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.
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