Wesley Corpus

But suppose we exclude women from using their natural right, by might overcoming right, what pretence have we for excluding men like ourselves, barely because they have not lived one-and-twenty years? “Why, they have not wisdom or experience to judge of the qualifications neces sary for Governors.” I answer, (1.) Who has? how many of the voters in Great Britain? one in twenty? one in an hundred? If you exclude all who have not this wisdom, you will leave few behind. But, (2.) Wisdom and experience are nothing to the purpose. You have put the matter upon another issue. Are they men? That is enough. Are they human creatures? Then they have a right to choose their own Governors; an indefeasible right; a right inherent, inseparable from human nature. “But in England they are excluded by law.” Did they consent to the making of that law? If not, by your original supposition, it can have no power over them. I therefore utterly deny that we can, consistently with that supposition, exclude either women or minors from choosing their own Governors. 25. But, suppose we exclude these by main force; are all that remain, all men of full age, the people? Are all males, then, that have lived one-and-twenty years, allowed to choose their own Governors? Not in England, unless they are freeholders, and have forty shillings a year. Worse and worse! After depriving half the human species of their natural right for want of a beard; after having deprived myriads more for want of a stiff beard, for not having lived one-and-twenty years; you rob others, many hundred thou sands, of their birthright for want of money ! Yet not alto gether on this account neither; if so, it might be more tolerable. But here is an Englishman who has money enough to buy the estates of fifty freeholders, and yet he must not be numbered among the people, because he has not two or three acres of land How is this? By what right do you exclude a man from being one of the people, because he has not forty shillings a year; yea, or not a groat? Is he not a man, whether he be rich or poor? Has he not a soul and a body?