lus needed to awaken interest, and while they are impressed
with the danger of admitting ignorant and irresponsible, and perhaps
corruptible voters to a voice in the government, they are apt to
overlook the counterbalancing danger of leaving a section of the
community outside the circle of civic responsibility. The actual work of
government must affect, and also it must be affected by, its relation to
all who live within the realm. To secure good adaptation it ought, I
will not say to reflect, but at least to take account of, the
dispositions and circumstances of every class in the population. If any
one class is dumb, the result is that Government is to that extent
uninformed. It is not merely that the interests of that class may
suffer, but that, even with the best will, mistakes may be made in
handling it, because it cannot speak for itself. Officious spokesmen
will pretend to represent its views, and will obtain, perhaps, undue
authority merely because there is no way of bringing them to book. So
among ourselves does the press constantly represent public opinion to be
one thing while the cold arithmetic of the polls conclusively declares
it to be another. The ballot alone effectively liberates the quiet
citizen from the tyranny of the shouter and the wire-puller.

I conclude that an impression of existing inertness or ignorance is not
a sufficient reason for withholding responsible government or
restricting the area of the suffrage. There must be a well-grounded view
that political incapacity is so deep-rooted that the extension of
political rights would tend only to facilitate undue influence by the
less scrupulous sections of the more capable part of the people. Thus
where we have an oligarchy of white planters in the midst of a coloured
population, it is always open to doubt whether a general
colour-franchise will be a sound method of securing even-handed justice.
The economic and social conditions may be such that the "coloured" man
would just have to vote as his master told him, and if the elementary
rights are to be secured for all it may be that a semi-despotic system
like that of some of our Crown colonies is the best that can be devised.
On the other side, that which is most apt to frighten a governing class
or race, a clamour on the part of an unenfranchised people for political
rights, is to the democrat precisely the strongest reason that he can
have in the absence of direct experience for believing them