ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The prejudice which attributed an intrinsic efficacy to the elective system was complicated by another mistake, which it perhaps brought in its train—the no less grave mistake of supposing that the application of this system could be left to itself. This view came direct from the eighteenth century, which had a fond belief in the automatic and universal action of moral ideas, and did not allow for free will and for the weaknesses and resistance of individual volition. Private organizations laid hand, in the United States and, later, in England, on the whole procedure which prepares and determines the elections. To control the action of the citizens during this preliminary electoral phase, a very complicated machinery was created, which formed a pendant to the constitutional mechanism. It was accepted all the more readily that it met a real public want.
