lightened the burdens of those who toil has been supplied by organized labor. "I see no reason why the rule of the majority should be the rule of ignorance, unless they are not only ignorant but fools," remarks Professor Cooley.[1]
The sentiments of justice, liberty, truth and patriotism are especially strong among the masses. The spirit of brotherhood manifested in acts of kindness and service to those in need is more prevalent among the poor than among the rich. It was the common people in New England who carried through the Revolution. The men of wealth and standing were largely against it.[2] The Tories everywhere consisted chiefly of men of property. The masses in England "upheld abolition in the colonies and sympathized with the North in the American Struggle."[3] If we are to have a narrow suffrage, to what portion of society shall it be restricted? Shall we entrust our currency solely to the bankers or the political economists? There is no class whose mental horizon and sympathies are broad enough to control the destinies of the state. In the opinion of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, there has never been a period since the American people gained their independence when control of the nation by its highly educated men alone would not have been a calamity.[4] So unfriendly a critic of democracy as Lecky remarks:
It has been the opinion of some of the ablest and most successful politicians of our time that, by adopting a very low suffrage, it would be possible to penetrate below the region where crochets and experiments and crude Utopias and habitual restlessness prevail, and to reach the strong, settled habits, the enduring tendencies, the deep conservative instincts of the nation.[5]
Universal suffrage in practise has worked much better than many of its opponents have predicted. The dire predictions of Macaulay in 1857 are a striking example.[6] Our "fertile and unoccupied land" is practically gone. Parts of New England are "as thickly peopled as old England." We have our "Manchesters and Birminghams." Periods of economic distress have come and gone. At times a multitude of people "has not had more than half a breakfast" or expected "more than half a dinner," but the poor have not plundered the rich, nor has civilization been saved at the price of liberty. The demagogue has asked "why anybody should be permitted to drink Champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries," and yet we have not been ravished by the Huns and Vandals engendered
- ↑ Charles Horton Cooley, "Social Organization," p. 145.
- ↑ Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "The Cowardice of Culture," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 96, 1905, p. 483.
- ↑ Cooley, op. cit., p. 136.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 483.
- ↑ Op. cit., Vol. I., p. 293.
- ↑ George Otto Trevelyan, "The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," Vol. I., pp. 451-454.
