this occasion expected to get returned unopposed at the reduced rate of two guineas, but on the appearance of Cochrane in the field he was compelled to raise his bounty to the old figure. "You need not ask me, my lord, who I vote for," said a burgess to Cochrane; "I always vote for Mister Most." The gallant seaman, however, refused to bribe at all, and got well beaten in consequence. How he turned his defeat to account makes an amusing story. After the election he sent the bellman round the town, directing those who had voted for him to go to his agent, Mr. Townsend, and receive ten pounds ten. The novelty of a defeated candidate paying double the current price for a vote or, indeed, paying anything at all-made a great sensation. He writes in his "Autobiography of a Seaman":

Even my agent assured me that he could have secured my return for less money, for that, the popular voice being in my favor, a trifling judicious expenditure would have turned the scale. I told Mr. Townsend that such payment would have been bribery, which would not have accorded with my character as a reformer of abuses-a declaration which seemed highly to amuse him. Notwithstanding the explanation that the ten guineas was paid as a reward for having withstood the influence of bribery, the impression produced on the electoral mind by such unlooked-for liberality was simply this-that if I gave ten guineas for being beaten, my opponent had not paid half enough for being elected; a conclusion which, by a similar process of reasoning, was magnified into the conviction that each of his voters had been cheated out of five pounds five.

In the October following there was a General Election. Cochrane was again a candidate for Honiton, and although he had said nothing about paying for his votes he was returned at the head of the poll. The burgesses were convinced that on this occasion he was "Mister Most." Surely it was impossi

ble to conceive any limits to the bounty of a successful candidate who in defeat was so generous as voluntarily to pay ten guineas a vote! They got-not a penny! Cochrane told them that bribery was against his principle. What the trustful electors said about their representative would not bear repetition here. But there was another dissolution a few months afterwards, and the gallant seaman did not dare to face outraged Honiton.

It was not often, however, that the burgesses of old were outwitted by a candidate. A story that is told of the Irish borough of Cashel affords an illustration of how the voters usually scored. The electors, locally known as "Commoners," fourteen in number, were notoriously corrupt, and always sold their votes to the highest bidder. It is curious to note, by the way, that it was for this constituency that Sir Robert Peel was first returned to Parliament in 1809. The usual price of a vote in Cashel was 201. The popular candidate at one election, anxious to win the seat honestly and not to spend a penny in corruption, got the parish priest to preach a sermon at Mass on the Sunday before the polling, against the immorality of trafficking in the franchise. The good man, indeed, went so far in the course of his impressive sermon as to declare that those who betrayed a public trust by selling their votes would go to hell. Next day the candidate met one of the electors and asked what was the effect of Sunday's sermon. "Your honor," said he, "votes have risen. We always got 201. for a vote before we knew it was a sin to sell it; but as his reverence tells us that we will be damned for selling our votes, we can't for the future afford to take less than 401." The borough was ultimately disfranchised for bribery and corruption.

Bribery did not always mean the direct purchase of votes for money

It

-the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883which has done much to make Parliamentary elections pure. It extends bribery to payments to voters for refreshments and travelling expenses. fixes a maximum scale of electioneering expenditure-varying in amount according to the character and extent of the constituency-and requires each candidate to make a statement of his expenses to the returning officer within thirty-five days after the election. The General Election of 1880-the last election in which expenditure within the law was practically unlimited-cost the candidates over 2,000,000l., or about 158. for each vote polled The General Election of 1885, the first held under the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, cost only 1,026,6461., or 48. 5d. for each vote polled. The tendency of the expenditure is still downwards. According to the Blue-book issued in connection with the last General Election, that of 1900, it appears that only 777,4291., or 214,1467. less than the maximum scale allowed by the Act of 1883, which in this case was 991,575l., was spent by the 1103 candidates who fought for the 670 seats of the House of Commons in that electoral campaign. As 3,519,345 votes were polled out of 6,730,935 then on the register, the average cost per vote was 48. 4d.

Still the question is sometimes asked in all seriousness: Is electioneering really any purer now than it was in the days before the first Reform Act? It is admitted that constituencies are no longer deliberately and frankly purchased. But it is said that the old blunt, barefaced forms of corruption have simply given place to newer and subtler methods of bribery, which are just as dishonorable to dispensers and receivers, and just as dangerous to public morals. A candidate does not buy a constituency; he "nurses" it. In other words he tries to secure the good will and support of the electors by lib

eral subscriptions and donations to various local objects. These objects divide themselves into two classes-religious and philanthropic, sport and amusements. Is a new peal of bells required for the parish church? Does the chapel aspire to a steeple? Is the Young Men's Christian Association in want of a gymnasium? The openhanded candidate is only waiting to be asked in order to supply these needs. Then there are football clubs and cricket clubs to which the candidate is expected to give financial assistance; and give it he does, willingly and proudly, for, says he, is it not the duty of public men to encourage the national sports and pastimes? It would seem indeed as if the old tradition that a vote is a salable commodity, and that Parliamentary elections are held, not that the country may be governed in accordance with the wishes of the people, but that electors may get payment in one way or another for their votes, still to some extent survives. It asserts itself, at times, in very impudent forms. A candidate who was asked to relate some of his experiences during the contest says:

I have a vivid recollection of one incident. I was visiting an outlying committee-room when three men came up to me, one of whom said, "Look 'ere, guv'nor, we're not going to vote without beer." This observation aroused my anger to such a pitch that I gave them this answer-"Now, we'll have a talk about this. In the first place you'll have no beer. That's plain. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll send you down to the polling-booth in the only carriage that is availableit was pouring at the time on one condition. That condition is that you'll vote for my opponent." The men were so astonished that they actually walked to the polling-booth in the rain and voted, not for my rival, but for me.

