Anti 1–2 League.
Again I asked my companion for an explanation. “This is simply to call a meeting for the purpose of forming a league to oppose the one-two men.” I was just as wise as before; but Bacon continued his explanation with his wonted courtesy. No mean introduction, however, was required to make the affair intelligible to me. I first gathered then from him that the right of universal suffrage had long since been entrusted to men and women alike. At first the privilege had been solely restricted to such persons as were of age, but since then the very consistent remark had been made that this restrictive measure was very inconsistent indeed. Why had the money qualification been abolished? because it was ostensibly unfair that a man paying taxes to the amount of two pounds should have a vote, and another paying only £1 19s. 11d. should be excluded from the poll. If the difference of one penny constituted no vital distinction, why not still further descend until we arrived at zero? Now the clear-headed and far-seeing people gradually learned to perceive that the question of being or not being of age was in itself a time-qualification, and these pioneers of progress began to argue as follows: “Why, you grant the right of voting, of influencing for good or for evil the interests of country and town, to doting old men, and you withhold it from young persons in the vigour of intellect, merely because the law has deemed proper to call them “infants.” You would not scruple to enlist them as soldiers, and they should have no vote in matters concerning their own interests. Why should a man at one and twenty be better than he was at twenty? Was not Pitt England’s prime minister on his coming of age? Is it not the height of folly and absurdity to attempt to determine by law at what period of life a man will just have sense enough to be entrusted with the performance of a duty which is the birth-right of every free-born citizen? Such laws are arbitrary and obsolete, a logical inconsistency, diametrically opposed to the grand and fundamental principle of equality before the law—aye, and a last remnant of those forms of paternal government which already in the nineteenth century began to be ridiculed and condemned; what could be opposed to such conclusive arguments? Some efforts were made, but those that attempted the struggle were cried down as unprincipled persons, weather-cocks, etc. A kind of compromise was arrived at; the period of coming of age was “recoiled,” but still nothing yet would satisfy the zealots for the principle of logical consistency. Once more the date of majority was moved back, until even the babies were admitted by law to come into their “birth-right.” The principle had been saved! the principle! and that was everything with the agitators. Difficulties there were involved in the principle no doubt, for some of the newly enfranchised babies could not walk, and others could not speak, and none could read or write. Under these doleful circumstances the mothers claimed the right to go to the poll for those youthful interesting voters, and this exorbitant demand the league proposed to counteract. One was one, and not two. The most learned mathematicians went out of their way to prove that either was wrong, and neither was right, meaning that both were nonsense; but the mothers laughed heartily at such ironical demonstrations, “and,” added Bacon, “the female party is by far stronger now than the male party.”