How is it that in America the masses can be disciplined so readily to take their side, and to engage so heartily in the fray, moving together as mysteriously as the swallows that with scarce audible twitterings gather in thousands, plume their wings for flight, seem to hesitate for a brief hour, and the next are gone? We, indeed, have of late been aping some American practices, and trying our hands at the caucus, and the three hundred, and what not. I suspect it is a very feeble imitation, and I suspect that one of my American friends was right when he said with a laugh: “Your fellows don’t know their business; they don’t understand what they are talking about. They’re first-rate at turning out steel pens and such small ware, but they’d better leave our political machinery alone. You’re too crowded up in your little island to find room for one of our big fly-wheels!” But how is all this enthusiasm for politics kept up with comparatively so little appeal to the lowest selfishness? and how are these immense numbers manipulated, the vast armies handled as skilfully as if they were soldiers on parade? It is all inexplicable to large numbers of wiseacres in England, who will persist in talking of petty “motives” and “reason” as if _they_ were the prime factors in every social problem. And this leads me to touch upon another matter, on which I feel myself profoundly ignorant, and which I am sure that others here are quite as ignorant about as I am. We are told that in America there is a recognized profession of politics, just as here there is a medical profession or a legal profession, or, if this is putting the case too strongly, just as here there is the profession of journalism. How in the world do the members of this profession get along? A new President is elected, and we are told that all the old officials are turned out. Where do they go? What becomes of them? What is the effect upon the executive? With us the patronage of the government, at any rate in the civil service, has been reduced to a minimum. Our executive is to a very great extent, indeed, independent of the government of the day. “Men may come and men may go,” but permanent secretaries “go on for ever.” So do commissioners and their clerks, and the thousands of stipendiaries to whom it matters not one straw whether the Radicals are in or the Tories. With us, when a man has gained an appointment by passing a good examination at eighteen or nineteen years old, it is his own fault if he ever loses it. Practically, there is no getting rid of him as long as he can do his work; he is as safe as a judge, and irremovable. But in America, we hear, every four years they shuffle the cards, and away they go! What results from this? Am I wrongly informed? or is there more absolute patronage, patronage _pur et simple_, in the hands of the President of the United States than in any other hands on the face of the earth? Assuming that it is so, what, I ask,