But also democracy,
in its very essence, insists so much more forcibly on the things in
which all are entitled to be considered equally, than on those in
which one person is entitled to more consideration than another,
that respect for even personal superiority is likely to be below the
mark. It is for this, among other reasons, I hold it of so much
importance that the institutions of the country should stamp the
opinions of persons of a more educated class as entitled to greater
weight than those of the less educated: and I should still contend for
assigning plurality of votes to authenticated superiority of
education, were it only to give the tone to public feeling,
irrespective of any direct political consequences.
When there does exist in the electoral body an adequate sense of the
extraordinary difference in value between one person and another, they
will not lack signs by which to distinguish the persons whose worth
for their purposes is the greatest. Actual public services will
naturally be the foremost indication: to have filled posts of
magnitude, and done important things in them, of which the wisdom
has been justified by the results; to have been the author of measures
which appear from their effects to have been wisely planned; to have
made predictions which have been of verified by the event, seldom or
never falsified by it; to have given advice, which when taken has been
followed by good consequences, when neglected, by bad.
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