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look about them for respectable candidates in political elections, instead of confining themselves, as a matter of course, to the names which stand in large letters under an American flag at the head of the columns of their morning newspaper, ought to receive the hearty support of every man who feels any interest in maintaining the dignity of his country. Patriotism is but a name, when men are willing to intrust the honor of the nation and the conduct of its affairs to the hands of whomsoever they are told to support. The value of free suffrage depends wholly upon the extent to which the people are willing to accept the responsibilities which it imposes, as well as the privileges which it confers; and there is small sense of responsibility in the action of the man who can abase himself so low as to throw a contented vote for a candidate whom he either does not know or does not respect. It is a matter which touches the interest of every citizen. If we in America fancy that our republican institutions are to save us from the decay and ruin which are the inevitable and just successors of popular apathy, without the most careful fostering and wide diffusion of liberal and progressive principles of thought and action among the whole people, we overrate the active power of good institutions as much as we underrate that of the insidious and fast growing abuses which they conceal.

Though the representation of minorities does not necessarily imply universal suffrage, but might logically coexist with a very limited and exclusive enjoyment of that right, yet it would seem that a people whose principles had become sufficiently enlightened to admit of the former improvement would not long hesitate in adopting the latter. Accordingly, Mr. Mill advocates making the suffrage universal, (with a provision excluding paupers and persons wholly illiterate,) but is careful to anticipate the dangers which he, with his distrust of the people, naturally apprehends from equality of political power, by advocating at the same time what he calls a "graduated suffrage," by which a man should have the right to cast one vote or several, in any election, according to the degree of his intellectual capacity and cultivation, this being previously ascertained, registered, and certified by the proper authorities;

a scheme which we do not remember to have seen recommended by any previous writer, and which Mr. Mill proposes with more appearance of hesitation, and with less confidence in its feasibility, than is usual with him. It seems objectionable on two grounds; - the impossibility, amounting almost to absurdity, of fixing with any accuracy the relative intellectual capacity of every voter in a population so infinitely diverse as, spite of the lack of individuality, must always be the case with a civilized nation of the present day; and not less for the reason that intellectual position cannot justly be made the exclusive, or even the principal, ground for judging of the fitness of a man to exercise the right of election. Mr. Mill proposes, with a good deal of apparent misgiving, several methods of getting at the intellectual condition of voters; such as the nature of a man's occupation; the employer of labor being in general more intelligent than the laborer, a foreman than the workmen under him, and a laborer in skilled trades than one in unskilled.

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"A banker, merchant, or manufacturer is likely to be more intelligent than a tradesman, because he has larger and more complicated interests to manage.. Two or more votes might be allowed to every person who exercises any of these superior functions. The liberal professions, when really and not nominally practised, imply of course a still higher degree of instruction, and whenever a sufficient examination, or any serious conditions of education, are required before entering on a profession, its members could be admitted at once to a plurality of votes. The same rule might be applied to graduates of universities, and even to those who bring satisfactory certificates of having passed through the course of study required by any school in which the higher branches are taught; under proper securities that the teaching is real, and not a mere pretence. .... All these suggestions are open to much discussion in detail, and to objections which it is of no use to anticipate. The time is not come for giving to such plans a practical shape, nor should I wish to be bound by the particular proposals which I have made. . . ... Let me add, that I consider it an absolutely necessary part of the plurality scheme, that it be open to the poorest individual in the country to claim its privileges, if he can prove that, in spite of all difficulties and obstacles, he is in point of intelligence entitled to them. There ought to be voluntary examinations, at which any person whatever might present himself, might prove that

he came up to the standard of knowledge and ability laid down as sufficient, and be admitted in consequence to the plurality of votes." 168-170.

pp.

The hesitation and uncertainty which are to be observed in these suggestions attach, however, only to the practical application of the principle. Of the correctness and importance of the principle itself Mr. Mill is firmly convinced, so firmly, indeed, as to be unwilling to make the suffrage universal, until its operation can be controlled and modified by it.

"Until there shall have been devised, and until public opinion is willing to accept, some mode of plural voting which may assign to education, as such, the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, - for so long the benefits of completely universal suffrage cannot be obtained without bringing with them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent evils." — p. 171.

