Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/64

own interests, or power, or policy. The choice of representatives to act in a legislative capacity is not only a refinement of much later stages of actual association and civilization, but could scarcely occur, until the society had assumed to itself the right to introduce such institutions, and to confer such privileges, as it deemed conducive to the public good, and to prohibit the existence of any other. In point of fact, it is well known, that representative legislative bodies, at least in the form now used, are the peculiar invention of modem times, and were unknown to antiquity. If, then, every well organized society has the right to consult for the common good of the whole, and if, upon the principles of natural law, this right is conceded by the very union of society, it seems difficult to assign any limit to this right, which is compatible with the due attainment of the end proposed. If, therefore, any society shall deem the common good and interests of the whole society best promoted under the particular circumstances, in which it is placed, by a restriction of the right of suffrage, it is not easy to state any solid ground of objection to its exercise of such an authority. At least, if any society has a clear right to deprive females, constituting one half of the whole population, from the right of suffrage, (which, with scarcely an exception, has been uniformly maintained,) it will require some astuteness to find upon what ground this exclusion can be vindicated, which does justify, or at least excuse, many other exclusions.^[1] Government (to repeat the pithy language of Mr. Burke) has been deemed a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind,

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1. See Paley's Moral Philosophy, B. 6, ch. 7, p. 392; 1 Black. Comm. 171; Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, B. 11. ch. 6.