int of
view of considering the amount of political usefulness they may have
achieved. We must consider rather Mr. Belloc's fine, contented industry
in his satiric task, the persistence with which he builds up his
instrument of destruction.

The method in these books is exclusively ironic. Never does the writer
overtly state that he seeks to drag down a system which he hates by
laughter. In _Emmanuel Burden_, that extraordinary book, the severity of
the method is extreme, almost overwhelming. The author supposes himself
to be writing a biography especially designed to uphold the principles
of "Cosmopolitan Finance--pitiless, destructive of all national ideals,
obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition": and he
preserves that pose consistently.

Elsewhere, for example, in _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, the pretence is
less elaborate: winks and nudges to the reader are permitted, and the
whole effect is less careful and more human, less bitter and more
humorous. But the general tone is maintained throughout the five books,
discussing the same characters who appear and reappear, the Peabody Yid,
Mary Smith, the young and popular Prime Minister, "Methlinghamhurtht,
Clutterbuck that wath," and the excellent Mr. William Bailey, who had
the number 666 on his shirts, subscribed to anti-Semitic societies on
the Continent and cherished with a peculiar affection _The Jewish
Encyclopaedia_. Such a preservation of tone is admirable, for it is a
subtly restrained acidity, requiring either intense and unremitting care
(which seems unlikely) or a special adjustment of temperament. It is
very Gaulish, it must have been modelled on Voltaire: but it is also
enlivened with flashes of irresponsibility that are the author's own.

To have composed five such volumes as, taking them in order, _Emmanuel
Burden_, _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, _A Change in the Cabinet_, _Pongo
and the Bull_, and _The Green Overcoat_, is an achievement of a very
remarkable sort, the more remarkable that the interest of these stories
lies entirely in Mr. Belloc's peculiar views upon politics and finance.
Even Disraeli, who liked writing novels about politics, could not
restrain himself from love interests, romance, poetry, and what not
else: but Mr. Belloc, serious and intent, concentrates his energies with
malevolent smile on one object.

In this consistent level of irony there are undoubtedly exalted patches
of more than merely verbal humour, s