It is beyond doubt that, at this period, setting aside the chief barons whose personal importance was such that it was necessary to treat with each of them individually, the freeholders, the clergy, and the burgesses of certain towns, could alone act as citizens. Those not comprised in one or other of these classes were chiefly poor husbandmen, labouring on subordinate and precarious property. They included all men invested with real independence, free to dispose of their person and wealth, and in a position to rise to some ideas of social interest. This it is which constitutes political capacity. This capacity varies according to time and place; the same degree of fortune and enlightenment is not everywhere and always sufficient to confer it, but its elements are constantly the same. It exists wherever we meet with the conditions, whether material or moral, of that degree of independence and intellectual development which enables a man freely and reasonably to accomplish the political act he is required to perform. Assuredly, considering the masses, as they should be considered in such a matter, these conditions are not met with in England in the fourteenth century, elsewhere than among the freeholders, the clergy, and the burgesses of the chief towns. Beyond these classes nothing is found but almost servile dependence and brutal ignorance. In summoning these classes, then, to join in the election, the electoral system summoned every capable citizen. It was derived, therefore, from the principle that capacity confers right; and among citizens whose capacity was recognized, no inequality was established.
Thus neither the sovereignty of the majority nor universal suffrage, were originally the basis of the British electoral system. Where capacity ceased, limitation of right was established. Within this limit the right was equal in all.
It is easy to prove that this is the sole principle on which it is possible to found a national and true electoral system. Let us for the moment forget facts, and consider the question from a purely philosophical point of view.
What motive has assigned in all times and countries a fixed age at which a man is declared to have attained his majority, that is to say, is considered free to manage his own affairs according to his own will? This appointment is nothing more than the declaration of the general fact, that, at a certain age, man is capable of acting, freely and reasonably, in the sphere of his individual interests. Is this declaration arbitrary? No, for if the period of his majority were fixed at ten years or at forty, the law would evidently be absurd; it would assume the presence of capacity where it did not exist, or else would not recognize it where it did exist—that is to say, it would confer or withhold the right wrongfully.
It is capacity, then, that confers right; and capacity is a fact independent of law, which law cannot create or destroy at will, but which it ought to endeavour to recognize with precision, that it may at the same time recognize the right which flows from it. And why does capacity confer right? because in reason, and reason alone, is right inherent. Capacity is nothing else than the faculty of acting in accordance with reason.
What is true of the individual considered in relation to his personal interests, is true also of the citizen in relation to social interests. Here, also, capacity confers right. Here, also, right cannot be refused to capacity without injustice. Here, also, capacity is a fact which the law, if it be just, asserts and distinguishes, to attach thereto the right.
This is the only principle in virtue of which the limitation of electoral rights can be reasonably assigned, and it was this which, without general intention or philosophic views, the nature of things and good sense caused to prevail in England at the end of the thirteenth century.
This principle equally repels the admission of the incapable, which would give dominion to the majority, that is, to material force; and would lead to the exclusion of some portion of the capable citizens, which would be an injustice; and to inequality between capacities, of which the least is declared sufficient, which would institute privilege.