on of
individual wealth is very limited. The theory of government by manhood
suffrage, so far as there is any theory, is now entirely personal. In
early times the freemen of the town, or little commune, met and legislated
according to their needs. To be a freeman one had to own property; to
"have a stake in the country." Nowadays nearly all the men who have no
property can vote, and some that have property cannot. In England, they
are doing away with "plural voters." Heretofore it was thought just, when
a man owned land in more than one place, that he should have his say in
the government of all; but this is now forbidden. The right was never
recognized in this country, partly because formerly men seldom owned
property in two places, but as transportation improved the conditions
changed. The "commuters" are legion. Their business and their capital are
under one jurisdiction and their dwellings and families under another; but
they can vote in only one. Many thousands of men own houses in both city
and country. They could help in the government of both, but are
disfranchised in one or the other. Under our complicated systems of
registration, they are often disfranchised at both.

Of course when population increases, the town meeting becomes a physical
impossibility. There is no more direct legislation; it has to be
delegated. The power is transferred to the city councils, and to the state
and national legislatures. In other words, the interests of the owners of
wealth are put in charge of trustees. According to Hamilton, the theory of
our government is that the people will "naturally" choose the wisest of
their number to represent them. There is not much basis for this
assumption. Rousseau scouted it. According to him, the _volonte generale_
could be ascertained only in the town meeting, and he seriously maintained
that the ideal government for the Roman empire was by the gangs of rioters
that the politicians marshalled in the Forum at Rome under the name of
_comitia_. All that the theory of our government requires, is that our
rulers shall be such men as are designated by the majority of the voters.
That they should be wise and good men may accord with the theory of
aristocracy; it is no part of the theory of democracy, and is certainly a
very small part of the practice.

When I say that half of the property of this country is disfranchised, I
mean that the nature of this property is such that it is peculiarly
subject t