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Universal suffrage   /jˌunəvˈərsəl sˈəfrɪdʒ/   Listen
Universal suffrage

noun
1.
Suffrage for all adults who are not disqualified by the laws of the country.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Universal suffrage" Quotes from Famous Books



... republican form of government is that in which all the men have a share in the public power, the slave-holding States will not alone retire from the Union. The constitutions of some of the other States do not sanction universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They require citizenship, and age, and a certain amount of property, to give a title to vote or to be voted for; and they who have not those qualifications are just as much disfranchised, with regard to the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... are!" said a Republican Form of Government to a Sovereign State. "Be good enough to lie still while I walk upon you, singing the praises of universal suffrage and descanting upon the blessings of civil and religious liberty. In the meantime you can relieve your feelings by cursing the one-man power and the effete ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... further reform of parliament. At a meeting held in Birmingham (1838), the People's Charter was drawn up. It contained six 'points' which henceforward were to be the watchwords of the party, until they succeeded in carrying them into law. These points were (1) universal suffrage; (2) annual parliaments; (3) vote by ballot; (4) the right of any one to sit in parliament, irrespective of property; (5) the payment of members; and (6) the redistribution of the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

... any of our people to promote prohibitory or retaliatory legislation. Our policies are adopted not to the hurt of others, but to secure for ourselves those advantages that fairly grow out of our favored position as a nation. Our form of government, with its incident of universal suffrage, makes it imperative that we shall save our working people from the agitations and distresses which scant work and wages that have no margin for comfort always beget. But after all this is done it will be found that our markets are open to friendly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... value to the world of the Graeco-Roman civilization. I have ranked feudalism under the head of barbarism, rejected every species of political aristocracy, and represented the English constitution as essentially antagonistic to the American, not as its type. I have accepted universal suffrage in principle, and defended American democracy, which I define to be territorial democracy, and carefully distinguish from pure individualism on the one hand, and from pure socialism ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of Heaven the better."[210] Later when Chase was out of the running among Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, The Revolution urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal suffrage ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... liberty as worthy the consideration of France. Rousseau, although he attacked civilization, depicting its miseries and inconsistencies, was more constructive, for in his Social Contract he advocated universal suffrage and government by the people through the principles of natural rights and mutual aid. These writers aroused a spirit of liberty among the thoughtful which could not do otherwise than ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... political disabilities of the negro man were so closely akin to those of all women that the advocates of universal suffrage organized under the name of the Equal Rights Association. The "reconstruction period," however, engendered so many differences of opinion, and a platform so broad permitted such latitude of debate, the women soon became convinced ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... the nation had at first tried universal suffrage pure and simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was not satisfactory. It had seemed to deliver all power into the hands of the ignorant and non-tax-paying classes; and of a necessity the responsible offices were filled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... can only be resisted by power. Therefore, a proper constitution must leave to the governed the power to resist encroachments. This is done in free countries by universal suffrage and the election of rulers at frequent and fixed periods. This gives to rulers the strongest possible motive to please the people, which can only be done by executing ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... Departments, representing thirty-five millions of people, by a still larger majority elected him king. The two Chambers prepared a Constitution, which he unhesitatingly accepted and swore to maintain. He was not chosen by universal suffrage, but by one hundred and fifty thousand voters. The Republicans were not satisfied, but submitted; so also did the ultra-Royalists. It was at first feared that the allied Powers, under the influence of Metternich, would be unfriendly; yet one after another recognized the new government, feeling ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... "There remains universal suffrage. I suppose that you will agree with me that geniuses are a rarity. Let us be liberal and say that there are at present five in France. Now, let us add, perhaps, two hundred men with a decided talent, one thousand others possessing various talents, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... still further, and say that they ought to take an equal part with men in the caucus, at the ballot-box, in the senate, at the bar, on the bench, and elsewhere? If universal suffrage be the true theory of government, then, logically, women are entitled to vote; because they, equally with men, represent humanity. Every asserted disqualification, on the ground of ignorance or preoccupation, is sophistical; because the same plea would disqualify four-fifths of the men too. If ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... orders. And there were two sides to the question, besides. Above Napoleon, the enemy of my house, the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien, who at his fall had left that dangerous game of chance wherein the ignorant herd is so often the dupe of the political croupier—universal suffrage- -as his legacy to ruined and dismembered France,—there was the matchless warrior whose genius, even in defeat, had shed immortal glory on our arms. To fetch his ashes from a foreign land was in a manner to wave the flag of vanquished ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... twenty members voted with Duncombe, of whom six were asked to meet six members of the Workingmen's Association to discuss a programme of action. At that meeting a document in the shape of a Parliamentary petition was prepared containing "six points," which were: Universal suffrage, or the right of voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal electoral districts. At ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case, the popular power would be likely to break in upon the rights of property, or else the influence of property to limit and control the exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property. The holders of estates would be obliged, in such case, in some way to restrain the right of suffrage, or else such ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not command it in person, and from the very beginning he assumed an independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took place ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... mankind ever heard of a sanitary reform! and, to judge of the slow progress which that reform seems to make, sewer and drain would have been much the same if they had. Scot-and-lot voters were the independent electors of Lansmere, with the additional franchise of Freemen. Universal suffrage could scarcely more efficiently swamp the franchises of men who care a straw what becomes of Great Britain! With all Randal Leslie's profound diplomacy, all his art in talking over, deceiving, and (to borrow Dick Avenel's vernacular phrase) "humbugging" educated men, his eloquence fell ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... expresses himself: "I know the Hottentot character well, as well as any man in the colony. I am a colonist born, and I believe from my soul, that it will be the most dangerous experiment ever made to allow these men to vote under a franchise amounting to universal suffrage." ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... we now so eagerly grasp, was pressed in confidence and friendship by the Father of our Country. The wreath we place on your honored brow, received its earliest leaves from the hand of Washington. We cannot expect, with the agency of free and universal suffrage, to be always governed by the wise and the good. But surely your predecessors in the Chief Magistracy, were men such as never before successively wielded power in any State. They differed in policy as they must, and yet, throughout their ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... with the general is what the artist works for or not, he, does not succeed without it. Their brute liking or misliking is the final test; it is universal suffrage that elects, after all. Only, in some cases of this sort the polls do not close at four o'clock on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, but remain open forever, and the voting goes on. Still, even the first day's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... all honesty in elections. It has divested politics of all attraction to superior men, and put government largely into the hands of the most venal and unblushing of demagogues. It has proved as great and fatal a mistake as has the establishment of universal suffrage which Jefferson encouraged,—a mistake at least in the great cities of the country,—an evil which can never be remedied except by revolution. Doubtless it was a generous impulse on the part of Jackson ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... Prussia nor in the Empire. There is no responsible Cabinet. The Chancellor is accountable, not to the majority of the Reichstag, but to the Kaiser. The Germans imagine that because they have the fiction of universal suffrage they possess the most democratic Government in Europe. And an enthusiastic German triumphantly reminded me of the fact at a mass meeting which I recently held in San Francisco on behalf of the Allies. I reminded him that Bismarck himself has given us in his "Memoirs" the Machiavellic reasons ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... who makes us live. We should be justified in calling it a rational proof only on the supposition that we believed that reason was identical with a more or less unanimous agreement among all peoples, that it corresponded with the verdict of a universal suffrage, only on the supposition that we held that vox populi, which is said to be vox Dei, was actually ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... like our own, have drawn their ideas from the Bible. It is enough to name the common law and trial by jury; the armed nation; the right of free public assembly, free speech, free passport, and free trade; the election of civil, judicial, and military officers by universal suffrage; the division of the land in fee-simple among the whole people; the rights of women to hold real estate in their own right, to speak in public assemblies, and to prophetic functions; and the support of religion by the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... which I, from my soul, wish to see them, if employment were always plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, if a large family were considered not as an encumbrance but as a blessing, the principal objections to Universal Suffrage would, I think, be removed. Universal Suffrage exists in the United States, without producing any very frightful consequences; and I do not believe that the people of those States, or of any part of the world, are in any good quality naturally superior to our ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the fluctuating contradictions, towards a victorious goal; not following this, mistaking this, disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain for every affair. How find it? All the world answers me, "Count heads; ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell." Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,—I perceive we have got into strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half-century or so, either the Universe or else ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... a desk and listened while Schafroff read, calmly, but badly, a paper on universal suffrage. He had a hard, monotonous voice and everything he read sounded like a column of statistics. Yet everybody listened attentively with the exception of the intellectual people in the front row, who soon grew restless ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... phrase, organically combined with others in the single power of control belonging to a State. This fusion is accomplished in the secondary stage, for the continuous action of the State, by representation, technically; but, in its primary stage and original validity, by universal suffrage; for the characteristic trait of democracy is that in constituting this authority, which is social as opposed to personal freedom,—personal freedom existing in its social form,—it includes every unit of will, and gives to each equivalence. Democracy thus establishes ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... of Napoleonism to dress itself up in the garb of popular government, and to appropriate the peculiar phrases of democracy, with a view to confound the distinction between the sovereign will of one and the sovereign will of the many. Napoleon III. enjoyed proclaiming himself the great champion of universal suffrage, although what his plebiscites really were the caustic pen of Kinglake has told us. The other day the French imperialists celebrated at Chiselhurst the fete of the late emperor; and there Prince Louis had the audacity to say: "Planting myself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... lie in the consolidation of the royal authority and the suppression of the feudal power of the nobles; down to 1789, in the tiers etat and the States-General; after the Commune of 1871, in the maintenance of a Republic supported by universal suffrage. The ideals of 1830 and of 1848 have been practically attained; there are, finally, no new and more liberal political expedients to hope for,—and never has France seen herself so distanced by her neighbors. Her contemporary literature groans with the accumulation ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... the end proposed by it? and secondly, Are they likely to succeed? As to the end proposed, I think there is much difference of opinion. Some Democrats would answer from the merely political point of view, and say: Universal suffrage, payment of members, annual Parliaments, abolition of the House of Lords, abolition of the monarchy, and so forth. I would answer this by saying: After all, these are not ends, but means to an end; and passing by the fact that the last two are not constitutional measures, and so ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... CRAWFORD moved another amendment, to the effect that the distress of the people referred to in the QUEEN'S Speech was mainly attributable to the non-representation of the working classes in Parliament. He did not advocate universal suffrage, but one which would give a fair representation of the people. From the want of this arose unjust wars, unjust legislation, unjust monopoly, of which the existing Corn Laws were the most grievous instance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... maintained except by a strongly- centralized administration and at the sacrifice of local self- government. A century ago the very idea of a stable federation of forty powerful states, covering a territory nearly equal in area to the whole of Europe, carried on by a republican government elected by universal suffrage, and guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full meed of local independence,—the very idea of all this would have been scouted as a thoroughly impracticable Utopian dream. And such scepticism would have been quite justifiable, for European history did ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... drawling, with which the advocate kept time by a movement of the head and shoulders almost like an animal, presented a striking contrast to the savage conciseness of the conclusions. First, a rapid sketch of the electoral irregularities. Never had universal suffrage been treated with such primitive, uncivilized disrespect. At Sarlazaccio, where Jansoulet's opponent seemed likely to carry the day, the ballot-box was destroyed during the night preceding the counting. The same thing, or almost the same, happened at Levie, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the King's coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... only free for the Magyars—a State founded on a mixture of democratic and feudal principles, reserving always the chief places for the magnates, lay and ecclesiastic, while rejecting the idea of universal suffrage—then the Serbs of southern Hungary assembled at Karlovci at the beginning of May and conferred upon Archbishop Rajacsich the title of Patriarch, at the same time electing Colonel Stephen [vC]uplikac the voivoda or chief of the Serbian Voivodina, which was to comprise Syrmia, Baranja, Ba[vc]ka ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... to produce the result which we desire? Why, the overthrow of the Tweed Ring was conclusive evidence of the preponderance of public virtue in the city of New York. In no other country in the world, and in no other political system than one which provides for and secures universal suffrage, would such a sudden and peaceful revolution have been possible. The demonstration of this fact was richly worth the twenty-five or thirty millions of dollars which the thieves had stolen. Thereafter, and thenceforth, there could be no ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... and wonders in deep interest where you buy such excellent snuff. He agrees with you that Sir Peter Laurie is the first statesman of the day, and flies into the highest ecstacies when he learns that it is some of George the Fourth's sold-off stock. He even acknowledges that Universal Suffrage is the only thing that can save the nation, and affects to be quite astonished that he has left his box behind him. He will beg to be remembered to your wife, and leaves you after begging for "the favour of another pinch." