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trol his actions, is despotism. It may be a benevolent despotism; it may be a just despotism; but whether benevolent and just or malevolent and unjust, it is despotism. When a criminal is put into State prison, where all his actions are determined for him by another, he is living under a despotism.

But Abraham Lincoln also said: "The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot by individual effort do at all, or do as well for themselves." When the people do collectively what needs to be done, but what they cannot by individual effort do at all, or do as well for themselves, that is not despotism: that is social selfgovernment, although in that social self-government each individual exercises a certain amount of control over the actions of every other individual. The community, by its collective action, not only establishes a public school, but compels the parents to send their child to school; it not only digs a sewer, but it compels the individual householder to connect his house with the sewer and send the waste, which otherwise would be a nuisance to the community, through the sewer; it not only constructs a highway, but it determines the rate of speed at which the automobile may be driven along the highway. Social self-government

necessarily involves the government of one individual by other individuals. That is, the compelling of one individual to do what he does not wish to do, or to abstain from what he does wish to do, because his will is oppugnant to the will of the community. Who have the right to take part in this social self-government, in its determining what the individual may do or may not do? The advocates of universal suffrage claim that every member of the community of adult age may take part in this social self-government. Starting with the assertion, as an axiom, that every man has a right to govern himself, they deduce the conclusion that every man has a right to take part in the government of others. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. On the contrary, I believe it may be laid down as a political axiom, on which all self-governments should be based, that

No man has a right to take part in governing others who has not the intellectual and moral capacity to govern himself.

The close of the eighteenth century was an epoch of revolution. It was characterized by an uprising of an oppressed people against their oppressors. In France and in America, following the example which had been set in the preceding century by the Puritans in England, the common

people demanded their rights. The question of political philosophy was, what are the rights of the common people? The claim of despotism was that the common people had no political rights; they were children who were to submit without question to the authority of their parents. Louis XVIII, returning from his exile in England to Paris, thus defined, with curious naïveté, the Bourbon conception of the relation between king and people: "If my right to the throne were not altogether founded on that law [the divine right of kings, recognized by the ancient law of France], what claim should I have to it? What am I apart from that right? An infirm old man, a miserable outlaw, reduced to begging, far from his country, for shelter and food. That is what I was only a few days ago; but that old man, that outlaw, was the King of France. That title alone sufficed to make the whole nation, when at last it understood its real interests, recall me to the throne of my fathers. I have come back in answer to the call, but I have come back King of France." 1

In such an epoch the emphasis, alike of leaders and of people, was laid upon rights. This view we have inherited from our fathers. We have formed the habit of looking at all the political

1 Gilbert Stenger, The Return of Louis XVIII, p. 177.

duties as rights and privileges, as something to which we have a claim, something which will confer a benefit upon us. All men, we think, have an equal right to hold office, and when one man has held office four years, his neighbor says, it is now my turn. The ballot we think of as something by which we are to protect our own interests and promote our own welfare. We select a Representative, who must come from our political district, and who, in the House of Representatives, will seek such legislation as will promote our local welfare; we select Senators who will represent our State and promote the interests of our State in the National legislation.

The next step is easy and natural. Special interests send representatives to Congress. Appropriations for public buildings, or for river and harbor improvements, and special advantage for special industries in the protective tariff are engineered by skillful politicians, each seeking, with perhaps personal disinterestedness, to promote the pecuniary advantage of his own clientelé. Under the corrupting influence of this false conception the professional politician becomes scarcely less an advocate of a special interest in Congress than is the paid counsel before the

courts.

But the evil effect of this point of view does

not stop with the professional politician. The individual voter votes for his own interests: one man to secure a higher protection for his manufactured goods, another to get a contract from the government, a third to get a job from the contractor, and a fourth to get a five-dollar-bill from the political committee. The story is told-I believe it is authentic-that a Western cowboy arrested for murder wrote to Mr. Roosevelt for financial aid in securing competent defense, but subsequently returned the contribution, saying: "I do not need it; we have elected the district attorney!"

It is high time we changed our point of view; high time that we realized that suffrage is not a natural right—is not a right at all. It is a sacred duty; a right only as every man has a right to do his duty. "Public office is a public trust." How that sentence rang through the land! It was better than a speech. Suffrage is a public office, and therefore a public trust, and no man is entitled to have that public trust committed to him unless he is at least able to govern himself. The Southern States have in this respect set an example which it would be well if it were possible for all the States to follow. Many of them have adopted in their Constitution a qualified suffrage. The qualifications are not the

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