e formation of political opinion would enable
us to improve it.

Something might be done, and perhaps will be done in the near future, to
abolish the more sordid details of English electioneering. Public houses
could be closed on the election day, both to prevent drunkenness and
casual treating, and to create an atmosphere of comparative seriousness.
It is a pity that we cannot have the elections on a Sunday as they have
in France. The voters would then come to the poll after twenty or
twenty-four hours' rest, and their own thoughts would have some power of
asserting themselves even in the presence of the canvasser, whose
hustling energy now inevitably dominates the tired nerves of men who
have just finished their day's work. The feeling of moral responsibility
half consciously associated with the religious use of Sunday would also
be so valuable an aid to reflection that the most determined
anti-clerical might be willing to risk the chance that it would add to
the political power of the churches. It may cease to be true that in
England the Christian day of rest, in spite of the recorded protest of
the founder of Christianity, is still too much hedged about by the
traditions of prehistoric taboo to be available for the most solemn act
of citizenship. It might again be possible to lend to the polling-place
some of the dignity of a law court, and if no better buildings were
available, at least to clean and decorate the dingy schoolrooms now
used. But such improvements in the external environment of election-day,
however desirable they may be in themselves, can only be of small
effect.

Some writers argue or imply that all difficulties in the working of the
electoral process will disappear of themselves as men approach to social
equality. Those who are now rich will, they believe, have neither motive
for corrupt electoral expenditure, nor superfluity of money to spend on
it; while the women and the working men who are now unenfranchised or
politically inactive, will bring into politics a fresh stream of
unspoilt impulse.

If our civilisation is to survive, greater social equality must indeed
come. Men will not continue to live peacefully together in huge cities
under conditions that are intolerable to any sensitive mind, both among
those who profit, and those who suffer by them. But no one who is near
to political facts can believe that the immediate effect either of
greater equality or of the extension of the suffrage