y by all past political
experience. In this country, at the present hour, there are
restrictions upon the suffrage in every State. Those restrictions vary
in character. They are either national, relating to color, political,
mental, educational, connected with a property qualification, connected
with sex, connected with minority of years, or they are moral in their
nature.[2]

(FOOTNOTE by SFC} [2] In connection with this point of moral
qualification we venture to ask a question. Why not enlarge the
criminal classes from whom the suffrage is now withheld? Why not
exclude every man convicted of any degrading legal crime, even petty
larceny? And why not exclude from the suffrage all habitual drunkards
judicially so declared? These are changes which would do vastly more of
good than admitting women to vote. {END FOOTNOTE}

This restriction connected with sex is, in fact, but one of many other
restrictions, considered more or less necessary even in a democracy.
Manhood suffrage is a very favorite term of the day. But, taken in the
plain meaning of those words, such fullness of suffrage has at the
present hour no actual existence in any independent nation, or in any
extensive province. It does not exist, as we have just seen, even among
the men of America. And, owing to the conditions of human life, we may
well believe that unrestricted fullness of manhood suffrage never can
exist in any great nation for any length of time. In those States of
the American Union which approach nearest to a practical manhood
suffrage, unnaturalized foreigners, minors, and certain classes of
criminals, are excluded from voting. And why so? What is the cause of
this exclusion? Here are men by tens of thousands--men of widely
different classes and conditions--peremptorily deprived of a privilege
asserted to be a positive inalienable right universal in its
application. There is manifestly some reason for this apparently
contradictory state of things. We know that reason to be the good of
society. It is for the good of society that the suffrage is withheld
from those classes of men. A certain fitness for the right use of the
suffrage is therefore deemed necessary before granting it. A criminal,
an unnaturalized foreigner, a minor, have not that fitness;
consequently the suffrage is withheld from them. The worthy use of the
vote is, then, a qualification not yet entirely overlooked by our
legislators. The State has had, thus far, no scrupl