election the party system
followed as a matter of course. In theory, of course, there may be any
number of candidates for a constituency and a voter votes for the one he
likes best; in practice there are only two or three candidates, and the
voter votes for the one most likely to beat the candidate he likes
least. It cannot be too strongly insisted that in contemporary elections
we vote against; we do not vote for. If A, B and C are candidates, and
you hate C and all his works and prefer A, but doubt if he will get as
many votes as B, who is indifferent to you, the chances are you will
vote for B. If C and B have the support of organised parties, you are
still less likely to risk "wasting" your vote upon A. If your real
confidence is in G, who is not a candidate for your constituency, and if
B pledges himself to support G, while A retains the right of separate
action, you may vote for B even if you distrust him personally.
Additional candidates would turn any election of this type into a wild
scramble. The system lies, in fact, wholly open to the control of
political organisations, calls out, indeed, for the control of political
organisations, and has in every country produced what is so evidently
demanded. The political organisations to-day rule us unchallenged. Save
as they speak for us, the people are dumb.

Elections of the prevalent pattern, which were intended and are still
supposed by simple-minded people to give every voter participation in
government, do as a matter of fact effect nothing of the sort. They give
him an exasperating fragment of choice between the agents of two party
organisations, over neither of which he has any intelligible control.
For twenty-five years I have been a voter, and in all that time I have
only twice had an opportunity of voting for a man of distinction in whom
I had the slightest confidence. Commonly my choice of a "representative"
has been between a couple of barristers entirely unknown to me or the
world at large. Rather more than half the men presented for my selection
have not been English at all, but of alien descent. This, then, is the
sum of the political liberty of the ordinary American or Englishman,
that is the political emancipation which Englishwomen have shown
themselves so pathetically eager to share. He may reject one of two
undesirables, and the other becomes his "representative." Now this is
not popular government at all; it is government by the profession of
pol