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Certainly, it was not out of suspicion of bribery and corruption that they required all such petitioners for their favor to appear ungirt and open, without any close garment; as it was much later, and many ages after this, that buying and selling crept in at their elections, and money became an ingredient in the public suffrages; proceeding thence to attempt their tribunals, and even attack their camps, till, by hiring the valiant, and enslaving iron to silver, it grew master of the state, and turned their commonwealth into a monarchy.
He affirmed that none of these motives at present existed; that, in case the imperial crown should devolve to a minor, many mischiefs and disorders must ensue, as the constitutions of the empire have established no regulations nor regency in that event; that an election of this nature, carried on under the power, influence, and authority of the head of the empire, would strike at the fundamental privileges of the princes and states; consequently, in time overturn the constitution of the empire, which, from being an elective dignity, conferred by the free and independent suffrages of the electoral college and states of Germany, under certain capitulations, obliging the prince thus chosen to govern according to law, would become an hereditary succession, perpetuated in one family, which of course must be aggrandized to the prejudice of its co-estates, and the ruin of the Germanic liberties.
But it will be said, perhaps, that candidates for political influence and leadership, who thus caress the self-love of those whose suffrages they desire, know quite well that they are not saying the sheer truth as reason sees it, but that they are using a sort of conventional language, or what we call clap-trap, which is essential to the working of representative institutions.
Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and such like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by? To the great mass of men, I am aware, the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side. Democracy they consider to be a kind of "Government."
Carlyle in 1850 had asked whether 'democracy once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and such-like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and had answered, 'Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting.
They say that also persons advanced in years were appointed by the last suffrages, in order that they might oppose with less warmth the opinions of others.
The question was to be renewed and to be decided by the people only; and since the people had the right to refuse what the Senate offered, they possessed, for the same reason, the right to give what the Senate did not offer. The moment now arrived for consulting the Council of State as to the mode to be adopted for invoking and collecting the suffrages of the people.
In a country whose constitution is derived from the will of the people, directly expressed by their free suffrages; where the principal executive functionaries and those of the legislature are renewed by them at short periods; where under the character of jurors they exercise in person the greatest portion of the judiciary powers; where the laws are consequently so formed and administered as to bear with equal weight and favor on all, restraining no man in the pursuits of honest industry and securing to everyone the property which that acquires, it would not be supposed that any safeguards could be needed against insurrection or enterprise on the public peace or authority.
Obstinately unacademic in his temper and training, he has won the suffrages of the most fastidious and academic judges of excellence in his profession. The secret is, I suppose, that the lawlessness, the amateurishness, the indifference to standards were on the surface, apparent to everybody, the soundness and rightness of his practice were unconscious.
After morning prayer also, we have the Litany and suffrages, an invocation in mine opinion not devised without the great assistance of the Spirit of God, although many curious mind-sick persons utterly condemn it as superstitious, and savouring of conjuration and sorcery.
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