"After all, neighbor Hall, these votes are pretty powerful weapons in a popular government."
"I'll not deny that; and now they talk of a convention to alter the constitution, it is a favorable moment to teach such managers they shall not abuse the right of suffrage in this way."
"How is it to be prevented? You are a universal suffrage man, I know?"
"Yes, I'm for universal suffrage among honest folks; but do not wish to have my rulers chosen by them that are never satisfied without having their hands in their neighbors' pockets. Let 'em put a clause into the constitution providing that no town, or village, or county, shall hold a poll within a given time after the execution of process has been openly resisted in it. That would take the conceit out of all such law-breakers in very short order."
It was plain that this idea struck the listeners, and several even avowed their approbation of the scheme aloud. Hubbard received it as a new thought, but was more reluctant to admit its practicability. As might be expected from a lawyer accustomed to practice in a small way, his objections savored more of narrow views than of the notions of a statesman.
"How would you determine the extent of the district to be disfranchised?" he asked.
"Take the legal limits as they stand. If process be resisted openly by a combination strong enough to look down the agents of the law in a town, disfranchise that town for a given period; if in more than one town, disfranchise the offending towns; if a county, disfranchise the whole county."
"But in that way you would punish the innocent with the guilty."
"It would be for the good of all; besides, you punish the innocent for the guilty, or with the guilty rather, in a thousand ways. You and I are taxed to keep drunkards from starving, because it is better to do that than to offend humanity by seeing men die of hunger, or tempting them to steal. When you declare martial law you punish the innocent with the guilty, in one sense; and so you do in a hundred cases. All we have to ask is, if it be not wiser and better to disarm demagogues, and those disturbers of the public peace who wish to pervert their right of suffrage to so wicked an end, by so simple a process, than to suffer them to effect their purposes by the most flagrant abuse of their political privileges?"
"How would you determine when a town should lose the right of voting?"