In this article from 1912, Arthur E. Clery rallies for the extension of the vote to the youth population. A supporter of female suffrage and for the abolition of corporal punishment, he notes in his opening paragraphs that his argument is not meant as satire against the then-ongoing suffrage movement (Irish women would receive the vote in 1918), but was being “put forward as a serious remedy for a great body of admitted social evil”, namely the many crimes committed against youth through child-labour, violence, lack of education, hunger, and failings in public health.
Clery was a nationalist, author, politician and university professor. For more information on his life, visit his entry on the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Arthur E. Clery, ‘Votes for Youth’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 4, No. 14 (June 1915), 279-285. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30082662
Like ping-pong and roller-skating, the art and pastime of voting is for the moment somewhat out of vogue. At least it is so in Europe. Nevertheless, this has not prevented the inauguration of at least one suffrage movement. I take courage to suggest another. After all at the present time one can be a propagandist with less danger to life and limb than usual, since no one really cares what your views are, on any subject save the one. The absence of free institutions is moreover in some respects rather a help to the spread of novel opinions an absolute government having, as has often been remarked, by no means the same facilities for hunting down and slaying new ideas that a well-established democracy possesses. The Renaissance and the French Revolution were each of them the product of unfree institutions. Women’s claim to the suffrage and the further claim I now venture to put forward are but carrying the second of these movements to its logical conclusion.
It is a trite saying that the three stages of any reform movement are ridicule, indignation, and acquiescence. Home Rule is (outside Ulster) in the third stage; women’s suffrage was recently in the second; we can all remember when it was in the first. The proposals here put forward have yet to reach even the first stage, of attentive ridicule. But let me say that, though it may perhaps have the good fortune to excite wide-spread derision, this article is not intended to be humorous. It is not for instance written as a satire upon the movement for women’s suffrage, as might readily be suspected. On the contrary the suggestions it contains are put forward as a serious remedy for a great body of admitted social evil.
Modern social enquiry seems to be steadily reaching the conclusion that the human race is in large part ruined in its ‘teens. Physically, no doubt, civilised humanity is corrupted at a still earlier age by under feeding, bad housing, and want of medical attendance; and the community realising this has entered on a policy (limited no doubt) of housing the poor, free meals, and medical inspection for school children…The physical ruin of the poor comes early; their moral and intellectual degeneration comes in the second decade of life. I need not enlarge on such topics as child-labour, the sudden stoppage of education, the want of technical training and “blind-alley occupations”, nor yet on these worse snares and evils which a modern city provides in unchecked profusion for the young. The former class of evils has been pointed out by all recent social investigators…
…The latter kind of evils fall under that axiom of modern state-craft, that “the Devil has his rights and they are not lightly to be interfered with”. Humanity between the ages of twelve and twenty is surely the site of his most extensive possessions. The evils themselves are admitted. How are they to be dealt with? The remedy for social evils is commonly not sociological. Of course it is simple enough to combat evil; you have only to do good. But doing good, in a public way, is about the hardest thing in the world. It is commonly the most unpopular…One must look to politics for the answer to the problems of sociology…The social sciences seldom go beyond a treatment of symptoms. You must employ the surgery of the politician to effect a radical cure.
There is one other proposition which has come to be looked upon as an axiom of democracy, that nobody can look after a man’s interest as well as the man himself. Of course there are always other people ready to take charge of them. Before 1793, while Catholics still lacked the franchise, there were not a few benevolent Protestants ready to promote and foster their interests in every way, to be more Catholic than the Catholics themselves. Wolfe Tone for one was wholly disinterested. Still the Catholics preferred to do the voting themselves; they felt they could safe-guard Catholic interests better than even their most eager well-wishers. And this has been the view of all disfranchised classes, a view commonly borne out in the result. It is of course one of the strongest grounds upon which women’s claim to the suffrage is usually based. Now, as there were Protestants who looked after Catholic interests before 1798, as there are Members of Parliament at present who look after the interests of women, so there are by no means wanting philanthropists, who take an interest in the welfare of the young, men who devote themselves to such questions as “blind alley occupations” or “child-labour”, and honestly seek a remedy for them.
