would be surprised to know how much a man spends in soliciting the honour of representing them—he has usually a great contempt for them—in Parliament. The more inquisitive voter, however, would discover that the poorer candidate is in a special sense the representative of a particular party, and he would touch the fringe of a peculiar and ingenious system. I happened one day to mention to a friend certain advanced opinions of a Member of Parliament. “That,” he said grimly, “will interest my father-in-law; he finances Mr. ——.” Through the party-organisation this wealthy and highly respectable manufacturer paid the election expenses and part of the income—Members of Parliament had not then a salary—of candidates or Members in various remote towns. The manufacturer, or the various manufacturers who do this sort of thing, will eventually be knighted or baronetted; their sons will have a chance of a secretaryship, or even of Cabinet rank. The secretly subsidised Member will go to Westminster, an automatic voter. In fact, since a candidate must generally have the sanction of the central organisation of one or other party before he can venture to solicit votes, even wealth does not usually relieve him of the party-tyranny.
What, then, is the party? It is not so much a creed as a wealthy and powerful organisation. Once it was a group of men who happened to have the same ideas. By a natural evolution of organisation—one sees the same thing in the evolution of
