I told the gardener that as he had found the thing he ought to keep it, but that if he cared to sell it to me it could be valued properly, and then sold.  He said at first, with characteristic independence, that he would like to keep it.  He said it would make a brooch for his wife.  But a little later he brought it back to me without explanation.  I could not get a ray of light on the reason of his refusal; but he looked lowering and unhappy.  Had he some mystical instinct that it is just such accidental and irrational wealth that is the doom of all peasantries?  Perhaps he dimly felt that the boy’s pirate tales are true; and that buried treasure is a thing for robbers and not for producers.  Perhaps he thought there was a curse on such capital:  on the coal of the coal-owners, on the gold of the gold-seekers.  Perhaps there is.

THE VOTER AND THE TWO VOICES

The real evil of our Party System is commonly stated wrong.  It was stated wrong by Lord Rosebery, when he said that it prevented the best men from devoting themselves to politics, and that it encouraged a fanatical conflict.  I doubt whether the best men ever would devote themselves to politics.  The best men devote themselves to pigs and babies and things like that.  And as for the fanatical conflict in party politics, I wish there was more of it.  The real danger of the two parties with their two policies is that they unduly limit the outlook of the ordinary citizen.  They make him barren instead of creative, because he is never allowed to do anything except prefer one existing policy to another.  We have not got real Democracy when the decision depends upon the people.  We shall have real Democracy when the problem depends upon the people.  The ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about.

It is this which involves some weakness in many current aspirations towards the extension of the suffrage; I mean that, apart from all questions of abstract justice, it is not the smallness or largeness of the suffrage that is at present the difficulty of Democracy.  It is not the quantity of voters, but the quality of the thing they are voting about.  A certain alternative is put before them by the powerful houses and the highest political class.  Two roads are opened to them; but they must go down one or the other.  They cannot have what they choose, but only which they choose.  To follow the process in practice we may put it thus.  The Suffragettes—­if one may judge by their frequent ringing of his bell—­want to do something to Mr. Asquith.  I have no notion what it is.  Let us say (for the sake of argument) that they want to paint him green.  We will suppose that it is entirely for that simple purpose that they are always seeking to have private interviews with him; it seems as profitable as any other end that I can imagine to such an interview.  Now, it is