p. 100 | Voting by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1871

Voting.

By Editor

A NUMBER of articles and paragraphs clipped from the Boston Journal, have been sent us, from which it appears that the question of making voting a duty, and compelling it by law, is considerably agitated in the East. We think there is a step demanded, more important than this; namely, to restrict the privilege of voting to those who can intelligently use it. We have often wondered why, in a government like this, the very existence of whose institutions depends upon the intelligence of the people, a certain degree of education was not made an essential qualification for voting. What right has a person to cast a vote which is to have its influence in the course and destiny of this government, who can neither read nor write, and who consequently cannot inform himself in reference to any of the vital questions respecting which he is called upon to decide? What right has a man, who, viewed from a mental and moral stand-point, is simply a mass of human flesh, actuated by ideas about as brilliant as those which may be supposed to animate the intelligent countenance of a hippopotamus, and understanding about as much respecting the genius of American institutions as the comparatively noble animal referred to—what right has such a man to the privilege of controlling these institutions in the least degree?

Let the restriction named above be adopted, and what an enormous and disgusting fungus is at once severed from the body politic. And it is nothing against the proposition that this fungus pertains principally to one party. It might be bad for the party, but it would be better for the country.

What is the great danger attending the elective franchise as it now exists in this country? It is, that unprincipled demagogues will control, to their own selfish and diabolical ends, the votes of the ignorant masses, every one of which is as potent as the vote of the most enlightened and skillful statesman. Take the Roman Catholic priesthood. They are enemies of our institutions. They are crafty and designing, working with steady, patient, unflinching purpose, to secure the control of this country. And they hold in their hands the vote of every Irish Catholic from one end of the land to the other, which they can use for their own purposes. So between unprincipled political aspirants and crafty priests, the government is drifting into the hands of its enemies.

But let the educational restriction be imposed, and vicious demagogues and designing priests are smitten as with paralysis. The dagger with which they aim to strike American liberty to the heart is wrenched from their grasp.

And no one would be wronged by this restriction; for the ignorant myrmidons now manipulated by ambitious and artful leaders to their own ends, are not elevated by the possession of the ballot. The government is degraded, but they are not helped. If the design is to elevate the masses, let a beginning be made with that which is the basis of all true elevation, namely, education. The man who can read, though not permitted to vote, is far higher in the scale of being than he who is permitted to vote, but is not able to read.

And, to speak more directly in reference to the article from the Boston Journal, we believe this would be the quickest way to secure the result there called for, that is, the attendance of the better classes of citizens at the polls; for the intelligent and refined will be more ready to attend when they can do so without being crowded and jostled by a degraded, ignorant, and vicious mass of humanity, and without having to stem a tide of unmitigated filth and drunken obscenity.