Further, the very idea of representation itself involved two
perfectly distinct notions: a man throws a shadow or he throws a
stone. "In the first sense, it is supposed that the representative is
like the thing he represents. In the second case, it is only supposed
that the representative is useful to the thing he represents."
Workmen, like Conservatives, sent men to Parliament not to show what
they themselves were like, but to attack the other party in their
name. "The Labour Members as a class are not representatives but
missiles. . . . Working men are not at all like Mr. Keir Hardie. If
it comes to likeness, working men are more like the Duke of
Devonshire. But they throw Mr. Keir Hardie at the Duke of Devonshire,
knowing that he is so curiously shaped as to hurt anything at which
he is thrown."* In the same way Mr. Balfour was entirely unlike the
Tory squires who used him as a weapon. To this rule, that men do not
choose to be represented by their like, Chesterton took Will Crooks
as the one exception:

[* Introduction to _From Workhouse to Westminster_, p. XV.]

You have not yet seen the English people in politics. It has not
yet entered politics. Liberals do not represent it; Tories do not
represent it; Labour Members, on the whole, represent it rather less
than Tories or Liberals. When it enters politics it will bring with
it a trail of all the things that politicians detest; prejudices (as
against hospitals), superstitions (as about funerals), a thirst for
respectability passing that of the middle classes, a faith in the
family which will knock to pieces half the Socialism of Europe. If
ever that people enters politics it will sweep away most of our
revolutionists as mere pedants. It will be able to point only to one
figure, powerful, pathetic, humorous and very humble, who bore in any
way upon his face the sign and star of its authority.*

[* Ibid., p. XX.]

It was sad enough after this to see Will Crooks fathering one of
those very Bills for the interference with family life which
Chesterton most hated. But, indeed, the years that followed the 1906
election are a story of a steadily growing disillusionment with the
realities of representative government in England.

Chesterton wrote regularly for the _Daily News_ and was regarded as
one of their most valuable contributors. But when, following an
attack in the House of Commons on the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman