Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/39

 But in order to show you how this law now actually works on an average, it is only necessary to exhibit to you some figures which are drawn from the official lists published by the Government.

In the year 1848 we had in consequence of the right of universal suffrage then introduced, 3,661,993 original electors.

By the electoral law of 30th May, 1849, with its three classes, the number of electors was in the first place reduced to 3,255,703 by depriving of the suffrage all who had no fixed abode, or who received public alms. Thus 406,000 men were at once deprived of the franchise. This however was the smallest part of the evil.

The remaining 3,255,000 electors were now to be divided, according to the electoral laws, into three classes, and according to the official lists prepared by the direction of the chartered electoral law of 1849—

Now let us leave the second class out of view, and compare only the first and the third, the rich burghers and those who possessed no property, with one another, and we find that 153,800 rich men exercised the same voting power as 2,691,950 who belonged to the class of workmen, small citizens, and peasants; that is to say, one rich man exercised the same right of voting as seventeen who had no property. And now if we take as our basis the fact, that in the year 1848 universal suffrage was decreed by the law of the 8th April, so that