What has been here said upon the subject of qualifications naturally leads to a few observations upon the three principal modes of determining public questions and elections, by sortition, ballot and vote.
The idea of sortition was first introduced by the dictates of superstition.
It was supposed that, when human reason piously acknowledged its insufficiency, the Gods, pleased with so unfeigned a homage, interfered to guide the decision.
This imagination is now exploded. Every man who pretends to philosophy will confess that, wherever sortition is introduced, the decision is exclusively guided by the laws of impulse and gravitation. Strictly speaking, we know of no such thing as contingence. But, so far as relates to the exercise of apprehension and judgement on the particular question to be determined, all decision by lot is the decision of contingence. The operations of impulse and gravitation either proceed from a blind and unconscious principle;Chapter r, if they be the offspring of a superintending mind, it is mind executing general laws, not temporizing with every variation of human caprice.
All reference of public questions and elections to lot includes in it one of two evils, moral imbecility or cowardice. There is no situation in which we can be placed that has not its corresponding duties. There is no alternative that can be offered to our choice that does not include in it a better and a worse. The idea of sortition therefore i. springs either from an effeminacy that will not enquire, or a timidity that dares not pronounce its decision.
The path of virtue is simple and direct. The first attributes of a virtuous character are a mind awake, and a quick and observant eye. A man of right dispositions will enquire out the lessons of duty. The man, on the contrary, who is spoiled by stupidity or superstition will wait till these lessons are brought to him in a way that he cannot "resist. A superficial survey will perhaps lead him to class a multitude of human transactions among the things that are indifferent. But, if we be indefatigably benevolent, we shall, for the most part, find, even among things ordinarily so denominated, a reason for preference. He may well be concluded to have but a small share of moral principle who easily dispenses himself from seeking the occasion to exercise it. Add to which, they are not trifles, but matters of serious import that it has been customary to commit to the decision of lot.