interest as other people. If he is
compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he is required
implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for;
to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth,
though not at more than its worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a
full-grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except
through their own default. Every one is degraded, whether aware of it
or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon
themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny. And even in a much
more improved state than the human mind has ever yet reached, it is
not in nature that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as
fair play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling classes are
under a necessity of considering the interests and wishes of those who
have the suffrage; but of those who are excluded, it is in their
option whether they will do so or not; and, however honestly disposed,
they are, in general, too fully occupied with things which they _must_
attend to to have much room in their thoughts for any thing which they
can with impunity disregard. No arrangement of the suffrage,
therefore, can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or
class is peremptorily excluded--in which the electoral privilege is
not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it.
There are, however, certain exclusions, required by positive reasons,
which do not conflict with this principle, and which, though an evil
in themselves, are only to be got rid of by the cessation of the state
of things which requires them. I regard it as wholly inadmissible that
any person should participate in the suffrage without being able to
read, write, and, I will add, perform the common operations of
arithmetic. Justice demands, even when the suffrage does not depend on
it, that the means of attaining these elementary acquirements should
be within the reach of every person, either gratuitously, or at an
expense not exceeding what the poorest, who can earn their own living,
can afford. If this were really the case, people would no more think
of giving the suffrage to a man who could not read, than of giving it
to a child who could not speak; and it would not be society that would
exclude him, but his own laziness. When society has not performed its
duty by rendering this amount of instruction accessible to all, there
is some hardship in the case, but it is a hardship that ought to be
borne. If society has neglected to discharge two solemn obligations,
the more important and more fundamental of the two must be fulfilled
first; universal teaching must precede universal enfranchisement. No
one but those in whom an _à priori_ theory has silenced common sense
will maintain that power over others, over the whole community, should
be imparted to people who have not acquired the commonest and most
essential requisities for taking care of themselves--for pursuing
intelligently their own interests, and those of the persons most
nearly allied to them. This argument, doubtless, might be pressed
further, and made to prove much more. It would be eminently desirable
that other things besides reading, writing, and arithmetic could be
made necessary to the suffrage; that some knowledge of the
conformation of the earth, its natural and political divisions, the
elements of general history, and of the history and institutions of
their own country, could be required from all electors. But these
kinds of knowledge, however indispensable to an intelligent use of the
suffrage, are not, in this country, nor probably any where save in the
Northern United States, accessible to the whole people, nor does there
exist any trustworthy machinery for ascertaining whether they have
been acquired or not. The attempt, at present, would lead to
partiality, chicanery, and every kind of fraud. It is better that the
suffrage should be conferred indiscriminately, or even withheld
indiscriminately, than that it should be given to one and withheld
from another at the discretion of a public officer. In regard,
however, to reading, writing, and calculating, there need be no
difficulty. It would be easy to require from every one who presented
himself for registry that he should, in the presence of the registrar,
copy a sentence from an English book, and perform a sum in the rule of
three; and to secure, by fixed rules and complete publicity, the
honest application of so very simple a test. This condition,
therefore, should in all cases accompany universal suffrage; and it
would, after a few years, exclude none but those who cared so little
for the privilege, that their vote, if given, would not in general be
an indication of any real political opinion.
It is also important, that the assembly which votes the taxes, either
general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay
something towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing
by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish
and none to economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any
power of voting possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental
principle of free government, a severance of the power of control from
the interest in its beneficial exercise. It amounts to allowing them
to put their hands into other people's pockets for any purpose which
they think fit to call a public one, which, in the great towns of the
United States, is known to have produced a scale of local taxation
onerous beyond example, and wholly borne by the wealthier classes.
