quisites; with us they have no wages and high perquisites: and possibly the latter system is not the least costly of the two. Still, rightly or wrongly, we do not like the name of paid members; and I fancy a great many changes must happen before the Estimates are burdened with the item of "Parliamentary Salaries." This being so, there is no immediate likelihood of any change which would make parliamentary life much cheaper than it is. And it may be urged with much force, that it is well men of small fortune should not enter Parliament unless their political vocation is strong enough to induce them to make considerable sacrifices for the privilege of membership.

The same argument, however, cannot be urged, at least openly, in defence of the extraordinary expenditure incurred in the acquisition of a seat. I suspect I suspect very few persons not actively engaged in electioneering have any idea of the expense even of an uncontested election. The line between legal and illegal expenditure is very vague and indistinct, and for obvious reasons neither successful nor unsuccessful candidates are much prone to talking about the outlay they have incurred. I do not say that many members are not returned free of expense. If you are supported by strong territorial interest, if you possess strong local influence, or if you enjoy great class popularity, whether deserved or undeserved, you may be returned at very little cost to your own pocket. The money, it is true, comes out of other people's pockets; and, however independent you may be, you are still conscious of certain obligations towards those who have paid for your return. Cases, however, of this kind are necessarily rare. If you want to go into Parliament, and know of no constituency which desires your services, not only in general but in particular, you put yourself in communication with the electioneering agents, and suggest your willingness to contest any eligible vacancy. You are told that in such a constituency there is likely to be an opening for a candidate of your poli

tical principles, and are given to understand more or less delicately that you must place at the disposal of your agent a certain sum of money. What that amount may be varies of course according to the circumstances of the case. But I don't think I should be far wrong in saying that, under ordinary circumstances, you will not have much change left out of a couple of thousand pounds when the election is over, and you head -or do not head-the poll. And all this money, let me add, has been spent on legitimate expenditure. If you once take to bribery, there is absolutely no limit to the outlay except the length of your purse. How the bill is exactly made out, neither you nor anybody else can tell with exact certainty. Hustings, placards, advertisements, committee rooms, messengers, cabs, hotelkeepers, publicans, and, above all, lawyers, figure amongst your expenses. All you know is that you have had, in one form or other, to retain the services of any number of your constituents; that you have paid them pretty much what they asked; and that generally, in the phrase appropriate to such occasion, you have set money going. friend of mine some years ago contested a very large constituency. The borough was an extremely Liberal one; all the candidates were men of different shades of Liberalism; and the only question was, which shade would best suit the taste of the electors. My friend was a good speaker, and was well received by the constituency, not the less so because he was notoriously a man of limited means. During the course of his canvass, he received a visit from a local solicitor, who was said to have a good deal of influence amongst the electors. In very plain words the attorney informed the candidate that his speeches had given satisfaction in the borough; and that he should be glad to support him subject to the understanding that the lawyer's bill should run up to a hundred pounds or so. He was a poor man-so the lawyer stated, I believe, with truthhe had a large family dependent on him; he always had cleared a hundred

A

pounds every contested election; and, if the candidate could not afford to pay this amount, he must reluctantly support one of the other more opulent competitors. To this request my friend. could only express his regret that he could not afford to pay for legal services; and, finding that similar expectations were entertained by all his most influential supporters, he retired from the contest.

In the instance alluded to the candidate was new to his business, and the constituent was perhaps a little more outspoken than is commonly the case. The negotiations are usually conducted in a less direct manner, but the net result is the same. Let it be understood that the hundred pounds demanded of my informant was in no sense a bribe. In case of his requiring any account afterwards, a perfectly genuine lawyer's bill would have been produced. The candidate would have been charged so much for consultations, so much for letters, so much for inquiries; and the services charged for would have been really rendered. All the attorney required was that in return for his influence he should have what I may call a retaining fee. This experience is common to all competitors for parliamentary honours. The wheels must be greased, or else the electoral machine will not function effectively. That the grease is laid on with lavish liberality is a matter of certainty, but how much of it could be spared without injury to locomotion it would puzzle even an electioneering expert to determine.

It is obvious that the tendency of our legislation is towards large constituencies. In the near future, therefore, we may reckon on the great majority of our constituencies numbering many thousands of electors. Now under our present electoral system the necessary cost of contesting a large constituency is extremely heavy. Within the last few years there was an election in a metropolitan borough at which the sitting members were re-elected. They were both of them popular with the constituency, their return was not

