what they called their " principles" represented. Treating was freely practised, and the acute faculties of the electoral mind were perfectionated by a course of festivities which assuredly as little contributed to the dignity of the individual as to his powers of correct appreciation.

The constituency that cared for five-pound notes were for the most part easily dealt with. A sort of Parliamentary transparency was exhibited as to measures. Things were promised, assurances given, pledges made as to this or that other; but the great fact remained palpable, that the man to conciliate the voters should be he who could most certainly provide them with material guarantees of his goodwill.

To secure freedom of election was naturally a great object with the Legislature-to offer as many obstacles as possible to all corruption was a very legitimate ambition-and so they determined that there should be no bribery, no coercion, no treating, no unfair interference.

The candidate, in consequence, approached his constituency no longer with his purse. The law said, You shall not bribe; you shall only promise-cajole— prevaricate. You shall qualify a concession to this by some restriction on that-you shall declare yourself in favour of fifty things, in the secret confidence that

none of them can ever be made practicable, and

You

give assurances of your hopes in that which in your heart you would regard as a dire calamity. shall profess-what shall you not profess of Christian virtues?—benevolence, integrity, and self-devotion, albeit your life may offer some unhappy contrast to your declarations, and the well-known opinions of your friends but little corroborate the high ground of your assumption. In one word, you shall transfer the course of your corruption from your purse to your person. Instead of going to your banker for the means of corruption, it shall be to your heart you shall apply. You shall fit yourself for the Legislature by a course of profligate profession which would disgrace a strolling actor in soliciting patronage for his benefit. You shall be, in the most humiliating sense of the expression, "all things to all men," and so accommodate your principles and shape your opinions, that you shall come out of this search after popular favour a creature without convictions—a man without one atom of manliness.

A word now for the voter. Not alone is the absurdity great in sending men to a deliberative assembly pledged to disregard all they shall hear there-bound, no matter how strong the evidence or how forcible the argument, to close their ears against all persuasion, and vote in open defiance of whatever may influence

their convictions; but there is the added absurdity that presupposes the Radical attorney of the village, the Mazzinian baker, or the Ledru-Rollinite grocer, to be a more adequate judge of political fitness than the trained and educated politician who has made lawmaking a study.

What should we say if, on the sailing of a great naval expedition, the boatswain, the carpenter, or the cook should step forward and demand explanations for what the fleet was intended; ask details of all that was to be done, and the means to do it; and impose certain pledges from the commanding officers that, under no circumstances, any interference was ever to occur with the daily privileges of the crew, their rations, or their tobacco?

We endure more outrageous absurdity than this. We permit ourselves to be lectured by ignorance and dragooned by self-conceit-to have the high duties of legislation taught by men whose aptitude for politics is generally acquired by a failure in some honest calling. These are the people who impose the tests and exact the pledges; these are the men, very rarely endowed with even the franchise, who step forward to catechise and cross-question and confound.

How if this system were to be carried out and applied to our juries, and men were to be asked, before they entered the box, or listened to the cause,

whether they would not pledge themselves to the plaintiff or the defendant ?-whether they would not give some assurance that they would hold themselves aloof from all pressure of persuasion, deaf to argument, obdurate to conviction, and indifferent to the evidence?

Is it likely such a procedure would serve the interests or advance the ends of justice? And are not the functions of a Parliament very many times those of a jury?

The fact is, we have imported into our public life the system of Civil Service Examinations. Our candidates have to "go up" like our consuls and our tidewaiters, and, like them, the capable men are frequently plucked, while the well-drilled and wellground postulants, "coached" by a practised hand, make a rather brilliant figure by the easy fluency with which they respond to what is asked of them.

If the world admire this-if they think it a good thing for the nation, and an element of strength or greatness to our people-they have the happiness of knowing that the coming autumn will give them an ample harvest of such benefits.

There are candidates and constituencies only impatient to show what a great thing is the election, and what a very small and ignoble one the elected.

GLIMPSES OF BLISS.

I REMEMBER, when a boy, to have seen a man who passed his days wandering from one book-stall to another, stopping a while to read at each, and in this way gratifying that taste for letters his humble fortune had denied him the power of more legitimately enjoying.

He must have had some small pittance to live on, for he never seemed to do anything for his support. His dress and belongings bespoke him as very poor, and there was a degree of humility in his manner that still more indicated narrow fortune. Thus, for instance, he never would presume to occupy the place of a possible purchaser, but would move respectfully away when such approached. In the same way was he cautious not to touch any volume in request, contenting himself for the most part with some old vellum-bound chronicle, some musty-looking record;