Within the borders of that political pigmy known as Rhode Island, the land of Roger Williams and “soul liberty,” it is a crime to have been born a foreigner, in that it deprives the citizen of a vote unless he is a land-grabber to the extent of $134. The bottom motive of this discrimination is to put the laboring masses entirely at the mercy of the manufacturing barons who run the machine.
Certain misguided friends of “equal rights,” however, have so much agitated the matter that the legislature recently appointed a committee to hear their grievances, the committee, of course, being a jury packed in the interest of the manufacturers’ ring. During the hearing one of the protestants against the injustice entered into a laborious argument to prove that a minority rules in Rhode Island. The chairman of the committee, a tool of the ring, named Sheffield, after he had listened long enough in disgust to the logic and the facts, suddenly shouted out contemptuously: “A minority rules in Rhode Island! Doesn’t a minority rule in every State in Christendom?”
And yet there were scores of intelligent reformers present who looked up in surprise, as if they had just learned something now. It is astonishing, but true, that we have sane men on every hand who still believe that in a republic a majority rules. Of course a majority has no better right to rule than a minority; but supposing that the majority theory has any virtue in equity, it is utterly preposterous to assume that even that right was ever long established in fact anywhere. Even a professional politician like Sheffield could not patiently listen to a man so “fresh” as to argue seriously on such a point.
No comments:
Post a Comment