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 labourers; 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,
cannot 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.
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