I readily admit (indeed, I should
lay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government,
which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security
above what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy,
and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossible
to divine what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preference
upon which the unequal representation of the masses is founded. The rich
cannot feel it, either as a support to dignity or as security to
fortune: for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely democratic
principles; and the prevalence given to it in the general representation
has no sort of reference to or connection with the persons upon account
of whose property this superiority of the mass is established. If the
contrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favor to the rich, in
consequence of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the
privilege either on the individual rich, or on some class formed of rich
persons (as historians represent Servius Tullius to have done in the
early constitution of Rome); because the contest between the rich and
the poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but a
contest between men and men,--a competition, not between districts, but
between descriptions. It would answer its purpose better, if the scheme
were inverted: that the votes of the masses were rendered equal, and
that the votes within each mass were proportioned to property.
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