brain, but from want of constant exercise of it. A very earnest idealist of the last century, Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, proposed that, for the great efficiency of our political machinery, every elector should, before he received a vote, be compelled to pass an examination in political economy and constitutional history. Since few Members of Parliament, to say nothing of voters, would have passed the examination, the proposal was rejected, and the education of the voter was left to the interested political parties and to the press which supported them, or was supported by them. The result was that two rival organisations, roughly corresponding to the two attitudes of the modern mind toward new ideas (progressive and conservative), gradually increased in wealth and power until they were able to control the electorate and exclude from representation every finer shade of political thought. The machinery by which this is done does not leap to the eyes, as the French say, and the average elector proudly contrasts our political system with that of most other nations.
Candidly, we may take some pride in the contrast. The struggles and sacrifices of our fathers have won for us a system which is far superior to that which has hitherto prevailed in Russia, to the despotic medievalism of Prussia, to the grave insincerity of Spanish political life, to the confusion and occasional corruption of French or Italian politics, to the remarkable activity which precedes
