In his formal statement of his case, he says that the amount of the reward would be entirely determined by what _ought_ to be sufficient for the purpose in the estimation of the voting majority; and he mentions the sums in question as those on which they would probably fix.

And it is, of course, quite imaginable that the majority, in making either these or any other estimates, might be right.

But what "X" fails altogether to see is that, if the majority of the citizens _were_ right, such sums would not be sufficient because the majority of citizens happened to think that they ought to be.

They would be sufficient because they were felt to be sufficient by the minority who were invited to earn them, at whose feelings the majority would have made a shrewd or a lucky guess.

A thousand men with fishing-rods might meet in an inn parlour and vote that such and such flies were sufficient to attract trout.