In such a way we come naturally to the five satirical novels, obviously an illustration of the passage in _The Party System_, where Mr. Belloc advocates the annulling of political evils by laughing at them. It is not our business here to analyse these compositions from the point of view of considering the amount of political usefulness they may have achieved. We must consider rather Mr. Belloc's fine, contented industry in his satiric task, the persistence with which he builds up his instrument of destruction. The method in these books is exclusively ironic. Never does the writer overtly state that he seeks to drag down a system which he hates by laughter. In _Emmanuel Burden_, that extraordinary book, the severity of the method is extreme, almost overwhelming. The author supposes himself to be writing a biography especially designed to uphold the principles of "Cosmopolitan Finance--pitiless, destructive of all national ideals, obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition": and he preserves that pose consistently. Elsewhere, for example, in _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, the pretence is less elaborate: winks and nudges to the reader are permitted, and the whole effect is less careful and more human, less bitter and more humorous. But the general tone is maintained throughout the five books, discussing the same characters who appear and reappear, the Peabody Yid, Mary Smith, the young and popular Prime Minister, "Methlinghamhurtht, Clutterbuck that wath," and the excellent Mr. William Bailey, who had the number 666 on his shirts, subscribed to anti-Semitic societies on the Continent and cherished with a peculiar affection _The Jewish Encyclopaedia_. Such a preservation of tone is admirable, for it is a subtly restrained acidity, requiring either intense and unremitting care (which seems unlikely) or a special adjustment of temperament. It is very Gaulish, it must have been modelled on Voltaire: but it is also enlivened with flashes of irresponsibility that are the author's own. To have composed five such volumes as, taking them in order, _Emmanuel Burden_, _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, _A Change in the Cabinet_, _Pongo and the Bull_, and _The Green Overcoat_, is an achievement of a very remarkable sort, the more remarkable that the interest of these stories lies entirely in Mr. Belloc's peculiar views upon politics and finance. Even Disraeli, who liked writing novels about politics, could not restrain himself from love interests, romance, poetry, and what not else: but Mr. Belloc, serious and intent, concentrates his energies with malevolent smile on one object.