The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

      Introduction © 1981 by William Murchison.

      This eBook edition published in 2013.

      eBook ISBNs:

       978-1-61487-102-6

       978-1-61487-220-7

       www.libertyfund.org

      CONTENTS

Introduction by William Murchison

Preface

CHAPTER 1

       English Representative Government in the Eighteenth Century

       Objects to be attained

       Taxation and representation

       Power of landed property

       And of the commercial classes

       Aristocratic influence

       Diversities in the size of constituencies and qualification of electors

       The small boroughs

       Dislike to organic change

       Merits of English government

       The founders of the American Republic aimed at the same ends

       Judge Story on the suffrage

       Rousseau's conception of government essentially different

       Review of the French constitutions, 1789–1830

       Ascendency of the middle class in France, 1830–1848

       English Reform Bill of 1832—Its causes

       Fears it excited not justified by the event

       Place of the middle class in English government

       The period from 1832 to 1867

       Votes not always a true test of opinion

       Motives that govern the more ignorant voters

       Dangers of too great degradation of the suffrage

       Growth of Rousseau's doctrine in England—The Irish representation

       University representation

       The new form of sycophancy

       Attacks on plural voting

       Equal electoral districts

       Taxation passing wholly under the control of numbers

       Successful parliaments mainly elected on a high suffrage

       Instability of democracies

       When they are least dangerous

       French Democracy

       Favourable circumstances under which it has been tried

       Manhood suffrage in 1848

       Restricted in 1851

       Re-established by Louis Napoleon—The Coup d'Etat and the plebiscite

       Universal suffrage under the Second Empire

       Last