200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suffrage should be organized so as to prepare for this result. It should 

 be the object of democracy to accord the right of deliberation to all 

 the constitutional parties in proportion to their strength, and to lodge 

 the right of making a decision in the progressive liberal, counterpoised 

 by the conservative liberal element. It is, however, not easy to 

 achieve a practical realization by mathematical processes of the ideal 

 of proportional representation ; and the separation of the power of de- 

 liberation and the power of decision is hardly practicable under exist- 

 ing constitutions, by which the same assembly deliberates and decides. 

 Philosophers should, nevertheless, continue to point out the end to be 

 sought. 



Besides the opposition of the majority and the minority bringing 

 about a conflict of the constitutional parties, universal suffrage em- 

 bodies another antinomy no less disquieting — that of the number and 

 the quality of the votes. The problem of reconciling numerical supe- 

 riority with mental superiority is a squaring of the circle for democ- 

 racy. As approximative solutions, it has been proposed to express 

 intellectual superiority by a numerical valuation, and allow a plural 

 vote to the educated man ; and so to instruct and enlighten the whole 

 mass that the number of the suffrages shall, on the whole, coincide 

 with their quality. John Stuart Mill has insisted upon the former 

 method, or " plural suffrage," but the system is not without its dan- 

 gers. It opens the door to arbitrary selections. Particular classes, 

 assuming too many votes for themselves, would finally become oli- 

 garchies, the more probably because the educated classes are also 

 those in easier circumstances. The only case in which a plurality of 

 suffrages would be, in our view, at all admissible, would be that in 

 which the individual really represented several persons, as the father 

 of a family, who might, in virtue of his wife and children, have two 

 votes. The best means of resolving, in part if not entirely, the anti- 

 nomy of right and capacity is, in our view, education ; but its charac- 

 ter should be rightly understood. 



By the theory of universal suffrage, the mass of the citizens should 

 desire the general good rather than their particular interests, and they 

 should have a sufficient discernment of it to impress good direction on 

 their policy. Education should, then, develop, as the two essential 

 qualities of the citizen, moral disinterestedness and political sense. 

 Our present system of education does not seem to respond, in any of 

 its departments, to this double requirement. We owe much to the 

 mathematical and physical sciences that are now held in so much 

 honor, but we have no reason for believing that they are competent 

 to make citizens morally disinterested or politically capable. Purely 

 scientific instruction has proved no better for this than that which is 

 purely grammatical. Criminal statistics has not shown that any great 

 advantage accrues even to those who simply know how to read, write, 

 and reckon ; but it has revealed more criminality among working-men 



