g idea grew many of the interpretations and partial
enforcements. A legislator, magistrate or judge might be the very
opposite of venal, and yet be irresistibly impelled by the force of
training and association to take the current view of the unassailable
rights and superiority of property. It would be biassed, in fact,
ridiculous to say that the privileges and exemptions enjoyed by the rich
were altogether the outcome of corruption by bribes. There is a much
more subtle and far more effective and dangerous form of corruption.
This is corruption of the mind. For innumerable centuries all government
had proceeded, perhaps not avowedly, but in reality, upon the settled
and consistent principle that the sanctity of property was superior to
considerations of human life, and that a man of property could not very
well be a criminal and a peril to the community. Under various disguises
church, college, newspaper, politician, judge, all were expositors of
this principle.

The people were drugged with laudations of property. But these teachings
were supplemented by other methods which added to their effectiveness.
We have seen how after the Revolution the propertied classes withheld
suffrage from those who lacked property. They feared that property would
no longer be able to dominate Government. Gradually they were forced to
yield to the popular demand and allow manhood suffrage. This seemed to
them a new and affrighting force; if votes were to determine the
personnel and policy of Government, then the propertyless, being in the
majority, would overwhelm them eventually and pass an entirely new code
of laws.

In one State after another, the propertied class were driven, after a
prolonged struggle, to grant citizens a vote, whether they had property
or not. In New York State unqualified manhood suffrage was adopted in
1822, but in other States it was more difficult to bring about this
revolutionary change. The fundamental suffrage law of New Jersey, for
instance, remained, for more than sixty years after the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence, in accordance with an act passed by the
Provincial Congress of New Jersey on July 2, 1776, two days before the
adoption of the Declaration of Independence, or according to some
authorities, on the very day of its adoption. Among other requirements
this act (1 Laws, N. J. p. 4.) decreed that the voter must be "worth L50
proclamation money, clear estate within the colony." The fourt