The acute critic will not be slow to remind me that this proposition is somewhat beside the case and that it possesses but an academic interest, since we are dealing with a fait accompli. This is of course perfectly true.  The electoral franchise could be so restricted only by the suffrages of the present electorate, and it is inconceivable that any large number, and far less, a majority, of voters would even consider the proposition for a moment.  For good or ill we have unrestricted adult suffrage, and there is not the faintest chance of any other basis being established by constitutional means.  Something however can be done, and this is a thing of great value and importance.  What I suggest is concerted effort towards a measured purification of the electorate through the penalizing of law-breakers by temporary disfranchisement.  It is hardly too much to assume that a man who deliberately breaks the law is constructively unfit to vote or to hold office, at all events, conviction for any crime or misdemeanour gives a reasonable ground for depriving the offender of these privileges, at least for a time.  The law-breaking element, whether it is millionaire or proletarian, is one of the dangerous factors in society, which would lose nothing if from time to time these gentry were removed from active participation in public affairs.  If, for example, any one convicted of minor offenses punishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if of major offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five years upwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisement worked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense, I conceive that the electorate would be measurably purified and that regard for the law would be stimulated.  In one instance I am persuaded that disfranchisement should be for life, and that is in the case of giving or accepting a bribe or otherwise committing a crime against the ballot; this, together with treason against the state, should be sufficient cause for eliminating the offender from all further participation in public affairs.  If the electorate could be purified after this fashion, and if more stringent laws could be passed in the matter of naturalization of aliens, together with iron-clad requirements that every voter should be able to speak, read and write the English language, we should have achieved something towards the safeguarding of the suffrage.

The third weakness in our system, and in some respect the most dangerous, as it is in all respects the most pestiferous, is the insanity of law-making.  All parliamentary governments suffer from this malady, but that of the United States most grievously, and this is true of the national government, the states and the municipalities.  It has become the conviction of legislative bodies that they must justify their existence by making laws, and the more laws they pass the better they have discharged their duties.