Equality

Stake In T

o myself. A resolution had, it appeared, been unanimously passed which, after reciting the facts of my extraordinary return to life, proceeded to clear up any conceivable question that might arise as to my legal status by declaring me an Americ

t, I was now informed, had passed beyond my personality and was already producing a general revival of the study of nineteenth-century

making you its guest, for you have already done more for our educational interests by

citizen rather an extraordinary length of time, there was no ground on which I could be argued to have forfeited any of them. However that might be, seeing the resol

necessity of being a pensioner on you any longer, but I confess I feel a l

sometimes a little difficult for me to quit

enough in this case. I feel as if

t this matter of the economic provision for citizens from an entirely different standpoint. It seems to us that in claiming and accepting your citizen's main

or were not jesting, but he

"but really, by what inversion of common sense, as it was understood in the nineteenth century, do yo

o do any violence to the methods of reasoning to which your contemporaries were accustomed.

es

s the id

s not a safe voter

for the advantage of the citizen to accept this education just as it is for you to accept this provision, b

accept an education, but not exactly why it is for the state

ould 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

reed 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 sho

rasp the full significance of the democratic faith which they professed! The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual. That dignity, consisting in the quality of human nature, is essentially the same in all individuals, and therefore equality is the vital principle of democracy. To this intrinsic and equal dignity of the individual all material conditions must be made subservient, and personal accidents and attributes subordinated. The raising up

m we conformed men to things, you think it

octor, "the vital difference bet

n which the same phrase was understood in your day and now is. I was saying that we thought everybody who voted ought to have a property stake in the country, and you obse

ed property in a country--a millionaire, fo

rtion without regard to the rest. Such a separate stake or the ambition to obtain it, far from making its owner or seeker a citizen devoted to the common weal, was quite as likely to make him a dangerous one, for his selfish interest was to aggrandize his separate stake at the expense of his fellow-citizens and of the public interest. Y

all this consumption, is indivisibly held by all in common, and it is impossible that there should be any dispute on selfish grounds as to the administration of this common interest on which all private interests depend, whatever differences of judgment there may be. The citizen's share in this common fund is a sort of stake in the country that makes it impossible to hurt another's interest without hurting one's own, or to help one's ow

ly suggested and intended in the interest of the material well-being of the people, is quite as mu

indirect and sentimental interest in the state as a whole, or its machinery--their real, main, constant, and direct interest being concentrated upon their personal fortunes, their private stakes, distinct from and adverse to the general stake. In moments of enthusiasm they might rally to the support of the commonwealth, but for the most part that had no custodian, but was at the mercy of designing men and factions who sought to plunder the commonwealth and use the machinery of government for personal or class ends. This was the structural weakness of democracies, by the effect of which, after passing their first youth, they became invariably, as the inequality of wealth developed, the most corrupt and worthless of all forms of government and the most susceptible to misuse and perversion fo