opposed; and no other candidate put in an appearance, or even talked of doing so. In fact, no election could have been conducted under circumstances more favourable to economy; and yet each of the members had to pay 5007. a piece for the cost of their re-election. At the present moment we have a remarkable case of the necessary costliness of metropolitan elections. There are probably very few candidates at the forthcoming elections whose names are better known to their constituencies than that of Mr. Mill to the electors of Westminster. He was returned three years ago by the volunteer exertions of a large section of his constituents. His parliamentary career has assuredly not lessened the admiration of his supporters; and the local pride of Westminster is involved in his re-election. For reasons into whose justice or injustice I do not care to enter, Mr. Mill declines positively to pay any portion of his election expenses, which have in consequence to be defrayed by public subscription; and it is calculated that at least 2,000l. must be raised in that way, in order to render his re-election possible; and the comparative smallness of this amount is assuredly due to the exceptional popularity which Mr. Mill's name carries with the Westminster electors. It may be said that there have been, and are, many metropolitan members who certainly cannot have paid very large sums of money on the occasion of their repeated elections. For obvious reasons, any assertion of this kind is very hard either to prove or disprove, All I can say is, that there never, to my belief, has been a metropolitan election since 1832 at which thousands of pounds have not been spent in each contested borough; and, as far as the general public is concerned, it makes very little difference whether these amounts have been paid by the candidates themselves or by friends and supporters on their behalf.

The metropolitan boroughs, it may be urged, are not favourable specimens, in respect of cost, of large constituencies. No doubt the absence of local feeling in the metropolis increases the outlay on

elections. Still, the more a provincial constituency approaches in size to a metropolitan, the more it approximates in character; and I question whether, under a régime of household suffrage, there would be any material difference in election expenditure between London and the provinces. This argument may seem to tell in favour of small constituencies. So it does, undoubtedly, as far as it goes. In a pocket borough the necessary legitimate cost of an election is relatively trifling; and if these minute constituencies were really free and open to the world they might be represented by men who could not afford any large expenditure on their election. Unfortunately, wherever the direct outlay is small, the indirect is proportionately large; and experience has shown that these pocket boroughs are either the private property of some wealthy landowner, or else are venal to a remarkable degree. On the other hand, bribery and intimidation are comparatively unknown in large constituencies; and, therefore, if we have to choose between conflicting evils, I prefer those attaching to Brobdignag rather than those belonging to Lilliput.

Thus, unless I am altogether mistaken in my facts, the House of Commons is not the place for men who cannot afford to pay an entrance-fee of some two thousand pounds, and a fine of at least half as much again every time they wish to seek for re-admission. Of course there are here and there members who, from one cause or another, manage their business on much cheaper terms; but the above estimate does not err on the side of excess. Granted these facts, it would follow that the majority of members of Parliamentexcluding adventurers and the class of directorial legislators, who rejoice, east of Temple Bar, in the name of "Guineapigs "--must be men with incomes of some three thousand a year and upwards. There are in the House many gentlemen, sons of peers and landed proprietors, whose actual incomes probably fall far short of this amount. But then these gentlemen, as a rule, have got into Parliament rather by nomination than

by popular choice. My proposition would perhaps be more exactly correct if I stated that the great majority of members who sit for constituencies open to the general public are men enjoying the average incomes I have specified. It may be right and fitting that this should be so. Very possibly the power of legislation is only vouchsafed to men who have rents and dividends and acres and shares; but I question whether this belief is likely to be that of the new electors.

I doubt whether the present House of Commons, or any House of Commons composed of the same or similar materials, can entertain any very earnest desire to put down the expense attending election. Our legislators are no fonder than other men of parting with their own money; and we have seen clearly enough, during the late session, how reluctant the House is to incur the inevitable cost of a dissolution. But yet, though each man would like to reduce his own electioneering expenditure, I suspect very few would like to reduce the average expenditure. No member of a club I was ever acquainted with enjoyed paying his entrance or subscription fees, or relished any increase in the tariff of the dinner-table. But yet in every Westend club there is a very general feeling that, if you reduce the scale of prices and make things cheap, you will have the club crowded with men who do not live in the same way, or belong to the same set, or share the same tastes, as the existing members; and as the club, taken collectively, wishes to confine membership to persons belonging more or less to its own class, it views any project for reducing the club expenses with very lukewarm approbation. In much the same way I have always thought that college dons and tutors are naturally biassed against all schemes for reducing the cost of an University

career.

It is not that they wish to put the undergraduates or their parents to expense; on the contrary, they are generally anxious to relieve the pockets of any meritorious student even at their own cost; but they desire with singular

unanimity that the undergraduates as a body should belong to a class who can keep the same company, dress in the same way, and follow the same pursuits as they did themselves while in statu pupillari; and therefore they are averse to any wholesale reduction of academic expenses, the result of which would be to fill the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge with students of the same social rank as the alumni of Heidelberg, or Glasgow, or St. Bees.

I am therefore only saying that members of Parliament are much like other men, when I assert that their natural bias is to keep St. Stephen's what it is now, a rich men's club.

Under these circumstances, we cannot expect the House will set actively about the work of making admission within its walls available to men whose means fall much below those of the bulk of our present representatives. The Bribery Bill, passed this session, will not, I think, tend in any way to decrease the legitimate normal cost of a seat; on the contrary, the increased facilities given for petitioning against a return will make a seat more and more of a luxury which wealthy men alone can prudently aspire to. The only proposition which would have done anything to lower the absolutely necessary outlay was that contained in Mr. Fawcett's clause for throwing the cost of hustings, returning officers' fees, and other recognised charges, on the local rates. This clause was only carried by an accident; and, in spite of the difficulty of getting a House together at the fag-end of the session, a sufficient. number of members rallied together to secure its ultimate rejection. The Government opposed it openly; the Opposition supported it feebly; and, if it should be brought forward again in the new Parliament, its fate may be safely predicted beforehand.

