James Kent, Excerpt from the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled for the
Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New York, 1821.
That extreme democratic principle [universal suffrage] . . . has been regarded with terror by the wise
men of every age because, in every European republic, ancient and modern, in which it has been tried,
it has terminated disastrously and been productive of corruption, injustice, violence, and tyranny. . . .
The apprehended danger from the experiment of universal suffrage applied to the whole legislative
department is no dream of the imagination. . . . The tendency of universal suffrage is to jeopardize the
rights of property and the principles of liberty. There is a constant tendency . . . in the poor to covet and
to share the plunder of the rich; in the debtor to relax or avoid the obligation of contracts; in the majority
to tyrannize over the minority and trample down their rights; in the indolent and the profligate to cast
the whole burdens of society upon the industrious and virtuous. . . . We are no longer to remain plain
and simple republics of farmers. . . . We are fast becoming a great nation, with great commerce,
manufactures, population, wealth, luxuries, and with the vices and miseries that they engender.
