stom of attaching Rights to _place_, or
in other words, to inanimate matter, instead of to the _person_,
independently of place, is too absurd to make any part of a rational
argument.
As every man in the nation, of the age of twenty-one years, pays taxes,
either out of the property he possesses, or out of the product of his
labor, which is property to him; and is amenable in his own person to
every law of the land; so has every one the same equal right to vote,
and no one part of the nation, nor any individual, has a right to
dispute the right of another. The man who should do this ought to
forfeit the exercise of his _own_ right, for a term of years. This would
render the punishment consistent with the crime.
When a qualification to vote is regulated by years, it is placed on the
firmest possible ground; because the qualification is such, as nothing
but dying before the time can take away; and the equality of Rights, as
a principle, is recognized in the act of regulating the exercise. But
when Rights are placed upon, or made dependant upon property, they are
on the most precarious of all tenures. "Riches make themselves wings,
and fly away," and the rights fly with them; and thus they become lost
to the man when they would be of most value.
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice, that exclusions
have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first,
changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The
Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to
do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of
all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew, that the same
conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely,
a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a
Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the
rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor
to plunder the rich of his property; for the rights of the one are
as much property to him, as wealth is property to the other, and the
_little all_ is as dear as the _much_. It is only by setting out on just
principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will
always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the
poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be
effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.
Exclusions are not only unjust, bu
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