Already we see clearly enough how the present system works. It is now several years since one of the seven points of the Charter was carried into effect by the abolition of the old property qualification. But the average wealth of members of Parliament has certainly not

declined since that period; and it has become more, not less, difficult for a poor man to take his seat in the House. Probably at no election of recent years have there been so few candidates, belonging to any other than the regulation House of Commons class, as there are at present. Whichever side wins, whatever may be the result of the poll, we can predict confidently that the gentlemen who form the first members of the Reformed Parliament will, with few exceptions, be men who, like their predecessors, are well off for money.

Is this monotony of representation a thing to be desired? I for my part doubt it. It is all very well that broad acres, large balances, handsome incomes should be represented in Parliament. As far as I can judge of human nature, there is not the slightest probability that they will ever be otherwise than fully represented; and mere wealth will certainly be not less respected in England by a democratic than by an aristocratic Legislature. But I cannot disguise from myself that the majority of the questions which are likely to occupy our attention for many years to come are rather social than political. We cannot doubt that all the topics which are stirring up the public mind in other countries as well as in our own, the relations of labour and capital, the rights of private property as opposed to public interests, the laws for the relief of the poor, the system of administering justice, education, voluntaryism, hours of labour, and a score of other subjects, will form the materials out of which the menu, so to speak, of our approaching parliamentary repast will have to be provided. What views will be or ought to be taken on all these topics, or more strictly, perhaps, on the fundamental issue which underlies them all, is a point on which it would be idle for me to express any opinion. But we may assume with certainty that men who are either wealthy themselves, or who represent wealth, will enter on this discussion with minds biassed almost irretrievably towards one side of the question. For the present all such subjects will meet with very scant

attention from our legislators; and we shall be assured doubtless on all sides, that on the whole people are perfectly well satisfied with things as they are. But when the time comes that the masses, whom we have entrusted with electoral rights, know their full power, and exercise it, they will not rest satisfied with the decision of a Parliament whose whole instincts are necessarily in favour of capital and property. The danger I allude to is, I hold, a real one. The gradual exclusion from Parliament of all classes of members who do not in some form or other belong to the moneyed classes, is a matter not to be dismissed as of no importance. But the remedy, I confess, is not so easily discerned as the malady. The candidate himself can do little or nothing. gentleman in Mr. Mill's position may take up the high moral ground of declining to pay, and may yet get returned by the subscriptions of his friends and admirers. But then, unfortunately, there are very few gentlemen in Mr. Mill's position. For the reasons I have urged, Parliament is never likely to undertake the reform of its own electioneering expenses, and, even if it did, I doubt whether it could effect much by any penal or prohibitive legislation. The remedy lies with the constituencies alone.

A

If the electors of any borough, or even an influential section of the electors, make up their minds that they wish to have a certain candidate returned as their member, the problem of expense is pretty well solved. When the constituents volunteer to canvass, to circulate addresses, to collect promises, and bring up voters to the poll, the cost and trouble of the election are divided among so many persons that they are scarcely felt, and thus there is no need for paid agents, or canvassers, or committee-men. It was through an organization of this kind that Mr. Hughes was returned for Parliament. The citizens of Lambeth had made up

their minds that they wished to have the author of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" for their representative, and they returned him by their own efforts; as I believe they will return him again. So in like manner Mr. Gladstone will probably be returned for Greenwich next November, with hardly any outlay, and certainly with no exertion, on his part. The electors of Greenwich wish to have him as their member, or at any rate to give him the chance of being their member; and therefore they undertake the duty which ordinarily falls upon the candidate, or his personal friends and supporters.

But in the vast majority of constituencies the electors wish to have a Tory, Whig, or Radical representative, as the case may be, but they care comparatively little whether this candidate is A or B. The result of this is, as a rule, that the candidate seeks the constituency, not the constituency the candidate; and as there are always any number of candidates available, the constituency naturally bestows its votes, other things being equal, on the one who takes most trouble and spends money most freely. I hope and see some small reason to think that the new household voters will care a good deal more than the old ten-pounders about the particular person who is to be selected to represent them in Parliament; and I own I shall be surprised if the predilections of this class lead them to exhibit a marked preference for the retired merchants, prosperous manufacturers, and rising lawyers, who form the staple of the present Parliament. But as yet I must admit there is no sign of the coming change. The cost of entering Parlia ment and of holding a seat serves as a sufficient barrier to any legislative ambition on the part of men who have not made their fortunes, and the prestige of the House of Commons as "the best club in London" will certainly be maintained, even after household suffrage has become the law of the land.