Politics & government > Complete suffrage

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bring the moral weight and influence of these parties
into play, and to produce a friendly feeling, if not a
cordial union, between them and the working classes,
so that an effectual agitation for political and social ame¬
lioration might be begun and carried out, was the grand
object of the Birmingham union. Such being the aim
and end of the movement, the question was, What ground
should be taken up ? and here, luckily, large and liberal
views prevailed. The Birmingham Conference set out
by affirming the grand principle that every member of
society has an equal right with every other member to
a voice in the management of the affairs of society—
(cheers). And having affirmed this abstract principle,
they resolved to define the extent to which they desire to
see it presently applied, by the well-understood and popu¬
lar plan of male adult suffrage, or an extension of the fran¬
chise to “ every man of twenty-one years of age, who is
not deprived of the rights of citizenship in consequence
of the verdict of a jury of his countrymen.” Now, I am
aware, Mr. Chairman, that the assertion of the right of
suffrage has been much cavilled at, and that many witty
and clever people have attempted to sneer down every
one who upholds it as an abstract principle. I trust I
shall be able to show that the objections are fallacious,
and that those who have adopted the opinion from aa
instinctive belief in its soundness, may also, if they be so
inclined, bear it out by strict logical reasoning. I admit
that to vest the right of suffrage in males of twenty-one
years of age is an arbitrary arrangement. Nay, repre¬
sentation itself is a clumsy mode of giving every member
of society an equal share in the management of the affairs
of society, for it is hard that nine men shall be obliged to
submit to the dictum of ten. Yet, as it is better that the
nine should submit to the ten, than that the ten should
submit to the nine ; so it is much better that we should
have the nearest practicable approximation to the abstract
right, than an arrangement which makes no approxima¬
tion whatever to the abstract right, and which is the
cause of general dissatisfaction and loudly-expressed dis¬
content. The reason why our opponents have been able
to take hold of us is, that there are ignorant men, who
have been foolish enough to declare that the extension
of the franchise to every man of twenty-one years of age,
and of sane mind, is justice. Now, it may be answered,
and truly enough, that there is nothing more just in
giving the franchise to men of twenty-one years of age
than in giving it to women, or to males whom we are ac¬
customed to look upon as minors. The real question of
right is to be separated from the question of expediency.
There is nothing more in twenty-one years of age,
speaking abstractly, than there is in eighteen, nineteen,
twenty, twenty and eleven months, twenty-two, twenty-
three, twenty-four, or twenty-five ; there is nothing
more in manhood.than there is in womanhood; and,
so far as we lay down a distinction between these