ch managers they
shall not abuse the right of suffrage in this way."

"How is it to be prevented? You are an universal suffrage man, I know?"

"Yes, I'm for universal suffrage among honest folks; but do not wish to
have my rulers chosen by them that are never satisfied without having
their hands in their neighbours' pockets. Let 'em put a clause into the
constitution providing that no town, or village, or county shall hold a
poll within a given time after the execution of process has been openly
resisted in it. That would take the conceit out of all such
law-breakers, in very short order."

It was plain that this idea struck the listeners, and several even
avowed their approbation of the scheme aloud. Hubbard received it as a
new thought, but was more reluctant to admit its practicability. As
might be expected from a lawyer accustomed to practise in a small way,
his objections savoured more of narrow views than of the notions of a
statesman.

"How would you determine the extent of the district to be
disfranchised?" he asked.

"Take the legal limits as they stand. If process be resisted openly by a
combination strong enough to look down the agents of the law in a town,
disfranchise that town for a given period; if in more than one town,
disfranchise the offending towns; if a county, disfranchise the whole
county."

"But, in that way you would punish the innocent with the guilty."

"It would be for the good of all; besides, you punish the innocent for
the guilty, or _with_ the guilty rather, in a thousand ways. You and I
are taxed to keep drunkards from starving, because it is better to do
that than to offend humanity by seeing men die of hunger, or tempting
them to steal. When you declare martial law you punish the innocent with
the guilty, in one sense; and so you do in a hundred cases. All we have
to ask is, if it be not wiser and better to disarm demagogues, and those
disturbers of the public peace who wish to pervert their right of
suffrage to so wicked an end, by so simple a process, than to suffer
them to effect their purposes by the most flagrant abuse of their
political privileges?"

"How would you determine _when_ a town should lose the right of voting?"

"By evidence given in open court. The judges would be the proper
authority to decide in such a case; and they would decide, beyond all
question, nineteen times in twenty, right. It is the interest of every
man who is desirous of exercising the suffra