Strange as it may seem to any one who has given any serious thought to the subject, the proposition has been, if not urged, at least put forward, by respectable writers, that the suffrage should be granted to all citizens without distinction, solely for the educational benefit they will receive from it. The voting booths are evidently viewed by these easy-going minds not as they really are, as judgment seats, as the beginnings and sources of actual government, but as schools for all comers in politics and patriotism; as practise grounds; experimental stations; where every clumsy dunce may try his hand, hit or miss. The author has not been able to find any well-worked-out argument in favor of this fantastic proposition, but it has been seriously presented by men who evidently thought they were uttering sense. The strongest plea in its favor heretofore published appears to be the following from Maccunn, which is quoted in full because the notion is such a queer one that it cannot safely be paraphrased.

And again as stated by Professor Woodburn:

This, which may be called the “harper theory,” is directly contrary to the doctrine herein advocated, that voting is a function of government to be operated solely for the benefit of the state, and by means of machinery as perfect and efficient as art and science can make it; the “harper” theory being that the election power house is a practise school for amateurs and blockheads, to be operated in the vague hope that the use of it may somehow improve their natures and understandings. The mere statement of this proposition ought to make its gross absurdity manifest to everybody. It would justify giving the suffrage to children sixteen years of age. As well propose to let boys snowball the passers by, because it would tend to give them exercise and raise their spirits; or to let the hens scratch in the garden, because they get such benefit from it.

The reasoning of the extracts above given strangely ignores the public interests directly involved, the mischiefs of unwise and corrupt voting and the real purpose and history of public elections in this country. Not a word as to the importance of selecting honest and competent men for office; not a hint at the notorious political scandals heretofore caused by the frequent election of fools and knaves; nothing said about the systematic use of the low voting class as organized political banditti. The notedly unfit must continue to vote knavery and folly into high places, and the honest and capable must be discredited and sent to the rear; peculation and blundering must continue indefinitely, in the hope that a set of ignorant, idle, shiftless, dissipated and worthless men may learn to do well by being trained by politicians to do evil. No doubt the act of voting will make even an incapable man think for a few minutes; possibly he may be tempted to wonder what it all means; his mind may be instructed as that of the small child who experiments with a hammer and a looking glass. We are told that the “harper is not made otherwise than by harping,” but his practising is conducted under the control of a master, and not at a public function. A better illustration than Aristotle’s harper would be the Irishman in company, who had never played the violin but was willing he said to do his best if desired. “How can the capable voter be made except by voting capably?” What is complained of is that he is voting not capably but incapably; and is being trained for that purpose. The assertion that men cannot be trained for any function except by the exercise of it is absurd. The universal practice of mankind is to the contrary. According to the “harper” theory, lawyers, doctors and engineers should be admitted to practise, and army officers granted commissions without preparation; since no man can prove his ability in anything until he has attempted its exercise. While it is perfectly true that no man’s fitness for any enterprise, profession or work can be finally ascertained except by actual test, and not always then, yet preparation may be required and preliminary tests made whereby the capacity of classes of men can be judged in advance; and the fear of the mischiefs that the ignorant or unskilled practitioner may do calls for the requirement of these wise precautions. It is well known that appropriate preparatory instruction and discipline tend to qualify men for certain duties, and the lack of them to disqualify them therefor; that a class of men trained for law, engineering, medicine, surgery, or the army will probably become competent officers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc., while untrained men will be absolutely incompetent. Laymen are not put on the bench, there to learn the law at the expense of a series of blunders. The same theory which is applied in licensing men for the professions and in selections for the judiciary is that which should be applied in establishing suffrage tests. Those who desire to be allowed to meddle with government should first be required to think; and if ignorant, to learn in some other way than at the expense of the public weal. The training of men as voters should be carried on in the school of life, where their mistakes will injure only themselves, and that to a small degree, and not the whole community or nation to a great degree. To permit people who have never practised thinking, to begin by experimenting in the making of laws to govern their neighbors, or in the appointment of officials, is preposterous. The late war and a hundred other similar experiences ought surely to have taught the most silly of our doctrinaires, and the most absurd of our demagogues, how dangerous it is for fools to meddle with the affairs of government, and how reprehensible it is for sensible people to permit the fools to do so.