That representation should be coextensive with taxation, not stopping
short of it, but also not going beyond it, is in accordance with the
theory of British institutions. But to reconcile this, as a condition
annexed to the representation, with universality, it is essential, as
it is on many other accounts desirable, that taxation, in a visible
shape, should descend to the poorest class. In this country, and in
most others, there is probably no laboring family which does not
contribute to the indirect taxes, by the purchase of tea, coffee,
sugar, not to mention narcotics or stimulants. But this mode of
defraying a share of the public expenses is hardly felt: the payer,
unless a person of education and reflection, does not identify his
interest with a low scale of public expenditure as closely as when
money for its support is demanded directly from himself; and even
supposing him to do so, he would doubtless take care that, however
lavish an expenditure he might, by his vote, assist in imposing upon
the government, it should not be defrayed by any additional taxes on
the articles which he himself consumes. It would be better that a
direct tax, in the simple form of a capitation, should be levied on
every grown person in the community; or that every such person should
be admitted an elector on allowing himself to be rated _extra ordinem_
to the assessed taxes; or that a small annual payment, rising and
falling with the gross expenditure of the country, should be required
from every registered elector, that so every one might feel that the
money which he assisted in voting was partly his own, and that he was
interested in keeping down its amount.
However this may be, I regard it as required by first principles that
the receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification
for the franchise. He who can not by his labor suffice for his own
support, has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money
of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the
community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal
rights with them in other respects. Those to whom he is indebted for
the continuance of his very existence may justly claim the exclusive
management of those common concerns to which he now brings nothing, or
less than he takes away. As a condition of the franchise, a term
should be fixed, say five years previous to the registry, during which
the applicant's name has not been on the parish books as a recipient
of relief. To be an uncertificated bankrupt, or to have taken the
benefit of the Insolvent Act, should disqualify for the franchise
until the person has paid his debts, or at least proved that he is not
now, and has not for some long period been, dependent on eleemosynary
support. Non-payment of taxes, when so long persisted in that it can
not have arisen from inadvertence, should disqualify while it lasts.
These exclusions are not in their nature permanent. They exact such
conditions only as all are able, or ought to be able, to fulfill if
they choose. They leave the suffrage accessible to all who are in the
normal condition of a human being; and if any one has to forego it, he
either does not care sufficiently for it to do for its sake what he is
already bound to do, or he is in a general condition of depression and
degradation in which this slight addition, necessary for the security
of others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which this mark of
inferiority would disappear with the rest.
In the long run, therefore (supposing no restrictions to exist but
those of which we have now treated), we might expect that all, except
that (it is to be hoped) progressively diminishing class, the
recipients of parish relief, would be in possession of votes, so that
the suffrage would be, with that slight abatement, universal. That it
should be thus widely expanded is, as we have seen, absolutely
necessary to an enlarged and elevated conception of good government.
Yet in this state of things, the great majority of voters in most
countries, and emphatically in this, would be manual laborers, and the
twofold danger, that of too low a standard of political intelligence,
and that of class legislation, would still exist in a very perilous
degree. It remains to be seen whether any means exist by which these
evils can be obviated.
They are capable of being obviated if men sincerely wish it; not by
any artificial contrivance, but by carrying out the natural order of
human life, which recommends itself to every one in things in which he
has no interest or traditional opinion running counter to it. In all
human affairs, every person directly interested, and not under
positive tutelage, has an admitted claim to a voice, and when his
exercise of it is not inconsistent with the safety of the whole, can
not justly be excluded from it. But (though every one ought to have a
voice) that every one should have an equal voice is a totally
different proposition. When two persons who have a joint interest in
any business differ in opinion, does justice require that both
opinions should be held of exactly equal value? If with equal virtue,
one is superior to the other in knowledge and intelligence--or if with
equal intelligence, one excels the other in virtue--the opinion, the
judgment of the higher moral or intellectual being is worth more than
that of the inferior; and if the institutions of the country virtually
assert that they are of the same value, they assert a thing which is
not. One of the two, as the wiser or better man, has a claim to
superior weight: the difficulty is in ascertaining which of the two it
is; a thing impossible as between individuals, but, taking men in
bodies and in numbers, it can be done with a certain approach to
accuracy. There would be no pretense for applying this doctrine to any
case which can with reason be considered as one of individual and
private right. In an affair which concerns only one of two persons,
that one is entitled to follow his own opinion, however much wiser the
other may be than himself. But we are speaking of things which equally
concern them both; where, if the more ignorant does not yield his
share of the matter to the guidance of the wiser man, the wiser man
must resign his to that of the more ignorant. Which of these modes of
getting over the difficulty is most for the interest of both, and most
conformable to the general fitness of things? If it be deemed unjust
that either should have to give way, which injustice is greatest? that
the better judgment should give way to the worse, or the worse to the
better?
