 But education was the great leveling factor. Though not his view when he wrote Considerations on Representative Government, Mill wrote in his autobiography that universal education could make plural voting unnecessary (1924, pp. 153, 183–84). Mill did acknowledge in Representative Government that a national system of education or “a trustworthy system of general examination” would simplify the means of ascertaining “mental superiority” of some persons over others. In their absence, a person’s years of schooling and nature of occupation would suffice to determine who would receive plural votes (1972, 308–09). Given Mill’s prescriptions for political participation and given the lessons learned from the deliberations and debates of representatives and experts, however, it is doubtful that civic education would have constituted much of his national education.