id="Page_13" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 13]"/> made; but it is a possible call, and one to be taken into account when the value of a vote is considered.

Those who are sent to Parliament have thus the power of embarking in enterprises which may diminish one’s revenue by increased taxation and imperil his life by enforced service. And in matters of less importance, but of considerable effect upon both pocket and comfort, they wield extensive powers. They can extend or they can lessen our liberties; they can interfere largely with our social concerns; their powers are nowhere strictly defined, and are so wide as to be almost illimitable. And for the manner in which they exercise those powers, each man who possesses a vote is in his degree responsible.

There are persons who affect, from the height of a serene indifference, to look down upon all political struggles as the mere diversions of a lower mental order. That kind of being, or any approach to its attitude of mind, should be avoided by all who wish well to the government of the country. To sit on the fence, and rail at the ploughman, because his boots are muddy and his hands unwashed, is at once useless and impertinent; and to stand outside the political field, and endeavour to hinder those who are doing their best within, deserves the same epithets. When it is said that hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers abound in politics, and that there is no place there for honest men, does not the indictment appear too sweeping? Has not the same argument been used against religion; and is it not one of the poorest in the whole armoury of controversy? If there are hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers in politics—and no candid person would deny it, any more than that there are such in religion, in business, in science, and in art—is it not the more necessary that every honest man should try and root them out? If every honest man abstained from politics, with what right could he complain that all politicians were rogues? But no sober person believes that all politicians are rogues, and those superior beings who talk as if they are deserve condemnation for doing nothing to purify the political atmosphere.

Some who would not go so far as those who are thus condemned, still labour under the idea that politics are more or less a game, to the issue of which they can afford to be indifferent. This, it may be feared, is the notion of many, and it is one to be earnestly combatted. Every man owes the duty to the State to assist, as far as he can, those whom he considers the best and wisest of its would-be governors. There is nobility in the idea that every elector can do something for the national welfare by thoughtfully and straightforwardly exercising the franchise, and aiding the cause he deems best. Young men especially should entertain this feeling, for youth is the time for burning thoughts, and it is not until a man is old that he can afford to smoulder. The future is in the hands of the young of to-day; and if these are indifferent to the great issues of State, and are prepared to let things drift, a rude awakening awaits them.

The details of political work need not here be entered upon. All that is now wanted is to show that that work is of very real importance to every one; and that, unless taken in hand by the honest and capable, it will fall to the dishonest and incapable for accomplishment. And as the vote is a right to which every free Englishman is entitled, and a trust each possessor of which should be called upon to exercise, there ought not to remain men on the registers who persistently decline to use it. Absentee landlords have been the curse of Ireland, and they will have to be got rid of. Abstentionist voters might, in easily conceivable circumstances, be the curse of England, and they would have to be got rid of likewise.

The value of a vote may be judged from the fact that it saves the country from a periodical necessity for revolution. Everything in our Constitution that wants altering can be altered at the ballot-box; and whereas the vote-less man has no direct influence upon those affairs of State which affect him as they affect every other citizen, the possessor of the franchise can make his power directly felt. We are within sight of manhood, it may be of adult, suffrage; and if the vote were of no value it would be folly—almost criminal folly—to extend its use. Those who deem it folly are of a practically extinct school in English politics. For better or worse, the few are now governed by the many, and the many will never again be governed by the few.

Those who are of the many may be tempted to urge that that very fact lessens the worth of the vote in that every elector has the same value at the polling booth, and that, however intelligent may be the interest he takes in politics, his ignorant neighbour’s vote counts the same as his own. But that is to forget what every one who mixes with his fellow-men must soon learn—that the intelligent have a weight of legitimate influence upon their less-informed fellows which is exceedingly great. Our vote counts for no more than that of the man who has sold his suffrage for beer; but our influence may have brought twenty waverers to the poll, while that of our beer-drinking acquaintance has brought none.

A cynic has observed that “politics are a salad, in which office is the oil, opposition the vinegar, and the people the thing to be devoured.” But to approach public affairs from that point, and to judge them solely on that principle, is as reasonable as to use green spectacles and complain of the colour of the sky. Politics should be looked at without prejudice, but with the recollection that in them are concerned many of our best and wisest men. If that be done, and the mind kept open for the reception of facts, there is little doubt of the admission that there is a deep reality in politics, and a reality in which every one is concerned.

II.—IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS?

All will possibly admit that, in conceivable circumstances, a vote may be useful, but many will not be prepared to allow that politics are an important factor in our daily life. War, they would urge, is a remote contingency, and a conscription is, of all unlikely things, the most unlikely; our liberties have been won, and there is no chance of a despot sitting on the throne; and, even if taxes are high, what can any one member of Parliament, much less any one elector, do to bring them down? From which questions, and from the answers they think must be made to them, they would draw the conclusion that, whatever might have been the case formerly, there is nothing practical in the politics of to-day.

It would not be hard to show that a conscription is by no means an impossibility; that our liberties demand constant vigilance; and that individual effort may greatly affect taxation. But even if the answer desired were given to each question, the points raised, except the last, are admittedly remote from daily life; and, if politics are to be considered practical, they must concern affairs nearer to us. This they do; and if they affected only the greater issues of State, they would not be practical in the sense they now are. It is the small troubles, whether public or private, which worry us most. The dust in one’s eye may be only a speck, but, measured by misery, it is colossal.

The law touches us upon every side, and the law is the outcome of politics in having been enacted by Parliament. From the smallest things to the greatest, the Legislature interferes. A man cannot go into a public-house after a certain hour because of one Act of Parliament; he cannot deal with a bank upon specified days because of another. One Act of Parliament orders him, if a