Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

Strange as it may seem, the doctrine of manhood suffrage has never been established in the minds of the American people by argument or discussion; originally adopted without serious reflection, it has since been largely taken for granted. It is curious to see how the most important measures may be adopted in a democratic community without even an approach to thorough consideration on the part of the majority. Take the case of woman suffrage adopted by the State of New York in 1917; only a small proportion of the men of the State had ever seriously considered the subject, and of the several millions of women of the State, probably not more than ten thousand really concerned themselves about it. National prohibition of the use of alcoholic beverages, which seemed impossible in 1908, was enacted in 1918 without real discussion by the electorate. The prohibition vote for President in 1916 was about 200,000 out of 18,000,000, or a little more than one per cent. But the prohibitionists were in bitter earnest; the others were careless or indifferent, a moment favorable to prohibition came, and the thing was done. Something like this is the story of the adoption of manhood suffrage in New York and the other large States; while it was being adopted the majority scarcely realized what was going on; after it was done they were indifferent to the change because it did not affect their daily lives. Since its adoption its theory has been very little discussed by the American people; it has not been openly attacked or questioned by newspaper or political orator for over two generations; its validity is usually taken as a matter of course; the masses are not even aware that there is anything questionable about it; and but one American writer, Prof. Hyslop of New York, has had the vision to see its enormity and the courage and patriotism to describe it in print. (Democracy.) His powerful book was never replied to and it is significant that not a well considered argument in favor of manhood or universal suffrage can be found in our libraries. Most of what has been printed on the subject is mere twaddle; a few authors lacking practical experience in active life, such as teachers or sociologists, have alluded to it in their class books or political treatises, but the little they say on the subject is usually confined to commonplace laudation of political liberty or other weak sentimentalism or else to the routine conventional assumption that manhood suffrage is what they call in their pretentious slang part of the “advance movement” of the nineteenth century.

A very short sketch of the history of manhood suffrage in this country may be useful here as a preliminary to a brief review of its actual operations. Though some traces of a belief in the abstract right of all men to vote may be found in the England of the middle ages, yet our English ancestors prior to the Protestant Reformation had, generally speaking, no idea of a vote not founded on property or on such a recognized business standing as might give an assurance of stability of character or of a substantial interest in the affairs of the community or nation. The first English public utterance in favor of manhood suffrage that has come to the writer’s attention was made in 1647 by some of the sect of Congregationalists or Independents. That body was divided in opinion on the subject. Those who favored it were called “Levellers,” and in so doing were opposed by the other Independents as well as by the Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians. The Levellers claimed that the right to vote was conferred by natural law upon all freemen. Cromwell and Ireton of the Puritan leaders opposed them, and insisted that no man had a right to vote on the affairs of the country or the choice of lawmakers who had not a property or a business interest; saying that those who have “noe interest butt the interest of breathing” should have no voice in elections.

The establishment of qualifications for voters in the American Colonies during the Colonial period was left entirely in the hands of the Colonies themselves; Great Britain not interfering. The first colonists were without any settled policy on the subject. Massachusetts had a religious qualification and some of the Puritans who wished to establish a theocracy or a church government in New England on the basis of the Independent or Congregational polity were in favor of making church membership the only qualification. The first settlers being without holdings in the colony, probably dispensed with a property qualification at first or waived it as impracticable. But very soon it was decided that only those having an interest in the colony should have a voice in its affairs; and the rule of a property qualification for voters was speedily established in all the colonies; in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut in 1630; in Rhode Island in 1658; in New Jersey in 1665 and North Carolina in 1663; in Maryland and in Virginia in 1670; in Pennsylvania in 1682; in South Carolina in 1692; in New York about 1701; in Delaware 1734; and in Georgia in 1761. In five colonies, namely, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, the property held might be either real or personal; in all the others it was required to be land. Some American theorists at the time of the Revolution held a belief or a half belief in manhood suffrage but they were few in number. In certain political declarations published not long prior to 1776 we find propositions that all men are naturally entitled to vote, while in others a suffrage qualification is suggested. But by the time the Revolution arrived the doctrine of manhood suffrage had practically disappeared from the colonies; and the practice of putting in office only the most prominent and best equipped was universal and apparently universally accepted.

The success of the Revolution in no way affected the suffrage. It had not been a democratic movement nor intended as such. At first it was designed to merely curtail without actually terminating British interference in American affairs; later as the estrangement increased it was determined to entirely get rid of British rule. But the Revolution was in spirit a conservative movement, whereby it was not intended to interfere with existing colonial laws relating to suffrage nor to alter the political or social structure of society nor to materially change aught in government beyond terminating the British connection. In this respect it materially differed from the French Revolution which developed into an attempt to completely reorganize the social and political fabrics. The American revolutionists were well satisfied with their local laws and customs, and the separation from Great Britain once accomplished, the conservative policy adopted at the beginning of the struggle still continued till the generation which had carried through the Revolution had finally passed away.

The Declaration of Independence has nothing to say about the right of suffrage. Although composed by Jefferson, who was influenced by the sentimentalities of the French theorists of the time it contains only two brief statements which can possibly be quoted as favoring the principle of manhood suffrage. One is “that all men are created equal.” This statement could not have been intended to be understood without qualification because it is notoriously false. Men are not created equal either in size, health, affections, virtues, social station, capacity, prospects in life, opportunities, nor in anything else. In his own country thousands were then held in bondage, some by Jefferson himself, and a considerable part of the colonial population were without political rights. He could not therefore have even meant that all men were entitled to be considered as politically equal unless he intended merely to express a private opinion of his own. Public opinion as expressed in the laws and customs of the time was exactly to the contrary. The other statement of the Declaration that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is equally absurd, if applied to individuals. It may be that a government is a usurper if it exists in defiance of society at large, but it may properly dispense with the consent of an unlimited number of the individuals whom it governs. It cannot be supposed that Jefferson and his associates intended to imply that none of the governmental powers on the earth including those of the colonies themselves were just; yet none of them derived their powers from the consent of all those under their authority. Most of the colonies were founded on charters granted by the British crown. The consent of the native Indians, of aliens, women, minors, negroes and the unpropertied class had not been given to any government in this country, nor was it proposed at that time that any such consent should be asked for. More than this, neither Jefferson nor any one else proposed that the consent of the minority at any election, even were it forty-nine per cent of the whole, should be required to establish the new government. The most that Jefferson pretended to mean by these fine phrases was to claim that a majority of the qualified voters of the colonies should govern the country through their representatives duly elected. But in practice even this was a sham; the Revolutionists were probably in a minority of from one-fifth to a third of the whole people; they never troubled themselves to obtain the consent of the Tories or the indifferent; and what Jefferson really intended was to get his faction together on the basis of that Declaration as a party platform, to fight for the result and to beat or intimidate the majority into subjection or acquiescence. This is what was actually done; both sides resorted to force, the neutrals were silenced, and the Americans of tory principles were soon taught to their sorrow that Jefferson and his associates intended to govern them with or without their consent and pretty harshly at that. No vote was ever taken on the question of separation from Great Britain, and the consent of the objectors to what was done was rendered unnecessary by the efficient process of killing them or driving them into exile and confiscating their property.

