will be to clear
away all moral and intellectual difficulties in political organisation.

A mere numerical increase in the number of persons in England who are
interested in politics would indeed itself introduce a new and difficult
political factor. The active politicians in England, those who take any
part in politics beyond voting, are at present a tiny minority. I was to
speak not long ago at an election meeting, and having been misdirected
as to the place where the meeting was to be held, found myself in an
unknown part of North London, compelled to inquire of the inhabitants
until I should find the address either of the meeting-hall or of the
party committee-room. For a long time I drew blank, but at last a cabman
on his way home to tea told me that there was a milkman in his street
who was 'a politician and would know.' There are in London seven hundred
thousand parliamentary voters, and I am informed by the man who is in
the best position to know that it would be safe to say that less than
ten thousand persons actually attend the annual ward meetings of the
various parties, and that not more than thirty thousand are members of
the party associations. That division of labour which assigns politics
to a special class of enthusiasts, looked on by many of their neighbours
as well-meaning busybodies, is not carried so far in most other parts of
England as in London. But in no county in England, as far as I am aware,
does the number of persons really active in politics amount to ten per
cent. of the electorate.

There are, I think, signs that this may soon cease to be true. The
English Elementary Education Act was passed in 1870, and the elementary
schools may be said to have become fairly efficient by 1880. Those who
entered them, being six years old, at that date are now aged
thirty-four. The statistics as to the production and sale of newspapers
and cheap books and the use of free libraries, show that the younger
working men and women in England read many times as much as their
parents did. This, and the general increase of intellectual activity in
our cities of which it is only a part, may very probably lead, as the
social question in politics grows more serious, to a large extension of
electoral interest. If so, the little groups of men and women who now
manage the three English parties in the local constituencies will find
themselves swamped by thousands of adherents who will insist on taking
some part in the c