“Very far from it. The difference between Leaphigh and Leaplow is just this: the Leaphighers, being an ancient people, with a thousand vested interests, are induced, as time improves the mind, to seek reasons for their facts; while we Leaplowers, being unshackled by any such restraints, have been able to make an effort to form our facts on our reasons.”
“Why do you, then, so much prize Leaphigh opinions on Leaplow facts?”
“Why does every little monikin believe his own father and mother to be just the two wisest, best, most virtuous, and discreetest old monikins in the whole world, until time, opportunity, and experience show him his error?”
“Do you make no exceptions, then, in your franchise, but admit every citizen who, as you say, has a nose, ears, bob, and wants, to the exercise of the suffrage?”
“Perhaps we are less scrupulous on this head than we ought to be, since we do not make ignorance and want of character bars to the privilege. Qualifications beyond mere birth and existence may be useful, but they are badly chosen when they are brought to the test of purely material possessions. This practice has arisen in the world from the fact that they who had property had power, and not because they ought to have it.”
“My dear brigadier, this is flying in the face of all experience.”
“For the reason just given, and because all experience has hitherto commenced at the wrong end. Society should be constructed as you erect a house; not from the roof down, but from the foundation upwards.”
“Admitting, however, that your house has been badly constructed at first, in repairing it, would you tear away the walls at random, at the risk of bringing all down about your ears?”
“I would first see that sufficient props were reared, and then proceed with vigor, though always with caution. Courage in such an experiment is less to be dreaded than timidity. Half the evils of life, social, personal and political, are as much the effects of moral cowardice as of fraud.”
I then told the brigadier, that as his countrymen rejected the inducements of property in the selection of the political base of their social compact, I expected to find a capital substitute in virtue.