ial features of that system, it may be well to
state in its simplest form the evils at which the reform aims. An
election, the reformers point out, is not the simple matter it appears
to be at the first blush. Methods of voting can be manipulated in
various ways, and nearly every method has its own liability to
falsification. We may take for illustration the commonest, simplest
case--the case that is the perplexity of every clear-thinking voter
under British or American conditions--the case of a constituency in
which every elector has one vote, and which returns one representative
to Parliament. The naive theory on which people go is that all the
possible candidates are put up, that each voter votes for the one he
likes best, and that the best man wins. The bitter experience is that
hardly ever are there more than two candidates, and still more rarely is
either of these the best man possible. Suppose, for example, the
constituency is mainly Conservative. A little group of pothouse
politicians, wire-pullers, busybodies, local journalists, and small
lawyers, working for various monetary interests, have "captured" the
local Conservative organization. They have time and energy to capture
it, because they have no other interest in life except that. It is their
"business," and honest men are busy with other duties. For reasons that
do not appear these local "workers" put up an unknown Mr. Goldbug as the
official Conservative candidate. He professes a generally Conservative
view of things, but few people are sure of him and few people trust him.
Against him the weaker (and therefore still more venal) Liberal
organization now puts up a Mr. Kentshire (formerly Wurstberg) to
represent the broader thought and finer generosities of the English
mind. A number of Conservative gentlemen, generally too busy about their
honest businesses to attend the party "smokers" and the party cave,
realize suddenly that they want Goldbug hardly more than they want
Wurstberg. They put up their long-admired, trusted, and able friend Mr.
Sanity as an Independent Conservative.

Every one knows the trouble that follows. Mr. Sanity is "going to split
the party vote." The hesitating voter is told, with considerable truth,
that a vote given for Mr. Sanity is a vote given for Wurstberg. At any
price the constituency does not want Wurstberg. So at the eleventh hour
Mr. Sanity is induced to withdraw, and Mr. Goldbug goes into Parliament
to misrepresent this c