over the country, but in no electorate was it
more vigorously and, to its credit, more good-humouredly fought than
in the fertile old valley of Noonoon.

It was the only chance the unfortunate electors had of bullying the
lordly M.P.'s and would-be M.P.'s, who, once elected, would fatten on
the parliamentary screw and pickings without showing any return, and
right eagerly the electors took their present opportunity.

Zest was added to the contest by both the contestants being wealthy
men, and with youth as well as means to carry it out on expensive
lines. They were equally independent of parliament as a means of
living, and being men of leisure were merely anxious for office to
raise them from the rank and file of nonentityism. Independent means
are a great advantage to a member of parliament. The penniless man
elected on sheer merit, to whom the country could look for good
things, becomes dependent upon politics for a living, is often
handicapped by a family who are loth to leave the society and comfort
to which their bread-winner's official position has raised them, and
he, held by his affection, is ready to sacrifice all convictions and
principle to remain in power. To this man politics becomes a desperate
gamble, and the country's interests can go to the dogs so long as he
can ensure re-election.

Another advantage in the Noonoon candidates which should have silenced
the pessimists, who averred there were no good clean men to enter
parliament, was that these men were both such exemplary citizens,
morally, physically, and socially, that it seemed a sheer waste of
goodness that only one could be elected.

The newspapers went politically mad, and those not any hysterical
country rags, but the big metropolitan dailies, and there was one
thing to be noted in regard to their statements that seriously needed
rectifying. What is the purpose of the great dailies but to keep the
people correctly informed as to the progress of public affairs and
events of the community at large? Most of the people are too hard at
work to forage information for themselves, or even to be thoroughly
cognisant of that collected in the newspapers, and therefore
parliamentary candidates, if not correct in their figures and
statements, should be publicly arraigned for perjury. The
Ministerialists gave one set of figures dealing with national
financial statistics and the Oppositionists gave widely different. How
was an elector to act when the pla