At the end of the last chapter was suggested a question which troubles many superficial but honest and sympathetic thinkers. How, say they, can a democratic State justly refuse the suffrage to any citizen? They see plainly the policy of such refusal in many cases; they realize the mischief of permitting discordant voices to mar the democracy of the cultivated choir of good citizenship, the danger of allowing rotten timbers in the structure of the ship of State; they wish for some superior power to silence the one or remove the other; but they cannot see that such a power exists. Can a man or any group of men in a democracy justly assume such superiority of judgment as the exercise of this power would imply? If the State be as democracy asserts, the creature, the agent of the people, how can it by refusing the franchise to any of its citizens rightfully deprive them of a voice in its deliberations? Is not such refusal in its essence a tyranny and a negation of democracy? No doubt some such feeling as above expressed, though perhaps more vaguely formulated, actuated many who, with more or less reluctance made the blunder of acquiescing in the establishment of white manhood suffrage in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and also many of those who forty years later made the still greater blunder of accepting negro suffrage.

An answer to all these scruples familiar to all sound lawyers and quite sufficient for most intelligent men, is found in the law of self preservation. Before any law or rule of a state or community can be enacted, the state or community must have existence, and the enactment implies that the state’s continuance is to be secured. The original law of its being must first be satisfied, and must ever remain superior to all other of its enactments. It is sufficient reason therefore for the suppression of the votes of the unworthy that they are prejudicial to the State, and the State in its struggle for existence may rightfully suppress them.

But there is still another complete answer to the questions above propounded, and one perhaps still more satisfying to some minds than that of the primal right of self preservation; and that is, that there does exist a higher warrant for the disfranchisement of unworthy voters, and for all suffrage regulations, conditions and qualifications than the mere precept of the State. This higher sanction is that which authorized men in the beginning to found the commonwealth in which we live. What was that authority? Imagine if you please the foundation of a state. By what rightful authority did the first white settlers in Virginia or Massachusetts establish a government and proceed by its agency to deal with the property, lives and liberty of the members of their little company and of all new comers? By what rightful authority did they for instance execute the first malefactor? The answer is, by the mandate of Society. For even if it be true, as many insist, that the State has no original power, but is a mere created agency of limited authority, it yet does not follow that that authority has no basis but the fiat of the electorate and no justification beyond certain election certificates and its own statutes. There is a mighty mundane power in constant operation amongst men, one far superior and anterior to the State; a part indeed or manifestation of that almighty persistent and mysterious force which maketh for righteousness in this world; a potentate with whose operations we are all perfectly familiar and whom we may here, for want of a better word, designate by the name “Society.” The idea intended here to be represented by that word is somewhat difficult of definition. We may approximately indicate our meaning by defining “Society” as Humanity self organized for the promotion of civilization; but we can best identify her by noting some of her operations and attributes. She finds her original source as all true authority must in the Eternal Verities, and her sovereignty is mysterious in its deepest origin as is everything vital in the universe. Her forms and methods are fine and subtle beyond description. She is not the State; she antedates the State; she was the source of the authority of our first American ancestors to establish governments and to execute justice, and was the founder and is the mistress and director of all states and governments that ever were or ever will be. Nor can she be identified with the population or body of citizenship of the nation or community; she is something which remains outside and independent of all these; possessing a separate organism, life and growth of her own. Society is the Overlord, the vital essence of which the State is the manifestation; she is to the State what the spirit is to the human body; and for her the State exists and was created. Her membership is not confined to any class, but includes all those who voluntarily submit to her decrees. These she organizes in a way peculiar to herself, assigning to them rights, obligations, influence and power without regard to laws or statutes except those of her own original promulgation, disregarding entirely the shallow and false modern notion of equality between men. For just as no two individuals have exactly the same appearance or physical power, so in the whole social domain there are no two members who are in every respect or indeed in any respect the social equals of each other. Her membership has its own traditions, rules and standards which she promulgates by silent and subtle methods, often finally compelling their formal adoption by the State. Her mandates are more powerful than those of governments; and all political decrees are subordinate to the constitutions of civilized society. Her honors and powers are often more valued than those of the State, and are conferred not as in our politics at the command of mere numbers, as prizes for oratory or rewards for intrigue, but in consideration of social aptitudes and energies; so that in any given community you will find the social development of each individual to correspond with his or her compliance with the rules and mandates of Society.

