be to put forward the men most attractive to a whole community, and at each re-election the men who had proved weakest would naturally and inevitably go to the wall. Instead of this-a most desirable state of things, irrespective of party interests-we shall have a considerable stereotyping of ward opinion and a too permanent adhesion of members to seats for which they have not originally been too well selected.

Those who think that the new ward-boroughs will return a good proportion of working-men candidates by reason of contests being inexpensive, should remember that a working-man can just as easily find £6,000 as £600 (which will be the average expense); that workmen, except in Mr. Burt's district, are not in the habit of raising money to send men of their own class to Parliament; and that people of other classes are not prone to relieve operatives of the expense of such an undertaking.

If I am charged with looking at the worst side and carping at a system which ought to have a fair trial, I can only reply that the way to give it a fair trial is to keep these conspicuous dangers now indicated thoroughly in view, and to resolve from the first that they shall be averted in the ward-boroughs by developing a sound political spirit, and infusing it into well-devised political machinery. The same perspicacity and real political energy will be needed in the new London parish boroughs, against the characteristics of which Mr. Clayden has entered a weighty protest.

In the counties the policy of division can scarcely fail to prove an unmixed good. In many places it will be life from the dead. In others it will healthily correct the sort of life that prevailed. The character of a county area tends greatly to the concentration of what energy there is at particular points. The centre may be a man of pre-eminent wealth, or standing, or popularity. It may be a place of industry, or of traditional energy. It may be a knot of farmers, or a sphere of hearty Church work, or of Nonconformist zeal. Or it may be a nest of miners or a range of quarries, or some other industry by which the character of the population is definitely stamped. But whatever it may be, the tendency under the existing system is to make the life which is thus concentrated an exception within a cordon rather than a source of strong radiating influence. Hence it has been that in many counties the Tory gentry have been able to depend upon what always makes for them-the inertia of the non-lively districts. In not a few instances the dull weight of votes in these neighbourhoods, never politically explored except at election times, is enough to overbalance everything of an intelligent order that can be arrayed against them in other districts; and if this is not so, it may still be possible by pressure, by good paid organization, and by the

employment of some of those extremely vulgar-souled young barristers-at-law who are always ready to vilify Mr. Gladstone and to work the Bradlaugh odium on the lecture platform, to array in the most Liberal districts sufficient force to supplement victoriously the normal strength of the Conservatives in the duller parts.

These are present-day, temporary illustrations, but for that reason they will serve all the better to illuminate a present-day, temporary situation. Without arrogance or offence it may be assumed that a dead condition of things in a county is more favourable to the Tories than to the Liberals; but, whoever it favours, deadness is deadness; and we may expect that, when under conditions of newly forced and necessarily maintained life smaller and homogeneous divisions of the counties have to be plied by both parties with speeches, argument, and propagandism, Toryism too will profit in the increased zeal of its supporters and by the disciplinary necessity under which it will be laid of appealing to more intelligent motives and considerations. No part of any county can in future be neglected. All must be well worked in detail, and in competition the organization and the evangelism, so to speak, of each party may be expected to improve.

Another great advantage must be the greater freedom of choice of representatives. Sitting for a county will no longer be such an ineffable distinction as it has heretofore been locally regarded. Consequently, standing for a county will require less courage and may be proposed to gentlemen of less exceptional position than used to be looked for. Even under present conditions this consideration has been made too much of. Often when an aristocratic, highly connected personage has been fixed on, because no other kind of candidate would be acceptable to the "county people," it has been found too late that in his own rank he only excited jealousy and was for various petty reasons socially disliked; while over voters of other grades he could not, and his connections would not, exercise any influence, and there was no sort of popular charm or attraction to be expected either from his manners, his eloquence, or his information. Very often even in a county of the old type a sounder and more expert politician not drawn from the genteel ranks would have created less bad blood among the lofty and more zeal among the lowlier electors. Under the new conditions we may expect good men to be intrinsically sought and chosen for many county divisions. Electioneering will be vigorous and shrewd. Party managers will see that local claims may be best countered by conspicuous competency. Good candidates will therefore be at a premium. The tendency which has made such great boroughs as Hackney, Southwark, and Newcastle seek out and commission a Bryce, a Cohen, a Rogers, a Stuart, and a Morley-the disposition which Birmingham and Bradford have shown to choose in a Chamberlain and a Forster not mere chiefs of local industry, but

men of the highest mark in local public life-will certainly be exemplified in the new county districts; and the latter species of selection will take a permanent place in the usages of the country when the counties have received that genuine and well-ordered local self-government which it will be a first duty of the new Parliament to supply them with.

The reduction in the expenses of county contests will increase the independence of the constituents. The cost will be easily manageable, especially so long as the present leading county politicians continue, as they may be expected to do, their present rate of contribution, and it will no doubt be further relieved by special contributions from candidates and their friends. Thus will be escaped the slavery of territorial influence, and, what is perhaps worse, the shadow of territorial influence where little, if any, real territorial power exists. For the habit of deference lingers long after there is any necessity for it, and great pains are taken to please this Earl and to consult that Marquis when neither of them really counts for many votes at the polling-booth. Henceforth there will be less of this, or even if it be intensified in particular districts, as it probably will not be, the operation of it will not extend beyond those limits. County voters have hitherto been remote from each other. The only people who could meet to discuss and arrange matters were the county squires and justices. Between these there could be little cohesion, except class cohesion. They could not be keenly or minutely representative of the feelings of the voters in their districts. And if in any part of the county there lay any Radical element of population, not only would these gentlemen think little of it, or think of it only as a nuisance to both sides of politics alike, but in every way such a Radical element would be so far separated from any sympathizing centres in any other parts of the county as to be helpless.