Now national affairs are exactly such a joint concern, with the
difference that no one needs ever be called upon for a complete
sacrifice of his own opinion. It can always be taken into the
calculation, and counted at a certain figure, a higher figure being
assigned to the suffrages of those whose opinion is entitled to
greater weight. There is not in this arrangement any thing necessarily
invidious to those to whom it assigns the lower degrees of influence.
Entire exclusion from a voice in the common concerns is one thing: the
concession to others of a more potential voice, on the ground of
greater capacity for the management of the joint interests, is
another. The two things are not merely different, they are
incommensurable. Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made
a nobody, and stamped as of no account at all. No one but a fool, and
only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the
acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose
wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his. To
have no voice in what are partly his own concerns is a thing which
nobody willingly submits to; but when what is partly his concern is
also partly another's, and he feels the other to understand the
subject better than himself, that the other's opinion should be
counted for more than his own accords with his expectations, and with
the course of things which in all other affairs of life he is
accustomed to acquiese in. It is only necessary that this superior
influence should be assigned on grounds which he can comprehend, and
of which he is able to perceive the justice.
I hasten to say that I consider it entirely inadmissible, unless as a
temporary makeshift, that the superiority of influence should be
conferred in consideration of property. I do not deny that property is
a kind of test; education, in most countries, though any thing but
proportional to riches, is on the average better in the richer half of
society than in the poorer. But the criterion is so imperfect;
accident has so much more to do than merit with enabling men to rise
in the world; and it is so impossible for any one, by acquiring any
amount of instruction, to make sure of the corresponding rise in
station, that this foundation of electoral privilege is always, and
will continue to be, supremely odious. To connect plurality of votes
with any pecuniary qualification would be not only objectionable in
itself, but a sure mode of compromising the principle, and making its
permanent maintenance impracticable. The democracy, at least of this
country, are not at present jealous of personal superiority, but they
are naturally and must justly so of that which is grounded on mere
pecuniary circumstances. The only thing which can justify reckoning
one person's opinion as equivalent to more than one is individual
mental superiority, and what is wanted is some approximate means of
ascertaining that. If there existed such a thing as a really national
education or a trustworthy system of general examination, education
might be tested directly. In the absence of these, the nature of a
person's occupation is some test. An employer of labor is on the
average more intelligent than a laborer; for he must labor with his
head, and not solely with his hands. A foreman is generally more
intelligent than an ordinary laborer, and a laborer in the skilled
trades than in the unskilled. A banker, merchant, or manufacturer is
likely to be more intelligent than a tradesman, because he has larger
and more complicated interests to manage. In all these cases it is not
the having merely undertaken the superior function, but the successful
performance of it, that tests the qualifications; for which reason, as
well as to prevent persons from engaging nominally in an occupation
for the sake of the vote, it would be proper to require that the
occupation should have been persevered in for some length of time (say
three years). Subject to some such condition, two or more votes might
be allowed to every person who exercises any of these superior
functions. The liberal professions, when really and not nominally
practiced, imply, of course, a still higher degree of instruction; and
wherever a sufficient examination, or any serious conditions of
education, are required before entering on a profession, its members
could be admitted at once to a plurality of votes. The same rule might
be applied to graduates of universities; and even to those who bring
satisfactory certificates of having passed through the course of study
required by any school at which the higher branches of knowledge are
taught, under proper securities that the teaching is real, and not a
mere pretense. The "local" or "middle class" examination for the
degree of associate, so laudably and public-spiritedly established by
the University of Oxford, and any similar ones which may be instituted
by other competent bodies (provided they are fairly open to all
comers), afford a ground on which plurality of votes might with great
advantage be accorded to those who have passed the test. All these
suggestions are open to much discussion in the detail, and to
objections which it is of no use to anticipate. The time is not come
for giving to such plans a practical shape, nor should I wish to be
bound by the particular proposals which I have made. But it is to me
evident that in this direction lies the true ideal of representative
government; and that to work towards it by the best practical
contrivances which can be found is the path of real political
improvement.
