In order to fight, a party needed organisation and money; and it was money, to a considerable extent, which dictated the form that organisation took. Politics were not cheap. There are Parliamentary returns showing the cost of each election to each candidate which tell part of the story. Their statements are somewhat notional. ‘You will see I have put down your personal expenses as £85–10–0’, Bonar Law's chairman told him after his contest in Manchester North West. ‘The actual sum spent does not really matter.’ But there is no reason to doubt their general import, that it cost between £500 and £1,000 to fight a borough and between £1,000 and £2,000 to fight a county division. The tradition was for the candidate to be a beast of burden, if not a milch cow. When Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth was preparing to leave Clitheroe he reported to Herbert Gladstone: ‘The Chairman thinks that there is still a strong feeling – as there always has been – among the leading men in the council that a candidate shd. pay his own way.’