ding the Army and Navy)
given in the Census Returns of 1901 as professionally employed in the
central and local government of the United Kingdom was 161,000. This
number has certainly grown since 1901 at an increasing rate, and
consists of persons who give on an average at least four times as many
hours a week to their work as can be expected from the average elected
member.

What ought to be the relation between these two bodies, of twenty-three
thousand elected, and, say, two hundred thousand non-elected persons? To
begin with, ought the elected members be free to appoint the non-elected
officials as they like? Most American politicians of Andrew Jackson's
time, and a large number of American politicians to-day, would hold, for
instance, as a direct corollary from democratic principles, that the
elected congressman or senator for a district or State has a right to
nominate the local federal officials. There may, he would admit, be some
risk in that method, but the risk, he would argue, is one involved in
the whole scheme of democracy, and the advantages of democracy as a
whole are greater than its disadvantages.

Our political logic in England has never been so elementary as that of
the Americans, nor has our faith in it been so unflinching. Most
Englishmen, therefore, have no feeling of disloyalty to the democratic
idea in admitting that it is not safe to allow the efficiency of
officials to depend upon the personal character of individual
representatives. At the General Election of 1906 there were at least two
English constituencies (one Liberal and the other Conservative) which
returned candidates whose personal unfitness had been to most men's
minds proved by evidence given in the law courts. Neither constituency
was markedly unlike the average in any respect. The facts were well
known, and in each case an attempt was made by a few public-spirited
voters to split the party vote, but both candidates were successful by
large majorities. The Borough of Croydon stands, socially and
intellectually, well above the average, but Mr. Jabez Balfour
represented Croydon for many years, until he was sentenced to penal
servitude for fraud. No one in any of these three cases would have
desired that the sitting member should appoint, say, the postmasters, or
collectors of Inland Revenue for his constituency.

But though the case against the appointment of officials by individual
representatives is clear, the question of the pa