This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for himself, but for
everybody.
If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of
suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at his birth, it would be an
injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are
they prevented? Because they are presumed to be incapable. And why is
incapacity a motive for exclusion? Because the elector does not reap
alone the responsibility of his vote; because every vote engages and
affects the community at large; because the community has a right to
demand some securities, as regards the acts upon which his well-being
and his existence depend.
I know what might be said in answer to this. I know what might be
objected. But this is not the place to exhaust a controversy of this
kind. What I wish to observe is this, that this same controversy (in
common with the greater part of political questions) which agitates,
excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance
if the law had always been what it ought to be.
In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and
all properties to be respected--if it were merely the organisation of
individual right and individual defence--if it were the obstacle, the
check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder--is it
likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the
greater or less universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would
compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely
that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn? Is it
likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their
privilege? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and
the same, some would act without much inconvenience to the others?
But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under
pretence of organisation, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the
law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to
the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one
class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the
shipowners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case,
there is no class which may not pretend, and with reason, to place its
hand upon the law, which would not demand with fury its right of
election and eligibility, and which would overturn society rather than
not obtain it.
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