If it be asked to what length the principle admits of being carried,
or how many votes might be accorded to an individual on the ground of
superior qualifications, I answer, that this is not in itself very
material, provided the distinctions and gradations are not made
arbitrarily, but are such as can be understood and accepted by the
general conscience and understanding. But it is an absolute condition
not to overpass the limit prescribed by the fundamental principle laid
down in a former chapter as the condition of excellence in the
constitution of a representative system. The plurality of votes must
on no account be carried so far that those who are privileged by it,
or the class (if any) to which they mainly belong, shall outweigh by
means of it all the rest of the community. The distinction in favor of
education, right in itself, is farther and strongly recommended by its
preserving the educated from the class legislation of the uneducated;
but it must stop short of enabling them to practice class legislation
on their own account. Let me add, that I consider it an absolutely
necessary part of the plurality scheme that it be open to the poorest
individual in the community to claim its privileges, if he can prove
that, in spite of all difficulties and obstacles, he is, in point of
intelligence, entitled to them. There ought to be voluntary
examinations at which any person whatever might present himself, might
prove that he came up to the standard of knowledge and ability laid
down as sufficient, and be admitted, in consequence, to the plurality
of votes. A privilege which is not refused to any one who can show
that he has realized the conditions on which in theory and principle
it is dependent, would not necessarily be repugnant to any one's
sentiment of justice; but it would certainly be so if, while conferred
on general presumptions not always infallible, it were denied to
direct proof.
Plural voting, though practiced in vestry elections and those of
poor-law guardians, is so unfamiliar in elections to Parliament that
it is not likely to be soon or willingly adopted; but as the time will
certainly arrive when the only choice will be between this and equal
universal suffrage, whoever does not desire the last can not too soon
begin to reconcile himself to the former. In the mean time, though the
suggestion, for the present, may not be a practical one, it will serve
to mark what is best in principle, and enable us to judge of the
eligibility of any indirect means, either existing or capable of being
adopted, which may promote in a less perfect manner the same end. A
person may have a double vote by other means than that of tendering
two votes at the same hustings; he may have a vote in each of two
different constituencies; and though this exceptional privilege at
present belongs rather to superiority of means than of intelligence, I
would not abolish it where it exists, since, until a truer test of
education is adopted, it would be unwise to dispense with even so
imperfect a one as is afforded by pecuniary circumstances. Means might
be found of giving a farther extension to the privilege, which would
connect it in a more direct manner with superior education. In any
future Reform Bill which lowers greatly the pecuniary conditions of
the suffrage, it might be a wise provision to allow all graduates of
universities, all persons who have passed creditably through the
higher schools, all members of the liberal professions, and perhaps
some others, to be registered specifically in those characters, and to
give their votes as such in any constituency in which they choose to
register; retaining, in addition, their votes as simple citizens in
the localities in which they reside.
Until there shall have been devised, and until opinion is willing to
accept, some mode of plural voting which may assign to education as
such the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a
counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, for
so long the benefits of completely universal suffrage can not be
obtained without bringing with them, as it appears to me, more than
equivalent evils. It is possible, indeed (and this is perhaps one of
the transitions through which we may have to pass in our progress to a
really good representative system), that the barriers which restrict
the suffrage might be entirely leveled in some particular
constituencies, whose members, consequently, would be returned
principally by manual laborers; the existing electoral qualification
being maintained elsewhere, or any alteration in it being accompanied
by such a grouping of the constituencies as to prevent the laboring
class from becoming preponderant in Parliament. By such a compromise,
the anomalies in the representation would not only be retained, but
augmented; this, however, is not a conclusive objection; for if the
country does not choose to pursue the right ends by a regular system
directly leading to them, it must be content with an irregular
makeshift, as being greatly preferable to a system free from
irregularities, but regularly adapted to wrong ends, or in which some
ends equally necessary with the others have been left out. It is a far
graver objection, that this adjustment is incompatible with the
intercommunity of local constituencies which Mr. Hare's plan requires;
that under it every voter would remain imprisoned within the one or
more constituencies in which his name is registered, and, unless
willing to be represented by one of the candidates for those
localities, would not be represented at all.
