The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-11-07
TRAFFIC IN VOTES
A VOTE IS NOT A MARKETABLE
COMMODITY NOR Is IT THE
ELECTORS TO SELL.

The Casket of Antagonist, n S., Can,
discussing, some years ago, the ques-
ton: why should not an elector
make little money by promising a
vote for the candidate who is ready
to pay the highest price?" gave the
following reasons why this should not
be done:
Because (1) vote is not salable
thing, not marketable commodity,
and CD because it is not his to SELL
And first, the suffrage or right to vote
does not belong to the class of things
that may be brought into the market
to be sold and bought, but is and ought
to be, like honor and virtue, strictly
unpurchasable. For the suffrage is
the right to exercise ones judgment
in the choice of one out of two or more
candidates for an Office, and the
eternal law of right requires that such
Judgment shall not be swayed unduly
to this side or to that by purely per-
sonal and selfish motives. Now it is
of the very nature of a bride thus
unduly to sway the judgment, and
therefore the sale of ones judgment,
i. e., of the suffrage, is against the
law of nature, and, under the law of
nature itself, invalid In the second
place, one cannot validity sell what is
not ones own to sell. But the right
to vote is not ones own to sell. 1t
is not property right, but a privi-
lege bestowed upon the individual by
society as sacred trust to be con-
scientiously discharged in the best
interests of society. To sell ones vote
Is thus to sell what has been given
one in trust for the common good
and what is therefore no more ones
own to sell than is any other thing
committed to one in trust.
The sale of that which is not salable
and which is not ones own to sell
confers no valid title to the price re-
ceiyed, which cannot therefore be
kept, and yet is not to be given back
to the person from whom it was got,
but spent for the benefit of society or
distributed in aims. There is another
sort (of ill-gotten goods)," writes st.
Thomas, (which the party who has
gotten it cannot keep, and yet it is
not due to him of whom he has gotten
it; because against justice he received
it, and against justice the other gave
it; as in the case of simony, in which
the justice of the divine law. Hence
restitution should not be made to the
giver, but the amount should be dis
tributed in aims. And the same in
like cases in which both the giving
and the receiving are against the law"
That the sale of a vote is one of
the like cases" which st. Thomas
would have us solve in the same way
is beyond question. There is the
strictest kind of parity between the
sale OF the suffrage and the sale of
something spiritual, say, a sacrament,
in which simony consists. For the
suffrage is in itself priceless entity,
like the sacrament, and is but given
in trust to the individual to be used
for the good of civil society, just as
the sacrament is committed to given
individual to be administered freely
for the good of religious society. The
taking of a bribe is an injustice to
society, and the bride is forfeit to
society by the law of nature which
dictates that man shall not live for
himself alone, and shall not pervert to
his private use and benefit what has
been bestowed upon him solely with a
view to the common good.