Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/149

Rh own class to office, they hold a balance between conflicting parties, uniformly act together, and commonly in favor of those who are most disposed to sacrifice principle to expediency. A system must be radically wrong, when the keeper of a tavern, or of a grocery, through his facilities in humoring one of the worst of our vices, can command more votes than a man of the highest attainments, or of the highest character.

The great immigration of foreigners into the country, and the practice of remaining, or of assembling, in the large towns, renders universal suffrage doubly oppressive to the citizens of the latter. The natives of other countries bring with them the prejudices of another and an antagonist state of society; or what is still worse, their reaction; and it is a painful and humiliating fact, that several of the principal places of this country, are, virtually, under the control of men of this class, who have few convictions of liberty, beyond those which arise from a love of licentiousness, who are totally ignorant of its governing principles, and who, in their hearts and language, are hostile to the very people whose hospitality they enjoy. Many of these men cannot even speak the language of the land, and perhaps a majority of them cannot read the great social compact, by which society is held together. Whatever may be said, on general principles, of the necessity of giving to a government the broadest possible base, few will contend that circumstances like these, ought not to qualify the regulation in practice.

Local and limited governments, like those of towns and villages, are best managed in the hands of men who have permanent and fixed interests within their boundaries, and there is little propriety in admitting the more floating part of the population to a participation of an authority that scarcely controls a single right which affects transient persons.