It is rarely that an English political campaign is fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual interests; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself--the large Idea--on which orators and party managers rely to secure their hold on the imaginations of the mass of the people. It does not necessarily imply any superior morality on the part of the Americans; but is an accident of the different conditions prevailing in the two countries. British politics are infinitely more complex than American, and foreign affairs play a much larger part in public controversies. The people of the United States have been throughout their history able to confine their attention almost wholly to their home affairs, and in those home affairs, the mere vastness of the country, with the diverse and conflicting interests of the various parts, has made it as a rule impossible to frame any appeal to the minds of the voters as a whole except in terms of some abstract idea. An appeal to the self-interests of the people in the aggregate in any matter of domestic policy is almost unformulable, because the interest of each section conflicts with the interest of others; whence it has necessarily followed that the American people has grown accustomed to be led by large phrases--disciplined to follow the flag of an ideal.