n business, are incompetent
to participate in government, then farewell to the republican
system of government; it can not stand a day; it is a wrong
foundation. Our principles of government are radically wrong if
gentlemen's fears on this subject are well grounded. Thank God, I
know they are not. I know that all the defects and evils of our
Government have not come from the ignorant masses; but the frauds
and the devices of the higher intellects and the more cultivated
minds have brought upon our Government all those scars by which
it has been disfigured.

Why, sir, look at the administration of the Southern governments
in the seceded States, where their public men were advocates of
the doctrine that suffrage should be restricted, and generally
that republican governments were wrong. I had a great deal of
private conversation with the gentlemen who were formerly in
these halls representing those governments, and I hardly ever
conversed with a single man of them from that part of the country
who believed that a republican government could or ought to
stand. Some of them used to say, "How can the mechanic, how can
the laboring man understandingly participate in these high and
complicated affairs of Government?" Those men at heart were
aristocrats or monarchists; they did not believe in your
republican Government. I, on the other hand, believe that the
safety of our Government depends on unlimited franchise, or,
rather, I should say, on franchise limited only by that
discretion which fits a man to manage his own concerns. Let a man
arrive at the years of majority, when the Government and the
experience of the world say that he has attained to such an age
and such discretion that it is safe to intrust him with his own
affairs, and then if he can not be permitted to participate in
the Government, I say again, farewell to republican government;
it can not stand.

It was for these reasons that, when I introduced the original
bill, I put it upon the most liberal principles of franchise
except as to females. The question of female suffrage had not
then been much agitated, and I knew the community had not thought
sufficiently upon it to be ready to introduce it as an element in
our political system. While I am aware of that fact, I think it