What ought to be the relation between these two bodies, of twenty-three thousand elected, and, say, two hundred thousand non-elected persons?  To begin with, ought the elected members be free to appoint the non-elected officials as they like?  Most American politicians of Andrew Jackson’s time, and a large number of American politicians to-day, would hold, for instance, as a direct corollary from democratic principles, that the elected congressman or senator for a district or State has a right to nominate the local federal officials.  There may, he would admit, be some risk in that method, but the risk, he would argue, is one involved in the whole scheme of democracy, and the advantages of democracy as a whole are greater than its disadvantages.

Our political logic in England has never been so elementary as that of the Americans, nor has our faith in it been so unflinching.  Most Englishmen, therefore, have no feeling of disloyalty to the democratic idea in admitting that it is not safe to allow the efficiency of officials to depend upon the personal character of individual representatives.  At the General Election of 1906 there were at least two English constituencies (one Liberal and the other Conservative) which returned candidates whose personal unfitness had been to most men’s minds proved by evidence given in the law courts.  Neither constituency was markedly unlike the average in any respect.  The facts were well known, and in each case an attempt was made by a few public-spirited voters to split the party vote, but both candidates were successful by large majorities.  The Borough of Croydon stands, socially and intellectually, well above the average, but Mr. Jabez Balfour represented Croydon for many years, until he was sentenced to penal servitude for fraud.  No one in any of these three cases would have desired that the sitting member should appoint, say, the postmasters, or collectors of Inland Revenue for his constituency.

But though the case against the appointment of officials by individual representatives is clear, the question of the part which should be taken by any elected body as a whole in appointing the officials who serve under it is much more difficult, and cannot be discussed without considering what are to be the relative functions of the officials and the representatives after the appointment has taken place.  Do we aim at making election in fact as well as in constitutional theory the sole base of political authority, or do we desire that the non-elected officials shall exert some amount of independent influence?

The fact that most Englishmen, in spite of their traditional fear of bureaucracy, would now accept the second of these alternatives, is one of the most striking results of our experience in the working of democracy.  We see that the evidence on which the verdict at an election must be given is becoming every year more difficult to collect and present, and further removed from the direct observation of the voters.  We