A mere numerical increase in the number of persons in England who are interested in politics would indeed itself introduce a new and difficult political factor.  The active politicians in England, those who take any part in politics beyond voting, are at present a tiny minority.  I was to speak not long ago at an election meeting, and having been misdirected as to the place where the meeting was to be held, found myself in an unknown part of North London, compelled to inquire of the inhabitants until I should find the address either of the meeting-hall or of the party committee-room.  For a long time I drew blank, but at last a cabman on his way home to tea told me that there was a milkman in his street who was ‘a politician and would know.’  There are in London seven hundred thousand parliamentary voters, and I am informed by the man who is in the best position to know that it would be safe to say that less than ten thousand persons actually attend the annual ward meetings of the various parties, and that not more than thirty thousand are members of the party associations.  That division of labour which assigns politics to a special class of enthusiasts, looked on by many of their neighbours as well-meaning busybodies, is not carried so far in most other parts of England as in London.  But in no county in England, as far as I am aware, does the number of persons really active in politics amount to ten per cent. of the electorate.

There are, I think, signs that this may soon cease to be true.  The English Elementary Education Act was passed in 1870, and the elementary schools may be said to have become fairly efficient by 1880.  Those who entered them, being six years old, at that date are now aged thirty-four.  The statistics as to the production and sale of newspapers and cheap books and the use of free libraries, show that the younger working men and women in England read many times as much as their parents did.  This, and the general increase of intellectual activity in our cities of which it is only a part, may very probably lead, as the social question in politics grows more serious, to a large extension of electoral interest.  If so, the little groups of men and women who now manage the three English parties in the local constituencies will find themselves swamped by thousands of adherents who will insist on taking some part in the choice of candidates and the formation of programmes.  That will lead to a great increase in the complexity of the process by which the Council, the Executive, and the officers of each local party association are appointed.  Parliament indeed may find itself compelled, as many of the American States have been compelled, to pass a series of Acts for the prevention of fraud in the interior government of parties.  The ordinary citizen would find then, much more obviously than he does at present, that an effective use of his voting power involves not only the marking of a ballot paper on the day of the election, but an active share in that work of appointing and controlling party committees from which many men whose opinions are valuable to the State shrink with an instinctive dread.