Yet there is enough in the familiar criticisms of our political machinery to justify one in saying that the political sham is, even now, intolerable. What, candidly, is the procedure? A general election is announced, and two men call, or send agents, to solicit the honour of representing you in Parliament. In the district in which I write at the moment one candidate is a wealthy and muddle-headed Liberal: the other is a wealthy and (politically) equally muddle-headed Conservative. Neither of them has the remotest idea of representing my national wishes,--they would blush to be suspected of it,--and neither has ever spoken in Parliament; so I have never yet voted. But I am an eccentric man. Let us take a normal case. You notice, as a rule, that during the few years before the election a wealthy man has been openly suffered, or directed from his party-headquarters, to "nurse" the constituency. Hundreds will cast votes for him solely because they fear a withdrawal of his subscriptions to their chapels and football clubs, and of his open-handed philanthropy. As the election approaches, another candidate appears. He also is, as a rule, a wealthy man, and he spends between one and two thousand pounds in disturbing the judgment and inflaming the emotions of the voters. Pictorial posters, which might have adorned the walls of some Pyrenean cavern in the Old Stone Age, are massed near the doors of some dark "committee room" or spread over the town. The brain struggles feebly with the contradictory statements of orators and journals. And on the day of the election the two wealthy rivals for the honour of printing M.P. on their cards, and the duty of voting as they are directed by their superiors, flood the district, although it has an excellent tram-service, with expensive cars and carriages, to take the tired working man to the poll.