If suffrage were a natural right, the voter might exercise it to please himself or solely for his own interest. But nobody pretends that this is the case. It is conceded that the function of the voter is not to gratify himself nor to practise experiments, nor to express his own personal ideas, nor primarily nor mainly to foster his own interests or those of his class, but to propose the best men and measures for the country at large. He is not to seek direct personal benefit or gain by his vote but is expected thereby to contribute his opinion, his wisdom, his experience, to the promotion of the general welfare. He is not to vote for a judge because he expects him to decide a lawsuit in his favor; nor for a congressman because he hopes that he will help to secure him a contract or a pension or a tariff rate favorable to his business; but it is his duty to vote for judges and congressmen who will decide and legislate justly, that is, with due regard for all. This makes it clear that the franchise is not a gift of nature, but a trust or function created by society for its own high purposes; that the voter comes to the polls to take part in that function not as a master but as a servant of the State in obedience to her mandate; and must be clad with such qualifications as she prescribes. The voters are not masters or rulers as is so often erroneously said, they are merely called upon to designate the real rulers and masters of the land. When the citizen approaches the polls on election day he there finds in operation a formidable electoral machine which he is sometimes told is a contrivance whose object is to establish the rule of the people. But this is a superficial understanding of the matter; the people cannot possibly rule themselves; the existence of any rule whatever implies rulers as well as those ruled over; to talk of the people ruling is nonsense, or at best a mere figure of speech to indicate that they have a choice of rulers. Here as elsewhere there is and must be a government ruling by force; here as elsewhere that government is a human machine wielding or intended to wield irresistible power over its subjects, and constantly menacing the disobedient with deprivation of property, liberty and life. Our elective system is really a means for sustaining this tremendous apparatus and of keeping it in operation and effective. It is that all powerful governmental organism and not the people which rules the country. Every American is just as much under the control of the authority thus created as the subject of any ruler whatever. Freedom in the sense of liberty to the individual to thwart or neglect governmental authority is not within the American scheme. This is why resident foreigners, deceived by the silly newspaper cant about the “people” ruling are frequently surprised to find themselves more restricted in some respects than they were in their own native monarchical countries.