Overtaxed Politicals.

This increasing ascendancy of economics over politics has compelled the politician to put on economic spectacles, to consult economists, even to be ruled by them. In the Press the pre-war political gossip—of Kaisers, Tsars, and Kings— from Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, etc., has little modern counterpart; and what there is of it is overshadowed by bread-and-butter issues. Political practices have broken free from supposedly immutable political principles, and have attuned themselves expediently to considerations of time and place. For instance, Labour is tariffite in thinly populated Australia, and anti-tariff in populous Britain. On the same issue Conservatism has split more than once. Though old adherents of the “pure science” of politics do not like it, that “science” becomes more and more the handmaid of economic opportunism.