Wisdom of the ballotbox

'If of ten men nine are recognizable as fools, which is a common calculation,' says our Intermittent Friend, 'how, in the name of wonder, will you ever get a ballotbox to grind you out a wisdom from the votes of these ten men?  Never by any conceivable ballotbox, nor by all the machinery in Bromwicham or out of it, will you attain such a result.  Not by any method under Heaven, except by suppressing, and in some good way reducing to zero, nine of those votes, can wisdom ever issue from your ten.

Thomas Carlyle (Latter-Day Pamphlets,  Pg 303, 1855)