What these writers above quoted must mean if they mean anything practicable, is that those who are already capable voters are stimulated by the actual exercise of the franchise into greater curiosity and knowledge of public affairs. This is undoubtedly true; the young doctor learns by practice, but only after he is qualified to practise. An untrained man would never become a competent physician by killing patients. The argument for the “harper” theory confuses the question; it ignores the difference in capacity between classes of citizens, and thus misses the point. It urges the educational value of the suffrage to all voters without making a proper distinction between the intelligent and propertied men and the unintelligent floaters and other controllable voters. But it is not proposed to disfranchise the former, and they do not need the suffrage for educational purposes. The question then is entirely confined to the venal and otherwise dangerous residuum, whether they shall be invited to take part in government merely in order to stimulate them to think on state questions. The answer cannot be doubtful. We may recognize the fact that the interest in politics of an already capable voter is probably stimulated by his taking part in an election; but the proposal that a dishonest or incapable man’s vote should be invited merely for the purpose of starting his dormant interest in politics, or in the hope of stimulating him to be more of a patriot and less of a rascal is ridiculous.

There is as already pointed out in a previous chapter a school of preparation and a test for voters in full operation, of whose valuable instruction the state may take the benefit; namely the school of business and the test of business success. In that school all may aspire to earn the certificate of diligence, industry and good judgment, which in the shape of a fair amount of material prosperity is given to all successful aspirants. This method will not be infallible any more than the graduate professional examinations; but it will establish the principle of fitness; it will purify and elevate politics and will afford a fairer test than any other at present known to the world.

In the foregoing discussion it has been conceded for the sake of argument, that voting might possibly be a means of moral or mental development to the voter. But the assumption is unwarranted and contrary to the facts. There is no healthy stimulus of any kind to be gained in manhood suffrage politics. The spectacle of popular elections as at present conducted, and the display of fraud and humbug which they present, is demoralizing to the whole nation, and especially to its young men. The moral injury to the voter caused by the operation of universal suffrage, and by the immoral attitude of the nation solemnly asserting the falsity that the vote of the ignorant and disorderly is as valuable as that of the orderly and educated man was recognized by John Stuart Mill in his work on Representative Government, where he says that equal voting is “in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter’s mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political “power as knowledge.” (P. 188.) That the practical influence of political life as at present conducted tends rather to degrade than to elevate the masses is the universal testimony of all having knowledge on the subject. The pursuit of politics as a business is vile, and its continued practice must have a deteriorating effect on those engaged in it. As for the influence of ordinary political activity upon the average voter, it is in no way beneficial; if anything it is injurious. For generations, worthless men have been in the enjoyment of the suffrage in the United States. It has never made an intellectual man out of an ignorant one, nor reformed a drunkard, but it has created many drunkards and loafers, and has had the effect of training many to sell their votes and to spend their time in low and disreputable local political intrigues. As for the majority, those who confine their political activities to voting for one of two candidates without any strong convictions in his favor, they cannot be said to receive thereby any ethical or intellectual exercise or benefit whatever.

“Mere existence” (says Bagehot) “under a good government is more instructive than the power of now and then contributing to a bad government.” (Parliamentary Reform, p. 340.) The mere act of voting for a man or a measure without proper knowledge is demoralizing to the mind and deadening to the conscience. Nor is there moral stimulus in the exercise of a trifling privilege, which is also enjoyed by the meanest and the least worthy, and the employment whereof is usually at best a mere futility, and frequently a farce. What moral elevation can be gained from voting to put in place either a humbug whom you know, or a non-entity whom you don’t know? And yet this is about what the exercise of the franchise usually amounts to in every village, city and town in the United States.

The “harper” suffrage doctrine in its entirety was in the decade from 1865 to 1875 applied to the Southern states, when the negroes were granted the suffrage in compliance with the hysterical demands of demagogues, fanatics, and sentimentalists, who made the American people believe that all a man had to do to become a harper was to get a harp and keep harping. The disastrous results were told in a previous chapter of this book. The history of that experiment with its sordid incidents, ought to be sufficient to convince the most credulous believer in popular rule, that our Revolutionary ancestors were right in insisting that “a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow’s ear,” that there should be no harping except under the supervision of a competent master, and that an untrained musical performer at a concert is certain to spoil the performance, disgrace himself, and benefit nobody.