represented in the series, and though very well known indeed by name,
less read than quoted. The suitableness of the political pamphlet,
both by size and self-containedness, for such a volume as this, needs
no justification except that which it, like everything else, must
receive, by being put to the proof of reading.

There is no difficulty in showing, with at least sufficient critical
exactness, why it is not possible or not desirable to select examples
from very early periods even of strictly modern history. The causes
are in part the same as those which delayed the production of really
capital political verse (which has been treated in another volume),
but they are not wholly the same. The Martin Marprelate pamphlets are
strictly political; so are many things earlier, later, and
contemporary with them, by hands known and unknown, great and small,
skilled and unskilled; so are some even in the work of so great a man
as Bacon. But very many things were wanting to secure the conditions
necessary to the perfect pamphlet. There was not the political
freedom; there was not the public; there was not the immediate object;
there was not, last and most of all, the style. Political utterances
under a more or less despotic, or, as the modern euphemism goes,
'personal' government, were almost necessarily those of a retained
advocate, who expected his immediate reward, on the one hand; or of a
rebel, who stood to make his account with office if he succeeded, or
with savage punishment if he failed, on the other. A distant prospect
of impeachment, of the loss of ears, hands, or life if the tide turns,
is a stimulant to violence rather than to vigour. I do not think,
however, that this is the most important factor in the problem.
Parliamentary government, with a limited franchise of tolerably
intelligent voters, a party system, and newspapers comparatively
undeveloped, may not suit an ideally perfect _politeia_, but it is