FRANCHISE. In its political acceptation, the F. may be said to be the right which centers in the individual holding it to exercise a certain limited portion of the general sovereignty of the state. A F. in this sense is possible only in a free state, i.e., in a. state in which the governed, as whole, are identical with the governors. It does. not necessarily involve the idea of representative government; for where legislation is effected by the votes of the people themselves, as it was in the small states of antiquity, the F. is exercised by each individual directly, without the intervention of any rep resentative machinery. Where representation has been introduced, the F. is the right which the citizen has of voting for his representative, not the right of the. legislative body conferred on the representative in consequence of being and is an expression not of the sovereignty which centers in him, but of that which belongs to the constituents who send him. There would be no theoretical inconsis tency, however, in applying the term F. to the right of voting in the house of lords, which belongs to each peer, because lie here exercises the sovereignty, or original free dom which belongs, or is supposed to belong, to himself, and does not represent that of others. As the F. is the political expression of the sovereignty which centers in each free citizen, the extent or value which ought to belong to the F. will be measured by the amount of the sovereignty which it expresses. But this sovereignty again corresponds, or finds forms of actual expression, in the social position which the individual occupies, in the amount of power and influence which is conceded to him_ by the society of which he is a part. A theoretically just F., then, would be one.
which corresponded accurately to the social position of each individual, which trans lated the verdict by which society fixed his status into the language of politics. But scientific accuracy in such matters, for obvious reasons, is unattainable. An approxi mation in the individual case is all that is possible in dealing with the mass, and one of the questions which is at present most keenly discussed amongst speculative politicians is, by what test shall this approximate estimate of social value be brought most nearly to the truth. Mr. J. S. Mill has proposed intelligence, as indicated by instruction, as. the sole measure of individual sovereignty, and, consequently, as the basis of the F. (see his work on Representative Government). Others have proposed wealth; whilst by a third class of speculators it is contended that, in the case of each individual, there are various elements of social importance which must be taken into account in deter mining the political value which is his due. By all the more recent writers on the theory of government, however, the idea of all citizens being entitled to an equal suf frage, however great might be the disparity of intelligence, wealth, manhood, and 'tiler elements which go to make up social importance, is repudiated as a scientific absurdity, and reprobated as the source of all the practical injustice which results from what are commonly. kno4vn, as democratic governuacuts. See Mill's..work, alluded to above; also P.AlithIsailt\ - Lnquize11 Dv microsott