However, nothing but an uncritical projection of our own
viewpoint onto the past gives any reason to suppose that Harrington,
Montesquieu, or Rousseau themselves regarded their
thoughts on lot and election as being peripheral. More important,
the presence of these considerations in the works of authors whose
influence is beyond doubt shows that the contrast between the two
methods of appointment retained a measure of importance in the
political culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Propositions
of a general nature concerning the properties of one or the
other procedure were advanced by the intellectual authorities of the
period. The cultivated elites that established representative government
were certainly aware of them, which no doubt sheds some
light on the beliefs and aspirations that moved those elites when the
decision was made that modern political representation should be
based solely on election.