The Revolution therefore was not the establishment of the rule of the majority in numbers, but of the sway of those qualified to govern, because the strongest, the most daring and the most fortunate. And the property qualification principle also assuring the rule of those believed to be the best qualified to govern was in force in every one of the thirteen states at and immediately after the Revolution by the will of the colonists themselves. Voters’ qualifications varied in different States, but in all there was some kind of a property qualification. In some the actual ownership of real property was required; in others a voter was required either to pay a property tax, to lease real property or to have a substantial yearly income. The payment of direct taxes in some form or other was in the minds of the founders of the American republic an essential qualification of the voter. The revolt against Great Britain had been generally and publicly defended on the theory of no taxation without representation; and the converse of this principle was popularly assumed, namely, that there should be no representation without taxation; in other words, that no man should be permitted to aid in shaping the policy of the country who did not directly contribute to the expense of its government, or, in the language of the time, “who had not a stake in the country.” For example, Virginia from 1670 restricted the suffrage “to such as by their estates, real or personal, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavor of the public good,” and later excluded all but freeholders. In the Virginia Bill of Rights of June 12, 1776, the statement is “That all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to the community have the right of suffrage.” In New Haven in 1784, out of about 600 adult males, only 343 were qualified to be freemen and vote for the mayor, who being once elected held his office during the pleasure of the General Assembly which usually meant for life. (Levermore, New Haven.) The payment of taxes and the right to representation were so much united in the public mind at that time that in some states, for instance in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the number of senators was apportioned among the counties according to the amount of taxation paid and not according to the population. Within the State of New York, representation was granted not according to the number of inhabitants, but to that of actual voters; in other words, of propertied citizens. When the word “people” was used in public documents what was really meant was the citizens or voters of the State.

In those days the obscure and ignorant political adventurers who now adorn our legislative halls, had no chance of getting themselves into the seats of the mighty, or their ravenous fingers into the public purse. As for judicial and administrative officers their selection was entirely withdrawn from the electorate. Our colonial and revolutionary ancestors believed that the members of the State Legislature who were personally acquainted with the candidates for high office were better able to select them than the mass of voters who only knew them by sight or reputation. The electorate might only choose the legislature, and that body usually elected the governor and appointed and removed judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other administrative officers. The voters chose the men who made the laws, but not the officials charged with their interpretation and execution; and the actual administration of government was so arranged for that honest, competent and responsible agents might be employed therein and was as far removed from the people as was conveniently possible.

Therefore the popular belief that the founders of our government believed in a democracy of numbers is a mistaken one. They maintained that both official and voter should be qualified men and they saw to it that they were such. And look at the result; the ablest and best men were put forward. Every nation has superior, mediocre, and inferior men; the latter being often the most greedy for office. One of the tests of a system of government is which of these classes it brings to the political front. Judged by this, the old colonial and revolutionary system was far superior to the present one. It put in power and kept there, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, the Adamses, Jefferson, and a number of their subordinates of great superiority to men in corresponding places in the present days of manhood and female suffrage. By their fruits you may know them. It is probable that the female suffragists firmly believe that their shallow platform ranters are superior to anything that earth can show; but with that exception no one will pretend that the present day methods have produced or can produce for the public service the equal of that revolutionary stock. Indeed we have more reason than some of us fully realize to be thankful that the governing class of that time in this country were men of substance; for the opposition to the proposed Federal Constitution in 1788 was very strong among the poorer classes; and it is considered certain by those who have looked carefully into the matter that had that instrument been at that time submitted to a vote based on manhood suffrage it would have been overwhelmingly defeated. This is not to be wondered at, since lack of experience in dealing with any but the simplest matters left those people incapable of understanding the provisions of the constitution or of realizing its beneficent import. One can hardly imagine what that defeat would have cost to mankind; the deplorable results of the indefinite postponement of the American Union with all its blessings of peace and prosperity, and the perpetuation here on this continent of the tariffs, strifes, petty wars and tyrannies of Europe and South America. When one tries to imagine the world without the United States of America as a beneficent enlightening force, one is appalled at the bare possibility that such a calamity might have been allowed to fall upon the world; and yet it was possible had it not been that Hamilton, Washington and the other leaders in that business were eighteenth century statesmen, staunch, efficient and determined, and not a bunch of twentieth century cowardly, spineless, brainless, heartless politicians, the product of machine and boss rule, such as would probably be in charge of any similar movement in the present year of grace, 1920.

CHAPTER III

THE SUFFRAGE IS NOT A NATURAL RIGHT BUT A FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT AND MAY THEREFORE PROPERLY BE RESTRICTED TO THOSE COMPETENT TO EXERCISE IT.