Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau, which professes to be very far advanced, but which I consider twenty centuries behind, universal suffrage (taking the word in its strictest sense) is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes.

Serious objections may be made to it.

In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism.  There are, in France, 36,000,000 of inhabitants.  To make the right of suffrage universal, 36,000,000 of electors should be reckoned.  The most extended system reckons only 9,000,000.  Three persons out of four, then, are excluded; and more than this, they are excluded by the fourth.  Upon what principle is this exclusion founded?  Upon the principle of incapacity.  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?

On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the motive which causes the right of suffrage to depend upon the presumption of incapacity; the most extended system differing only in this respect from the most restricted, by the appreciation of those conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which constitutes, not a difference in principle, but in degree.

This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for himself, but for everybody.

If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at his birth, it would be an injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting.  Why are they prevented?  Because they are presumed to be incapable.  And why is incapacity a motive for exclusion?  Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of his vote; because every vote engages and affects the community at large; because the community has a right to demand some securities, as regards the acts upon which his well-being and his existence depend.

I know what might be said in answer to this.  I know what might be objected.  But this is not the place to exhaust a controversy of this kind.  What I wish to observe is this, that this same controversy (in common with the greater part of political questions) which agitates, excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be.

In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be respected—­if it were merely the organisation of individual right and individual defence—­if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder—­is it likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the greater or less universality of suffrage?  Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace?  Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn?  Is it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privilege?  And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to the others?