Jeniffer electronic book

A
substantially universal suffrage merely places the ultimate political
responsibility in the hands of those for whose benefit governments are
created; and its denial can be justified only on the ground that the
whole community is incapable of exercising the responsibility. Such
cases unquestionably exist. They exist wherever the individuals
constituting a community, as at present in the South, are more divided
by social or class ambitions and prejudices than they are united by a
tradition of common action and mutual loyalty. But wherever the whole
people are capable of thinking, feeling, and acting as if they
constituted a whole, universal suffrage, even if it costs something in
temporary efficiency, has a tendency to be more salutary and more
formative than a restricted suffrage.
The substantially equal political rights enjoyed by the American people
for so many generations have not proved dangerous to the civil liberties
of the individual and, except to a limited extent, not to his political
liberty.


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