government. We hold it to be a self-evident principle that every one who
exercises the suffrage should not only be educated, but should have a
stake in the country, in order that self-interest may be identified with
public interest. As the power exercised by every citizen through the
suffrage is the same, the economic stake should be the same, and so you
see we come to the reason why the public safety requires that you should
loyally accept your equal stake in the country quite apart from the
personal advantage you derive by doing so."

"Do you know," I said, "that this idea of yours, that every one who votes
should have an economic stake in the country, is one which our rankest
Tories were very fond of insisting on, but the practical conclusion they
drew from it was diametrically opposed to that which you draw? They would
have agreed with you on the axiom that political power and economic stake
in the country should go together, but the practical application they
made of it was negative instead of positive. You argue that because an
economic interest in the country should go with the suffrage, all who
have the suffrage should have that interest guaranteed them. They argued,
on the contrary, that from all who had not the economic stake the
suffrage should be taken away. There were not a few of my friends who
maintained that some such limitation of the suffrage was needed to save
the democratic experiment from failure."

"That is to say," observed the doctor, "it was proposed to save the
democratic experiment by abandoning it. It was an ingenious thought, but
it so happened that democracy was not an experiment which could be
abandoned, but an evolution which must be fulfilled. In what a striking
manner does that talk of your contemporaries about limiting the suffrage
to correspond with the economic position of citizens illustrate the
failure of even the most intelligent classes in your time to grasp the