There are in the first place, then, the great political parties, in the nation and in Parliament (Congress); with the fact always to be borne in mind that the members of Congress are not nominated by any central committee or association, but are selected and nominated by the people of each district. A candidate is not "sent down" to contest a given constituency. He is a resident of that constituency, selected in small local meetings by the voters themselves. Next, every County (State) has its own machinery of government, including a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other County officials as well as a bi-cameral Legislature, with a membership ranging from seventy in some Counties to over three hundred in others. In these County Legislatures and governments, parties are split on precisely the same lines as in the nation and in Parliament. Members of the House of Commons have usually qualified for election by a previous term in the County Legislature, while members of the House of Lords are actually elected direct, not by the people in the mass, but by the members of the County Legislatures only, each county sending to Westminster two members so elected. Nor is it to be supposed that these County governments are governments in name only. It is not easy to imagine that in England the Counties, each with its separate and sovereign government, preceded the National Government and voluntarily called it into existence only as a federation of themselves. But that, we must for the present understand, was indeed the course of history; and when that federation was formed, the various Counties entrusted to the Central Government only a strictly limited list of powers. The Central Government was authorised to treat with foreign nations in the name of the United Counties; to maintain a standing army of limited size, and to create a navy; to establish postal routes, regardless of County boundaries; to regulate commerce between the different Counties, to care for the national coast line and all navigable waters within the national dominions, and to levy taxes for national purposes. All powers not thus specifically conceded to the central authority were, in theory at least, reserved by the individual Counties to themselves; and to-day a County government, except that it cannot interfere with the postal service within its borders, nor erect custom-houses on its County lines to levy taxes on goods coming in from neighbouring Counties, is practically a sovereign government within its own territory.