Thus is constituted what may be called the Social Commonwealth, imperium in imperio, composed of all those who take up the cause of civilization; a number which does not necessarily represent a majority or any definite proportion of the people of the community, but does represent and include the community’s mental and moral force and civilizing influence. Its leaders or captains are comparatively few; they are readily distinguishable as active champions of social progress; spending time and effort for the cause; zealous in the establishment of public order; in advancing public health, in creating and maintaining beauty in public and private life; in forwarding enterprises of religion, art, education, science and benevolence; in promoting civilizing institutions, such as libraries, hospitals, churches; also operas, music, dancing and all the refinements of life; in creating parks and flower gardens, in beautifying cities and villages; in elevating the standards of dress, manners and private living, and in furthering all civilizing and humanizing influences. Following these leaders at greater or less social distance are the great body of the membership of the Social Commonwealth composed of all classes of rich and poor and between, the great mass of the socially loyal, themselves originating and initiating nothing of social importance, but faithfully keeping up year by year with the steadily advancing procession; directing their children in the way of sweetness and light, that so they may reach the places where the social leaders stood a generation before. So that a basis for the establishment of a qualified electorate and for the exclusion therefrom of the disqualified is found in the primary fact of the existence of two classes of humanity, the one including the socially fit, the socially organized, the members of the Social Commonwealth; and the others the non-members of that organization. As already stated, not all the inhabitants of our borders are the lieges of Society; there is the considerable body of the unsocial; comprising those cold and indifferent to the social cause, the socially worthless, the nondescript and the rabble; also the anti-social; the openly hostile, the criminals and malefactors of the community. The existence of these two divisions of men, the social and the unsocial, justifies and requires the State to distinguish between them in granting the voting franchise. The primary test of voting capacity is and must be allegiance to the social commonwealth.

Society was born when humanity emerged from savagery, and will endure while civilization continues in the world. The Jacobins of France of 1790, like the present Bolsheviki of Russia, got possession of the State machinery and turning it against Society swore to destroy her forever; after a dozen years of strife she emerged from the conflict stronger than before. She accompanied the first immigrants to Massachusetts Bay, to Jamestown and to every other American settlement. There she was on the very first day and ever after with her customs, traditions, beliefs, classes, prejudices, dress, manners and standards of conduct, ready to enforce them in America with the same despotic authority exercised long before in the England of the Plantagenets, Normans, Saxons and Romans. And then and there in the fields and forests of the new world, Society established governments as her agents to enforce her mandates, imposing her will upon the States which she thus created. Since then, by Society has the onward course of the nation at all times been directed. Governments may change; peace may follow war; the monarchy may give way to a republic or dictatorship and that to a democracy, or vice versa; laws may be enacted and repealed, constitutions established and abolished, but the rule of the Social Commonwealth goes on forever.

It is to Society, the champion of civilization, that the enlightened civilized man considers his allegiance is ultimately due, and only to the State as the agent of Society. A law to be valid and enforceable must conform to social mandates. The late James C. Carter, a noted New York lawyer, is the author of a philosophical treatise on Law in which he clearly establishes this principle. He says (p. 120); “That to which we give the name of Law always has been, still is, and will forever continue to be Custom.” But customs are merely the ordinances of Society. When the State forgets its duty to Society it does so at its peril; let it enact for example, a Fugitive Slave Law and the Emersons, Thoreaus, Beechers and other social leaders refuse obedience and defy the State. In like manner, wars are justified when decreed by Society against unsocial sovereign states in the interests of civilization, as for instance, some of the modern wars of civilized powers against Turkey. Consider the actual political power and operations of Society. Compare the statute books of today with those of fifty or a hundred years ago and note the changes she has dictated in that period. History is sad and bloody with the story of the efforts of the State to modify the religious practices of men; they have all failed; but Society does not fail to change these practices year by year. Commerce, manufactures, transportation, the arts, education, customs, manners, all human institutions are in turn created and destroyed by Society, and law and the State are powerless to defeat permanently her decrees, while their own are only valid when stamped with her approval.

