Since time immemorial, our constituency has been represented in Parliament by a retired old general. He made his career somewhere on the western shore of Africa. There, with a small detachment and five cannon, he spread European culture, i.e. he burned so many villages, cut down so many fruit trees and exterminated so many negroes and cows that the land remains barren to this day, although many, many years have now passed. The general, having finished with the trials of camp life, settled down in our constituency, which sent him as its representative to Parliament to uphold ‘real’ Conservatism there. The old man has only been to Parliament once or twice, but he made his presence felt. Having listened to the speeches of the Opposition, the old man announced that, in point of fact, they should be dealt with ‘the African way’, i.e. by letting in a few soldiers, rolling in a small cannon and then: ‘One, two! Thrust to the right and cleave to the left!’. The old general's speech was met with Homeric laughter from the Opposition benches; meanwhile, his own side was quite put out and gave the old man some ‘friendly’ advice not to venture into the unfamiliar field of parliamentary politics. The old general took offence and has hardly ever made an appearance in Parliament since. Every day with clockwork regularity, his grey pointed head held high, his chest sticking out, in a long coat reaching to the ground, rapping his stout stick and mumbling something with his drooping lips, the general makes the round of the park. But our constituency still regularly puts him forward at every election: he is so respectable, such a ‘patriot’, and our constituency is ultra-conservative. Its population consists of three of the most conservative elements in England, Tories through and through – not because they are in need of ‘markets’ or the protection of capital invested in foreign enterprises, but just ‘because’, because it's ‘stylish’. This population is made up of clerks, ‘cads’, and habitual drunkards, the descendants of people who have lived for two or three centuries in abject poverty.