nationalization of the telegraphs. One of the most extraordinary of the astounding incidents of the campaign and negotiations that resulted in the purchase of the telegraphs, was the fact that in the debates in the House of Commons was not even raised the question of the possibility of complications and dangers arising out of the multiplication of the civil servants. That fact is the more remarkable, since the leaders of both political parties at the time apprehended so much danger from the existing civil servants that they refused to take active steps to enfranchise the civil servants employed in the so-called revenue departments--the customs, inland revenue and Post Office departments--who had been disfranchised since the close of the Eighteenth Century. The Bill of 1868, which gave the franchise to the civil servants in question, was a Private Bill, introduced by Mr. Monk, a private Member of the House of Commons; and it was carried against the protest of the Disraeli Ministry, and without the active support of the leading men in the Opposition. In the debates upon Mr. Monk's Bill, Mr. Gladstone, sitting in Opposition, said he was not afraid that either political party ever would try to use the votes of the civil servants for the purpose of promoting its political fortunes, "but he owned that he had some apprehension of what might be called class influence in the House of Commons, which in his opinion was the great reproach of the Reformed Parliament, as he believed history would record. Whether they were going to emerge into a new state of things in which class influence would be weaker, he knew not; but that class influence had been in many things evil and a scandal to them, especially for the last fifteen or twenty years [since the Reform of Parliament]; and he was fearful of its increase in consequence of the possession of the franchise, through the power which men who, as members of a regular service, were already organized, might bring to bear on Members of Parliament." Chapters VII and following show that Mr. Gladstone's apprehensions were well-founded; that the civil servants have become a class by themselves, with interests so widely divergent from the interests of the rest of the community that they do not distribute their allegiance between the two great political parties on the merits of the respective policies of those parties, as do an equal number of voters taken at random. The civil servants have organized themselves in great civil service unions, for the purpose of promoting their class interests by bringing pressure to bear upon the House of Commons. At the parliamentary elections they tend to vote solidly for the candidate who promises them most. In one constituency they will vote for the Liberal candidate, in another for the Conservative candidate.