Alfred Byron Cruikshank

AN UNQUALIFIED NUMERICAL MAJORITY RULE IS NOT IN ACCORD WITH GOOD STATESMANSHIP

For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life; and few there be that find it.—Matthew, vii: 13, 14.

A specious argument in favor of manhood suffrage is sometimes condensed into the expression “Let the majority rule”; a popular catchword, misleading like most catchwords, and far from expressing a sound principle in politics. That our national polity does to a large extent recognize the legitimacy of a numerical majority power is true enough; but it neither does, nor ought it, declare the numerical majority opinion to be the only, nor even the final arbiter. No thoroughly enlightened scheme of government of a great nation can do so, for pure majority government is merely the rule of brute force. Wisdom and ability are usually in the minority in this world; and a better saying would seem to be “let the minority rule”; in other words, let patriotic intelligence, justice and efficiency bear sway, and let them as far as possible lead the majority into a better way. In the practical affairs of every day life, people do not seek to learn of the majority, but of the few. In the administration of justice the better opinion is that majority verdicts of juries should not be received; such verdicts are apt to be hasty and careless, and to lack that element of care and deliberation which the requirement of unanimity tends to produce. In a casual group of fifty men, the opinion of twenty-five, properly selected, or a majority of them, is worth far more than the opinion of a chance majority of the total fifty. In nothing except politics is an appeal to the majority ever made; everyone turns to a small minority of men, or even to one single man, for guidance in every important conjuncture of life. When a serious disease attacks a man, he does not take a vote of the public or of his family, friends and neighbors as to the course of treatment to be adopted to save his life; he turns to one learned and trustworthy man, and puts himself in his hands. So in the navigation of a ship, whether in tempest or fair weather; the trained and experienced mind of the captain controls at every moment of the voyage; it is the same in the conduct of a law suit; of a business enterprise; of the construction of dwellings, bridges, railroads and tunnels; in military campaigns; in all the serious undertakings of life, guidance is never sought in the voices of the many, but in the opinion of a select few or of a still more selected one.

It is a fatal error in the manhood suffrage theory that it assumes that numbers rule, and are capable of giving the final sanction. Such is not the fact. Despite all that demagogues may do or say, no amount of vociferation, resolutioning, applauding, cheering, registering, and voting will serve to prevent or delay the operation of natural law. Mind and reason must govern in politics as elsewhere. The power that is best capable of establishing and sustaining governments and governmental systems is a combination of forces; including principally energy, intelligence and numbers, producing a sum total of effectiveness. When allowed free play to its powers, as in India for instance, an energetic and intelligent minority will often control an inert and ignorant majority. The basic cause for the recognition of the majority principle in government, is not a belief in majority opinion, but an assumption that the majority actually possesses sufficient physical force to master the minority, and that therefore in the last appeal the majority must rule. But true statesmanship distrusts majority opinion in everything; seeks to escape its interference, and to educate and guide it in the right direction. It yields to it at last with reluctance, and only as we all yield to any of the overpowering forces of Nature; to darkness, to the deadly frost of the poles, to torrid heat, to the desert; to each of which we give way only to the extent to which we are unable to circumvent them, and to prevent their interference with our enterprises. And so, astute politicians are often active in seeking expedients, to compel the often blind will of majorities to conform to reason and the inevitable. It is the ambition of real statesmen to drive the state coach; while the mere politician is content to climb up behind, or to run up and down at the heels of the populace, like a servile flunkey after a demented master, whose follies he dares not correct, and out of whose worst extravagances he is ready to profit. Political leaders realize that a majority vote does not always, perhaps not often, represent the weight of the effective public opinion of the state; that such a vote frequently not only lacks understanding, but also lacks any guarantee of future support for the politician who shall rely upon it. And so it is the part of statesmanship to mitigate or prevent pure majority rule; to manage public opinion; to muzzle, assuage or pacify it; to create and guide majorities; to soothe and placate them for the time being; and sometimes to divert their attention, till they melt away and disappear and reason resumes her sway.

The necessity of effectively curbing, moderating and checking majority action, was well understood by the framers of the Constitution, who erected various anti-majority or one might say anti-snap-judgment barriers. First, there was the existing property qualification for voters; Second, the fundamental guarantees for personal property rights, contained in the Constitution and intended to protect minorities against hasty majority legislation; Third, the immutable constitutional provision for the equal representation of the states in the Senate. This last is a clear flouting of the majority theory, since it gives a small state the same representation as a large one, and conceivably enables a minority to defeat a majority. Fourth, the creation of an electoral college to select the president; thus intending to deprive the people of all direct voice in his election; Fifth, the veto placed in the hands of a president not elected by popular vote; Sixth, the election of federal senators by the state legislatures instead of by the people; Seventh, the creation of a supreme court with power to nullify unconstitutional legislation; Eighth, the system of appointment instead of election of all federal officials.

