Not only has the country the right to exclude incapables from the suffrage, but it is the patriotic duty of the good citizen to place a voluntary limitation on himself, and to refrain altogether from voting where through ignorance of the candidates or subject matter his vote cannot be intelligently cast. For, just as the voter is peremptorily called upon in casting his vote to disregard entirely his own interest and pleasure, and even to vote contrary to his interests and prejudices for the benefit of his country, so surely he can also be required in the public interest to surrender his privilege of voting, to remain altogether silent, and to allow the choice of men and measures to be made by his more intelligent neighbors. And it further follows, that where the ignorant voter knowingly and wilfully insists upon expressing his own opinion or prejudice at the polls in opposition to the judgment of another better qualified than he, his act is immoral and unpatriotic; and equally immoral and unpatriotic is the conduct of the legislator, writer or voter who knowingly countenances or assists in the enfranchisement of a class of people who are incompetent to vote on the questions to be presented to them, or to select the proper candidates for public offices. Voting at a political election being an act of government, the proper test of the voter is that of capacity to govern. As Bagehot puts it:-- “Fitness to govern must depend on the community to be governed and on the merits of other persons who may be capable of governing that community. A savage chief may be capable of governing a savage tribe. He may have the right of governing it, for he may be the sole person capable of so doing: but he would have no right to govern England. Whatever may be your capacity for rule, you have no right to obtain the opportunity of exercising it by dethroning a person who is more capable; you are wronging the community if you do, if you are depriving it of a better government than that which you can give to it.... The true principle is, that every person has a right to so much political power as he can exercise, without impeding any other person who would more fitly exercise such power.... Any such measure for enfranchising the lower orders as would overpower and consequently disfranchise the higher should be resisted on the ground of abstract right; you are proposing to take power from those who have the superior capacity, and to rest it in those who have but an inferior capacity or in many cases no capacity at all.” (_Parliamentary Reform_, 1859.)