Universal suffrage

“ What if their mothers on this platform be angular, old, wrinkled, and gray? They, too, have fought a good fight for freedom, and proudly bear the scars of the battle. We alone have struck the key-note of reconstruction. While man talks of "equal, impartial, manhood suffrage," we give the certain sound, "universal suffrage." While he talks of the rights of races, we exalt the higher, the holier idea proclaimed by the Fathers, and now twice baptized in blood, "individual rights." To woman it is given to save the Republic. ”

“ When a free government is seriously desired, we must choose between the principle of the law of the 5th of February, 1817, and universal suffrage,—between the right of voting confined to the higher classes of society and that extended to the popular masses. I believe the direct and defined right of suffrage to be alone effectual in securing the action of the country upon the Government. ”

“ Are we prepared, after a hundred and twenty years, to own ourselves defeated?... Universal suffrage, to me, means the right of every man and woman who is mentally able to do so, and who has not forfeited the right by an ill use of it, to say who shall rule them, and what action shall be taken by those rulers upon questions of moment.... ”

“ Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development.
The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power ”

“ The nation is ready for a long step in the right direction; party lines are obliterated, and all men are thinking for themselves. If our rulers have the justice to give the black man suffrage, woman should avail herself of that new-born virtue to secure her rights; if not, she should begin with renewed earnestness to educate the people into the idea of universal suffrage. ”

“ The same already made to extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less, an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause of the jealousies, dissensions, and revolutions of the past. ”

“ The most strenuous advocate for universal suffrage has never yet contended that the right should be absolutely universal. No one has ever been sufficiently visionary to hold that all persons of every age, degree, and character, should be entitled to vote in all elections of all public officers. ”

“ Let us say to men: "Government is just only when it obtains the consent of the governed": we are governed, surrender to us our ballot. If they deride, still answer: Surrender our ballot! and they will give it up. "It is not in our stars that we are underlings, but in ourselves." Woman has sat, like Mordecai at the king's gate, hoping that her [Pg 653] silent presence would bring justice; but justice has not come. The world has talked of universal suffrage; but it has made it universal only to man. ”

“ Again, I do not shut my eyes to the evils of universal suffrage, when extended not only to the educated and prosperous American, owning property or receiving high wages, and fully competent to exercise all the powers of a citizen, but to the ignorant and penniless emigrant, Irish or German. This is a mischief which has arisen from the desire in each state to create a large number of voters, that it may be largely represented in the central government. ”

“ I need not enter further into the subject than to say, that we established a system of practically universal suffrage, of equality in representation, a just share in taxation for the support of the State, and equality in the benefits of public education, and in all those blessings which are derived from the freedom of a free people. ”

“ But they overlook the fact that the danger arises not from universal suffrage by itself, but from universal suffrage in conjunction with party government and direct elections. It is as the tool of faction and its demagogues that the rowdy is politically formidable. Universal suffrage, however, in America, is no doubt to-day a very different thing from what it was when the great majority of the people were substantial farmers, and almost all of them were holders of property, responsible, settled in their habitations, and of English blood. ”

“ Not one word should be added to that great charter of rights to the insult or injury of the humblest of our citizens. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth Congress to demand universal suffrage, that thus a republican form of government might be secured to every State in the Union.
If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for "Negro Suffrage" in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and because the highest good of the State demands that the republican idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the women of the nation be ignored. ”

“ Universal suffrage, then, means—universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, sex, and judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity is to be attached? ”

“ Universal Suffrage and its Representatives.
Among the dogmas of democracy perhaps the most fundamental of all and the most attractive is that of universal suffrage. It gives the masses the idea of equality, since for a moment at least rich and poor, learned and ignorant, are equal before the electoral urn. The minister elbows the least of his servants, and during this brief moment the power of one is as great as the others. ”

“ Through the unwearied efforts of the Republican party Universal Suffrage has become a law of the Nation, freedom of speech and freedom of opinion everywhere vindicated throughout the land, and the right to exercise the elective franchise as their consciences might dictate, guaranteed to all. ”

“ In view of the terrible corruption of our politics, people ask, can we maintain universal suffrage? I say no, not without women. The only bear-gardens in our community are the town-meeting and the caucus. ”

“ If a generation of ignorant, degraded men, does not vote at once with the wisdom of statesmen, then Universal Suffrage is a failure, and the despot and the dagger the true government. The careful reader of history will see that with every new extension of rights a new step in civilization has been taken, and that uniformly those nations have been most prosperous where the greatest number of the people have been recognized in the government. Contrast China with Russia, England with the United States. Where the few govern, the legislation is for the advantage of the few. ”

“ In truth, it deserves consideration by those who think on human affairs, and the probable form of government which may be expected to prevail in future among men, whether universal suffrage is the real evil to be dreaded; and whether equality of suffrage is not the real poison which destroys society. ”

