who at present lead Conservative and Liberal and Labour parties alike, and, with the help of the press syndicate and the subscription fund of the ‘Free Money League,’ begins to capture the local associations, and through them the central office of the party which is for the moment in opposition, Can any one be sure that such a campaign, if it were opposed only by counter-electioneering, might not succeed, even although its proposals were wholly fraudulent and its leaders so ignorant or so criminal that they could only come into power by discrediting two-thirds of the honest politicians in the country and by replacing them with ‘hustlers’ and ‘boodlers’ and ‘grafters,’ and the other species for whom American political science has provided names?  How is the ordinary voter—­a market-gardener, or a gas-stoker, or a water-colour painter—­to distinguish by the help of his own knowledge and reasoning power between the various appeals made to him by the ‘Reformers’ and the ’Safe Money Men’ as to the right proportion of the gold reserve to the note issue—­the ‘ten per cent.’ on the blue posters and the ‘cent. per cent.’ on the yellow?  Nor will his conscience be a safer guide than his judgment.  A ‘Christian Service Wing’ of the Free Money League may be formed, and his conscience may be roused by a white-cravatted orator, intoxicated by his own eloquence into something like sincerity, who borrows that phrase about ‘Humanity crucified on a cross of gold’ which Mr. W.J.  Bryan borrowed a dozen years ago from some one else.  In an optimistic mood one might rely on the subtle network of confidence by which each man trusts, on subjects outside his own knowledge, some honest and better-informed neighbour, who again trusts at several removes the trained thinker.  But does such a personal network exist in our vast delocalised urban populations?

It is the vague apprehension of such dangers, quite as much as the merely selfish fears of the privileged classes, which preserves in Europe the relics of past systems of non-elective government, the House of Lords, for instance, in England, and the Monarchy in Italy or Norway.  Men feel that a second base in politics is required, consisting of persons independent of the tactics by which electoral opinion is formed and legally entitled to make themselves heard.  But political authority founded on heredity or wealth is not in fact protected from the interested manipulation of opinion and feeling.  The American Senate, which has come to be representative of wealth, is already absorbed by that financial power which depends for its existence on manufactured opinion; and our House of Lords is rapidly tending in the same direction.  From the beginning of history it has been found easier for any skilled politician who set his mind to it, to control the opinions of a hereditary monarch than those of a crowd.