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, anything
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.
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