The meaning of the Easter season is the arising of Christianity from the grave--that grave where it lies bound in darkness, corrupting in worldliness, dying through selfishness; but, thank God! not yet dead. May our religious people awake from their fatal lethargy and roll away the stone from the sepulchre, by the establishment of a true Christian Society! FOOTNOTES: [21] The works referring to the economic principles laid down in this paper, with the statistics and experiments which support and illustrate them, are too numerous to mention here; but they are of the utmost value to the Christian Socialist. ON THE DECAY OF MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT _A CHAPTER OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, 1885_ ON THE DECAY OF MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT It is only in the belief that a simple narrative of facts, exactly as they occurred, will show more vividly than an abstract statement can do, the dangers which threaten our free institutions, that I venture to offer this personal narrative to municipal voters, and particularly to women householders. When, in 1879, I became a householder in Hastings I did not at all realize that I thereby acquired the right to vote in municipal affairs, and that this right necessarily involved a corresponding duty and responsibility--the duty, viz., of voting intelligently, and necessarily a certain responsibility for the way in which the government of the town was carried on. I soon observed, however, that in the autumn, although I was neither a Conservative nor a Liberal, I was called on by the Conservative and the Liberal candidates for election to the Town Council to ask for my vote, and although these visits often led to interesting conversation, and my opinions were assented to with the most flattering courtesy before the elections took place, I soon perceived that all influence ceased with the election; the matters went on in the same way without me as with me, and my supposed privilege of voting seemed really to be very much of a mockery. Being, moreover, a peaceable person, and much occupied with subjects of interest, it appeared to be rather a waste of time to concern myself with an election which was managed by cliques on strictly party issues, with no regard to questions of social well-being, nor necessarily to the selection of the wisest and best man, but only of the person who could in any way secure the largest party vote. Being compelled, also, as far as my limited powers of observation admitted, to criticise the two great parties of the State, as both committing much injustice, and as rather guided by class selfishness than by high morality, I could not feel any enthusiasm for elections carried on by party strife.