Note 2 — LETTER XXIX.
Reading edition
“5. You may choose a pig or horse for yourself, but I claim the right of choosing mine, even though you know that you could choose better animals for me. By your system, if logically carried out, we should have no elections, but should have an emperor of the world,—the man who knew himself to be the most intelligent of all. I suppose you should be allowed to vote? It is somebody else who must have no political voice? Where do you draw the line? Just below John Ruskin?2 Is a man so little and his polish so much? Men and women must vote, or must not submit. I have bought but little of the polish sold at schools; but, ignorant as I am, I would not yield as the ‘subject’ of thirty million Ruskins, or of the king they might elect without consulting me. You did not let either your brain or your heart speak when you answered that question.