There is, however, not the remotest possibility that the hypothetical process sketched above will be carried to completion. If it were it could not long survive. Oligarchies are notoriously unstable compounds. No matter how secure they may make themselves from internal dissension, their very power and success provoke to attack from the outside. In the case we have assumed the weak point lies in the unavoidable necessity of securing a majority of the popular vote from time to time. Ultimately the oligarchy would have to become strong enough to disregard this necessity; that is, to throw off the mask of democracy by abolishing popular elections. Long before this point could be reached, however, the ruling clique would probably find itself attacked by organisations of great voting power which would demand a share of the spoils of sovereignty for themselves. Reduce all politics to a mere calculation of profit and even those voters who now sell themselves for a few dollars or a few petty political favours would come to realise that they held their ballots at too low a figure. They would see political privileges based on their venal compliance or connivance become the foundation stones of large fortunes. They would further realise that the capital value of such privileges was based largely upon the profits extracted from their own pockets a penny at a time and many times over by the high prices charged them for public utility services. Under conditions approaching frank oligarchy, with a political philosophy justifying such conditions, and with class consciousness bred of them, it would seem inevitable that powerful organisations, particularly of labourers or other industrial classes, would be formed for the purpose of wresting valuable privileges from the government. Instead of the low individual forms of corruption now prevailing we would have other forms, higher because tinged with a group character, but still corrupt because narrow interests would be advanced to the detriment of the interests of the state as a whole. Confronted with such difficulties the corrupt machine would no more prevail to save oligarchy than it is now prevailing to save democracy.