“ As far as passion and prejudice are concerned we must go right in the teeth of public opinion, and universal suffrage will tell you what that is. On the other hand we must pay heed, serious heed to every cry of pain, and here too universal suffrage will come to our aid. Universal suffrage is necessary to a monarchy as a source of information. ”

“ It is true that all the forces of society, in their final political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on any question in which they are interested and united are more powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. ”

“ The struggle for equal and direct universal suffrage, for the popular initiative and referendum, is an important phase of the political struggle, and is fitted to have a good influence on the political education of the workers. ”

“ Not by universal suffrage, nor by votes purchasable with beer, is such government to be had. That is to say, not by universal equal suffrage. Every man upwards of twenty, who had been convicted of no legal crime, should have his say in this matter ”

“ The property qualifications making a man eligible to vote should be altogether abolished and universal suffrage be introduced instead. Every adult, both male and female, should have the right to vote. ”

“ The principle of universal suffrage, however applicable to matters of government, which concern the common feelings and common interests of society, is by no means applicable to matters of taste, which can only be decided upon by the most refined understandings. ”

“ Could universal suffrage be supposed to exist consistently with the preservation of social order—of society—it would still be impossible to extirpate or effectually to counteract the influence of property, in whose hands soever it might be placed. ”

“ For with what truth or rationality could the suffrage be termed universal while half the human species remain excluded from it? To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and demand it only for a part—the part, namely, to which the claimant belongs—is to renounce even the appearance of principle. ”

“ Now during that time, by the votes of the people, with a great party to back up the opposition, with all the old predilections in favor of the South, and the natural unwillingness of men to burden themselves with taxation, this country, in which there was substantially a universal manhood suffrage, voted to burden itself until three thousand millions of debt was rolled up. There is an instance of what men will do with universal suffrage. ”

“ The horrors of the French Revolution were always held up by conservatives to show that the people could not be trusted, and the learned author of the “Commentaries,” which every lawyer has pored over, maintained that, if universal suffrage should be adopted, “The radicals of England, with the force of that mighty engine, would sweep away the property, the laws, and the people of that island like a deluge.” Not until between 1840 and 1850 did universal suffrage among the whites come to be accepted in the older States. ”

“ Pitt. Very often I have heard my dear father talking of universal suffrage as the bulwark of liberty; well then, we have now, and here, an universal suffrage that is neither a fraud nor a fiction; and as Athanase says, “it is expressing itself every minute, in the crimes of the Holy Guillotine.” ”

“ The people believed they had found it; not in the destruction of universal suffrage, but in the enlargement of it. It was an odd idea, and ingenious. You must understand, the constitution gave every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested right, and could not be taken away. ”

“ Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. ”

“ We have seen in France two bad elections following one another, in 1848 and 1849. But universal and direct suffrage is the only means which in the long run of itself corrects the mistakes to which its momentary wrong use may lead. It is that spear which heals the wounds itself has made. It is impossible in the long run with universal and direct suffrage that the elected body should be any other than the exact and true likeness of the people which has elected it. ”

“ If this government which is based on the intelligence of the people, shall ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature or corrupt suffrage. If the Ship of State launched by our fathers shall ever be destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of universal, unprepared suffrage. Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When any particular class or portion of the community is once invested with this privilege it is fixed, accomplished and eternal. ”

“ Universal Suffrage. "It is the duty of the Sovereign People to recapture and reconstitute all the social forces which to-day are dispersed. "Consequently, the Representatives of the People decree:— "ARTICLE I.—The People are convoked on the 21st December, 1851, for the election of a Sovereign Assembly. "ARTICLE II.—The election will take place by Universal Suffrage, according to the formalities determined by the decree of the Provisional Government of March 5, 1848. "Given at Paris, in Permanent Session, December 4, 1851." ”

“ I have already observed that universal suffrage has been adopted in all the states of the Union: it consequently occurs among different populations which occupy very different positions in the scale of society. ”

“ So we say, to-day, to the Abolitionists and Republicans, we can not accept your platform, because it is not based on the idea that suffrage is a natural right, we admit that "negro suffrage" is a step in the right direction, but to educate the people to this partial demand even, we need the enthusiasm of a principle, which you do not proclaim, so long as you ask simply the extension of suffrage to two million men, instead of its universal application to every citizen of the republic. ”

“ There and elsewhere the thinking women who opposed it used this argument: There are too many people voting already; the practical effect of woman suffrage would be an increase in the illiterate vote, without a proportionate increase in the intelligent vote. They were not in favor of it unless there could be an educational qualification. In other words, they were opposed to woman suffrage because they were opposed to universal suffrage. I have always regarded universal suffrage as the foundation principle of our government. ”