Excerpt from Essays on Practical Politics These two essays appeared originally in the Century. Both alike were criticised at the time as offering no cure for the evils they portrayed. Such a criticism shows, in the first place, a curious ignorance of what is meant by the diagnosis of a disease; for my articles pretended to do nothing more than give what has apparently never before been given, an accurate account of certain phases of our political life, with its good and bad impartially set forth. The practical poli tician, who alone knows how our politics are really managed, is rarely willing to write about them, unless with very large reservations, while the student-reformer whose political experience is limited to the dinner table, the debating Club, or an occasional mass-meeting Where none but his friends are present, and who yet seeks. In pamphlet or editorial column to make clear the subject, hardly ever knows exactly what he is talking about, and abuses the system in all its parts with such looseness of language as to wholly take away the value even from such of his utterances as are true. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.