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“The American institutions have imprinted strongly on the American mind that any one man (with a white skin) is as good as any other, and it is felt that this false creed is nearly connected with some of the most unfavorable points in American character. It is not a small mischief that the constitution of any country should sanction this creed; for the belief in it, whether express or tacit, is almost as detrimental to moral and intellectual excellence as any effect which most forms of government can produce.". p. 174.

Mr. Mill is a believer in the perfectibility of human institutions of government, — an end worth striving for, certainly, whether we believe or not in the probability of its accomplishment; but it seems to us that his whole scheme of "graduated suffrage" rests on a false estimate of the qualifications necessary for intelligent voting. If a man has to vote upon measures, he must of course understand whatever relates to their propriety, their probable usefulness, and their adaptation to the end which they are intended to effect. Therefore it might seem eminently just and proper to gauge the capacity of members of Parliament or of Congress, and to "graduate their votes, though this we do not understand Mr. Mill to propose. But in voting for men, it seems to us that the main requirements are common sense and common honesty; and VOL. LXXIV. 5TH S. VOL. XII. NO. I.

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that, these being granted, the tradesman's vote is as intelligent as that of the merchant or manufacturer, and the choice of the university graduate no wiser or safer than that of the man of moderate education. The men eminent for character and ability in a community are in general as clearly recognized by the humbler classes as by the higher, and though it might sometimes happen that a man of showy but shallow attainments would pass among the former for genuine, we should not apprehend more serious evils from this possibility than from the class feeling which is at least as strong among educated as among uneducated men, and which would be certain in many cases to outbalance in a favorite candidate many shortcomings not less important and dangerous than those of the intellect. The examining committees which our author proposes, even if they were like to accomplish their object, (which, from Mr. Mill's remarks on the examination of candidates for civil offices, may well be doubted,) could take no account of moral qualifications; and it would be by no means edifying to see a man of simple honesty and of modest intellectual culture confined to a single vote, while his neighbor, an educated knave, was invested with the dignity of a triple vote; an anomaly which would be certain to occur with considerable frequency. And, moreover, intellectual superiority has its dangers. A peculiar conservatism (as we may call it, for want of a more definite term), a peculiar timidity and distrust, are apt to attach to the political views of the classes which possess most of the wealth and the education of old communities,- qualities which may be, and doubtless are, at times very useful in restraining the eccentricities. of the men who are at the other extreme of temperament, but which should not be allowed a larger proportional influence than belongs to them in virtue of their actual extent. From the political experience of this country, we should by no means say that its interests would be advanced by giving more power to the educated classes in the cities, and less to the men of moderate education in the country towns. In England, we suppose the nobility to have, as a class, more education and culture than any other. Does Mr. Mill think the members of the House of Commons would be more safely chosen by the

nobility, than by the great middle classes who now elect them ? Even if it were possible to ascertain each man's qualifications with sufficient exactness, the system proposed takes no account of the element of progress in education. Suppose a voter were examined on coming of age, and assigned a single vote. How long would it be before he should be allowed to present himself for the privilege of another? Education is progressive, or should be so; to meet this difficulty, a man should have the right to a second or third examination whenever he should believe his progress sufficient to entitle him to a plurality of votes. Thus we should come to have "cramming" for special elections, and it might well happen that a closely contested canvass might be decided by the raising of a dozen single voters to the rank of double voters. The evils of bribery also, of which the English complain, doubtless with sufficient reason, would not be lessened by the existence of committees of individuals whose single voices possessed such influence in determining the privileges of great bodies of men. But we do not wish to multiply objections, a task seldom difficult, even in the case of the most beneficent political or social projects. Mr. Mill's. scheme, springing as it does from a most worthy desire to perfect the system of voting, and to realize all the benefits while avoiding all the dangers of universal suffrage, seems to us, nevertheless, equally impracticable and undesirable; - impracticable, as involving a fixed register of attainments which it is at any time difficult to measure, and which are, or should be, constantly changing; and undesirable, as establishing a rule of qualification which recognizes only half the true and legitimate grounds on which real qualification is based.

We have said that this work is especially interesting to Americans, from the frequent reference and illustration which its author draws from the working of the American system of government. Let us add to the quotations we have already made two extracts, which are perhaps as important in their bearings as any we could select, and which, though advancing only views with which we have long been perfectly familiar, give an added weight to those views, which is not the less desirable that it comes from a source which all may believe to

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