Confidence is the badge of the tribe of candidates. How it is born, where it is bred, on what it feeds save vanity, we cannot tell. Figures cannot shake it. It is too majestical to be affected by ridicule. From scorn and brutal jest it turns contemptuously away. When a collision occurs between the boundless confidence of the candidate and the bottomless world-wearied scepticism of the member, it is interesting to note how wholly ineffectual is the latter to disturb, even for a moment, the beautifully poised equilibrium of the former.
‘I always forget the name of the place you are trying for,’ I lately overheard a member, during an election contest, observe at breakfast-time to a candidate.
‘The Slowcombe Division of Mudfordshire,’ replied the candidate.
‘Oh!’ said the member, with a groan, as he savagely chipped at his egg; ‘I thought they had given you something better than that.’
‘I wish for nothing better,’ said the candidate; ‘I’m safe enough.’
And so saying, he rose from the table, and, taking his hat, went off on to the Parade, where he was soon joined by another candidate, and the pair whiled away a couple of hours in delightful converse.
The politics of candidates are fierce things. In this respect the British commodity differs materially from the American. Mr. Lowell introduces the American candidate as saying:
‘Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin’ nothin’ o’ the sort.
I ain’t a Whig, I ain’t a Tory—