cheap distinctions of a manhood suffrage constituency. To the silly French Jacobin scheme of ascertaining the best by counting noses, Society opposes her own never failing system of continuous study, training and selection. She does not favor, on the contrary, she discourages the absurd and impossible purpose of modern liberalism of giving expression to ignorant individual wills with all their clashing selfishness and brutality. She does not favor the politician’s purpose of perpetuating moral feebleness and incapacity, nor of forwarding the foolish aims and ideas of the weak and the worthless. She is far from giving office or power to such or from even hearkening to their prattle and humbug. She has much to overcome. The power that makes for righteousness is not permitted to operate without the opposition of fools and charlatans; and it is within Society’s function to master this opposition, which she invariably does in the end. She constantly refuses to descend as manhood suffrage does to the level of the ignoble; on the contrary when they presume to oppose her in her momentous business she undertakes either to conquer them by reclamation or to see that they are hanged or otherwise removed out of her implacable path. It is the crime of manhood suffrage that it constantly endeavors to oppose and thwart this all beneficent social tendency; that it pushes to the front and seeks to give power in civic affairs to the non-social and anti-social classes, consisting of men devoid of the instinct for the creation and preservation of the useful and the beautiful, and who cannot safely be trusted as their guardians. In so doing it perverts the State from its proper functions. The State has no rightful authority over men’s lives except as the deputy of Society, and its every legitimate act should and must be for the promotion of beneficial social objects. It is its clear duty as such deputy to place political control in the hands of those gifted with distinguished social attributes; and an essential and the first step in that direction is the discarding of manhood suffrage and all similar unnatural political stupidities which inevitably lead to Jacobinism, Bolshevism, anarchy, ruin and death. CHAPTER V THE CAPACITY TO CREATE AND PRESERVE PRIVATE PROPERTY IS THE PROPER TEST AND PROOF OF QUALIFICATION FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN AN ADVANCED DEMOCRACY. There are two principal arguments in favor of a property qualification for voters; one the argument of fitness, that the propertied class are the most capable of passing upon affairs of state; the other the argument of justice, that the business of government principally concerns property, namely, the belongings and the productions of propertied people. Both these arguments assume that what is wanted is an honest and efficient government, not a corrupt and inefficient one.