When governments establish inequalities affecting the lives and liberties of any, however few, I see no sanction whatsoever in majorities. One runaway slave had not to wait upon a majority of his fellow-slaves in order to establish his right to escape from slavery—still less upon a majority of the nation which owned him. If he could find a path along which to escape, that was the highroad appointed for him by God from of old; and if he died in the attempt his grave was still a monument to Liberty. Not the will of a million could destroy the right of that one. And though I admit that a society which sanctions slavery must treat as a murderer the slave who kills in his effort to escape,—nevertheless, by posterity, and in a society which has repudiated slavery, that act will be very differently regarded; and so long as the man’s aim when he committed that legal offence was freedom, we, who have repudiated slavery, look upon him not as a murderer but as a fighter in a just cause.
We are in a society to-day which tolerates and even sanctions things which to-morrow will be regarded as slavery is regarded now. While society thus chooses to establish evil it is driven in self-defence to treat those who rebel as criminals. But posterity will not so think of them; and the greater the forces of the majority which stood against them when they struck—the more will it admire and reverence, and approve. Surely a startling commentary on the “rights” of majorities: approval of the minority in an inverse proportion to its size!
Now, you might have a State almost equally divided into what were, broadly speaking, opposed interests; under certain circumstances, for instance, (circumstances which have actually occurred in the past) manufacturing and agricultural interests might be opposed. If, then, you accepted majority rule as a blind dogma, those two interests would have the right alternately to prey upon and to bleed each other, according to the fortunes of the polls—and they might do it by putting forward legislative programmes which would bribe the electoral wobblers first to this side and then to that. Where, on such a device does moral right come in? Was ever anything so ludicrous as a doctrine?
As a doctrine of right, majority rule has but doubtful ground to stand on. As an expedient, for practical use under sound conditions, there is much to be said for it. But when once you recognise it as a mere working expedient, then its workings must be watched, proved, and sometimes corrected and checked—by a minority.
Majority rule is only tolerable when it has the equal rights of man and woman firmly fixed as its goal; and it is as tending to the establishment of that doctrine that majority rule is acceptable (with some caution and reservations) to our progressive sense of citizenship.
In the great historic moments of upheaval which have brought it about, it has consciously or subconsciously been an attempt to get rid of the bad principle of dominance over others. It expresses the hope, or it embodies the probability, that a majority will be so broadly made up of all sorts and conditions—of the whole chemical composition of human society, that is to say—that in a government prompted and directed by a majority there will be no dominance of one section over another section: that they will, in the long run (or, if efficiently checked, in the short run) correct each other, strike a balance, and prevent the rigid and continuous existence in the body politic of any subjected section.
But if a majority could so sort its materials as to select for rigid and permanent subjection one section of the community, then the reason for its existence, and the grounds for its moral sanction would be gone.
If, then, two-thirds or three-quarters of the community can secure a greater apparent measure of comfort for themselves by forcing the remaining one-third, or one-quarter, to wait upon them and minister to their needs, the actual size of that dominant majority confers upon it no moral right whatever. There would, indeed, be more semblance of right, or at least more tenable ground, if a minority could so impose on a majority; because in that case the power of imposition would arise not from mere brute force so much as from superior ability; and a minority which can manipulate to its purpose the bulk material of a community has shown better ground for the rule of others (not very good ground, I admit) than the mere weight of numbers can supply. Weight of numbers as a ground for dominating others gives you no moral or efficient basis at all. Weight of capacity does give you an efficient basis, if not a moral one.
Now, if your two-thirds majority is extracting comfort on unequal and compulsory terms from the remaining one-third, you surely cannot deny the right of the remaining one-third so to diminish the comfort thus compulsorily extracted as to bring it to vanishing point, or to make it even a minus quantity. And the bigger the majority which is thus extracting sustenance from the minority, and exploiting it to its own ends, the more you will admire the minority if it rises in revolt, and makes the imposed and one-sided bargain unprofitable to the majority. And should the contention be carried to extremes (as it will be if both sides are sufficiently resolved) then the majority will have to exterminate the minority, and (if it wishes to continue government on the same lines) will have to extract for exploitation a new minority from its own body—give up one of its own ribs to servitude—and so become a diminished people in its perpetuation of a bad system.