William Lane was a prominent Republican in Queensland who wrote through a succession of Labor focused newspapers during the 1880s and 1890s. This is the transcript of his One-man-one-vote article which appeared in The Worker in 1891.

William Lane was an Englishman who came to Queensland via Canada and America in 1885. He worked as a journalist before starting The Boomerang. Audrey Oldfield in the Great Republic of the Southern Seas writes that the Boomerang; "preached socialism, white Australia, women's rights and republicanism". Mark McKenna in a Captive Republic writes that Lane's form of Republicanism was not too far different from The Bulletin's;

In certain respects, Lane's vision of a republic was not too dissimilar to that of the Bulletin. Monarchy was seen as a 'remnant of barbarism' and the British sovereign was a 'worthless brainless individual' who did 'nothing but draw a big salary'.

This was familiar rhetoric, but Lane though more critically than the Bulletin or Sydney Republicans. He frequently reminded his readers that a republic would not be a panacea and that Australians had to be just as careful of monopolists in a republic as under a monarchy.

For Lane, a republic was nothing if it did not include the nationalisation of land, women's rights, electoral reform, free education and the expulsion of all alien races. ...

Like Harpur and Lang, Lane saw republicanism as the symbol of a modern enlightened and progressive society.

The Boomerang became the Brisbane Worker before finally becoming The Worker . The latter being notable for helping to establish what would become the Queensland Labor Party. Queensland was a radical hotbed of conflicting politics in the 1880s and 1890s. The Shearer's Strike and its breaking led directly to the modern day Labor Party and National Party. The political environment also left the way open for polemicists such as William Lane and Frederick Vosper. The latter who was charged with treason, and later acquitted, for advocating a Republican revolution during the Shearer's Strike.

In 1893 Lane managed to convince 220 others to sail to Paraguay to establish a utopia. By 1899 Lane was back in New Zealand writing in a conservative manner.

One man one vote was published under the pseudonym John Miller and appeared in The Worker in June 1891. I personally find applying ret-con to Lane much harder because of the race-based and socialist rhetoric.

One Man, One Vote

As a natural result of common school education the common man is beginning to have opinions and to criticise institutions. In every country where common through is thus started its first encounter is with the customs which give one man authority over the other men regardless of the consent of those others.

If there is an absolute dictator men ask by what right John dictates to Tom. If there is a despotic emperor men ask who William is that Peter should be born to stand up or lie down as William directs. And if there is so-called representative government through which a a quarter of the community puts a ring in the nose of the other three quarters, the common men whose noses are ringed inquire energetically why this is thusly.

Here in Queensland, as in other parts of the world, we have found out that our noses are ringed by gross electoral inequalities; here, a small minority of squatters and land-grabbers have hold of the legislative rope with which they haul us about as much as they like.

One man, one vote means equal voice in law-making for all men, thereby giving the men of Queensland opportunity to be the rulers of Queensland and effectively snapping the ring-in-the-nose wherewith the propertied classes now control us for their own selfish purposes.

Based Upon General Principles

If we reason upon general principles, if we take into consideration accepted ideas of Freedom and Justice, particularly if we supposed that it is right to do to others as we would have others do to us, there can be no two answers about one man, one vote.

Free states are manifestly those in which government is by the will and with the consent of the governed, in which every man stands equal before the law. And it is manifestly unjust for one man or one set of men to make laws for others who are allowed no opportunity to take part in the making of such laws as it is manifestly necessary for men associated in a state to recognise some equitable method of arriving at a mutually authorative decision upon disputed points.

The broadest and the narrowest conceptions of Freedom, Justice, Right, Fair Dealing, both imply this; That laws shall be mutually agreed upon by those who by act of citizenship have agreed not only to keep for themselves but to maintain against attack all constitutional regulations instituted for the common well being.

A More Equitable Method of Government

One man, one vote is an attempt to reach a more equitable method of governance; it is a protest against the usurpation of governance which reached its climax under kingcraft and has been passed along from autocrat to aristocrat, from aristocrat to plutocrat, until it nearly confronts the democrat whom it has so long wronged.

The term one man, one vote expresses a principle which appeals to the hearts of all who desire a better world and higher civilisation, for it means that Man himself is to be recognised as the unit in the State, that at the ballot box Humanity alone shall be known, that as far as the law can do it every man shall enter the polling booth a simple citizen and no more.

The Truth That Man Is Equal

Blind fools may laugh at idealism all the like, but idealism, the recognition of Truths, is what moves mankind up the ladder of progress. And this has been one divine truth, known and loved and preserved for out betterance, through ages of darkness and degradation, that in spite of his inequalities Man is equal.

We have had the world bowing enslaved before an Alexander. We have had Russian boyars puddling their feet in the gutted entrails of human foot warmers. We have had French lords claiming the droit de seigneur , taking the peasants bride for the bridal-night. And among our own people we have seen and see still millions upon millions living like imbruted beasts.