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... lower classes; he thought them detestable, and qualified universal suffrage as "a disgrace to the human mind." She preached concord, the union of classes, whilst he gave his opinion ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... with branches and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower classes in manufacturing towns, precursors of the Chartists of 1846, belonged to this society. Their avowed objects were annual parliaments and universal suffrage; but many members were in favor of a national convention and a republic. The tone of all three societies became French; they used a jargon borrowed from the other side of the Channel. They sent deputations to the National Convention, expressing their wish to adopt the republican form ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... of the nineteenth century, however, there came about a change in the attitude of American scholarship effected largely by political movements. Because of the unpopularity and the blunders of the southern States reconstructed on the basis of universal suffrage and mainly under the dictation of white adventurers from the North, the majority of the influential men of the country reached the conclusion that the southern white man, in spite of his faults as a slaveholder, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... legislation. The members of the former must be at least forty years old and married; every aspirant for a seat in the latter must be twenty-five and of good character. Both these bodies were alike to be elected by universal suffrage working indirectly through secondary electors, and limited by educational and property qualifications. There were many wholesome checks and balances. This constitution is known as that of I Vendemiaire, An IV, or September twenty-second, 1795. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the Weasel," lose all false modesty as to their musical powers, and become royally (I beg majesty's pardon) vocal. Choruses receive the additional charm of variety from each vocalist giving his tongue "universal suffrage" as to power, matter, and melody; everybody evinces a happy independence, and if, as the chorus is beginning, an unlucky wight finds his cigar just going out, he takes a few puffs to save the precious fire, and then starts off Derby pace to catch up his vocal colleagues, blending ten notes ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... intelligible that in the new conditions such modern idols as universal suffrage, public opinion, and the referendum, in which the ignorant masses are called on to decide questions which demand varied and profound knowledge, will last no longer than the old idols. The progress of human knowledge will bring about the replacement of such institutions by others, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... Whigs of the present day would in general approve. There is no reason to think, however, that the reform effected by Cromwell made any great difference in the conduct of the Parliament. Indeed, if the House of Commons had, during the reign of Charles the Second, been elected by universal suffrage, or if all the seats had been put up to sale, as in the French Parliaments, it would, we suspect, have acted very much as it did. We know how strongly the Parliament of Paris exerted itself in favour of the people on many important occasions; and the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... are being energetically organised is highly important. The City Dumas are elected by universal suffrage, and in purely local matters have more authority than the Soviets. Not a single democrat will see anything ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... influential, was the free public school system in New York. This system was originally planted by the great mayor and governor, De Witt Clinton, to whom the State is indebted for the Erie Canal, and for many other plans and impulses scarcely less significant. While Clinton was an advocate of universal suffrage, he perceived the danger of granting this power to an ignorant and largely foreign population; and in 1805 he secured a charter for "The Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York for the Education of Such Poor Children as do ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... under a despotism, a numerical majority of some sort or other is sure to govern. No man capable of thought, as Mr. Pollard certainly is, would admit that a majority was any more likely to be right under a system of limited than under one of universal suffrage, always provided the said majority did not express his own opinions. The majority always governs in the long run, because it comes gradually round to the side of what is just and for the common interest, and the only dangerous majority ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... representatives of the peoples of the States brought together in the Community, shall exercise the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty." 40) Paragraph 3 of Article 138 shall be replaced by the following: "3. The European Parliament shall draw up proposals for elections by direct universal suffrage in accordance in accordance with a uniform procedure in all Member States. The Council shall, acting unanimously after obtaining the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by a majority of its component members, lay down the appropriate provision, ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union

... of one mind, always on the spot, and always hungry and ready for anarchy and blood. Besides which, they are already accused of having sold themselves to Mr. Pitt. Very often I have heard my dear father talking of universal suffrage as the bulwark of liberty; well then, we have now, and here, an universal suffrage that is neither a fraud nor a fiction; and as Athanase says, "it is expressing itself every minute, in the crimes ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... herself is very careful to guard the polls so jealously that she will not allow any man to vote who does not pay roundly for the "privilege" of voting, while she provides other securities that operate so stringently as sometimes to exclude even men who have paid their money. Universal suffrage exists nowhere in the United States, nor has its introduction ever been proposed in any part of this country. The French imperial system of voting approaches much nearer to universality than anything that ever has been known in America; and yet England manages to get ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... aside the letter of the Constitution, and appealing to the nation for a vindication of its course. In the event of the calling of a Convention a further question is to be considered as to whether the delegates shall be elected by universal suffrage, or under the present restrictive laws. The Ministry now in office seem pledged to the latter, while the Constitutionnel, understood to be the organ of the President, advocates universal suffrage. From this it is inferred that Bonaparte intends to keep the choice open to himself of selecting either ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the civil and the criminal law, the "liberte', egalite', fraternite'," together with the 2d of May 1852—all vanished like a phantasmagoria before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of the people, declare: "All that exists ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... been variously affirmed that the political leaven of these destructive ferments in eastern and central Europe was wholesome. Slavs and Germans, it is argued, stung by the bankruptcy of their political systems, resolved to alter them on the lines of universal suffrage and its corollaries, but were carried farther than they meant to go. This mild judgment is based on a very partial survey of the phenomena. The improvement in question was the work, not of the Bolshevists, but of their adversaries, the moderate reformers. And the political strivings of these ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... ... It seemed to me certain, that