These advantages I do not look for in the superior class of the rich, for they undoubtedly have too many special and individual interests, which they separate from the general interests.  But if it is true that we must not look for the qualifications of the pure elector among the eminently rich, neither should I look for it among those whose lack of fortune has prevented their enlightenment; among such, unceasingly feeling the touches of want, corruption too easily can find its means.  It is, then, in the middle class that we find the qualities and advantages I have cited.  And, I ask, is it the demand that they contribute five to ten francs that causes the assertion that we would throw elections into the hands of the rich?  You have established the usage that the electors receive nothing; if it were otherwise their great number would make an election most expensive.  From the instant that the voter has not means enough to enable him to sacrifice a little time from his daily labor, one of three things would occur.  The voter would absent himself, or insist on being paid by the State, else he would be rewarded by the one who wanted to obtain his suffrage.  This does not occur when a comfortable condition is necessary to constitute an elector.  As soon as the government is established, when the constitution is guaranteed, there is but a common interest for those who live on their property, and those who toil honestly.  Then can be distinguished those who desire a stable government and those who seek but revolution and change, since they increase in importance in the midst of trouble as vermin in the midst of corruption.

If it is true, then, that under an established constitutional government all its well-wishers have the same interest, the power of the same must be placed in the hands of the enlightened who can have no interest pressing on them, greater than the common interest of all the citizens.  Depart from these principles and you fall into the abuses of representative government.  You would have extreme poverty in the electorate and extreme opulence in the legislature.  You would see soon in France what yon see now in England, the purchase of voters in the boroughs not with money even, but with pots of beer.  Thus incontestably are elected many of their parliamentary members.  Good representation must not be sought in either extreme, but in the middle class.  The committee have thus placed it by making it incumbent that the voter shall possess an accumulation the equivalent of, say forty days of labor.  This would unite the qualities needed to make the elector exercise his privilege with an interest in the same.  It is necessary that he own from one hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty livres, either in property or chattels.  I do not think it can seriously be said that this qualification is fixed too high, unless we would introduce among our electors men who would beg or seek improper recompense.