But all the time the ideal has lived, enshrined in religions that sprung form the aching heart of the common people. At the Judgment-seat of God was Equality, there the robes of the king and the rags of the beggar fell to the ground together and each man stood naked as he was born and as he died. This is the ideal conception of Justice, that men in themselves are equal - and we want Justice to be with us a little for it is only through Justice that good can come.

The Right Of The Citizen

It is clearly Just and Right that all those who are citizens of a state should have equal voice in the making of the laws which all citizens are equally bound not only to obey, but to maintain.

The alien - that is the citizen of another state who enters our state as a visitor on suffrance only and who is not part and parcel of our community - may justly have demanded of him that while he is with us he should, without having a voice in the making, submit to our laws and conform to our regulations; his interests are not our common interests, he may be and often is more interested in weakening our social organisation than strengthening it, like the Chinaman his only object is generally to get wealth wherewith to return again to his own people; the claims of the citizen to recognition naturally do not apply to the alien.

Nor can the minors, the children, and the insane, those who are not yet grown to years of discretion or who are regarded by the laws very differently from adults, be presumed to rank as full citizens, as independent electors. But the adult members of any community , whether men or women, can in Justice demand an equal voice with any other member in the making of laws which each and every one of them must commonly obey and maintain.

Women Should Have Justice Too!

One man one vote has this weakness, this failing, that it does not include the women. Not a single principle can be advanced in support of the rights of men which does not apply with equal force to the rights of women. Our mothers, our wives, our sisters and our daughters are as essentially citizens of the State as any man of us.

They must obey all laws, they suffer from unjust laws, they benefit by good laws, equally with the rest of us. We men deserve to have Justice denied us if we deny Justice to our women.

But there is this about one man one vote agitation that it does not deny the rights of women. It simply deals with one part of an Injustice, leaving another part of the same Injustice to be dealt with in the future. And of this we may be sure and certain that the men of Queensland or of any other state, as a mass, will be far more inclined to secure for the womenfolk the same Justice which they have managed to secure for themselves than will any propertied selection which wields authority in defiance of all Justice and in antagonism to all conception of free and equal government.

Class Government is Usurpation

For this we must never lose sight of: class governance is a usurpation, a tyranny which has its root in the ages when armed robbers, military castes, ground the peaceful tillers of the soil into slavery. Our parliamentary system, of which the very opponents of one man one vote profess to be so proud, is only a degenerated survival of the assembly at which in primitive times our Teutonic forefathers gathered, free and equal, to make for themselves laws for their common governance.

And it is because of the countless generations the race we come of governed itself thus, knowing neither king nor landlord nor rank nor wealth nor place nor privilege in its tremendous march from Central Asia to the Atlantic Coast that the desire for self governance is so instinctive in us today.

It is told of these fathers of ours that, when the burst upon the rotten Empire of Rome, a band of Goths stormed and took a Roman town. Their chief, a man elected by his fellows to lead them to war, saw among the plunder a beautiful porcelain vase and set it aside for himself. "Why is that apart?" asked an old warrior. "It is the chief's" said a young one. Down came the old Goth's battle-axe, smashing the porcelain into atoms. "The Goths are equal", he cried "next time he steals let him look to his head."

So much for the privilege in the old Teutonic day, but wrong begot wrong and those who began by plundering others ended up being plundered themselves. The chiefs stole and stole and there were none left to break their heads and finally it came to that the common lands and the common cattle and the common law-making and the common liberties, the free conditions, which gave our race its brains and its vigour and its courage and its contempt for danger and its respect for women and hatred of lying and all that is good and true and loyal and brave in us, were all stolen away from us and we are what we are.

To win back our liberties is our duty.

We have a right to have them back and to govern ourselves for our own good in our own way. One man one vote is simply self-governance, a right list indeed by the crimes of some and the follies of others and the weakness of all, but still our right when we can get it for truths live always and Justice never dies.

The Plea of The Usurpers

The classes which have usurped government, which make pretense of representative authority while controlling the laws and domineering over the community by means of plural voting for themselves, whole disenfranchisement of the workers, unequal electoral districts and nominee chambers, have certain specious arguments against one man one vote with which they seek to lull their own consciences and to delude and bewilder us.

They ask if the drunken and the sober, the industrious and the idle, the ignorant and the intelligent, and so on through a whole catalogue of opposites, are to be equal at the ballot box. What do they really mean?

The Inequality of Intellect

This specious and pretentious argument against one man one vote is used by opponents so often that it necessitates notice otherwise undeserved. "You cannot make men equal," they say. "There will always be the intellectual and the foolish and some who will exert a personal influence not only over a whole people but for all time." Just so! We cannot make men equal where they are not equal but we can maintain the equality of men where it exists, as it does exist where it is now denied.

