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any thing more than might be expected in the absurd Jack-Cadeisms which almost nightly disgrace the debates? Even without setting up so high a standard of qualification as that above specified, the unfitness of most representatives for their duties is abundantly manifest. You need but glance over the miscellaneous list of noblemen, baronets, squires, merchants, barristers, engineers, soldiers, sailors, railway-directors, etc., and then ask what training their previous lives have given them for the intricate business of legislation, to see at once how extreme must be the incompetence. One would think that the whole system had been framed on the sayings of some political Dogberry:-" The art of healing is difficult; the art of government easy. The understanding of arithmetic comes by study; while the understanding of society comes by instinct. Watchmaking requires a long apprenticeship; but there needs none for the making of institutions. manage a shop properly requires teaching; but the management of a people may be undertaken without preparation." Were we to be visited by some wiser Gulliver, or, as in the "Micromegas" of Voltaire, by some inhabitant of another sphere, his account of our political institutions might run somewhat as follows:

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"I found that the English were governed by an assem bly of men, said to embody the 'collective wisdom.' This assembly, joined with some other authorities which seem practically subordinate to it, has unlimited power. I was much perplexed by this. With us it is customary to define the office of any appointed body; and above all things to see that it does not defeat the ends for which it was appointed. But both the theory and the practice of this English Government, imply that it may do whatever it pleases. Though, by their current maxims and usages, the English recognize the right of property as sacredthough the infraction of it is considered by them one of

the gravest crimes-though the laws profess to be so jeal ous of it as to punish even the stealing of a turnip; yet their legislators suspend it at will. They take the money of citizens for any project which they choose to undertake; though such project was not in the least contem. plated by those who gave them authority-nay, though the greater part of the citizens from whom the money is taken had no share in giving them such authority. Each citizen can hold property only so long as the 654 deputies do not want it. It seemed to me that an exploded doc trine once current among them of 'the divine right of kings,' had simply been changed into the divine right of Parliaments.

"I was at first inclined to think that the constitution of things on the Earth was totally different from what it is with us; for the current political philosophy here, implies that acts are not right or wrong in themselves, but become one or the other by the votes of law-makers. In our world it is considered manifest that if a number of beings live together, there must, in virtue of their natures, be certain primary conditions on which only they can. work satisfactorily in concert; and that the conduct which breaks through these conditions is bad. In the English legislature, however, a proposal to regulate conduct by any such abstract standard would be held absurd. I asked one of their members of Parliament whether a majority of the House could legitimize murder. He said, No. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by decisions of statesmen, that similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that, if the right and wrong of the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal. Some, indeed, among

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the English think as we do. One of their remarkable men (not included in their Assembly of Notables) writes thus:

"To ascertain better and better what the will of the Eternal was and is with us, what the laws of the Eternal are, all Parliaments, Ecumenic Councils, Congresses, and other Collective Wisdoms, have had this for their object. Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we vote" this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. . . . Practically, men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting. . . . It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by 66 voting!

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"But I find that, contemptuously disregarding all such protests, the English legislators persevere in their hyperatheistic notion, that an Act of Parliament duly enforced by State-officers, will work out any object: no question being put whether Laws of Nature permit. I forgot to ask whether they considered that different kinds of food could be made wholesome or unwholesome by State-decree.

"One thing that struck me, was the curious way in which the members of their House of Commons judge of each others' capacities. Many who expressed opinions of the crudest kind, or trivial platitudes, or worn-out superstitions, were very civilly treated. Follies as great as that but a few years since uttered by one of their ministers, who said that free trade was contrary to common sense, were received in silence. But I was present when one of their number, who as I thought was speaking very

rationally, made a mistake in his pronunciation-made what they call a wrong quantity; and immediately there arose a shout of derision. It seemed quite tolerable that a member should know little or nothing about the business he was there to transact; but quite intolerable that he should be ignorant on a point of no moment.

"The English pique themselves on being especially practical-have a great contempt for theorizers, and profess to be guided exclusively by facts. Before making or altering a law, it is the custom to appoint a committee of inquiry, who send for men able to give information concerning the matter in hand, and ask them some thousands of questions. These questions, and the answers given to them, are printed in large books, and distributed among the members of the Houses of Parliament; and I was told that they spent about £100,000 a year in thus collecting and distributing evidence. Nevertheless, it appeared to me that the ministers and representatives of the English people, pertinaciously adhere to theories long ago disproved by the most conspicuous facts. They pay great respect to petty details of evidence, but of large truths they are quite regardless. Thus, the experience of age after age, has shown that their state-management is almost invariably bad. The national estates are so miserably administered as often to bring loss instead of gain. The government ship-yards are uniformly extravagant and inefficient. The judicial system works so ill, that most citizens will submit to serious losses rather than run risks of being ruined by law-suits. Countless facts prove the Government to be the worst owner, the worst manufacturer, the worst trader: in fact, the worst manager, be the thing managed what it may. But though the evidence of this is abundant and conclusive-though during a recent war the bunglings of officials were as glaring and multitudinous as ever; yet the belief that any proposed

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duties will be satisfactorily discharged by a new public department appointed to them, seems not a whit the weaker. Legislators, thinking themselves practical, cling to the plausible theory of an officially-regulated society, spite of overwhelming evidence that official regulation perpetually fails.

"Nay, indeed, the belief seems to gain strength among these fact-loving English statesmen; notwithstanding the facts are against it. Proposals for State-control over this and the other, have been of late more rife than ever. And, most remarkable of all, their representative assembly lately listened with grave faces to the assertion, made by one of their high authorities, that State-workshops are more economical than private workshops. Their prime minister, in defending a recently-established arms-factory, actually told them that at one of their arsenals, certain missiles of war were manufactured not only better than by the trade, but at about one-third the price; and added, 'so it would be in all things.' The English being a trading people, who must be tolerably familiar with the usual. rates of profits among manufacturers, and the margin for possible economy, the fact that they should have got for their chief representative one so utterly in the dark on these matters, struck me as a wonderful result of the representative system.

"I did not inquire much further, for it was manifest that if these were really their wisest men, the English were not a wise people."

Representative government, then, cannot be called a success, in so far as the choice of men is concerned, Those it puts into power are the fittest neither in respect of their interests, their culture, nor their wisdom. And as a consequence, partly of this and partly of its complex and sumbrous nature, representative government is any thing