mplements of party leaders and managers, the House of Commons becomes an
assembly of place-hunters and self-seekers, for whom the profession of
politics affords the gratification of vanity or enrichment at the public
expense. In such an assembly the self-respecting man with a laudable
willingness to serve the State is conspicuous by his absence.

With a Press in the hands of party politicians, and with editors and
journalists engaged to write up their party through thick and thin, and to
write down every honest effort at political independence of mind, the
danger of losing from all political service the few rare minds that can ill
be spared is a very real and present danger.

ON BEHALF OF DEMOCRACY

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," and often enough we sleep at
our vigils. But when all the dangers and difficulties that beset democracy
are enumerated, and all its weak spots are laid bare, we can still hold
democracy to be the only suitable form of government for persons possessing
free will, and the representation of the people the most satisfactory
expression of democracy.

Government by autocrat, by despotism, benevolent or otherwise, by expert
officials, or by an oligarchy of superior intelligences is irksome to the
average man or woman of reasonable education, and in each case has been
intolerable to the British people. They have all been tried and found
wanting--royal absolutism, aristocracy, military dictatorship, and only of
late have we been threatened by an expert bureaucracy.

Parliamentary representation adapted, by the removal of disabilities of
creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been
proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression.
Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an
instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for
the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of
Parliament that means be found for getting rid of the ills around us, for
preventing disease and destitution, for promoting health and decency.

And just because legislation is, at the prompting of a social conscience,
invading our homes and workshops, penetrating into prisons, workhouses, and
hospitals, touching the lives of all of us from the cradle to the grave,
the more imperative is it that our legislators should be chosen freely by
the widest electorate of men and women. We fall back on th