lasses of it any longer?" It may be conjectured that it is
cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that
the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of
wrong in their heads. At any rate this is the dilemma to which the drift
of opinion has been for some time sweeping us, and in politics a dilemma
is a more unmanageable thing to hold by the horns than a wolf by the
ears. It is said that the right of suffrage is not valued when it is
indiscriminately bestowed, and there may be some truth in this, for I
have observed that what men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that
of chief mourner at a funeral. But is there not danger that it will be
valued at more than its worth if denied, and that some illegitimate way
will be sought to make up for the want of it? Men who have a voice in
public affairs are at once affiliated with one or other of the great
parties between which society is divided, merge their individual hopes
and opinions in its safer, because more generalized, hopes and opinions,
are disciplined by its tactics, and acquire, to a certain degree, the
orderly qualities of an army. They no longer belong to a class, but to a
body corporate. Of one thing, at least, we may be certain, that, under
whatever method of helping things to go wrong man's wit can contrive,
those who have the divine right to govern will be found to govern in the
end, and that the highest privilege to which the majority of mankind can
aspire is that of being governed by those wiser than they. Universal
suffrage has in the United States sometimes been made the instrument of
inconsiderate changes, under the notion of reform, and this from a
misconception of the true meaning of popular government. One of these
has been the substitution in many of the States of popular election for
official selection in the choice of judges. The same system applied to
military officers was the source of much evil during our civil war, and,
I believe, had to be abandoned. But it has been also true that on all
great questions of national policy a reserve of prudence and discretion
has been brought out at the critical moment to turn the scale in favor of
a wiser decision. An appeal to the reason of the people has never been
known to fail in the long run. It is, perhaps, true that, by effacing
the principle of passive obedience, democracy, ill understood, has
slackened the spring of that ductility to discipl