144 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



beeu able to test its value by any well-defined measure of suc- 

 cess, but simply and solely because other 2Jcople believe in it. 

 " What's good enough for most people is good enough for me," 

 is a saying as common as blackberries in autumn, and with this 

 comforting platitude they dismiss many a knotty problem which 

 would otherwise cause them a lot of trouble to uuravel. 



But we have at length realised that this attitude, although 

 conducive at the outset to a certain amount of personal ease 

 and comfort and freedom from care, is about the most wasteful 

 one that we could possibly assume ; wasteful, individually and 

 collectively. 



We hud that we are being overtaken with a heavy and 

 ever-increasing burden of taxation ; that the people cannot find 

 work and are obliged to emigrate in ever-growing numbers ; 

 that poverty increases and pauperism grows ; that despite our 

 unique position as manufacturers we are not holding our own 

 in the markets of the world : and we therefore conclude that 

 we had better look at this matter through our own spectacles 

 rather than through those which have been fitted to our noses 

 by others, and which have done nothing but obscure our vision. 



That many of our beliefs in respect to the question we are 

 here considering are wrong there is little room for doubt. That 

 these beliefs have been planted in our minds by those who pro- 

 fessed to know, is also true ; while it is, moreover, evident 

 that, in spite of the fact that the present agricultural and fiscal 

 systems are utterly unsuited to present-day requirements, there 

 is a large, powerful section of men in Parliament and out of it 

 who, either for party considerations or to serve private interests, 

 will be found arrayed in solid phalanx against any reforms that 

 would be of real use to the people. 



Many earnest men are now drawing the people's attention 

 to the regrettable fact that those whom they elect and send up 

 to the national leuislative assemblies at Westminster neither 

 legislate in the interests of the people nor serve any purpose 

 save that of the political ends of the party to which they happen 

 to beloncr. 



^O" 



The KNAVEiiY of Electioneering Dodges 



This electioneering dodge of inventing some political catch- 

 word that will attract the attention of the unwary voter, and 

 trick him into a temporary belief in its verity, would be in- 

 tensely amusing were it not that deep tragedy underlies the 

 process. Dickens, in " Pickwick," humorously describes an 

 election in his day, but the knavery resorted to on that memor- 

 able occasion by the rival candidates — the Honourable Samuel 



