right to exclude the poor from
the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor
have to exclude the rich; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on
either side, it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that
would exclude another? That other has a right to exclude him.

That which is now called aristocracy implies an inequality of rights;
but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality?
Will the rich exclude themselves? No. Will the poor exclude themselves?
No. By what right then can any be excluded? It would be a question, if
any man or class of men have a right to exclude themselves; but, be this
as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will
not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to
assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right
to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting for
representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred
kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon
the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property
of rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and
merits to have it taken from him.

1 "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for
among old parchments or musty records. They are written as
with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the
hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured
by mortal power."--Alexander Hamilton, 1775. (Cf. Rights of
Man, Toi. ii., p. 304): "Portions of antiquity by proving
everything establish nothing. It is authority against
authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of
the rights of man at the creation."--_Editor._.

Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the
community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made
an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or
of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons
possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a
combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who
do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers
as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equ