f has worked badly, both for the
community and for many of the voters. It is of course impossible for me
to argue the case in detail; I can do hardly more than state my own
personal belief, and this is that the question is wholly one of
expediency, and that the question of abstract justice and the rights of
man does not enter into the consideration. I submit that the electoral
franchise should again be accepted as a privilege involving a duty, and
not as a right inherent in every adult person of twenty-one years or
over and not lunatic or in jail. This privilege, which in itself should
confer honour, should be granted to those who demonstrate their capacity
to use it honestly and intelligently, and taken away for cause.

The acute critic will not be slow to remind me that this proposition is
somewhat beside the case and that it possesses but an academic interest,
since we are dealing with a _fait accompli._ This is of course perfectly
true. The electoral franchise could be so restricted only by the
suffrages of the present electorate, and it is inconceivable that any
large number, and far less, a majority, of voters would even consider
the proposition for a moment. For good or ill we have unrestricted adult
suffrage, and there is not the faintest chance of any other basis being
established by constitutional means. Something however can be done, and
this is a thing of great value and importance. What I suggest is
concerted effort towards a measured purification of the electorate
through the penalizing of law-breakers by temporary disfranchisement. It
is hardly too much to assume that a man who deliberately breaks the law
is constructively unfit to vote or to hold office, at all events,
conviction for any crime or misdemeanour gives a reasonable ground for
depriving the offender of these privileges, at least for a time. The
law-breaking element, whether it is millionaire or proletarian, is one
of the dangerous factors in society, which would lose nothing if from
time to time these gentry were removed from active participation in
public affairs. If, for example, any one convicted of minor offenses
punishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if of
major offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five years
upwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisement
worked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense,
I conceive that the electorate would be measurab