CHAPTER XII. CONCERNING THE SELECTIONS AND THE DECISIONS OF ASSEMBLIES.
The probability of the decisions of an assembly depends upon the plurality of votes, the intelligence and the impartiality of the members who compose it. So many passions and particular interests so often add their influence that it is impossible to submit this probability to calculus. There are, however, some general results dictated by simple common sense and confirmed by calculus. If, for example, the assembly is poorly informed about the subject submitted to its decision, if this subject requires delicate considerations, or if the truth on this point is contrary to established prejudices, so that it would be a bet of more than one against one that each voter will err; then the decision of the majority will be probably wrong, and the fear of it will be the better based as the assembly is more numerous. It is important then, in public affairs, that assemblies should have to pass upon subjects within reach of the greatest number; it is important for them that information be generally diffused and that good works founded upon reason and experience should enlighten those
who are called to decide the lot of their fellows or to govern them, and should forewarn them against false ideas and the prejudices of ignorance. Scholars have had frequent occasion to remark that first conceptions often deceive and that the truth is not always probable.
It is difficult to understand and to define the desire of an assembly in the midst of a variety of opinions of its members. Let us attempt to give some rules in regard to this matter by considering the two most ordinary cases: the election among several candidates, and that among several propositions relative to the same subject.
When an assembly has to choose among several candidates who present themselves for one or for several places of the same kind, that which appears simplest is to have each voter write upon a ticket the names of all the candidates according to the order of merit that he attributes to them. Supposing that he classifies them in good faith, the inspection of these tickets will give the results of the elections in such a manner that the candidates may be compared among themselves; so that new elections can give nothing more in this regard. It is a question now to conclude the order of preference which the tickets establish among the candidates. Let us imagine that one gives to each voter an urn which contains an infinity of balls by means of which he is able to shade all the degrees of merit of the candidates; let us conceive again that he draws from his urn a number of balls proportional to the merit of each candidate, and let us suppose this number written upon a ticket at the side of the name of the candidate. It is clear that by making a sum of all the numbers relative to each candidate upon each ticket, that one of all the candidates who shall have the largest sum will be the candidate whom the assembly prefers; and that in general the order of preference of the candidates will be that of the sums relative to each of them. But the tickets do not mark at all the number of balls which each voter gives to the candidates; they indicate solely that the first has more of them than the second, the second more than the third, and so on. In supposing then at first upon a given ticket a certain