e things observed by our senses, of looking, for instance, through a
list of candidates for an appointment and weighing the qualifications of
the man whom one has never met by the same standard as those of the man
whom one has met, and liked or pitied, the day before; or of deciding on
an improvement with complete impartiality as between the district one
knows of on the map and the district one sees every morning. If a
representative elected to govern a large area allows personal
acquaintance and liking to influence his decisions, his acquaintance and
liking will he schemed for and exploited by those who have their own
ends to gain. The same difficulty arises in matters of discipline, where
the interests of the unknown thousands who will suffer from the
inefficiency of an official have to be balanced against those of the
known official who will suffer by being punished or dismissed; as well
as in those numerous cases in which a working man has to balance the
dimly realised interests of the general consumer against his intimate
sympathy with his fellow-craftsmen.

The political risk arising from these facts is not, at present, very
great in the parliamentary Labour Party. The working men who have been
sent to parliament have been hitherto, as a rule, men of picked
intelligence and morale and of considerable political experience. But
the success or failure of any scheme aiming at social equality will
depend chiefly on its administration by local bodies, to which the
working classes must necessarily send men of less exceptional ability
and experience. I have never myself served on an elected local body the
majority of whose members were weekly wage earners. But I have talked
with men, both of working-class and middle-class origin, who have been
in that position. What they say confirms that which I have inferred from
my own observation, that on such a body one finds a high level of
enthusiasm, of sympathy, and of readiness to work, combined with a
difficulty in maintaining a sufficiently rigorous standard in dealing
with sectional interests and official discipline.

One is told that on such a body many members feel it difficult to
realise that the way in which a well-intentioned man may deal with his
own personal expenditure, his continued patronage, for instance, of a
rather inefficient tradesman because he has a large family, or his
refusal to contest an account from a dislike of imputing bad motives, is
fatal if applied