Semi Weekly Standard

THE FREE SUFFRAGE ACT.

In another column we publish the Act passed at the last session of the Legislature to amend the Constitution of North Carolina, and also the supplementary Act to take the sense of the people of the State on the first Thursday in August next relative to the proposed amendment. All persons qualified to vote for members of the House of Commons can vote on this question.

By the supplementary act it will be seen that it was the duty of the County Courts, at their first term after the first day of April, to appoint Inspectors for the Free Suffrage box. Certain duties are also enjoined on the Sheriffs, a failure to perform which, subjects the officer so neglecting to a forfeiture of one thousand dollars. But we suppose all the requirements of the law have been and will be complied with by the Courts and Sheriffs.

Those desiring to endorse this just and equitable measure will vote a ticket with the word "Approved" written or printed upon it, and those opposed, a ticket with the words "Not approved."

It is unnecessary for us, at this late day, to enter into a discussion of the merits of the question, or to show the propriety of ratifying the Free Suffrage Act, by recurring to the many incontrovertible arguments that have been heretofore brought forward by the friends of the measure. The proposition is a plain and simple one, easily understood, and incapable of misconstruction except by designing politicians who desire to defeat the measure because it was originated and mainly supported by democrats.

The fact is patent and has been demonstrated time after time that the free people of this country are capable of self-government, and can exercise the rights of suffrage without endangering the body politic. The Free Suffrage Act proposes to extend rights to a large, worthy and respectable class of citizens who were heretofore denied them—it proposes to allow qualified persons who now only enjoy the privilege of voting for members of one branch of the Legislature, the House of Commons, the right to vote also for members of the other branch, the Senate—it proposes to do away with the freehold qualification of fifty acres of land.

Now, to say that extending the right of suffrage in this particular will subject the landed interest to onerous taxation is nothing more than raising an objection without the least possibility of sustaining it. For the members themselves are required to be freeholders as they have ever been, and they will be pecuniarily interested; so they will not be more liable to burden the land with taxes because they are voted for by non freeholders than they were when elected by freeholders alone. We can see no force in the objection that the landed interest will be injured by adopting the measure proposed.

Four times have the people of North-Carolina demanded that their Constitution be amended in the manner proposed by the democratic party. Through the factious opposition of our opponents in the Legislature their will has been defeated until recently; and now that they have an opportunity of confirming and approving the measure at the polls, we hope they will do so by an overwhelming majority. Let not its friends be over-confident—there are those still opposed to the amendment, not from any valid reason, but from an instinctive hatred to anything originated by the democratic party. Let our friends see to it that while members of Congress and Clerks of the Courts are being voted for on the first Thursday in August, that Equal Suffrage also receives the attention its importance demands, and that a majority of twenty thousand crowns the Act with success.

Char. Dem.