In truth, universal suffrage is no guarantee at all for liberty, unless it be accompanied, on the part of the working classes, with a knowledge of their social rights, and a consequent determination to use political power for their establishment. The Romans, the Spartans and Athenians, the Sicilians, and many other ancient peoples had universal suffrage—at least, a vote for every citizen who was not a helot or a bondsman; but it proved of no use to them, for want of knowing their social rights. For the like reason, the Irish made no good use of their forty-shilling freehold vote, when they had it; and, for the same reason, they offered no resistance when it was taken away. The French people had universal suffrage in 1793. Their Convention of that period was elected by universal suffrage; and the constitution it made was far more democratic than the French constitution of 1848. But, not understanding their social rights then so well as they do now, they suffered their landlords and money-lords to rob them of it, just as the old Romans, Athenians, &c., had allowed their land and money lords to do in their day. After the Convention had succeeded, with the aid of the Parisian shopocracy, in murdering Robespierre and in striking terror into all who, like him, loved justice and the people, they not only abolished the democratic constitution of 1793 and put a middle-class constitution in its place, but they actually decreed that they (the Convention members) should constitute two-thirds of the next Legislative Assembly, and that the nation should be at liberty to choose only the remaining third! Strange to say, too, the people submitted to this, as to every other abomination of the times; they submitted because the great mass of them were too profoundly ignorant of their social rights to take much interest in the franchise question. It ever was so, it ever will be so, with a people ignorant of their social rights: they will never risk life or limb in defence of their political till they comprehend their social rights.
In America there is less danger than anywhere else of the people losing their political rights. This is owing partly to the greater equality in property which subsists there, but chiefly to the agitation of social questions which has been forced upon the working classes of late years by the continuous arrival of European emigrants competing with them in the labour-market, and alarming them, by their example, as to what might prove their own fate hereafter, should they suffer a powerful territorial and commercial aristocracy to grow up amongst them. Hence the springing up of the “Free Soil” and “National Reform” movements in the United States; hence an attempt to radicalize the constitution of Rhode Island; hence the numerous publications which denounced the sale of the public lands—especially to foreigners and companies; hence the hatred of national debts—especially if they arise out of foreign loans—and the determination of the working-classes to repudiate them; and hence, above all, the cheering fact, so well deserving of our notice, that every new revision of an American constitution—whether it be that of a State or of the entire Union—is invariably distinguished by an increase of strength or latitude given to the democratic principle. This is particularly observable in the new States, where the settlers, consisting in great part of exiles forced from Europe by poverty and tyranny, have carried out with them an intense hatred of the systems they fled from, and therefore take all the democratic precautions they can to keep down the aristocratic leaven.
But not even America herself, we predict, will escape the régime of Europe, unless she reform her social institutions while she is yet young and healthy. Her agrarian laws are not a jot better than those of France or England; and her commercial spirit is even more ravenous and unscrupulous. In one respect she is worse than either. We allude to her preference of metallic money to symbolic money; which is a result of the fraudulent paper-systems she has so often smarted under. There is no subject upon which the American working-classes are so lamentably at fault as the subject of money. They fancy that an honest paper-system is impossible, because they have been so often cheated by the worthless rags of fraudulent usurers; and in this suicidal delusion the bullionists and usurers take good care to confirm them. Next to their want of sound views upon the Land question, this delusion as to the real nature and proper functions of Money is the greatest foe to American progress. On the subject of Credit—that most potent of all levers of modern production—the same ignorance prevails in America as here and in France. In truth, were it not that universal suffrage is the fundamental law in France and America, while it is scouted in England, we should be at a loss to know what advantages the French and Americans possess over us, so deplorably similar are the three countries in respect of social rights.
But we shall better comprehend these matters when we come to analyze the propositions of the National Reform League, and to test their value by showing their equal applicability to, and desirability for, all three countries,—indeed, for all civilized countries under the sun.
CHAPTER XVII. RELIEF TO UNEMPLOYED OR DESTITUTE A RIGHT, NOT A CHARITY.
Inability of a People ignorant of Social Rights to choose Representatives—Duties of a wise Democracy—Omnipotency of a Knowledge of Social Rights—Facility of Application of Social Reforms—Exposition of the three Provisional Measures necessary.