Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau,
which professes to be _very far advanced_, but which I consider twenty
centuries _behind, universal_ suffrage (taking the word in its strictest
sense) is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which
examination and doubt are crimes.
Serious objections may be made to it.
In the first place, the word _universal_ conceals a gross sophism. There
are, in France, 36,000,000 of inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage
universal, 36,000,000 of electors should be reckoned. The most extended
system reckons only 9,000,000. Three persons out of four, then, are
excluded; and more than this, they are excluded by the fourth. Upon what
principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity.
Universal suffrage, then, means--universal suffrage of those who are
capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, sex, and
judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity is to be
attached?
On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the motive
which causes the right of suffrage to depend upon the presumption of
incapacity; the most extended system differing only in this respect from
the most restricted, by the appreciation of those conditions on which
this incapacity depends, and which constitutes, not a difference in
principle, but in degree.
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