when new States had to be incorporated with Prussia, despotic reaction would be impossible, much more if a German Parliament were summoned. And now the King himself proposes Universal Suffrage for all men above twenty-five and of unblemished character! This seems to make any English Reform Bill impossible, which is not far more democratic than any practical statesman here has yet imagined. Nevertheless, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... discreditable production. The tone of it is detestable, the object mischievous, though by no means definite or clear. After stripping it of all its invectives and ribaldry, there is no proposition which can be extracted from it except that of giving universal suffrage, for, although he does not say so, his argument cannot be arrested short of such a consummation. It is a bitter, brilliant, wayward satire and philippic, and, as Johnson said of Junius, 'if you extract from its wit the vivacity of impudence, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... from sentiment, partly for political convenience, a hereditary chief, but the will of the people is decisive upon all questions, and every man by his vote helps to mould the destiny of the State. There is practically universal suffrage, and the highest offices of the State are within reach of any citizen who is competent to attain them. On the other hand, the Transvaal is an oligarchy, not a democracy, where half the inhabitants ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... many whose two ideals are the man on horseback and the man in his shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether Washington, with his grand manner, would be nearly as popular with what are called "the masses" as Lincoln, with his homely ways and broad stories. The experiment of universal suffrage must render the waters of political and social life more or less turbid even if they remain innoxious. The Cloaca Maxima can hardly mingle its contents with the stream of the Aqua Claudia, without taking something from its crystal clearness. We need not go so far ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... is the true basis of universal suffrage; hence the several States should so amend their constitutions as to make education compulsory, and, as a stimulus to the rising generation, declare that after 1885 all who exercise the right of suffrage must be able to read and write the English language. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of the year 1780, when the famous Resolutions on the State of the Representation, signed by Mr. Fox as chairman of the Westminster Committee, together with a Report on the same subject from the Sub-committee, signed by Sheridan, were laid before the public. Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage were the professed objects of this meeting; and the first of the Resolutions, subscribed by Mr. Fox, stated that "Annual Parliaments are the undoubted right of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... majority was prevented, and the practical direction of affairs was thrown into the hands of the better class of citizens, though not free from objection, is the most perfect method of combining universal suffrage in the citizens, with the real direction of affairs by those fitted to conduct them, which the wit of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... his back; and then came the meteorologists, with a curious apparatus, consisting of a large tin scutcheon, across which was fastened a red band, with the letters 'Al. St.,' signifying 'almindelig stemmeret,' or 'universal suffrage.' [54] ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... brought in a bill to remedy what was said to be the great defect in the registration laws, and it was not his fault that it was not carried; he proposed to extend the franchise, and he was denounced for doing so by the advocates of universal suffrage; he has promoted the formation of railways; he has issued a commission to enquire into the oppressions said to be perpetrated on their tenantry by the Irish landlords; and he has subjected Irish absentees to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... simplification of judicial procedure and the forms of government; for the election, on the American plan, of administrative as well as legislative authorities; for annual parliaments; for increased powers of local government; for universal suffrage; for the abolition of clergy reserves, seigneurial tenure, and church tithes; and for the repeal of the Union. They joined the disgruntled Tories of their province in demanding, for very different reasons, annexation to the ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... appear in favour of a republic. Popular societies were formed, and became the vogue, with a programme of universal suffrage, and fraternization as a social characteristic. Women, occasionally children, were admitted; the members called one {112} another brother and sister, having discarded more formal modes of address; popular banquets were held. The influence of woman, of which something has already been said, was ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... same dismal story, and their statements were caught up and paraded and dwelt upon in the English periodical press. In "The Quarterly Review," in particular, our condition was constantly held up as an awful example of the results of democratic institutions and universal suffrage. Certain facts and predictions had been repeated so often that they came to be accepted and believed by all. We spoke a dialect of the English tongue; our manners were bad, if we could be said to have any at all; ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. The state was an historically necessary evil, but its complete extinction will be, sooner or later, equally necessary. Repudiating all legislation, even when issuing from universal suffrage, Bakunin claimed for each nation, each region and each commune, full autonomy, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours, and full independence for the individual, adding that one becomes really free only when, and in proportion ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the provisional Government conceded to all Brazilians who could read and write universal suffrage, and this was followed by the appointment of a Commission for the providing of a Federal Constitution. Republican measures came quickly. On January 10, 1890, the separation of Church and State was decreed by the provisional Government; and on June 23 of the same year the ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... call himself a man of progress was to declare himself a philosopher in all things and a puritan in politics; it declared him in favor of railroads, mackintoshes, penitentiaries, wooden pavements, Negro freedom, savings-banks, seamless shoes, lighting by gas, asphalt pavements, universal suffrage, and reduction of the civil list. In short, it meant pronouncing himself against the treaties of 1815, against the Eldest Branch, against the colossus of the North, perfidious Albion, against all enterprises, good or bad, of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... words for universal suffrage could not be employed. His argument is that if men are taxed without being represented, they are deprived of essential rights; and the continuance of this deprivation despoils them of every civil right, thus making the latter depend upon the right of suffrage, which ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... ever lived in history before. This continent has been the great white plain of eternity on which the chains of ages have been broken, freeing the human soul and body at one stroke, placing in men's hands, the mighty weapon of progress and defense—universal suffrage. The workingman of to-day lives better than the kings of the Middle Ages. Have patience, my friends, the workingman of to-morrow will be the heir of all the knowledge, of all the pain and all the glory ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... supernaturalist as equally to repel the radical destructionists in religion. He and I are Christ-worshipers, adoring Him as the Image in the Invisible God and all that comes from believing this. Then he has been a reformer, an advocate of universal suffrage and woman's rights, yet not radical enough to please that reform party who stand where the socialists of France do, and are for tearing up all creation generally. Lastly, he had had the misfortune of a popularity which is perfectly ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... was uniformly consistent in his view of the remedies which the various sections of Opposition proposed against the existing debasement and servility of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond wanted universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. Wilkes proposed to disfranchise the rotten boroughs, to increase the county constituencies, and to give members to rich, populous, trading towns—a general policy which ...
