To an American Cabinet officer, dismissal may
mean exchanging a residence in the City of
Washington, with its pleasant cosmopolitan society,
for a law office in a remote western town. In
France, the transition may be even more marked,
as M. le Ministre leaves the stately apartments, in
which he has lived at the charge of the Republic,
with a train of secretaries and attendants, a
dignified person in the select circles of a wealthy
and brilliant society, to return, a somewhat obscure
private citizen, to his desk or his newspaper. In
these cases the loss of place may be a far heavier
penalty than it can be for an English minister, ap-
pointed from the ranks of the governing oligarchy,
rich, important, and influential. Macaulay points
out that in the period between the Restoration and
the reign of George II., when impeachments and pro-
scriptions were still possible, the party conflict was
carried on with savage ferocity. The temper of
politicians was exacerbated by the risks they ran and
the consequences of failure. In the English political
contest, as it has been conducted since the great
Reform Bill, success, for those who are in the front
ranks, may bring some satisfaction, but failure bears
with it few real terrors. The game can be played
with good-humoured complaisance, and with little
trace of the social envy and bitterness noticeable in
some other countries, so long as the leading per-
formers are a group of men for whom politics is
only one of the occupations or the amusements of an
extremely comfortable existence.

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