So much importance do I attach to the emancipation of those who
already have votes, but whose votes are useless, because always
outnumbered--so much should I hope from the natural influence of truth
and reason, if only secured a hearing and a competent advocacy, that I
should not despair of the operation even of equal and universal
suffrage, if made real by the proportional representation of all
minorities, on Mr. Hare's principle. But if the best hopes which can
be formed on this subject were certainties, I should still contend for
the principle of plural voting. I do not propose the plurality as a
thing in itself undesirable, which, like the exclusion of part of the
community from the suffrage, may be temporarily tolerated while
necessary to prevent greater evils. I do not look upon equal voting as
among the things which are good in themselves, provided they can be
guarded against inconveniences. I look upon it as only relatively
good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on
irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but 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. The national institutions should
place all things that they are concerned with before the mind of the
citizen in the light in which it is for his good that he should regard
them; and as it is for his good that he should think that every one is
entitled to some influence, but the better and wiser to more than
others, it is important that this conviction should be professed by
the state, and embodied in the national institutions. Such things
constitute the _spirit_ of the institutions of a country; that portion
of their influence which is least regarded by common, and especially
by English thinkers, though the institutions of every country, not
under great positive oppression, produce more effect by their spirit
than by any of their direct provisions, since by it they shape the
national character. The American institutions have imprinted strongly
on the American mind that any one man (with a white skin) is as good
as any other; and it is felt that this false creed is nearly connected
with some of the more unfavorable points in American character. It is
not small mischief that the constitution of any country should
sanction this creed; for the belief in it, whether express or tacit,
is almost as detrimental to moral and intellectual excellence any
effect which most forms of government can produce.
It may, perhaps, be said, that a constitution which gives equal
influence, man for man, to the most and to the least instructed, is
nevertheless conducive to progress, because the appeals constantly
made to the less instructed classes, the exercise given to their
mental powers, and the exertions which the more instructed are obliged
to make for enlightening their judgment and ridding them of errors and
prejudices, are powerful stimulants to their advance in intelligence.
That this most desirable effect really attends the admission of the
less educated classes to some, and even to a large share of power, I
admit, and have already strenuously maintained. But theory and
experience alike prove that a counter current sets in when they are
made the possessors of all power. Those who are supreme over every
thing, whether they be One, or Few, or Many, have no longer need of
the arms of reason; they can make their mere will prevail; and those
who can not be resisted are usually far too well satisfied with their
own opinions to be willing to change them, or listen without
impatience to any one who tells them that they are in the wrong. The
position which gives the strongest stimulus to the growth of
intelligence is that of rising into power, not that of having achieved
it; and of all resting-points, temporary or permanent, in the way to
ascendancy, the one which develops the best and highest qualities is
the position of those who are strong enough to make reason prevail,
but not strong enough to prevail against reason. This is the position
in which, according to the principles we have laid down, the rich and
the poor, the much and the little educated, and all the other classes
and denominations which divide society between them, ought as far as
practicable to be placed; and by combining this principle with the
otherwise just one of allowing superiority of weight to superiority of
mental qualities, a political constitution would realize that kind of
relative perfection which is alone compatible with the complicated
nature of human affairs.
In the preceding argument for universal but graduated suffrage, I have
taken no account of difference of sex. I consider it to be as entirely
irrelevant to political rights as difference in height or in the color
of the hair. All human beings have the same interest in good
government; the welfare of all is alike affected by it, and they have
equal need of a voice in it to secure their share of its benefits. If
there be any difference, women require it more than men, since, being
physically weaker, they are more dependent on law and society for
protection. Mankind have long since abandoned the only premises which
will support the conclusion that women ought not to have votes. No one
now holds that women should be in personal servitude; that they should
have no thought, wish, or occupation but to be the domestic drudges of
husbands, fathers, or brothers. It is allowed to unmarried, and wants
but little of being conceded to married women to hold property, and
have pecuniary and business interests in the same manner as men. It is
considered suitable and proper that women should think, and write, and
be teachers. As soon as these things are admitted, the political
disqualification has no principle to rest on. The whole mode of
thought of the modern world is, with increasing emphasis, pronouncing
against the claim of society to decide for individuals what they are
and are not fit for, and what they shall and shall not be allowed to
attempt. If the principles of modern politics and political economy
are good for any thing, it is for proving that these points can only
be rightly judged of by the individuals themselves; and that, under
complete freedom of choice, wherever there are real diversities of
aptitude, the greater number will apply themselves to the things for
which they are on the average fittest, and the exceptional course will
only be taken by the exceptions. Either the whole tendency of modern
social improvements has been wrong, or it ought to be carried out to
the total abolition of all exclusions and disabilities which close any
honest employment to a human being.
