More than once, it is true, during my residence in America I have been approached by individuals or by committees, with invitations to associate myself with some proposed political organisation of Englishmen "to make our weight felt;" but in justice to those who have made the suggestion it should be said that it has always been the outcome of exasperation at a moment either when Fenianism was peculiarly rampant in the neighbourhood, or when members of other nationalities were doing their best to create ill-will between Great Britain and the United States. The idea of organising, as the members of other nationalities have organised, for the mere purpose of sharing in the party plunder, has, I believe, never been seriously contemplated by any Englishmen in America; though there are many communities in which their vote might well give them the balance of power. It would, as a rule, be easier to pick out--say, in Chicago--a Southerner who had lived in the North for ten years than an Englishman who had lived there for the same length of time. It would certainly be safer to guess the Southerner's party affiliation. The ideas of Englishmen in England about American politics are vague. They have a general notion that there is a great deal of politics in America, that it is mostly corrupt, and that "the best people" do not take any interest in it. As for the last proposition, it is only locally or partially true, and quite untrue in the sense in which the Englishman understands it. The word "politics" means two entirely separate things in England and in the United States. Understanding the word in its English sense, it is conspicuously untrue that the "best people" in America do not take at least as much an interest in politics as the "best people" take in England. Selecting as a representative of the "best people" of America, any citizen eminent in his particular community--capitalist, landed proprietor or "real-estate owner," banker, manufacturer, lawyer, railway president, or what not,--that man as a usual thing takes a very active interest in politics, and not in the politics of the nation only, but of his State and his municipality. He is known to be a pillar of one party or the other; he gives liberally of his own funds and of the funds of his firm or company to the party treasury[229:1]; he is consulted by, and advises with, the local committees; representatives of the national committees or from other parts of the State call upon him for information; he concerns himself intimately with the appointments to political office made from his section of the country; he attends public meetings and entertains visiting speakers at his house; as far as may be judicious (and sometimes much further), he endeavours by his example or precept to influence the votes and ways of thought of those in his service. The chances of his being sent to Congress or to the Senate, of his becoming a cabinet minister, being appointed to a foreign mission,