The right of voting being confined to members of the Communist party, the Government represented by no means one really elected by universal suffrage but rather a dictatorship of the lower classes.
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it.
In the Terror the number of those voting averaged only 250.
They were defeated on the second reading of the bill, Gladstone voting with them.
An educational test (dating from 1857) is exacted for the privilege of voting, every voter being required to be able to read the constitution of the commonwealth in the English language, and to write his name.