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324 with those checks and balances which he hated, to be a source of any great hope. To Lady Burne-Jones, who was standing for election to the Parish Council at Rottingdean, he wrote on the 14th of December:

"Well now, I hope you will come in at the head of the poll; and I hope we shall beat our Bumbles. No one here can even guess how it will go. I daresay you think me rather lukewarm about the affair; but I am so depressed with the pettiness and timidity of the bill and the checks and counterchecks with which such an obvious measure has been hedged about, that all I can hope is that people will be able to keep up the excitement about it till they have got it altered somewhat. However, I shall go and vote for my twelve to-morrow morning, but I am lethargic and faint-hearted."

A week later he wrote again: "Many thanks for your book"—a brief, but admirably lucid printed address to the electors, explaining the scope of the Act and the nature of their rights and duties under it—"which is as good as the subject admits of, and for the first time makes me know something about the parish councils. Could you let me have two or three more? Now I congratulate you on the election, and I am really quite pleased that you beat the Bumbles. Here they beat us properly; though I didn't think, all things considered, that it was so bad, as we polled about half of what they did. You see all through London the middle class voted solid against us; which I think extremely stupid of them, as they might as well have got credit for supporting an improved administration. But you see they have an instinct, which they can't resist, against any progress in any direction. Item, they are very fearful lest the rates should be raised on them; as they certainly will be, whoever is in. We did better