ss of the nation.
The man therefore who by his personal influence, or by his leadership in
a perfectly organised party machine in one ward of Birmingham, can be
relied on to call out the full Liberal strength in that one ward of a
single city may be absolutely indispensable to the success of the party
in the country as a whole. And it is even conceivable that that man
again may be dependent on one of his own henchmen, the "Captain" of a
single precinct in the ward or the man who has the ear and confidence of
the hands in the largest of the factories.

Let me not be understood as saying that the personal influence of an
individual may not be extremely powerful in an English election; and
that power may rest, similarly, on his popularity in, and consequent
ability to carry with him into the party fold, one particular district.
But there is not the same established form of County government on
avowedly national lines, nor the same city government, as in America,
through which that influence can make itself definitely and continuously
felt.

* * * * *

We will state the situation in another way, which will make it clear to
Englishmen from another point of view:

Let it be imagined that at the next general election in England, the
decision is to be arrived at by a direct vote of the country as a whole
for a Conservative or a Liberal Prime Minister. Instead of each County
and borough electing its members of Parliament (they will do that only
incidentally) the real struggle will take the form of a direct contest
between two men. Each of the great parties will choose its own
candidate, and the Conservatives have already nominated Mr. Balfour. It
remains for the Liberals to name their man who is to run against Mr.
Balfour. The selection is to be made in a National Convention, to be
held in Manchester, at which each County will be represented by a number
of delegates proportioned to its population. Those delegates have
already been elected in each County by local meetings within the
Counties themselves, and in nearly every case the delegations so elected
will come into the Convention Hall at Manchester prepared to vote and
act as a unit. Whether that has been arrived at by choice of the
individual Counties when they elected their delegations or whether the
Convention itself has decided the matter by adopting the "unit rule"
does not matter. The fact is that each county will be compelled to vote