Calhoun discussed the subject of majority vote in a very interesting way in his Disquisition on Government. He there distinguishes between the sense of the majority of the community and the sense of the entire community; he recognizes the tendency to misgovernment by a numerical majority, and the necessity of checking that tendency by some means, and he proposes the creation of a countervailing “Organism” by which would be called into operation the sense of the community as a whole. This would merely amount to the adoption of an additional constitutional check on majority rule; and such checks are of course useful; but they are insufficient; they are directed against the operation of the mischief, but not against its root and origin. The political machine should be so constructed that the constitutional checks on its operation would only be needed on rare occasions, like the stops in an elevator, which come into play only in cases of accident when the machine gets beyond ordinary control. A vital error in the scheme of majority rule is pointed out by John Stuart Mill in his “System of Logic”; it lies in the vicious extreme to which it has been carried. All excess is mischievous. All systems of government are bound to be defective in results, and therefore none should be radically enforced. The so called French extreme logical application of general rules tends to aggravate imperfections. “In these, and many other cases, we set in motion a principle from which, while it is under control we derive signal advantage, but which, if it breaks loose and follows its own tendencies unchecked, is highly dangerous: of which we may say, as of fire, that it is a good servant but a bad master.” (Lewis on Authority, p. 239.) In other words the doctrine of majority rule represents only one principle applicable to government: it contains only a part of the truth; and should not in practise be applied to excess, or as if it were the only principle involved; but its original operation should be combined at the very outset with that of other steadying forces such as intelligence, experience and morality. “The mere counting of votes (says one writer) is insufficient when parts of the nation are electing representatives for the whole. The parts must be arranged according to quality so as to guarantee the election of the best men, and to give due proportion to the intellectual, moral and material elements of the nation.” (Bluntschli; Theory of the State.)

The foregoing may serve to clear up the difficulty in the minds of many people, who have thought of the construction of a governmental machine as of a problem in mathematics, where only numbers are to be considered. As Mills the logician points out, the doctrine of pure numerical majority rule is not logical, and other considerations besides mere numbers must be given value in weighing the national verdict in political questions. In determining what those other considerations should be, it is obvious that property rights, and the qualities which create and preserve property, are of first availability and importance, and that the neglect and oversight of these rights and qualities constitute the most glaring defects of popular government. The property qualification is obviously that most readily applied to the electorate and its institution is a return to the natural and original practice of the American people.

The use of the property qualification as a corrective of the excesses attendant upon pure majority government is also recommendable on the ground of efficiency and practicability. It will effect a needed check on hasty, emotional, prejudiced and unsocial measures more easily and with less jar and racking than any of the other expedients in practise or suggested for that purpose. The marginal vote between right and wrong, between wisdom and folly, is often very small; sometimes five or ten per cent. It is safe to assume that a propertied electorate would give enlightened verdicts in many cases, where the present inferior voting body renders barbarous ones; and such decisions would carry with them all the prestige of a popular vote. The constitutional expedients now in force to check majority action, or any which may be invented, should not be subjected to every day use, for they have serious drawbacks. They are not preventive; they are not final; at best they effect no more than delay, and they irritate the masses by opposing a technical and inferior power to theirs; a mere obstruction as it were, and that interposed by those whom they assume to call their servants. There can be no doubt that the logical and safe thing is to avoid and prevent mistakes of the electorate, rather than to allow them to be made, and afterward to attempt by extraneous means to offset them or to thwart their operation; and this especially when these means are such as to the masses may seem obstructive and oppressive. As the real difficulty in the case lies in this vicious constitution of the electorate, why not meet it there? The object is to prevent foolish, oppressive and fluctuating majority decisions. To effectuate this, the property qualification scheme, while accepting the fact that voting power rule is one necessary factor in republican government, creates at the outset a majority body of voters from which it has eliminated the politically worthless element. It thus furnishes an electorate containing, and capable of producing out of itself, a numerical majority which will also carry a preponderance in property, intelligence, public spirit and in political weight, prestige and power. Such a majority will never attempt to rule in defiance of justice and good policy; and the assurance furnished by its very existence will promote business confidence and general prosperity.