In our individuality, in our personality, in ourselves, as Men, we are all equal - and the only true inequality as in the influence which one personality wields over other personalities. For what to do with men like Sir George Grey, like Griffith, like McIllwraith, want more votes that the humblest when by their personally power they move hundreds and thousands, Sir George Grey hundreds of thousand, of minds?

Is there a single man of superior intellect in Queensland, or in Australia, or in the world, who does not affect somewhat the individuality of all who come within his sphere, no matter what he may be? And will one man one vote impede this influence of superior intellects, will it not rather strengthen and enlarge it in every way? For as things are, power is given not to the more intellectual, through a desirable influence on others, but to pickers-up of corner allotments, grabbers of squatting land, holders of various properties, whatever their intellectuality may be. This is absurd.

Morality As Qualification

As a matter of fact sobriety, industriousness, intelligence and general virtuousness are not intended by the usurping classes to the tests of electoral rights. Drunkenness is too usual among the working mass but is even more frequently seen among the rich and well to do. The Queensland Assembly of today, the meeting place of legislators who do not represent the people of Queensland, is often no better than the lobby of a pot-house and witnesses scenes which would not be tolerated for an instant in any friendly society of trade union meeting.

As for industriousness, it is only by the industry of the labouring people, so largely disenfranchised, that wealth exists at all. While as for intelligence, that is similarly not an attribute peculiar to those who by inheritance, luck, skin-flinting, or profit-mongering shrewdness have got to possess the property which is supposed to induce them with prerogative of ruling over their poorer fellow men.

If we were to set up a standard of morality as the qualification for those who would claim full citizenship, then we should have to disfranchise a very considerable percentage of plural voters and to admit to the franchise the vast majority of those now denied any share in the governance of their country. This twaddle about sobriety, industry, intellect and so forth is worthless sophistry, used only by those who for another reason desire to withhold from the people the inborn right of self-governance.

The Real Cause of Opposition

What is this other reason, the real reason, why one man one vote is opposed? It is opposed only by the propertied classes in their own selfish self-interest, by the great land monopolists, by the great mine-monopolists, by the importing and trading monopolists, by the banks, the syndicates, the employer's associations, and the hundred and one cringing dependents of these high priests of the great god Mammon.

They oppose it for this reason only, that the masses are intelligent enough, sober enough, earnest enough, to that Society Just, that government as we have it is a farce which is exerted for the advantage of Capitalism regardless of the well-being of the People at large. They fear that if one man one vote is secured by the common people, the labourers who toil and have nothing, the masses who are worse off amid all the luxury and flitter of our Christian civilisation than ever savages were in so-called heathen lands, that the first use made of that power will be legislative 'interference' with existing industrial conditions.

They are afraid of Eight Hour Bills and Factory Bills and Lien Bills, of the abolition of imprisonment for 'absconding' labourors, of resumption of the squatter-lands and reform of land laws generally, of work being found for the unemployed and of the refusal of popular parliaments to let workmen be shot down like dogs at the bidding of tyrannical Capitalism.

They object to Reform: that is the only reason for this opposition to one man one vote.

The Enemy Of The People

The man who opposes one man one vote is the enemy of the people. Whoever he is, wherever he is, no matter what he is, he would defraud his fellow men of their political rights solely in order to maintain the iniquitous laws and unbearable industrial conditions which every thoughtful man must see and which every honest man must admit to be wrong.

We may not all agree as to the best way to right these wrongs, we may differ utterly but honestly as to the unhappy inequalities which cause world-wide misery and discontent, but we must agree, if we are honest, that peaceful remedy can only come by the untrammeled play of that self-governance which is based upon Justice and ignores class and privilege.

It is not from the squatter and land-grabber, the syndicator and speculator that we can look for help. We must look to ourselves. And how can we look to ourselves so long as we are so disfranchised and handicapped while these gentry vote and count over and over again.

Our Duty To Ourselves

We must have one man one vote. We know now that we owe no duty to a law which usurpers impose upon us, that the government which denies rights to any people is a tyranny and that our duty to ourselves and to our fellows and to our children and to all Humanity is to make such tyranny impossible.

We know also that his usurpation of government by the classes over the masses is the great barrier to the changes which are absolutely necessary if Civilisation, with all that it implies, is not to pieces under our feet.

We want to get the ballot box, free and equal, and they are trying to prevent us. The employers' associations are organised to prevent us. Griffith quibbles when he is asked his intentions. The Government, the magistracy, the whole machinery of Capitalism, is doing everything in its power to bar the common man from the polling booth, to conserve the privileges of the favoured few.

And then they rave at us about "law and order". Have we not been as tolerant of their "law and order" as ever people could be who had the faintest inkling of what Justice was and who know that the laws have been deliberately designed to oppress the people by the privileged classes who have usurped lawmaking and now defend their usurpation against the one man one vote?