beer, rather than a tea opened with a touch of the religious element.” Each body also has gentlemen continually on the road—rival political travellers, as it were, bringing round to the electors the newest and most attractive samples of principles, Liberal or Conservative. Such is the British variant of the American Caucus. It was imported from the country of its origin, in 1873, by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain—a man who has profoundly influenced Party tactics and strategy, as well as political opinion, in Great Britain—and was first set up in Birmingham under the direction of Mr. Francis Schnadhorst. The Caucus was at once attacked as a most mischievous element in public life. It was contended by old-fashioned Liberals and Tories alike that it would make impossible the free expression of the will of the constituency. The electors would become an unthinking, passive mass under the dominion of headquarters, and the destiny of the Nation—controlled as it is by the exercise of the franchise—would pass into the hands, perhaps, of unprincipled and artful demagogues. But the Caucus had come to stay. It was adopted by the Conservatives as well as by the Liberals. In fact, the idea of forming a Party organization in this country first originated with Disraeli. In the General Election of 1868 the Conservative Government, of which Disraeli was Prime Minister, was hopelessly beaten at the polls. There was practically no organization of the Conservatives at the time, and the work of bringing it into existence was entrusted by Disraeli to a young barrister who had been in the House of Commons for a year or two—John Eldon Gorst. Gorst began by establishing the “Central Conservative Office.” He then proceeded to create a permanent system of local bodies throughout the country for the registration of voters, linked them up in the National Union, and kept at headquarters a register of approved candidates from which the local bodies could make their own selection. The dissolution of the Liberal Parliament in 1874, unexpected though it was, found the Conservatives accordingly quite prepared, and they returned from the polls victorious. The Liberals then set earnestly to work on the same lines, and, improving upon the Conservative example, produced an even more perfect electoral machine. In 1877 Schnadhorst founded the National Liberal Federation, and, becoming the chief organizer and electoral adviser of the Liberal Party, it was to his exertions that the immense Gladstonian victory of 1880 was mainly due. Schnadhorst, on his retirement in 1887, was presented with 10,000 guineas by the Liberal Party as a slight recognition of his great services to their cause.