Wisconsin's Course Approved. 
101 
new when this case was presented, it has seemed from the very 
first that the meaning was, a majority of all the votes cast upon 
the subject. ” 
Justice Cole did not write an opinion, but he also concurred. 
The decision sustaining the validity of the law was upheld by 
the full bench. 
The day has gone by when suffrage was glowingly regarded as 
an end. We recognize it now as merely a means toward an end. 
There are among us intelligent people who grumble at the 
results — or what they conceive to be the results — of universal 
manhood suffrage in the United States. Did our fathers blunder 
when by extending the franchise they sought to expand the limits 
of human freedom? My purpose in this paper has been to present 
fact, not to blossom into theory. It is a fact, I take it, that 
the liberal suffrage provisions of our law are a noble monument 
to a glorious faith in the approximate perfectibility of humanity. 
As a native and a citizen of Wisconsin, I am proud that at an 
early stage of her career, and in advance of nearly all of her 
sister commonwealths, she turned into the broad path in which 
they have seen fit to follow. 
Milwaukee , Wis. 