There are friends of youth, just as there are friends of Ireland, and friends of labour. But my point is that the interest of such persons in these questions and their influence for good in solving them is much less than the interest and influence of the classes affected would be if they were themselves allowed a voice in the matter. Philanthropy is a weak battle-cry as compared with self-interest. And though any one individual may be neglectful of his own interests, a class hardly ever is. Give boys the vote, and they will of a surety use it, like other classes, to promote the interests of their kind, to solve the problems of boyhood, to punish the outrages that are perpetrated on their age. The wrongs inflicted by adults upon voteless adolescents are very considerable, and yet like most such things readily laughed away. Laughter is the best defence for the indefensible.
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The young too have certain of the other marks of a servile class. With procurers and garotters they remain the only sections of the community still liable to torture by stripes. Laughter again tends to be the defence. And the jokes about flogging boys bear a close family resemblance to the jokes about flogging adult slaves, with which readers of Terence and Plautus are familiar. It is only in comparatively recent times that the same treatment has come to be looked upon as no longer suitable for women. Some such phrase as “it is good for them” or perhaps even “they like it” is in such matters usually thought a sufficient justification. That for which a class beyond all else needs the vote, is to protect itself from degradation. Of course it will be said that if the young had the vote, they would not know how to use it, that schoolboys are not the persons most fit to decide questions of foreign policy for instance. Are agricultural labourers? Youths under twenty-one have those qualities which are perhaps most lacking in modem statecraft, honesty and enthusiasm. They would form an uncorrupt element in every electorate. Honesty-public honesty-is the quality of the ‘teens and the early twenties. It is all but gone by the thirties, surviving later perhaps in a few chosen individuals…
Nor have boys shown themselves in any way lacking in those other qualities that make the good citizen. In Ireland at least, taking them one with another, they certainly work harder than adults, and their work is more disinterested. They have a far keener desire for intellectual improvement, and are more interested in serious questions. They read serious books for pleasure. Not one adult in a hundred does. Until contaminated by some of the sources of corruption already alluded to they are more religious and much less vicious than adults. In our time, in such bodies as the boy-scouts, they have shown a remarkable capacity for patriotism and organisation.
The “military” argument commonly urged against the female vote cannot be used in this case. Whilst on the other hand a well-known argument for women’s suffrage, that the highest type of woman is immeasurably superior to the lowest type of male voter, applies with even in creased force in the case of boys. A well-educated and clever boy has faculties immensely superior to those of the lowest type of adult voter. Yet even were this not the case, the objection would be irrelevant. It is not because of his capabilities as a governor, but because of his rights as one of the governed, that modern democracy gives an individual the vote.
Finally, it may be asked, what is the concrete proposition? Are voters in arms to be carried to the poll by their nurses, for instance? This is the reductio ad absurdum of the proposal. The propositions of practical politics always admit of a reductio ad absurdum; it in no way impairs their validity. There is a limit. But one can be damned at seven. I propose to give the vote at twelve, or at all events at fourteen, when the individual incurs full criminal responsibility, and a large degree of civil responsibility for his acts. In the Roman empire the privilege of citizenship was acquired about this age. In other words the interests of the school population, so much talked about, so little really attended to, would receive a real representation in the commonwealth.
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It remains to deal with a few rather obvious objections. “They have shown no desire for the vote, they don’t want it”. As this objection is a standard one against all franchise and emancipation movements whatever, I need only refer the objector to the well known answers, which are now almost as definitely in stereotype as the objection. “They would not use it if they got it”, “it would bring ruin and ridicule on the commonwealth”. “It is too ridiculous to be seriously discussed”. To these the same remark applies. Finally, the subtle humourist, if he be of a logical turn of mind, can urge something really original. “Why stop short in your democracy? Why not give votes to the other excluded classes, criminals and lunatics?” Well, as for lunatics, any politician must admit, nay he has perpetually stated, that they are fully represented – on the other side. Whilst as for criminals, many of them in fact have the vote; but in any event criminals belong commonly not so much to the classes that vote, as to the class that is voted for. To take the most famous instance, the hero of Victor Hugo’s “Story of a Crime” received the almost unanimous suffrages of the people.
I cannot, of course, hope for an immediate acceptance of these proposals. I shall be satisfied if I awake some first faint stirring in the political conscience of the community, even though that stirring should take its rise in the risible faculty.
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