No Permanent Test Of Electoral Capacity.
Some towns rose again and became repeopled; commerce brought with it wealth, and wealth procured social importance, and the development of mind. Representatives should emanate from these bodies; for there were certainly electors. New capacities form and declare themselves by new symptoms. At the same time, or soon after, the number of freeholders increases by the division of fiefs, many among them fall to a much lower condition than that of the ancient freeholders, and no longer possess the same independence. Will they preserve the same rights when their capacity is no longer the same? no, necessity makes each to know his value; the mere title of freeholder is no longer a correct sign of electoral capacity. Another is sought, and the condition of forty shillings rent enters into the laws. Thus, without any violation, and even by the authority of the principle, the conditions and signs of electoral capacity vary according to the real state of society. It is only when this portion of the electoral system becomes invariable that the principle will be violated.
It would then be vain and dangerous to pretend to regulate, beforehand and for ever, this part of the electoral system of a free people. The determination of the conditions of capacity and that of the external characteristics which reveal it, possess, by the very nature of things, no universal or permanent character. And not only is it unnecessary to endeavour to fix them, but the laws should oppose any unchangeable prescription regarding them. The more numerous and flexible the legal characteristics of electoral capacity, the less need this danger be dreaded. If, for example, the land-tax was regulated and fixed once for all, as it is to be desired that it may be, this tax alone would be an incorrect sign of electoral capacity; for it would not follow the vicissitudes of property: it would enfeoff the land itself with the right of election; the rent would be a better indication, because it would be more pliable. If, instead of attributing electoral rights by name and for ever to a particular borough, the English laws had conferred them upon every town whose population reached a certain limit, or the revenue from which attained a certain amount, the representation of boroughs, instead of becoming corrupt, would have followed the changes and progress of true political capacity. We could multiply these examples, and prove in a thousand ways that it is better neither to adopt any one legal sign of electoral capacity, nor to place this sign beyond the reach of the vicissitudes of society.
General Conclusions.
In summing up, we may deduce, from our examination of the electoral system of England in the fourteenth century, these three conclusions:
I. The right ought to be coextensive with the capability of judicious election, for it is its source.
II. The conditions of electoral capacity should vary according to time, place, the internal state of society, public intelligence, &c.
III. The external characteristics prescribed by the laws, as declaring the accomplishment of the conditions of electoral capacity, should neither be utterly immutable nor derived entirely from purely material facts.