A typical example of the fusion of the economic life with the rights-life was afforded by Austria. According to the constitution adopted by Austria in the eighteen-sixties, the representatives of the imperial assembly, the "Reichsrat," of that compound territory, were elected from the communities representing the four branches of economic life:--the landed proprietors,--the chambers of commerce,--the towns, markets and industrial centres,--and the rural areas. Obviously, in this composition of the representative State-assembly, the first and only idea was, that of playing off the economic interests against one another, in the belief that a system of political rights must be the outcome. No doubt the disruptive forces of her divers nationalities contributed largely to Austria's downfall. But it may be taken as no less certain, that if an opportunity had been given for developing a system of "rights," working alongside and outside of the economic one, it would, from the common sense of right, have evolved a form of society in which the different nationalities could have lived together in unity. A person engaged in public life to-day usually turns his attention to things in it that are only of secondary consideration. This is because his habits of thought lead him to regard the body social as uniform in structure. As a uniform structure, there is no form of suffrage he can devise that will fit it; for the economic interest and the impulses of human rights will come into mutual conflict upon the representative body, however it may be elected; and the conflict between them will affect social life in a way that must result in severe shocks to the whole organism of society. The first and indispensable object to be worked for in public life to-day must be the radical separation of economic life from the "rights" organisation. And as the separation becomes gradually established, and people grow into it, the two organisations will each in the process discover its own most appropriate method of selecting its legislators and administrature. Amongst all that at the present moment is clamouring for settlement, forms of suffrage, although they bear on fundamental issues, are nevertheless of secondary consideration.