ing the
election for a particular candidate, but in propagating their own
principles. Sometimes the candidate whom they support, and whom they try
to commit as deeply as possible, would be greatly relieved if they
withdrew. Generally their agents are an integral part of his fighting
organisation, and often the whole of their expenditure at an election is
covered by a special subscription made by him to the central fund. Every
one sees that this system drives a coach and horse through those clauses
in the Corrupt Practices Act which restrict election expenses and forbid
the employment of paid canvassers, though no one as yet has put forward
any plan for preventing it. But it is acknowledged that unless the whole
principle is to be abandoned, new legislation must take place; and Lord
Robert Cecil talks of the probable necessity for a 'stringent and
far-reaching Corrupt Practices Act.'[74] If, however, an act is carried
stringent enough to deal effectually with the existing development of
electoral tactics, it will have to be drafted on lines involving new and
hitherto unthought-of forms of interference with the liberty of
political appeal.

[74] _Times_, June 26, 1907.

A hundred years ago a contested election might last in any constituency
for three or four weeks of excitement and horseplay, during which the
voters were every day further removed from the state of mind in which
serious thought on the probable results of their votes was possible. Now
no election may last more than one day, and we may soon enact that all
the polling for a general election shall take place on the same day. The
sporting fever of the weeks during which a general election even now
lasts, with the ladder-climbing figures outside the newspaper offices,
the flash-lights at night, and the cheering or groaning crowds in the
party clubs, are not only waste of energy but an actual hindrance to
effective political reasoning.

A more difficult psychological problem arose in the discussion of the
Ballot. Would a voter be more likely to form a thoughtful and
public-spirited decision if, after it was formed, he voted publicly or
secretly? Most of the followers of Bentham advocated secrecy. Since men
acted in accordance with their ideas of pleasure and pain, and since
landlords and employers were able, in spite of any laws against
intimidation, to bring 'sinister' motives to bear upon voters whose
votes were known, the advisability of secret voting seeme