THE EAST DORSET ELECTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You pay a just tribute to Mr. Bond, the late Member for East Dorset, in your paragraph describing the success of the Unionist Member, his successor. Last year Mr. Bond was driving me to take a service in the church near which he now lies buried. I asked him how it was that he had turned a majority against him of over six hundred in 1885 to a similar one for him in 1886. I had my own reasons for thinking that the constituency was not likely to be much swayed one way or the other by the subject of Home-rule. Mr. Bond did not agree with me on this point, as was perhaps natural ; but in the course of our conversation he told me that in his canvas he had aimed at shaking hands with every grown-up person in his constituency, and that he believed he had very nearly succeeded in doing so. His plan was not to ask for votes, but to give any one who wished for it opportunity of speaking to him on political matters. He told me, further, that only two people of the thousands he had so approached had been in the least rude or unpleasant, and that those two were women.
I cannot but think that such constituencies will more and more be won by men of leisure and local influence who are willing to adopt Mr. Bond's perfectly fair and righteous method of spreading the views they think right. It involves real hard work ; but "Six days shalt thou labour" is a universal rule, and no man who does not work hard in some way deserves to represent working men in Parliament.—I am,
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