“To give 'the suffrage' to a poor man is to give him as large a part in determining that legislation which is mainly concerned with property as the banker whose name is known on every Exchange in Europe, as the merchant whose ships are in every sea, as the landowner who owns the soil of a whole manufacturing town…two day-labourers shall outvote Baron Rothschild…The bestowal upon any class of a voting power disproportionate to their stake in the country, must infallibly give that class a power pro tanto of using taxation as an instrument of plunder, and expenditure and legislation as a fountain of gain.”

— Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 116, 1864, p. 266, pp. 269-270
1860s

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Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury112

British politician 1830–1903

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