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 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
a 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.
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