``These important persons completely ignore one another; they prepare and execute their plans without knowing anything of what their neighbours are doing; there is no one above them to group and co-ordinate their work.'' This is why a road is often torn up, repaired, and then torn up again a few days later, because the departments dealing with the supply of water, gas, electricity, and the sewers are mutually jealous, and never attempt to work together. This anarchy and indiscipline naturally cost enormous sums of money, and a private firm which operated in this manner would soon find itself bankrupt. 3. Universal Suffrage and its Representatives. Among the dogmas of democracy perhaps the most fundamental of all and the most attractive is that of universal suffrage. It gives the masses the idea of equality, since for a moment at least rich and poor, learned and ignorant, are equal before the electoral urn. The minister elbows the least of his servants, and during this brief moment the power of one is as great as the others. All Governments, including that of the Revolution, have feared universal suffrage. At a first glance, indeed, the objections which suggests themselves are numerous. The idea that the multitude could usefully choose the men capable of governing, that individuals of indifferent morality, feeble knowledge, and narrow minds should possess, by the sole fact of number, a certain talent for judging the candidate proposed for its selection is surely a shocking one. From a rational point of view the suffrage of numbers is to a certain extent justified if we think with Pascal. ``Plurality is the best way, because it is visible and has strength to make itself obeyed; it is, however, the advice of the less able.'' As universal suffrage cannot in our times be replaced by any other institution, we must accept it and try to adapt it. It is accordingly useless to protest against it or to repeat with the queen Marie Caroline, at the time of her struggle with Napoleon: ``Nothing is more dreadful than to govern men in this enlightened century, when every cobbler reasons and criticises the Government.'' To tell the truth, the objections are not always as great as they appear. The laws of the psychology of crowds being admitted, it is very doubtful whether a limited suffrage would give a much better choice of men than that obtained by universal suffrage. These same psychological laws also show us that so-called universal suffrage is in reality a pure fiction. The crowd, save in very rare cases, has no opinion but that of its leaders. Universal suffrage really represents the most limited of suffrages. There justly resides its real danger. Universal suffrage is made dangerous by the fact that the leaders who are its masters are the creatures of little local committees analogous to the clubs of the Revolution. The leader who canvasses for a mandate is chosen by them.