Neither can it be admitted that even if all had votes they would
give their votes as honestly in secret as in public.
"The proposition that the electors when they compose the whole of
the community cannot have an interest in voting against the interest
of the community will be found on examination to have more sound
than meaning in it. Though the community as a whole can have (as the
terms imply) no other interest than its collective interest, any or
every individual in it may. A man's interest consists of whatever he
takes an interest in. Everybody has as many different interests as
he has feelings; likings or dislikings, either of a selfish or of a
better kind. It cannot be said that any of these, taken by itself,
constitutes 'his interest'; he is a good man or a bad according as
he prefers one class of his interests or another. A man who is a
tyrant at home will be apt to sympathise with tyranny (when not
exercised over himself): he will be almost certain not to sympathise
with resistance to tyranny. An envious man will vote against Aristides
because he is called the just. A selfish man will prefer even a
trifling individual benefit to his share of the advantage which his
country would derive from a good law; because interests peculiar to
himself are those which the habits of his mind both dispose him to
dwell on, and make him best able to estimate.
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