rule-of-thumb, rough-and-ready style, and when one party had
dragged the country into the mire, the other dragged it out again.
It was customary for the party that was out of office to say that
the party that was in was corrupt and venal--that every man of it
was a liar, was a thief, was taking bribes, would soon be kicked
out, etc. Then the party that was in had to say that the party that
was out should look to its own sins and remember that everyone of
its men when they were in proved himself incapable, insensible to
every feeling of shame, with no susceptibilities except in his
pocket, corrupt in every fibre, being justly rewarded when hurled
from office by an indignant people, etc., etc. The wonder is that
the country ever got governed at all, but it seems that all public
men who had any fixed and sensible ideas and wished to see them
carried out, had to make themselves callous, pachydermatous,
hardened against this offensive mud-slinging. Of course politics
did not elevate the man, nor the man politics, while things went on
thus. A general demoralization and lowering of the tone of public
opinion naturally resulted, which did not improve till the stirring
events of the summer of 1887 brought men to their senses again.
The number of members sent to Parliament was something so enormous,
that it seems as if the people must have had a perfect mania for
being represented. Nowadays we get along splendidly with only
fifteen members (one for each Province) and a speaker. Formerly
several hundred was not thought too many, and before the
constitution was revised in 1935, there were actually over seven
hundred representatives assembled at Ottawa every year. Perhaps
this was all right under the circumstances, as there did not then
exist any organization for training men for Parliamentary duties,
or selecting them for candidature such as now exists; so there was
safety in numbers, though the floods of talk must at times have