would have good members, and the minority would have more representation, and representation less open to objection, than could be secured in any other way."

List-voting, each voter having as many votes as there are members to be elected, and not being allowed to cumulate them, will sooner or later, depend upon it, along with payment of members, crown the edifice of equal electoral power of which the foundations have just been auspiciously laid. The weightiest argument against the division of the big boroughs is based on the assumptions that many local men not specially fitted for parliamentary work will get to Parliament by means of local popularity in the ward-boroughs; that in consequence of this tendency, and increasingly as such members endear themselves by amiable small attentions to their ward constituents and establish a sort of personal prescription as " fixtures," great issues will be ignored, even in general elections nationally critical, to an extent only conceivable by those who know intimately such constituencies; and that it is a proper function for constructive statesmen to safeguard the character and calibre of Parliament by minimizing the operation of such degenerating elements. Much censure has been cast upon me, especially in my own neighbourhood, for hazarding these opinions and for insisting upon a standard of parliamentary capability, but it is significant that there is less challenging of my anticipatory estimate of the new ward-borough members than there is of my claim that statesmen should try to secure for us upon system a good supply of competent legislators. This, I am told, is an interference with the true operation of representative institutions. Representation, it is urged, should be as nearly as possible a mirror of the people down to the smallest particular. This is not the best idea of it. The conception has the same fault as that which governs the proportionalist theory. The function of representation cannot indeed. be soundly and sufficiently exercised without absolute freedom of choice, but the electors should be encouraged to choose, and should be so constituted as to make it likely that they will choose, men who may be, in one way or another (and there are ways enough to employ every variety of real capacity), useful in the Legislature. A suitor who retains Mr. Charles Russell will take care that the great advocate is properly instructed and that he represents the views set down in his brief, but Mr. Russell would not deserve heavy fees and daily refreshers as the mere mirror of his client. He is eagerly employed and highly paid for far other reasons. So with ambassadors and other skilled representatives. And never let it be supposed that parliamentary duty calls for no special ability in ordinary members. To suppose so would be to come short alike in one's ideal and in the wisdom accruing from actual experience. A glance at the personnel of the House will always be instructive on this point. For instance,

in their day the lives of, say, Joseph Hume, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, Richard Cobden, Sir William Heathcote, and Thomas Berry Horsfall were just as distinctly the competent, business lives of skilled experts as if these members had been officials of the State. So now are the lives of, say, Mr. Richard, Mr. Heneage, Mr. William Fowler, Mr. Cowen, Lord Lymington, Mr. John Morley, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. Arthur Arnold, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir Drummond Wolff, Baron de Worms, and, not only Mr. Parnell, but Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Healy, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and perhaps others among the Irishmen. All Members of Parliament cannot be expected to reach such a point of efficiency, but efficiency ought to be aimed at. We ought to keep up the standard and to keep up the succession, and this cannot be done by encouraging voters to believe, or by so arranging constituencies as to lead to voters assuming, that any man will do for Parliament whose local popularity on comparatively petty grounds will make him easy

to return.

So much for a question which, for the present-and indeed for many years to come-must remain in abeyance. The new wardboroughs have been marked out. They will soon have their organizations. They have all their troubles before them. They will probably enter upon their separate existence with a heavier sense of responsibility, and a less exuberant sense of adding to the political power of the town in which they are situated, than would have attended an increase en bloc of the representation of the town as a whole. It may be hoped, however, that this sense of responsibility and the facts with which it corresponds may call into existence a new centre of genuine political life in each of these ward-boroughs. Until now it has been difficult to generate political warmth and activity away from the centre of a great town, especially if the municipal wards away from the centre ran large in extent.

In speaking of such subjects one is always tempted to remember John Stuart Mill's sage remark about women—that so few men are intimately acquainted with more than one, that, if you hear a man generalizing on the sex, you may safely assume he is describing his own wife. Of the great towns Londoners know nothing, and those who live in them as a rule only know their own. But it may be advanced with confidence that in all these large communities the political party which happens to be in a minority finds great difficulty in maintaining the political life of neighbourhoods as distinguished from that of the whole town. It has to be attempted, if only because in most places the municipal elections (though you would not suppose it from the candidates' addresses) turn on political partisanship. But it is usually sorry work at best, at all events on

the minority side, taking the year round; and the feebleness of it, the slack committees, the thin public meetings, the abstention of the majority of the educated residents, and other symptoms contrast acutely with the genuine interest which is called forth over the very same area by a parliamentary election. The belief now prevalent among zealous politicians in the large towns, is that similar interest will now be shown in the parliamentary elections for each of the sectional boroughs into which the towns are to be divided, and that thus political zeal will be both localized and intensified in many districts, where hitherto it has scarcely had a local habitation, or even "a name to live." On all hands there is abundant evidence of the ardour with which politicians of enterprise are looking forward to the undertakings of which an inspiring prospect is thus opened up to them. In what direction will their efforts tend?

The system which its enemies call the Caucus, and which every one associates with Birmingham, has been so generally adopted, that it will naturally be made the basis of the new organizations; and this on both sides, for in boroughs the Tories long ago offered to the Liberals the sincerest form of flattery. It is very satisfactory to think of this taking place in the counties, where it will bring life and energy for the first time into many districts which could not possibly be vivified under the old system. In the towns a previous question must be raised whether the standing central organization shall be maintained either for purposes of registration, or in order to treat in an architectonic manner the electoral management of the town as a collective whole. I have made some inquiries on this subject, and believe that in most of the large towns the central organization will be retained, and every effort made, as Mr. Chamberlain lately suggested, to preserve it in full vigour. In Liverpool the balance of advantage has been thought by the Central Management Committee itself to lie in the opposite direction. This Management Committee will efface itself as much as possible. The chairmen of

the various ward-boroughs are expected to act together in cases requiring concert or joint public demonstration; but the great aim is to be the creation of independent individual life in each of the nine new parliamentary centres.

