[p. 120]
|120| of these, too, a seat in Parliament is secured, partly by their own wealth and the influence which they themselves or their family possess in a borough, town or county, partly by the influence of the ministry and then of their party friends.
To this class there attaches itself a multitude of men who make political activity the business of their lives, whether they do so out of fondness for it and are of independent means, or hold public posts which they have obtained through connexion with parliamentary influence; but even where they have obtained them otherwise, they cannot, both by their official position and by their general inner calling, refrain from attaching themselves to the political class and to a party of it. Where service of the state is not bound up with other conditions, e.g. completed scholarly studies, state examinations, courses of practical preparation and the like, the individual must incorporate himself into that class; he has to win an importance for himself in it, is borne by its influence, just as conversely his own is added to theirs. Rare anomalies are individuals isolated from this connexion, such as e.g. Hunt, who come into Parliament, but there do not fail to cut a strange figure.
A chief element of the power of this coherence – whose other bonds, family connexions, politicising and speechifying at banquets etc., the endless political correspondence extending to all parts of the earth, also the common roving about on country seats, horse races, fox hunts etc., are admittedly not disturbed -, namely the disposition over a multitude of parliamentary seats, does indeed undergo through the Reform Bill a considerable modification, which may well have the effect touched on by the Duke, that many other individuals step into the place of those who belong to the present circle of those devoting themselves to the interest of the government of the state, but
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