nation. But universal suffrage, pushed to its extreme limits, including
all men, all women, all minors beyond the years of childhood, would
inevitably be fraught with evil. There have been limits to the
suffrage of the freest nations. Such limits have been found necessary
by all past political experience. In this country, at the present hour,
there are restrictions upon the suffrage in every State. Those
restrictions vary in character. They are either national, relating to
color, political, mental, educational, connected with a property
qualification, connected with sex, connected with minority of years,
or they are moral in their nature.*

[FOOTNOTE by SFC} *In connection with this point of moral
qualification we venture to ask a question. Why not enlarge the
criminal classes from whom the suffrage is now withheld? Why not
exclude every man convicted of any degrading legal crime, even petty
larceny? And why not exclude from the suffrage all habitual
drunkards judicially so declared? These are changes which would do
vastly more of good than admitting women to vote. {END
FOOTNOTE}

This restriction connected with sex is, in fact, but one of many other
restrictions, considered more or less necessary even in a democracy.
Manhood suffrage is a very favorite term of the day. But, taken in
the plain meaning of those words, such fullness of suffrage has at
the present hour no actual existence in any independent nation, or in
any extensive province. It does not exist, as we have just seen,
even among the men of America. And, owing to the conditions of
human life, we may well believe that unrestricted fullness of
manhood suffrage never can exist in any great nation for any length
of time. In those States of the American Union which approach