In Russell Kirk's biography of John Randolph of Roanoke, I ran across a striking argument:
To grant non-freeholders the right to vote violates the principle of no taxation without representation. If propertyless men are allowed to participate in government, which unavoidably includes the power of taxation, then they have the power to impose burdens which can only benefit, and never burden, themselves. If untaxed men are given power to dispose of other men's money, we have set ourselves up for tyranny. It's a simple and obvious deduction.
Property was the traditional requirement for representation in government from mediaeval England up to the early decades of American independence, and I am a bit surprised how quickly it was abandoned, considering the generally conservative nature of American leadership from colonial times through the revolution. I'm curious whether the change to one man, one vote can be traced to some secular extension of Puritan ideas of priesthood and equality, or to simple Enlightenment doctrine, or Jacobinism, or the "frontier spirit" in the age of Jackson, or to some combination of these.
To grant non-freeholders the right to vote violates the principle of no taxation without representation. If propertyless men are allowed to participate in government, which unavoidably includes the power of taxation, then they have the power to impose burdens which can only benefit, and never burden, themselves. If untaxed men are given power to dispose of other men's money, we have set ourselves up for tyranny. It's a simple and obvious deduction.
Property was the traditional requirement for representation in government from mediaeval England up to the early decades of American independence, and I am a bit surprised how quickly it was abandoned, considering the generally conservative nature of American leadership from colonial times through the revolution. I'm curious whether the change to one man, one vote can be traced to some secular extension of Puritan ideas of priesthood and equality, or to simple Enlightenment doctrine, or Jacobinism, or the "frontier spirit" in the age of Jackson, or to some combination of these.
It also helps demonstrate how odd is our current notion of the "ontology of franchise," if you want to call it that--the somewhat hazy idea that the right to vote is what makes you fully human. (Recently the state of Washington allowed criminals serving time in jail the right to vote!)
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