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 recognise a potent instrument of mental improvement in the
exercise of political franchises by manual labourers. 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 travellers 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.
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