Some embarrassment must accrue in boroughs of this description from the absence of conspicuous leaders of local society. Hitherto the natural leaders have been indicated at the centre of the town's life by wealth, by extent of business, by long-standing repute, by prominence in town affairs, by note at the local bar, by distinction on the press, and by other things all associated in the popular mind with the central representative neighbourhood in which the Exchange, the Clubs, the General Post Office, and the old parish churches are found. The very same men drive home two or three miles, and in their

suburbs are nobodies, except at their places of worship and in select dinner coteries. Many of them, indeed, live quite out of town, and in future must be deemed politically connected not with the town at large, but with the wards in which their places of business are situated. Those who live in suburbs will have to select whether they will vote where they live or where they carry on business. In either case they will probably do their best to bring politicians of their own colour together in their suburbs, and to aid in organizing the new boroughs there to be formed. Between these outlying places and the centre ward or wards must lie in boroughs which are large enough wards of a different type, in which there is a very miscellaneous collection of squares and streets, including all grades of society, from merchants, solicitors, and doctors down to the smallest shopkeepers, and to stablemen and stable-helps. Here the want of natural leaders may be even more felt. To draw the best people out into the active life of a newly founded constituency-people who have always been contentedly accustomed to vote under the management of "the Central," and people who for sufficient reasons will shrink from anything that suggests an approaching and a stated demand for subscriptions-will be one of the most important and herculean tasks of the new managers. Should they fail in it, and should the management fall into the hands of the smaller shopkeepers and working-men, the managers will have the still more herculean task of raising the funds from classes that have heretofore shown little disposition to back their opinions pecuniarily. Many a man of moderate means will give to his chapel twenty times over a sum which he would regard as out of all character to expend on a political cause. Why is this? Because under the old system the political money matters were all managed at the centre, partly by certain contributions from candidates, but chiefly by very liberal contributions from the most prominent men. These, in future, will give much less in their own central ward. They will give something, no doubt, in the ward in which they live. But they will scarcely consent to give for the populous wards in which they neither transact business nor reside. Should the collection of money from the residents in these wards be found to fail, the turn things will take will be that the local committees will look out for candidates who can pay the whole expenses, just as is common in the old small boroughs; and readiness to do this will be a very high, if not the first, consideration in selecting a gentleman to stand.* We must not overlook the

It was lately said in my presence by an able advocate of the ward-borough system that it would be a positive advantage to be rid of the large central subscriptions of the merchants and others, because they naturally entailed control on the part of these wealthy contributors, on the principle that he who pays the piper may call the tune. He added with much naïveté : " Any constituency of ten thousand voters ought to be able, with the assistance of the candidate, to raise all the money that can reasonably be required." Any one acquainted with these things must see that this amounts to a

prospect, indeed, that as time goes on the new separate boroughs will acquire traditions. More and more people will be brought into active political work. The habit of participation, and even of paying, may be learnt. Each borough will have a corporate credit and respectability, and by degrees the borough organization may create for the at present ill-defined and arbitrarily-bounded neighbourhood those very social leaders the lack of whom will at first prove inconvenient. What I want to make clear is, that in the beginning of the new régime all that is best in the business life of the large towns is likely to remain very much concentrated in the political machinery of the central wards, such as that for which Mr. Forster is already standing in Bradford, and that for which it is hoped Mr. Samuel Smith will stand in Liverpool. As a consequence, candidates are likely to offer themselves for other wards instead of waiting to be invited, will pay for themselves instead of being paid for, and in little regions where there are no political or other leaders will have a good chance of being supreme.

Another probable result of the new system not unconnected with the foregoing will be the hardening of political opinion in the new ward-boroughs. One does not know why political opinion or bias should be more fixed in wards of a great town than in separate towns of corresponding size, but experience seems to show that it is so. If a politician obtains a parliamentary seat for one of these boroughs, this tendency will be much in favour of his permanently retaining it. So will be all the circumstances lately named as having given him the seat. In the absence of influential local leaders, and with a paucity of contributed funds, such a man will have a good chance of holding his own, though his merits may be but slight. Moreover, there will in single-member constituencies be less room for shades of opinion and for compromise between the parties. The Radical will be more Radical, the Tory more Tory, and the moderate man will have less chance. Under scrutin de liste, while there would be a splendid volume of strength available when any point of policy or great reform had to be carried, the necessary uniform action of the system would readiness to exchange the control of a number of public-spirited politicians, if it exists, for the practical autocracy of a candidate willing to pay for his seat; for it is unlikely that these districts, on the supposition of their being left financially unaided by the well-off politicians at the centre, who alone have the habit of giving, will raise anything considerable for election purposes. But I deny that the rich men have exercised any control in the sense of having forced either candidates or policy upon the mass of either party. In Liverpool, on the Liberal side it is a proverb that "the Whigs never jib," although there are richer and more powerful and more active Whigs here than in any other borough. Our Moderates never yet stood aloof, or even hung back, much less started a man of their own, or insisted upon having their own way. It is remarkable that in 1867, when Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright even were still looking askance at household suffrage, members of the cream of the cream of our Whigs united in proposing at a great popular meeting at the Theatre Royal the frank and immediate adoption of that full extension of the Franchise, and the same men, though nearly all high in the shipping interest, were found on the platforms of Mr. Plimsoll when he contested the borough.