— Burke • John Morley

... Fusion Bourbons desire Constitutional Government Socialists would prefer the Empire They rejoiced in the Orleans confiscation Empire might be secured by liberal institutions Policy of G. English new Reform Bill Dangers of universal suffrage Baraguay d'Hilliers and Randon Lent in the Provinces Chenonceaux Montalembert's speech Cinq Mars Appearance of prosperity Petite culture in Touraine Tyranny more mischievous than civil war Centralisation ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... seventeen seats were held by the People's Party, corresponding to the Young Czech Party in Bohemia, thirteen by the Old Czechs and five by the Clericals. In 1896 Badeni made an attempt at enfranchising the masses; seventy-two additional deputies were to be elected by universal suffrage. In these elections the Young Czechs again won in Bohemia. In Moravia the People's Party concluded a compromise with the Old Czechs and gained fifteen seats, the Socialists gained three seats and the Clericals one. On entering the parliament the Czechs again ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... of Providence, this land was to be purged of human slavery ... the Republican party came into power," ran a declaration in one platform. "The Republican party suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four million slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and established universal suffrage," ran another. As for the aid rendered by the millions of Northern Democrats who stood by the union and the tens of thousands of them who actually fought in the union army, the Republicans in their ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... that though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a right to an equal share. Horne Tooke's Radicalism (I use the word by anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. He opposed the government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. He argued against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. A comfortable old gentleman, with a good cellar of Madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit in a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see George III. at the guillotine, and still less to see a mob ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... suits the impetuous patriotism of Mr Sims. He is possessed evidently with the idea that some great explosion of national genius would suddenly take place, if the people would but resolve upon it. It is an affair of public opinion, like any other measure of policy; if but the universal suffrage could be brought to bear upon it, the thing were done; it is from the electoral urn that the whole scroll of poets and philosophers is to be drawn. "Let the nation," he solemnly proclaims, "but yield a day's faith ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... Chihuahua and Durango had not submitted; but enough of the Mexican territory was pacified to answer immediate purposes. European criticism and the scruples of Maximilian must be satisfied by this appearance of a popular election and a quasi-universal suffrage. For forty years Mexico had not been so quiet. The defeated and demoralized Liberal forces were scattered, and the Juarez government, retreating toward the extreme northern frontier at Monterey, seemed to have nothing ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... their faith; and since then they have had to fight up their way through a long, a circuitous, and an uneven track. Their creed, as before intimated, is Calvinistic, and that is a sufficient definition of it. They believe in a sort of universal suffrage, so far as the election of their pastors is concerned; and if they have grievances on hand they nurse them for a short time, then appeal to "the presbytery." and in case they can't get consolation from that body they go to "the synod." We could give the history of this sect, but ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Emperor of his son, and the child was a prisoner with his mother in the palaces of Vienna. Very cordially Napoleon received his two nephews, and kept them continually near him. With characteristic devotion to the principle of universal suffrage, Napoleon submitted the question of his re-election to the throne of the empire to the French people. More than a million of votes over all other parties ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... inherited is that of a status created for the individual by laws and institutions, the effect of which is that each man is guaranteed the use of all his own powers exclusively for his own welfare. It is not at all a matter of elections, or universal suffrage, or democracy. All institutions are to be tested by the degree to which they guarantee liberty. It is not to be admitted for a moment that liberty is a means to social ends, and that it may be impaired for major considerations. ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... cutting tools manufactured from it: French metallurgists pronounced the product of peculiar excellence, and nevertheless the project of the company was abandoned. Political disorganization consequent upon the establishment of universal suffrage frightened capitalists who might have aided the undertaking under a better condition of affairs; and the lack of large means, coupled with the cost of freight to remote markets, ultimately baffled this creditable attempt to found a ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... stirring up discontent against existing institutions, but it must be admitted that he condemned the use of physical force, and pointed to parliamentary reform as the legitimate cure for all social evils. Reform, however, in Cobbett's meaning included universal suffrage with annual parliaments, and the Hampden clubs, all over the country, agitated for the same objects in less guarded language. Still, looking back at these democratic agencies by the light of later experience, we can hardly adopt the opinion ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... haste his feet to disengage, Nor lime his wings, whom Love has made a prize; For love, in fine, is nought but phrensied rage, By universal suffrage of the wise: And albeit some may show themselves more sage Than Roland, they but sin in other guise. For, what proves folly more than on this shelf, Thus, for ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... suggests an amendment, and I indorse it most heartily, and foreign women too, because if we let a foreign man vote I say let the foreign woman vote. I am in favor of universal suffrage. ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... will follow from a given cause, a certain general condition of social circumstances being presupposed. As, for example, what would be the effect of imposing or of repealing corn laws, of abolishing monarchy or introducing universal suffrage, in the present condition of society and civilization in any European country, or under any other given supposition with regard to the circumstances of society in general, without reference to the changes which might take place, or which may already ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... any of whose members he may grant a salary of 30,000 francs, "may propose modifications of the Constitution:" its deliberations are secret. The Legislature is to consist of a deputy for every 35,000 electors, elected by universal suffrage, for six years. The President convokes, adjourns, prorogues, and dissolves this body at his pleasure; he nominates its President and Vice-President; the official minute of its proceedings, drawn up by the Bureau, is all that is allowed to be published; it cannot ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Republic of Tanzania, the Assembly enacts laws that apply only to the mainland; Zanzibar has its own House of Representatives to make laws especially for Zanzibar (the Zanzibar House of Representatives has 50 seats, directly elected by universal suffrage to serve ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. Yet during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length, Professor Owen has not ventured ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... May Anniversary. On the way