Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/207

Rh knowledge nor the mere feeling. On this point Mr. Spencer remarks that, although the vote of the people is not the expression of absolute utility and truth, it is the expression of the people's understanding of hem, and of what they are ready to maintain. True; but is the present moment all? Must we not think of to-morrow? The fault of the masses is want of foresight. They are instinctive, not reflective. To calculate the remote effects of a measure, to rise to the point of view of future generations, to be moderate now, to give up immediate pleasures for future good, perhaps for the sake of an idea that will never be realized, passes the scope of average minds. The fate of democracy is, then, subordinated to the existence of a real public and impersonal spirit in the majority of the individuals: if this spirit does not exist, universal suffrage is only a strife of individual interests—it dissolves the masses into their atomic elements, then arbitrarily gathers up the atoms, and scatters them to the winds. It may be said, and with truth, that the best means of developing a genuine public spirit in a nation is to call the whole people to political life, and that the participation of all in power is an exercise useful to all, and one that develops knowledge of the national affairs in all. But an important distinction must be made in the matter. It is the conquest of power, not its completed acquisition, that gives the most lively stimulus to progress in political intelligence. While the people are contending for their rights against oppression, their intelligence is growing; when the masses have become preponderant, the current sets in in the contrary direction. Those who have the supreme power, whether it be one, a few, or many, have no longer need of the arms of reason; they can make their mere will prevail. Men who can not be resisted are generally too well satisfied with their own opinions to be disposed to change them, or to be told without impatience that they are in the wrong. John Stuart Mill was right in conceiving that the best interest of democracy consisted in giving the different classes force enough to make reason prevail, but not enough to prevail against reason. The existing organization of suffrage is far from securing this guarantee.

The third theory of universal suffrage, higher and more correct than the theories of force and interest, is based on right. Public freedom is above public force and public interest, and is founded on individual freedom. The individual has no right to alienate, for the benefit of another, his own liberty and that of his descendants. The object of universal suffrage is to reserve the will of generations to come, and for that reason it involves the suppression of hereditary privileges, of aristocracies and monarchies, and of everything that shackles present and future freedom.

This principle is morally incontestable; but the consequences derivable from it do not seem to be generally comprehended. From the point of right, suffrage seems to us to imply—1. A power over one's