It is an important consideration that none of the new county divisions will be too large or too scattered for the growth of a natural and congenial political life. No one, for instance, can survey the divisions of South-West Lancashire without recognizing the improvement in political tone which must ensue. Such prosperous and active districts as Leigh, St. Helens, and Southport have hitherto been represented in county electoral matters by three or four delegates sitting on a committee that met occasionally in an office in Liverpool. There could be little concerted action even under the best management. At an election for the whole county there was much discouragement. A weak place measured the case by its own condition, did not even do its best, and gave up the ghost about two o'clock in the day, just when the deciding struggles were beginning. A strong place was paralyzed by reflecting on the little use of exertion being made by one when nine were supine. When each district has to fight for its

own hand it will fight much better and keep itself in much better fighting order. Many in this county prognosticate that all the seven newly constituted districts of South-West Lancashire, or at least five out of the seven, will spring at once and naturally into a healthy political life. To appreciate their special circumstances, it is necessary to remember that they are active and enterprising districts, each having a number of natural social leaders, usually as truly leaders in all that is progressive, socially and educationally, as in the ordinary routine of society and in local business and politics.

Each, in fact,

is a chief in a smaller district which keeps itself very much to itself, though the districts and the leaders alike co-operate in a businesslike manner whenever there is anything of public utility to be done. Here is an admirable basis for the creation of a sterling political life by the machinery which the Redistribution will supply. Candidates will not be lacking-choice of candidates will not be difficult. The habit of recognizing leadership has already been formed in these districts in the most creditable manner. Following good leaders is a tradition and instinct of the local mind. Give political opportunity to such qualities, put them into regular political harness, and political communities will be formed that in all essential particulars of excellence will bear comparison with any that the history of democracy can produce. And all this, observe, will be an absolute product of the new Reform Bills; for under the old system the good qualities and aptitudes of our South-West Lancashire districts ran almost utterly

to waste.

What is true of South-West Lancashire must be true, more or less, of all similar places, though in some of them there may have heretofore been more political vitality. In South-East Lancashire, in Cornwall, in Yorkshire, and elsewhere the same things may largely be expected.

There may be a little doubt as to the result of division being quite so good in some of the agricultural counties. For instance, North and South Leicestershire, as several close, vigorous contests show, are not unwieldy under present conditions. Under the new arrangements Lord John Manners will be securely intrenched in his Belvoir district, and there political life will be virtually extinct. Lord John Manners and his particular friends will soon be "blue mouldy for want of a beating." The adjoining district of Loughborough, with its busy manufacturing life, will not lapse into political inactivity, but Ashby-de-la-Zouch and Hinckley and Bosworth form a rather mixed and dubious district, and, with Lutterworth and Market Harborough a separate constituency by their side, will lack the vigour infused into them by Mr. T. T. Paget in his many gallant and successful contests. These are specimen cases which might be multiplied, and the object of citing them is neither to exhibit concern, at

this point, for Liberal interests, nor to complain of division as a principle, but to bring under review some of its less desirable results from the point of view of Lord Beaconsfield's admirable vaunt when he said, "We are a free and political people."

Let us now, however, quit the general outlook from which we regard the result to the national political health, without reference to party advantage. Let us consider how far the Liberal party will be benefited by the change.

I instance first a minor advantage which it might seem ungenerous to mention, but that I am not a wire-puller, and desire to see extreme men in Parliament rather than excluded from it. I mean the opportunity that the new boroughs will afford for finding convenient places for gentlemen who, under strong conscientious impulses, do not hesitate to divide the Liberal interest, or whose appearance as candidates has that effect. Some say that the result will be to increase the embarrassment, because it will no longer be possible to yoke together as candidates for one constituency two Liberals of different schools. This, however, was never an agreeable proceeding. There were always suspicions of bad faith and other drawbacks, to say nothing of an excess of compromise and policy in speech. And very often, when there was no possibility of the method of pairing Liberal candidates being adopted, a pushing or muchpushed politician of a type not acceptable to the majority of the constituency has hung upon the skirts of the local managers in such a manner as to render their efforts hopeless and to entangle them in imbecile inaction or mistakes. In future, opportunities will usually be found to place a candidate of this kind as candidate in a district where not only will he cease to be inconvenient to his party at large, but he may prove the best possible man to fight its battle and may obtain an honourable entrance upon parliamentary usefulness.

Liberal interests in this matter must, however, be looked at in a much larger spirit. What we may mainly hope for as a result of the more equal representation of numbers will be more continuity of progressive force. The abolition of the old small boroughs means the extinction of the most wavering element of the representative body. Politicians who think it worth while are always discussing which side really was in a minority at particular general elections. When we see such startling revulsions as have taken place it certainly suggests that there must have been some specially variable element in our electorate. Now it was largely due to the small boroughs, happily about to be extinguished, that the Tory wave of 1874 had the force and effect that it had. Again, it was the coming back of the same small boroughs that gave the Liberals their signal majority in 1880. Thus we find that the English boroughs under 50,000 of