to convince people that they are excellent
in their way, and to cajole them to
employ them; on the contrary, people get up
and run after them; they are solicited and sent
for, and rewarded proportionately (it is to be
hoped) to their deserts. So should it be, my
honourable friend, in the case of membership of
Parliament. The M.P. should be known for his
qualities and fitness, and instead of interceding,
he should be interceded with, to lend his assistance.
He should be at no expense, for serving
the people, and his reward should consist in
the honour of adroitly managing the business
entrusted to him. It should not be considered
as a recommendation in an accomplished gentleman,
or plain dealing individual, that he act
honestly, and without immediate regard to bettering
himself. Whereas, I notice that a
member of Parliament, filling his post with the
common honesty necessary in humbler life to
ensure a livelihood, is sometimes considered as
a wonder, a phenomenon, without opening his
mouth or moving a finger in the work for which
he is placed where he is. This would suggest
that there is somewhat of laxity of principle
acknowledged to exist in Parliament; that people
regard it as a sort of necessary evil; and, on
the principle that

     Despair it was come, and he thought it content,

are content to put up with what they get.
My honourable friend, how many among you
are known familiarly for their good works?
How many of you think it an honour to be the
advocates of the people's happiness and improvement?
How many of you go into Parliament,
but to become other than you were? To be
put into a position to do good, is not often
the ambition of the would-be M.P. It is to
be M.P. And instead of being by his own
sheer force, a made man before entering Parliament,
he does but consider the House the
making of him, and that at the expense of
passed over superiority immeasurable. It would
seem, I think, my honourable friend, that the
men for the duties required, are occasionally
chosen at a chance.

In every small section of the community, two
or three individuals are known for some peculiar
qualities appertaining to usefulness; in every
small collection of a dozen huts there is some
person whose advice is sought on occasions of
emergency; but really, my honourable friend, I
never knew you to have been consulted in such
wise before you added M.P. to your name. I even
question whether many people knew of your existence
until you tacked those two letters to your
name, and thus made something out of a non-
entity. " Who is Mr. So-and-so?" " Oh! he is
M.P. for Such a place." " Oh!" That is enough,
and Mr. So-and-so knows it; that is why he
was so anxious to write M.P. after his name;
he knows the meaning, if he do not know the
translation, of the moral, " d'un magistrat
ignorant, c'est la robe qu'on salue." But such
people are to the body of the state as poisons
to the system; they engender bad blood, by
causing stagnation. How many members are
there who give their votes in accordance with
any inward conviction of their own, or the
wishes of their constituents? How many who
know what these wishes are, or knowing, care?
How many are guided by them? How many a
member votes in the House otherwise than as
an adherent to a stronger member, or as an indirectly
subsidised agent? Again; is it wholesome,
my honourable friend, that at the present
day it should be looked upon as a necessary,
but vulgar and irksome ordeal withal, that a
fit subject for a seat in Parliament should address
a noisy mob, with the view of gammoning
or flattering them into the notion that he is
the very best person they could possibly select
to act for them? That this hero, in order to
propitiate himself into the good graces of those
enlightened fellow countrymen, should pump
up poor jests, and lend himself to buffoonery
and littlenesses not so honest or harmless, and
certainly not so amusing, as the clap-trap of
the quack doctor and merry-andrew of the days
gone by? That in order to give specimens of
how he will act, he should vamp up his version
of how he would deal with such and such a
question, at such and such a moment—showing
a brick as it were, as a sample of the house he
would build? There is a strange carelessness
as to who's the member, that is taken advantage
of by the wary. Ask how it came that a vote
was given for such and such a one, what Smith
personally or historically knew of him, what he
expected of him, what he hoped from him in
regard to anything, and you will wait a long
time for your answer. At the Presidential
election in America, the other day, huge bells,
it is said, were sent about, mounted on waggons,
to wake up the voters. Some such stimulus is
needed sadly in this country in these times, for,
as a rule, unless something out of Parliament
is to be got for a vote, or some spite paid off,
people appear very calm, not to say indifferent,
as to giving one at all. But not so apathetic
are they where interests more near and plain to
them are concerned. The densest will think
twice before they entrust a piece of money to
friend or foe, to lay out for them; they look
out for a strict account of that; but a vote is
frequently invested quite at random. What
surprise there would be among some of the
"lower orders," if they were told that, to all
intents and purposes, the M.P. is in their
service; that he goes to market for them; that
it is his duty to make the best bargains he can
for them; that he goes to Parliament not merely
because he is the squire, or contractor, or what
not of the neighbourhood, but because he is sent
by them, as solemnly trusted to speak up for
the general interest, and with no more reference
to his money than because he has enough
money to pay others to do his business whilst
he is absent attending to theirs.

Be not puffed up, my honourable friend! It is
only some of the speeches on the hustings that
are delivered with the aim of enlightenment,
and they are held as downright compliments to
improved intellectual and educational standing,
and are tributes to (as they are tributaries
from) master minds, which the most obtuse and
ignorant can hardly listen to, without, to some