From Gladstone downwards even our most "democratic" statesmen have acquiesced in these enormities of our electoral system; and they have meantime expended much eloquence on the injustice of the Prussian system, and have expressed ardent hopes for the emancipation of the people of Italy, or Bulgaria, or Persia, or some other remote land. Yet these features of our electoral scheme are retained solely in order to protect the party-system: to keep in the hands of a group, which is largely hereditary and is at all events a small and jealous caste, all the prestige and emoluments of the higher positions. Even the grave peril of a national catastrophe, owing to this restriction of power and responsibility to a group of moderate talent, does not shake their tradition. We shall, when this war is over, see them resist reform as energetically as ever. Within the House of Commons itself a mass of old rules and customs are maintained for the same purpose. The hours of work are still arranged on the old supposition, that a Member of Parliament is a man who, with great self-sacrifice, devotes a large part of his time gratuitously to the service of his country. The most important work in the nation's economy is relegated to the hours when every healthy man is disposed to rest and recreate himself: indeed, the more important the issue at stake, the more certain it is to be discussed during the worst working hours out of the twenty-four. One has only to glance at our legislators on their benches after dinner to realise the significance of it. The majority of them are plainly reconciled to the theory that the heads of the party have done the necessary work during the day: _their_ business is to keep sufficiently awake to vote correctly. The arrangement of business is not less iniquitous. The Ministry decides that certain measures of reform are needed, either in the interest of the people or in their own interest, and, since they have an assured majority of "Ayes," the lengthy debate is almost superfluous. The passing of the measure has been secured in advance, or it would not be put forward. The rare event of miscalculation, and the still rarer event of independent action, need not be regarded. No Member is, even in these cases, influenced by the long and tiring speeches which are made about the matter. At one time the debates had a certain elocutionary elegance, at least; now they represent an unattractive sham-fight, and abuse is being increasingly substituted for rhetoric. The most paltry trickery is employed on both sides, because every man is aware that his speech is really addressed to his followers outside the House, and he must, _in_ the House, rely on quite other devices than eloquence. Yet all this pseudo-gravity is lightened occasionally by sittings in which some measure of the greatest importance, but not introduced by the Government, is treated as flippantly as it would be in a humorous debate during a long sea-voyage.