Possibly one of the candidates is not a wealthy man, and you begin to speculate on the source of his thousand pounds, or even three hundred pounds. Very few voters do inquire, of course; most of them would be surprised to know how much a man spends in soliciting the honour of representing them--he has usually a great contempt for them--in Parliament. The more inquisitive voter, however, would discover that the poorer candidate is in a special sense the representative of a particular party, and he would touch the fringe of a peculiar and ingenious system. I happened one day to mention to a friend certain advanced opinions of a Member of Parliament. "That," he said grimly, "will interest my father-in-law; he finances Mr. ----." Through the party-organisation this wealthy and highly respectable manufacturer paid the election expenses and part of the income--Members of Parliament had not then a salary--of candidates or Members in various remote towns. The manufacturer, or the various manufacturers who do this sort of thing, will eventually be knighted or baronetted; their sons will have a chance of a secretaryship, or even of Cabinet rank. The secretly subsidised Member will go to Westminster, an automatic voter. In fact, since a candidate must generally have the sanction of the central organisation of one or other party before he can venture to solicit votes, even wealth does not usually relieve him of the party-tyranny. What, then, is the party? It is not so much a creed as a wealthy and powerful organisation. Once it was a group of men who happened to have the same ideas. By a natural evolution of organisation--one sees the same thing in the evolution of Churches--it has become rather a machine for impressing those ideas on men. In a sense, it is an oligarchy. We must remember such facts as the dismissal of Mr. Balfour, and the powerlessness of Mr. Asquith to get rid of a certain Minister whom he disliked. The power of the front-benchers is not absolute. But on the whole the party is an aristocracy of wealthy men, titled men, and able men, which rules the country for a term of years. Its leading agents are the Ministers and Whips: the body of the party is an association for carrying out its will, and for adding the attractions of parochial entertainment and cheap club-life to the more austere cult of ideas. Its revenue is, to a great extent, secret; but the annual lists of honours reveal very plainly that it conducts an unblushing traffic in such things. The reasons allied in the published list are often too ludicrous for words. Privately one can often ascertain the exact price.