and with so little decorum on the part of either buyer or seller
that a shop was publicly opened at the Pay Office, whither members
flocked, and received the wages of their venality in bank bills, even
to so low a sum as two hundred pounds for their votes on the treaty.
Twenty-five thousand pounds, as Martin, Secretary of the Treasury,
afterwards owned, were issued in one morning; and in a single
fortnight a vast majority was purchased to approve the peace.
It is perhaps going far to say that nothing more disgraceful was ever
done in Parliament, but it is not too much to affirm that no greater
act of treachery was ever attempted against the theory of popular
representation by a member of the supposed popular House. But he had
his barony, and received it three years later than Bubb Dodington
obtained his.
It is not Lord Ilchester's fault that much of the intrigue he
elucidates is rueful reading. The wonder is that he has found the
spirit with which to achieve it. When one's native country, its
neighbour states and colonial dependencies, when King, Lords, Commons,
Army, Navy, and Church are all seen to have been counters in a great
game of grab; when patriotism is as much an unknown quantity as even a
rudimentary civic sense, and the only certainty is that of one's own
and one's rivals' common dishonesty, it is no wonder that the accidents
of his book count for more than the substance. What we get of Charles
Fox makes amends for Henry. Everything that Lord Ilchester has to tell
us of Charles is good. We have him first as a baby. "He is weakly,
but likely to live. His skin hangs all shrivell'd about him, his eyes
stare, he has a black head of hair, and 'tis incredible how like a
monkey he look'd before he was dress'd." Then he is at a preparatory
school, in 1757, where it seems that Charles has more emulation than
any boy almost ever had; next at Eton, where he and his brother Stephen
entertained their father at a dinner "bespoke from the Christopher:
... boil'd mutton and broth, three large fowls, and a leg of mutton
roasted." It was at Eton in 1758, when he was nine years old, that he
thus announced his philosophy of life. The father is writing to the
mother:
That odd dog Charles said, with a smile, he wish'd his life was at an
end. I asked the reason. "Why," says he, "it is a troublesome affair,
and one wishes one had this thing or that thing, and then one is not
the happier; and then one wishes for another thing, and one's very
sorry if one can't get it, and it does not make one happier if one
does."
We can follow him to Oxford, and wish we had room for his letter to his
father explaining with elaborate pains how he came to knock the bottom
out of £150, or for another which announces the loss of eighty guineas
at cards, and registers the first of a series of vows that it shall
never happen again. All this will be found in Volume II., together with
some account of the stormy opening of his parliamentary career--at
nineteen; but there or thereabouts we regretfully leave him, the best
thing by far that Henry Fox ever made.
If it were asked what this man had done in his days to deserve two
biographies on the scale of Mr. Riker's and Lord Ilchester's, the
answer would be long in coming. Henry Fox was a man of good but
moderate abilities, a bad speaker, a fair debater, one of the few, at
any rate, who ever stood up to William Pitt the first. He conducted
his War Secretaryship with diligence, his Paymastership with what must
be called legal honesty. He robbed his country, but no more than any
other Paymaster had done. He enriched himself by trading with the huge
balances left on his hands, sometimes lending of them to the country
which found them at twenty per cent! Every Paymaster except Pitt, who
would have none of it, had done as much, and most of them did worse.
But one searches Lord Ilchester's pages in vain for anything definitely
_done_ by Fox, except, to be sure, the infamous attempt to betray the
constitution by making the third estate of the realm a creature of the
first. Even that he did not succeed in doing. It was Lord North who
reaped for King George what Fox had sown. And that is about all that
one can say, and very much what Lord Ilchester himself says of Henry
Fox. What should be added to that is that the book is admirable both
for lucidity of style and arrangement, for gallantry of attack, and
gaiety in action.
RECOLLECTIONS OF LADY GEORGIANA PEEL. Compiled by her Daughter, ETHEL
PEEL. London: Lane. 1920. 16_s._ net.
Lady Georgiana was born in 1836 and is daughter of Lord John Russell.
She should have memorable things to tell, and perhaps she has. But
Providence, which has given her length of days and illustrious
descent, has not conferred the garnering eye or the gift of tongues.
It is a pity, for she has seen so much: Holland House and Pembroke
Lodge, Bowood in the days of its greatness, Sir Robert Peel and Lord
Palmerston, the Duke and Disraeli, Rogers, Tom Moore and his wife,
Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the whole Victorian galaxy. She has
danced with the Prince Consort, and found him rather cross; she has
heard Tom Moore sing, and seen him weep at his own music; she has
helped entertain Garibaldi, and dined with Macaulay. She was not,
however, impressed by that pundit, found his monologue a bore, and
agreed with Sydney Smith when he said, "very gravely, towards the end
of dinner, 'Macaulay, when I'm dead, you'll be sorry you never heard
me talk.'" That is something; and here is another thing equally good.
When Lord John was about to take John Bright down to stay at Woburn, "a
candid friend" wrote to the Duke of Bedford, "Hope you'll count your
spoons." Here, once more, is a glimpse into the manners of that stately
place, about 1840:
Many were the happy Christmases we spent at Woburn. I remember, to
our huge delight, we were allowed to help throw mutton chops out of
the dining-room window for whoever cared to pick them up. I think
that custom died out. When I was a child each guest was provided with
a piece of paper in which to wrap up an eatable for people waiting
outside.
