ty has been acquired ought to be made a criterion also.

The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is
consistent with justice, would be to inflict it as a punishment for a
certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from
others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by
which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce
a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of
another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives
is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men
is as criminal as the proposal to take away property. When we speak
of right, we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties: rights
become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy becomes my duty
to guarantee it to another, and he to me; and those who violate the duty
justly incur a forfeiture of the right.

In a political view of the case, the strength and permanent security
of government is in proportion to the number of people interested in
supporting it. The true policy therefore is to interest the whole by
an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions. It is
possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible
to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and
when all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made
perfect.

While men could be persuaded they had no rights, or that rights
appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a
thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern
them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the
superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing
it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when
they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they
reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary
means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature
spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their consequence by
their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no
longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected
cannot be re-acted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite
destruction.

That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority
of talents, dexterity of management, extreme