Thus did he scout the whole wretched pretension of oligarchy and monopoly by which citizens are deprived of equal rights.
To these may be added his earliest and latest declarations on this important question. The earliest is in his “Notes on Virginia,” written in 1781, where he recognizes “a reciprocation of right” as a presiding principle:--
“When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give _a reciprocation of right_: that without this they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.”[131]
The latest declaration was in 1826, the year of his death. It is in a paper containing some of his most intimate opinions. Here he bears testimony to “_equality_ among our citizens” as “essential to the maintenance of republican government.”[132] These are among his dying words.
Madison was colder in nature than Jefferson; but they were associates in opinion, as in political life. In the debates on the National Constitution the former condemned the denial of rights on account of color:--
“We have seen the mere distinction of color made, in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”[133]
Speaking directly of the right of suffrage, he uses the following language:--
“_The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental articles of republican government_, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the legislature. A gradual abridgment of this right has been the mode in which _aristocracies_ have been built on the ruins of popular forms.”[134]
Thus declaring himself against “aristocracies,” he naturally recognized the true idea; and here he was perplexed by the question of a property qualification, and the effort to reconcile it with “the right of suffrage,” which he calls “a fundamental article in republican constitutions.”[135] In another place, he says of “confining the right of suffrage to freeholders”: “It violates _the vital principle_ of free government, that those who are to be bound by laws ought to have a voice in making them; and the violation would be more strikingly unjust as the lawmakers become the minority.”[136] Completely recognizing the great American principle, that just government can stand only on “the consent of the governed,” he is brought to this conclusion:--