any Hall--America's
Superior Opportunities for Wickedness--But England is Catching
up--Campaign Reminiscences--The "Hell-box"--Politics in a
Gravel-pit--Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan.

The subject of this chapter will, perhaps, be more easy of comprehension
to the English reader if he will for a moment surrender his imagination
into my charge while we transfer to England certain political conditions
of the United States.

There are in the first place, then, the great political parties, in the
nation and in Parliament (Congress); with the fact always to be borne in
mind that the members of Congress are not nominated by any central
committee or association, but are selected and nominated by the people
of each district. A candidate is not "sent down" to contest a given
constituency. He is a resident of that constituency, selected in small
local meetings by the voters themselves.

Next, every County (State) has its own machinery of government,
including a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other County officials as
well as a bi-cameral Legislature, with a membership ranging from seventy
in some Counties to over three hundred in others. In these County
Legislatures and governments, parties are split on precisely the same
lines as in the nation and in Parliament. Members of the House of
Commons have usually qualified for election by a previous term in the
County Legislature, while members of the House of Lords are actually
elected direct, not by the people in the mass, but by the members of the
County Legislatures only, each county sending to Westminster two members
so elected. Nor is it to be supposed that these County governments are
governments in name only.

It is not easy to imagine that in England the Counties, each with its
separate and sovereign government, preceded the National Government and
voluntarily called it into existence only as a federation of themselves.
But that, we must for the present understand, was indeed the course of
history; and when that federation was formed, the various Counties
entrusted to the Central Government only a strictly limited list of
powers. The Central Government was authorised to treat with foreign
nations in the name of the United Counties; to maintain a standing army
of limited size, and to create a navy; to establish postal routes,
regardless of County boundaries; to regulate commerce between the
different Counties, to care for the national coast line and all
nav