Success or failure in all such “political novels” depends on one factor, an entanglement of sex. It appears that the English voters insist rigidly upon one requirement--that the statesman who holds them by the throat while their pockets are being picked shall be ostensibly chaste. The law may be summed up by saying that he is permitted to have only one leisure-class female during his life. Of course, if she dies, he is permitted one more leisure-class female; but for the rest, he is required to satisfy his needs with females of lower classes. Political novels derive their plots from the fact that occasionally some statesman fails to conform to this law; there is a statesman who wants two ladies, or there are two ladies who want the statesman. Nature has not created man exclusively for the purpose of wearing a top-hat and a frock-coat, and making speeches in Parliament; nor do all women find complete satisfaction, like Mrs. Humphry Ward, in political labors to keep other women from getting the vote. There are women with mischief in them, who endeavor to tempt statesmen from exclusive devotion to “careers.” And the statesmen are tempted; they commit indiscretions, such as taking walks in the moonlight with the evil females; and a thrill runs through all “society,” and the tongues of the gossips wag furiously. Did they? Or did they not? The friends of the statesman rally to save him; and the enemies of the statesman sharpen their tomahawks; and Anglomaniacs, watching the scene, are thrilled as when Blondin on the tight-rope sets out to walk across Niagara Falls. “We don’t really need to worry,” says Mrs. Ogi; “a hero is always a hero, and in all the books that I got from the little cigar-store in the Mississippi town, I cannot recall that one hero ever failed to become premier.” “It would be interesting,” says Ogi, “to compile statistics on the question: How many premiers have there been in the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward, and how many in the recent history of the British Empire?” CHAPTER C THE UNCROWNED KING We come now to study America in the second half of the nineteenth century. The dominating factor in this period was the Civil War, a conflict in which the physical and moral energy of the country was exhausted. There followed the inevitable reaction: Abraham Lincoln was succeeded by the carpetbagger in the South and the tariff-boodler in the North. The very hero who had led the nation to victory, and had said, “Let us have peace,” entered the White House to turn the government over to corruptionists. In the two generations following the Civil War America made enormous material and some intellectual progress, but no moral progress discernible. As I write this book, our political morals are embodied in a post-campaign jest: “The Republicans should have stolen the Washington monument, and then Coolidge would have carried Florida and South Carolina.”