Here then we find in the inherent powers of Society, in powers which are God-given or Nature-given if you prefer, an answer to the scruples of those who seek a source of authority in the State to protect its life by preserving its own machinery. It is this supreme potentate acting by and through the State that we invoke to settle the structure of the State on the foundations of capacity and intelligence.

Consider now the interest of Society in the proper regulation of the suffrage as the source and foundation of the State. Not alone is she vitally interested in the maintenance of the present civilizing forces which are sending us forward day by day on the march to higher planes of life; but also in preserving the material and intellectual inheritance of all the ages. This inheritance includes all the accumulated acquisitions of the civilized human race; its property, treasures, achievements and traditions; all the products of its mental and physical endeavor, the fruits of its art, literature, science and industry. These constitute the body of civilization in which its soul and mind are preserved, nourished and kept alive; they form a social trust for ourselves and for posterity. “Civilization,” said Burke, is “a triple contract between the noble dead, the “living and the unborn.” And by that contract we are forbidden to live or to legislate so as to cheat those who come after.

Society’s process for the preservation of our intellectual inheritance is called education; her method for the preservation of our material inheritance is the institution of private property rights. Humanity, property and education combined, constitute the material endowment of society, wherewith she works for the advancement of the human race, or as otherwise expressed for the promotion of civilization. Obviously she is justified in adopting all possible precautions to guard and preserve this precious deposit committed to her charge, nor can it be doubted that she should carefully select its custodians and overseers. Equally plain is it that since the civilization of the nation is and has been produced entirely by the thrifty members of the Social Commonwealth and remains in their guardianship, they and they alone, as constituting the class who have produced and cared for the same should be continued in its care as the representatives of Society and in her behalf; and should be authorized to formulate the laws and measures which make for its protection and advancement. To this end and purpose Society is constantly endeavoring. A volume could be written illustrating the exercise of her steady and mighty influence in placing the scepter in the hands of her chosen ones. Rome was the ancient conservator of civilization, and to her was given sway for centuries; England of all modern nations has been most devoted to preserving the best of the product of the generations as they pass on, and she and her race were made foremost among nations and peoples. Look at the community where you live and you will easily note how Society bestows influence, authority, distinction and esteem upon her own workers, the builders and creators of civilization and upon their children, and passes contemptuously by the unsocial and anti-social. You cannot fail to observe her disdain of the mere talkers and wasters and how she brings to naught the works and cheap distinctions of a manhood suffrage constituency. To the silly French Jacobin scheme of ascertaining the best by counting noses, Society opposes her own never failing system of continuous study, training and selection. She does not favor, on the contrary, she discourages the absurd and impossible purpose of modern liberalism of giving expression to ignorant individual wills with all their clashing selfishness and brutality. She does not favor the politician’s purpose of perpetuating moral feebleness and incapacity, nor of forwarding the foolish aims and ideas of the weak and the worthless. She is far from giving office or power to such or from even hearkening to their prattle and humbug. She has much to overcome. The power that makes for righteousness is not permitted to operate without the opposition of fools and charlatans; and it is within Society’s function to master this opposition, which she invariably does in the end. She constantly refuses to descend as manhood suffrage does to the level of the ignoble; on the contrary when they presume to oppose her in her momentous business she undertakes either to conquer them by reclamation or to see that they are hanged or otherwise removed out of her implacable path.

It is the crime of manhood suffrage that it constantly endeavors to oppose and thwart this all beneficent social tendency; that it pushes to the front and seeks to give power in civic affairs to the non-social and anti-social classes, consisting of men devoid of the instinct for the creation and preservation of the useful and the beautiful, and who cannot safely be trusted as their guardians. In so doing it perverts the State from its proper functions. The State has no rightful authority over men’s lives except as the deputy of Society, and its every legitimate act should and must be for the promotion of beneficial social objects. It is its clear duty as such deputy to place political control in the hands of those gifted with distinguished social attributes; and an essential and the first step in that direction is the discarding of manhood suffrage and all similar unnatural political stupidities which inevitably lead to Jacobinism, Bolshevism, anarchy, ruin and death.