POPULAR SUFFRAGE 425 



governmental or administrative interference in any degree. Such 

 happy conditions exist in Belgium to-day, and they made the reform 

 at once easy and successful. I have no wish to talk politics in a 

 gathering of scientists; therefore I will refrain from mentioning the 

 particular effects which the reform has had on the standing of the 

 various political parties in Belgium. We are concerned here only 

 with the history of political theories, and a mere chronicle of political 

 events is foreign to our present studies. 



But I must say that since that reform, and although it was con- 

 temporaneous with the institution of universal suffrage, elections 

 in Belgium work with a tranquillity, a smoothness, and a regularity 

 which have been the wonder of those who remembered the disquieting 

 agitation that used to attend them in former times, under the ma- 

 jority rule. This result is very important, for it has confirmed by 

 a most decisive experiment the unimpeachable fairness and sincerity 

 of the new Belgian regime and this is no small merit, indeed. 