But it is not even necessary to maintain so much in order to prove
that women should have the suffrage. Were it as right as it is wrong
that they should be a subordinate class, confined to domestic
occupations and subject to domestic authority, they would not the less
require the protection of the suffrage to secure them from the abuse
of that authority. Men, as well as women, do not need political rights
in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be
misgoverned. The majority of the male sex are, and will be all their
lives, nothing else than laborers in corn-fields or manufactories; but
this does not render the suffrage less desirable for them, nor their
claim to it less irresistible, when not likely to make a bad use of
it. Nobody pretends to think that woman would make a bad use of the
suffrage. The worst that is said is that they would vote as mere
dependents, the bidding of their male relations. If it be so, so let
it be. If they think for themselves, great good will be done; and if
they do not, no harm. It is a benefit to human beings to take off
their fetters, even if they do not desire to walk. It would already be
a great improvement in the moral position of women to be no longer
declared by law incapable of an opinion, and not entitled to a
preference, respecting the most important concerns of humanity. There
would be some benefit to them individually in having something to
bestow which their male relatives can not exact, and are yet desirous
to have. It would also be no small matter that the husband would
necessarily discuss the matter with his wife, and that the vote would
not be his exclusive affair, but a joint concern. People do not
sufficiently consider how markedly the fact that she is able to have
some action on the outward world independently of him, raises her
dignity and value in a vulgar man's eyes, and makes her the object of
a respect which no personal qualities would ever obtain for one whose
social existence he can entirely appropriate. The vote itself, too,
would be improved in quality. The man would often be obliged to find
honest reasons for his vote, such as might induce a more upright and
impartial character to serve with him under the same banner. The
wife's influence would often keep him true to his own sincere opinion.
Often, indeed, it would be used, not on the side of public principle,
but of the personal interest or worldly vanity of the family. But,
wherever this would be the tendency of the wife's influence, it is
exerted to the full already in that bad direction, and with the more
certainty, since under the present law and custom she is generally too
utter a stranger to politics in any sense in which they involve
principle to be able to realize to herself that there is a point of
honor in them; and most people have as little sympathy in the point of
honor of others, when their own is not placed in the same thing, as
they have in the religious feelings of those whose religion differs
from theirs. Give the woman a vote, and she comes under the operation
of the political point of honor. She learns to look on politics as a
thing on which she is allowed to have an opinion, and in which, if one
has an opinion, it ought to be acted upon; she acquires a sense of
personal accountability in the matter, and will no longer feel, as she
does at present, that whatever amount of bad influence she may
exercise, if the man can but be persuaded, all is right, and his
responsibility covers all. It is only by being herself encouraged to
form an opinion, and obtain an intelligent comprehension of the
reasons which ought to prevail with the conscience against the
temptations of personal or family interest, that she can ever cease to
act as a disturbing force on the political conscience of the man. Her
indirect agency can only be prevented from being politically
mischievous by being exchanged for direct.
I have supposed the right of suffrage to depend, as in a good state of
things it would, on personal conditions. Where it depends, as in this
and most other countries, on conditions of property, the contradiction
is even more flagrant. There something more than ordinarily irrational
in the fact that when a woman can give all the guarantees required
from a male elector, independent circumstances, the position of a
householder and head of a family, payment of taxes, or whatever may be
the conditions imposed, the very principle and system of a
representation based on property is set aside, and an exceptionally
personal disqualification is created for the mere purpose of excluding
her. When it is added that in the country where this is done a woman
now reigns, and that the most glorious ruler whom that country ever
had was a woman, the picture of unreason and scarcely disguised
injustice is complete. Let us hope that as the work proceeds of
pulling down, one after another, the remains of the mouldering fabric
of monopoly and tyranny, this one will not be the last to disappear;
that the opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, of Mr. Hare, and
many other of the most powerful political thinkers of this age and
country (not to speak of others), will make its way to all minds not
rendered obdurate by selfishness or inveterate prejudice; and that,
before the lapse another generation, the accident of sex, no more than
the accident of skin, will be deemed a sufficient justification for
depriving its possessor of the equal protection and just privileges of
a citizen.