ality
of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves; and
in this view of the case, pardoning the vanity of the thing, aristocracy
is a subject of laughter. This self-soothing vanity is encouraged by
another idea not less selfish, which is, that the opposers conceive they
are playing a safe game, in which there is a chance to gain and none
to lose; that at any rate the doctrine of equality includes _them_,
and that if they cannot get more rights than those whom they oppose and
would exclude, they shall not have less. This opinion has already been
fatal to thousands, who, not contented with _equal rights_, have sought
more till they lost all, and experienced in themselves the degrading
_inequality_ they endeavoured to fix upon others.

In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes
ridiculous, and always unjust, to make property the criterion of the
right of voting. If the sum or value of the property upon which the
right is to take place be considerable, it will exclude a majority of
the people, and unite them in a common interest against the government
and against those who support it; and as the power is always with
the majority, they can overturn such a government and its supporters
whenever they please.

If, in order to avoid this danger, a small quantity of property be
fixed, as the criterion of the right, it exhibits liberty in disgrace,
by putting it in competition with accident and insignificance. When a
brood-mare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that, by being
worth the sum in question, shall convey to its owner the right of
voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of
such a right exist? Is it in the man, or in the mule? When we consider
how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without a
crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights.

But the offensive part of the case is, that this exclusion from the
right of voting implies a stigma on the moral char* acter of the persons
excluded; and this is what no part of the community has a right to
pronounce upon another part. No external circumstance can justify it:
wealth is no proof of moral character; nor poverty of the want of it.
On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty;
and poverty the negative evidence of innocence. If therefore property,
whether little or much, be made a criterion, the means by which that
proper