On the record
They constitute a system only likely to endure among a people of high virtue and high intelligence.
Said by
Whitelaw Reid
Source
gutenberg.orgWhitelaw Reid: “They constitute a system only likely to endure among a people of high virtue and high intelligence.”
Editor's note · Context
Reid asserts that a system of governance requires high virtue and intelligence among its people to endure.
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Our national experience has demonstrated that public order reposes most securely on the broad base of universal suffrage.
Let me repeat, that I think it best for all men—white men, black men, and brown men, if you make that distinction, that all men of proper age and unconvicted of crime, should have the right of suffrage.
May it not prove, moreover, in that work of reorganization, which now engages the thoughts of all patriotic men, that universal suffrage is the best reconciler of the most comprehensive lenity with the most perfect public security and the…
In this way they will surely overcome unjust hostility, and convince even the most prejudiced that the denial to them of any right which citizens may properly exercise is equally unwise and wrong.