There are even audacious demands on the purse of the candidate. They

range from five shillings for getting a voter's clothes or tools out of pawn, to a five-pound note for sending an invalid supporter to the seaside. But these attempts to blackmail the candidate are indeed exceedingly rare. According as the franchise has been broadened, according as the property qualification for a vote has been reduced, the purer have elections become. This is due to some extent no doubt to the risk that is run by the candidate in any attempt to evade the law against corrupt and illegal practices, and to the nature of the constituencies, which are now so large that the purchase of a sufficient number of votes to decide the issue is beyond the capacity of any purse. But we possess in the sturdy pride and self-respect of the working classes generally, as well as in their sense of public duty, a guarantee that they do not petitionally extend their hands for doles in return for their votes. Happily there is no gainsaying the seriousness and disinterestedness with which the franchise is now exercised. The electors go to the pollingbooths animated by a genuine and serious public spirit, which is really one of the essential qualities of a nation's greatness.

Moreover, party organization, which, as I have shown, is the dominant influence in our public life, makes a representative largely independent of the whims and caprices of his constituency. In truth a member of Parliament in these days is not so much the representative of a constituency as the delegate of a political party. What is the first step that is taken by a man who has an ambition to enter Parliament? He goes to the headquarters of his party and says that he is ready to carry its standard in any constituency for which it may get him accepted as the party candidate. He knows that if he were to go independently to the constituency, and declare that he belongs to no political party, that if The Nineteenth Century and After.

returned to Parliament his votes will be directed entirely to the good of the nation irrespective of party considerations, he would be scoffed at and derided as a crank. The self-chosen candidate, the man who says he is above party, makes no appeal to the electors. It is the great party organizations that bring into touch candidates in search of constituencies and constituencies seeking candidates. "You choose a member indeed," said Burke to the electors of Bristol; "but when you have chosen him, he is not member for Bristol, he is a member of Parliament." It is true to-day that the man who comes out at the head of the poll is not member for Bristol; he is a Liberal or a Conservative member, a Freetrader or a Tariff Reformer. He is the man who best embodies the political opinions of the majority, and as such he is elected to support the principles of one political party or the other in the House of Commons. So generally is this recognized that to give political pledges is no longer thought inconsistent with the duty or derogatory to the character of a Parliamentary representative. In truth, the atmosphere of a country with free Parliamentary institutions is unfavorable to the return of representatives unfettered by pledges. Occasionally, the representative may be hard pressed by local interests and local calls, but as a rule these are regarded as subsidiary to party interests, to the supreme aim of each party to obtain control of the machinery of Government. The secret of success in the wooing of the electors to-day is not the distribution of blankets or church steeples; it is not even wit, wisdom and eloquence in the candidate or complete independence of judgment in public affairs; it is staunch adherence to one party ticket or the other; it is conformity with the political opinions of the majority of the constituency.

Michael MacDonagh.

I often wish that we had a more beautiful word than "art" for so beautiful a thing; it is in itself a snappish explosive word, like the cry of an angry animal; and it has, too, to bear the sad burden of its own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so many things that one is never quite sure what the people who use it intend to mean; some people use it in an abstract, some in a concrete sense; and it is unfortunate, too, in bearing, in certain usages, a nuance of unreality and scheming.

What I mean by art, in its deepest and truest sense, is a certain perceptiveness, a power of seeing what is characteristic, coupled, as a rule, in the artistic temperament, with a certain power of expression, an imaginative gift which can raise a large fabric out of slender resources, building a palace, like the Genie in the story of Aladdin, in a single night.

The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, than is supposed. Most people find it difficult to believe in the existence of it, unless it is accompanied by certain fragile signs of its existence, such as water-color drawing, or a tendency to strum on a piano. But, as a matter of fact, the possession of an artistic temperament without the power of expression is one of the commonest causes of unhappiness in the world. Who does not know those illregulated, fastidious people, who have a strong sense of their own significance and position, a sense which is not justified by any particular performance, who are contemptuous of others, critical, hard to satisfy, who have a general sense of disappointment and dreariness, a craving for recognition, and a feeling that they are not ap

preciated at their true worth? To such people, sensitive, ineffective, proud, every circumstance of life gives food for discontent. They have vague perceptions which they cannot translate into words or symbols. They find their work humdrum and unexciting, their relations with others tiresome; they think that under different circumstances and in other surroundings they might have played a braver part; they never realize that the root of their unhappiness lies in themselves; and, perhaps, it is merciful that they do not, for the fact that they can accumulate blame upon the conditions imposed on them by fate is the only thing that saves them from irreclaimable depression.

Sometimes, again, the temperament exists with a certain power of expression, but without sufficient perseverance or hard technical merit to produce artistic successes, and thus we get the amateur. Sometimes it is the other way, and the technical power of production is developed beyond the inner perceptiveness; and this produces a species of dull soulless art, and the rôle of the professional artist. Very rarely one sees the outward and the inward power perfectly combined, but then we get the humble, hopeful artist who lives for and in his work; he is humble because he cannot reach the perfection for which he strives; he is hopeful because he gets nearer to it day by day. But, speaking generally, the temperament is not one that brings steady happiness; it brings with it moments of rapture, when some bright dream is being realized; but it brings with it also moments of deep depression, when dreams are silent, and the weary brain fears that the light is