[p. 484]
|484| This calling is over with a single action, an action which occurs only once within several years; with the great number of those giving votes, the influence which his vote has may be regarded by the individual as very insignificant, the more so since the deputy whom he helps to elect is himself in turn only a member of a numerous assembly, in which only a small number can bring itself to the evidence of a considerable importance, while otherwise, through only one vote among many, it furnishes an equally inconspicuous contribution. However much, then, it is expected psychologically that the interest of the citizens of the state should drive them to seek the capacity to vote most zealously, to hold it important and an honour, as well as to press forward to the exercise of this right and actually to exercise it with great circumspection and without any other interest, experience has shown on the contrary that the too great distance between the importance of the effect which is to come out and the influence of the individual, which presents itself as extremely trifling, soon has the consequence that those entitled to vote become indifferent to this their right; and when the first laws are occupied with excluding many citizens from voting, legal dispositions soon become necessary to induce those entitled to appear for voting. – The example of England, so often used superficially, of the lively agitation at the elections to parliament, does not fit here either; for in this part of the English constitution the privileges and inequalities of entitlement are precisely the most influential circumstance, – of which the contrary rather lies in that atomistic method.
Moreover it goes without saying that these remarks against the abstract principles of number, of quantum of property, of age, cannot aim at wishing to deprive these circumstances of their significance and their influence. On the contrary, if the entitlement to vote
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