back the New York delegation discussed this new plan enthusiastically, and Miss Anthony wrote home that there was a strong wish in the society to widen its object so as to include universal suffrage, believing this to be the case. The necessary steps at once were taken for calling a national woman's rights meeting to convene in New York the same week as the Anti-Slavery Anniversary, and the following call was issued ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... District Court, which was suggested by the President on the 3d of February and voted by the House on the 18th of February; the other was an address which Justice Chase delivered on the 2d of May to a Baltimore grand jury, assailing the repeal of the Judiciary Act and universal suffrage and predicting the deterioration of "our republican Constitution... into a mobocracy, the worst of all possible governments." * Considering the fact that the President was still smarting from the Chief Justice's lash and also that Chase himself ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... writing a little book about its hero. His Life of Franklin Pierce belongs to that class of literature which is known as the "campaign biography," and which consists of an attempt, more or less successful, to persuade the many-headed monster of universal suffrage that the gentleman on whose behalf it is addressed is a paragon of wisdom and virtue. Of Hawthorne's little book there is nothing particular to say, save that it is in very good taste, that he is a very fairly ingenious advocate, and that if he claimed for the future ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... self-government, the problem was successfully worked out. The suffrage was still limited to the holders of land; but the spirit of the Revolution looked towards abolishing all legal distinctions between man and man; and the foundation of later democracy, with its universal suffrage, was ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... the Queen's health was proposed; and the party expressed the greatest admiration for Her Majesty, and respect for the British Constitution. They all said that universal suffrage did not produce such deplorable results in the South as in the North; because the population in the South is so very scattered, and the whites being the superior race, they ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... intellectuals among them propounded the idea of the "Monarchomaques" that "the prince existed for the people, not the people for the prince," while the uneducated classes already proclaimed the principle of modern democracy and universal suffrage and questioned the right of the States to represent the people. Since August 1577 Brussels had been practically in the hands of the Commune, represented by a Council of Eighteen. Similar Councils had seized power in some provincial towns, and at Ghent, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... first, not only was there a property qualification in many of the States, but foreigners and negroes were in some of them altogether excluded from the polls. The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution crowned the edifice of universal suffrage in the United States; and the floodgates, once open, can never be shut again. A set of men once armed with the vote cannot be deprived of it: and all the efforts of Know-nothing movements will probably be vain, whether directed against ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... is elected by universal suffrage in electoral districts which were originally equal, but as we have noted are far from equal now. This house has three hundred and ninety-seven members, of whom two hundred and thirty-five are from Prussia. It sits for five years, but may be dissolved by the Bundesrath ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... divided masses and classes here. All classes, with the exception of the bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the establishment of a constitutional government, elected by the people on a basis of universal suffrage, and directly ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... in England, the distress and discontent of the poorer classes occasioned the riotous "Chartist" movement in 1839, when universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and other radical changes were in vain demanded. Mass meetings were held, and outbreakings of violence were feared; but order ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... boast, and which are the wonder and admiration of Europe. America is the only country under the sun in which there is self-government,—a government which purely represents the wishes of the people, where universal suffrage is not a mockery. And if America has a destiny to fulfil for other nations, she must give them something more valuable than reaping machines, palace cars, and horse railroads. She must give, not only machinery to abridge labor, but institutions and ideas ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... and Asia, to the mines of Nertschinsk, in the ever-frozen Altai. We lost all we had on earth; seemingly we were always beaten; but Portugal and Spain enjoy to-day a constitutional regime that is an improvement on absolutism. France has expelled forever the Bourbons, and universal suffrage, spelt now by the French people, is a progress, is a promise of a great democratic future. Germany has in part conquered free speech and free press. Italy is united, Romanism is falling to pieces, Austria is undermined and shaky, and broken are the chains on the body of the Russian serf. All ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... provinces, both sentiment and example are propagated. For sixteen years, in our parliaments elected by universal suffrage, the majority maintains that party in power which wages war against the Church; which, systematically and on principle, is and remains hostile to the Catholic religion; which has its own religion for which it claims dominion; which is possessed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the educated women of this Republic to protest against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the ignorant voted not to have ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... power, will voluntarily advocate a measure so evidently and palpably destructive to themselves. The public funds of Great Britain rest on the securest of all bases in a popular community, the self-interest of the holders of power. They would soon be swept away under universal suffrage, as they have been in so many states of America, because the majority under such a system ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... the government once more yielded, recognizing the Central Committee, admitting the right of the National Guard to take an active part in politics, and promising the convocation of a National Convention on the basis of a single chamber elected by universal suffrage. On the 17th the emperor left Vienna for Innsbruck "for the benefit of his health," and thence, on the 20th, issued a proclamation in which he cast himself on the loyalty of his faithful provinces, and, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... come we will continue to build up an office- holding class that is now so utterly idle, incompetent, impudent and corrupt that the history of the world can show nothing like it. This will be always so with universal suffrage. A government which permits the ballot of a man who has not a dollar's interest in the good conduct of the government, who can neither read nor write, who cannot speak the English language, who is permitted to vote ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... often sought merely for the better chance one had of making money, as the saying was. In the revolt against aristocratic government, the tendency in our race of going from one extreme to the other was again shown, and universal suffrage was adopted. This would have been wise if intelligence and honesty had also been universal. But the result proved it to be an exceedingly bad policy, for it created a large class of voters who held the high privilege of citizenship so meanly, and were themselves so venal, that they would even ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... England, she occupies a very low place in the scale. But then the people here have not even got universal suffrage! And this is a ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... I note that today in 1998, 100 years after Taine's death, Denmark, my country, has had total democracy, that is universal suffrage for women and men of 18 years of age for a considerable time, and a witty author has noted that the first rule of our unwritten constitution is that "thou shalt not think that thou art important". I have noted, however, that when a Dane praises ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... horrible, hypocritical, and stupid government,—this government which causes us to hesitate between a laugh and a sob, this gibbet-constitution on which all our liberties are hung, this great universal suffrage and this little universal suffrage, the first naming the President, and the other the legislators; the little one saying to the great one: "Monseigneur, accept these millions," and the great one ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... accustomed always to bring his individual light to a common search for the truth. My ideas may seem strange to you, but they are the outcome of much thought caused by the calamities of the last forty years. Universal suffrage, which finds such favor in the sight of those persons who belong to the constitutional opposition, as it is called, was a capital institution in the Church, because (as you yourself have just pointed out, dear pastor) the individuals of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... between the political role of the Soviets and that of the democratic organs of self-government. More than once, the Philistines called our attention to the fact that the new dumas and zemstvos elected on the basis of universal suffrage, were incomparably more democratic than the Soviets and were more suited to represent the population. However, this formal democratic criterion is devoid of serious content in a revolutionary epoch. The significance ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... class and the bourgeoisie, who gradually fuse to form the conservative element in all nations. Napoleon III restores the Empire in France. In Austria and Prussia, Bismarck and Francis Joseph II retrieve losses of 1848. Disraeli and Conservatives in England. 4. The progress toward universal suffrage after 1865, strengthening political position of lower classes. Vindication of democratic government through triumph of the North in the United States gave impetus to democracy abroad. Electoral reform bills in Great ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... the field of art and literature we have abandoned criticism and research for the Beautiful in favor of universal puffery. In politics we have nullified intelligence and renounced leadership to embrace universal suffrage, which is the last ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... Were there but question of countless millions of dollars and people, then indeed the victory would already have been gained. If we are to serve the highest interests of mankind, and to mark an advance in human history, we must do more than establish universal suffrage, and teach every child to read and write. As true criticism deals only with men of genius or of the best talent, and takes no serious notice of mechanical writers and book-makers, so true history loses sight of nations whose only distinction lies ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... changed by the proper authorities, not to interpose our individual caprices or fancies or speculations [that is, our convictions of justice] to defeat its due course and triumph." We must not "disregard laws, when disliked, because we can, under the universal suffrage enjoyed here, otherwise help legally to change or annul them by our votes." "As jurors you have sworn to obey them till so changed, and ought to stand by them faithfully, to the last moment of their existence." "We are ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... parliament has powers peculiar to itself, and never interferes with the upper parliament under the same roof, its powers not being so great as the "Senatus populusque Romanus." It is an annual parliament, but does not extend to universal suffrage. The members vacate their seats or stands, when discharged by their masters in the upper, or legal parliament. This parliament prints no journals, its acts not extending beyond the room, except when the Irish members turn out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... legislature." After the formation of the Constitution it remained, as before, the uniform usage for each State to enlarge the body of its electors according to its own judgment, and under this system one State after another has proceeded to increase the number of its electors, until now universal suffrage, or something very near it, is the general rule. So fixed was this reservation of power in the habits of the people and so unquestioned has been the interpretation of the Constitution that during the civil war the late President never harbored the purpose—certainly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... militarism. What is this new and terrible crime? Since the years of the wars of liberation against France and Napoleon we have had what amounts practically to universal conscription. Only two generations later universal suffrage was introduced. The nation has been sternly trained by its history in the ways of discipline and self-restraint. Germans are very far from mistaking freedom for license and independence ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... universally received in civilized nations, that government is instituted solely for the good of the governed. And in the progress of amelioration and improvement, it has been supposed that the popular principle of universal suffrage, with frequent elections, and consequent responsibility of political agents, would effectually prevent the exercise of tyranny in governments; and this especially when governments are instituted under written constitutions, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Voltairians, enemies to religion and devourers of priests? Fortunately, we have yet four Sundays before us, from now until the voting-day, and the patron will go to high mass and communion in our four more important parishes. That will be a response! If such a man is not elected, universal suffrage is hopeless!" ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... me that he had a conversation with Louis XIV, who said to him: "Universal suffrage is an excellent thing in a monarchy. It is a source of information. When it recommends a certain course of action it shows us that this is a thing which we must not do. If I could have consulted it over the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, it would have given ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws be made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... into Iowa, into Kansas, into Illinois, and into New Jersey, and by 1872 was serious enough to encourage the leaders to call for a national convention which gathered at Cincinnati (May, 1872), and, after declaring for amnesty, universal suffrage, civil service reform, and no more land grants to railroads, nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, for President, and B. Gratz Brown, the Liberal leader of Missouri, for Vice President. The nomination of Greeley displeased ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... of power to be the chief danger of the country, and the barrier of state rights, great and small, to be its only protection even against the Supreme Court. Gallatin took broader ground, and found encouragement in the excellent working of universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to legislative bodies. But he was opposed to the extension of the principle to municipal officers having the application of the proceeds of taxes, forgetting that universal suffrage is the lever by which capital is moved to educate labor ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... long in a state of bondage that few members of it certainly will take a leading part in the discussions. How many even will be allowed to influence the election of members by their votes or their capacity? Universal suffrage can scarcely be anticipated, perhaps even it would not be desirable. The question is certainly a doubtful one. Of one thing are we certain regarding the composition of an Irish Parliament: it would not ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... up for a critical bookstore-keeper? What is the Republic of Letters, anyway? A vast, benevolent, generous democracy, where one may have what one likes, or a cold oligarchy where he is compelled to take what is good for him? Is it a restricted citizenship, with a minority representation, or is it universal suffrage?" ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... return to their avocations. The students at Yale who are 21 years of age do the same, and go back to their exercises. The whole affair is managed with as much propriety as the election of deacons in the church at New Amsterdam. This is the working of universal suffrage in New England. Oh that all America, and all the world, were in this respect like the land of ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... the most solemn epochs. In 1848 the formula "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" was the one which went straight to the heart of the masses, and if they acclaimed the Republic and universal suffrage, it was because they hoped to attain to Communism through them. In 1871, also, when the people besieged in Paris desired to make a supreme effort to resist the invader, what was their demand?—That free rations should be served ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin

... he answered. "If I had my way, you would very soon see that one man wouldn't have so much more stake in the country than another. Then Universal Suffrage follows automatically—in fact that's the way ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... this time, not yet," he answered. "What we want is reform—no half measures, oh! dear no, that won't do at all. We want complete reform, do you hear? And why not universal suffrage?" ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... propounded for the college, in the shape of provision for the teaching of sociology. For though we are all agreed that party politics are to have no place in the instruction of the college; yet in this country, practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every man who does his duty must exercise political functions. And, if the evils which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Bundercombe exclaimed firmly. "We want universal suffrage. We want men and women placed on exactly the ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... basis of all prosperity, for that as well as for every other part of the country, lies the improvement of the intellectual and moral condition of the people. Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson

... She abhors change. She has not a radical in her whole dominions, except in jail—the only place fit for him. The agitations and vexations of other governments stop at the Austrian frontier. The people have not made the grand discovery, that universal suffrage is meat and drink, and annual parliaments lodging and clothing. They labour, and live by their labour; yet they have as much dancing as the French, and better music. They are probably the richest and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... 'how rarely one meets these old full-bodied clarets nowadays. The free admission of French wines has corrupted taste and impaired palate. Our cheap Gladstones have come upon us like universal suffrage.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... After six years from the passing of the Home Rule Bill—let us say in the year 1900—the Irish Parliament can alter the qualification of the electors and the distribution of the members among the constituencies. Parliament can in fact introduce at once universal suffrage, and do everything which the ingenuity of partisanship can suggest for diminishing the representation of property and of Protestantism. If, further, in any part of Ireland there be reason to fear opposition ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... Englishman is of a composition so uncomfortably original that no one can copy him, though many may caricature. I saw an American in London once who thought himself an Englishman because he wore leg-of-mutton whiskers, declaimed against universal suffrage and republics, and had an appetite for high game. He was a hateful animal, surely, but he was not the British lion; and this poor Hebrew at Bologna was not a whit more successful in his imitation of the illustrious brute, though he ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... country save that of a slave, but he has proven himself to be more valuable as a free man than as a slave. What kind of Negroes do the American people want? Do they want a voteless Negro in a Republic founded upon universal suffrage? Do they want a Negro who shall not be permitted to participate in the government which he must support with his treasure and defend with his blood? Do they want a Negro who shall consent to be set apart as forming a distinct industrial class, permitted to rise no higher than the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... franchise only to "white" persons. In 1867 the people of the State voted against striking the word "white" from the Constitution. In that year I was elected to the Ohio Senate, and participated in the political discussion of those times, both on the stump and in the General Assembly, and favored universal suffrage and the political equality of all persons. The wisdom of such suffrage will hardly be settled so long as there exists a great disparity of learning and moral, public and private, among the people, race ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... intelligent men, in different states of the Union, who could not even repeat the names of the senators who sat for them in Congress. Macaulay said, in 1852, "We now know, by the clearest of all proof, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no security, against the establishment of arbitrary power." To quote James Russell Lowell, writing a little later: "We have begun obscurely to recognize that . . . popular government is not in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... popular classes into political life—that is to say, in reality, their progressive transformation into governing classes—is one of the most striking characteristics of our epoch of transition. The introduction of universal suffrage, which exercised for a long time but little influence, is not, as might be thought, the distinguishing feature of this transference of political power. The progressive growth of the power of the masses took place ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is powerless; especially if it pretends ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... to the Federal Constitution. The nineteenth amendment on "Suffrage" is still pending, needing only one more state to give universal suffrage to women. ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell

... unanimously chosen the chief magistrate of a free people, we have seen him, at a time when his re-election with universal suffrage could not be doubted, afford to the world a rare instance of moderation, by withdrawing from his station to the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... generally either on that day or the preceding or following day. One must look to the price at which similar things are generally sold in the open market.'[1] 'We must state precisely,' says the Abbe Desbuquois, 'the character of this common estimation; it did not mean the universal suffrage; although it expresses the universal interest, it proceeds in practice from the evaluation of competent men, taken in the social environment where the exchange value operates. If one supposes a sovereign tribunal of arbitration where all the rights of all the weak and all ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien



Words linked to "Universal suffrage" :   right to vote, suffrage, vote



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