God bless the Squire and his relations,
And keep us in our proper stations!
No doubt that was as good a way of doing it as any. But such flowers
grow rarely in Lady Georgiana's garden, which is indeed something of
a _hortus siccus_ where names and dates have to stand for more than
they will bear. "I remember Mr. Kingslake coming down to Pembroke Lodge
sometimes; I don't think he had then begun his _History_. He was always
very agreeable." So much for _Eothen_. "In connection with William
Warburton, I remember Mr. Matthew Arnold, for he was a great friend of
my brother-in-law's, and a comrade in the inspection of schools." And
so much for him. Of Dickens we get something more. "In the evening,
I remember, he was conspicuous, owing to wearing a pink shirt front
embroidered with white." Disraeli, too, expatiated in shirts. "Though
he talked incessantly, I remember best his shirt front, which was made
of white book-muslin over a very bright rose-coloured foundation, which
shone through it." The temptation to stick pins into it must have been
severe.
With these grains the reader must be satisfied, and with such powers
of evolution as he possesses may extract, no doubt, some more. Here
is one of Lady Holland, too good to be passed over. She proposed
leaving to Lord John Russell, and did in fact leave him, an estate in
Kennington--where the Oval now is. Lord John would only accept it for
life, urging the claims of the son and daughter of the house. "I hate
my son; I don't like my daughter," said the great lady, and settled it.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM. (Revised Edition, Extended to 1920.) By
SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB. Longmans. 21_s._
Twenty-five years ago Trade Unionism was vaguely apprehended in
the polite world as a growing force in industry, useful to the
working-class and even legitimate if kept within proper bounds. Wise
employers recognised its value and treated with it; the unenlightened
fought against it or accepted it with a bad grace. Many even of its
friends and allies, the Socialists--and not a few of these were
themselves Trade Unionists--rated it very low, as being, in fact,
a mere "palliative of the Capitalist system." To-day it is safe to
assert that there is no institution in the country which bulks larger
in the public eye than the Trade Union movement. In numbers, wealth,
solidarity, and power it has developed out of all recognition. Its
leaders sit and bargain on equal terms with Ministers of the Crown,
take their places on public committees and Royal Commissions as of
right, even threaten, amid the angry protests of adversaries who were
once their masters, to destroy the foundations of the established
social order. The aims and activities of the Trade Unions vie with the
"crime wave" for first place in the columns of the newspapers; they are
discussed in trains and clubs and drawing-rooms. And, in short, the
organisation, which but a few years since was regarded as a more or
less private affair of workmen and their employers, now appears as the
biggest problem that the State has to face--as something that may even,
as many will have it, supersede the State itself.
It is hardly necessary, in these circumstances, to dilate on the
importance of a new edition, containing an account of the developments
during the last thirty years, of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's _History
of Trade Unionism_. When the book appeared in 1894 it was welcomed not
only by intelligent minds in the working-class, but by all students
of social history, abroad as well as in this country, as a remarkable
piece of work; it took its place, and has kept its place, as a classic.
Yet it had a far smaller public than it deserved; by 1911 under 10,000
copies had been sold. Of this new volume no less than 19,000 copies
in a special edition have been bought by Trade Unionists before
publication--a notable sign of the times. We have called this edition
a new volume--and that it certainly is, for not only have Mr. and Mrs.
Webb revised the work throughout and at some points slightly amplified
it, but they have added three chapters, covering actually some two
hundred and fifty pages.
The increase of Trade Union membership has been, as everyone knows,
enormous. In 1892, after more than two centuries of growth, the number
of Trade Unionists in the United Kingdom was not much over a million
and a half. At the outbreak of the war it was under four millions; at
the present moment it is above six millions--perhaps nearer seven than
six--and includes "probably as many as 60 per cent. of all the adult
manual working wage-earners." But what is of peculiar interest to note
is the increase in certain industries and among certain sections of
the community. The organisation of "unskilled labour" has in the last
few years been prodigious, and so also has that of women of all sorts
from the "braincombers in the learned professions" to domestic servants
and the chief "hands" in the sweated trades. The female membership of
Trade Unions, which in the year before the war was in round figures
361,000, has risen now to over three-quarters of a million, and it
is still rising. Very remarkable also is the increasing organisation
of the "black-coated proletariat"--civil servants, clerks, managers,
supervisors, technicians, and the rest. This, as Mr. and Mrs. Webb
rightly insist, is an important indication of the lines on which
industry is likely to be shaped in the future. But with this vast
growth of numbers, and a corresponding growth of amalgamation and
federation, there has been singularly little change in the central
machinery of the movement. The weakest point, indeed, is at the top.
The Trades Union Congress, as Mr. and Mrs. Webb put it, "remains, as
we have described it in its early years, rather a parade of the Trade
Union forces than a genuine Parliament of Labour." Its executive body,
the Parliamentary Committee, does not provide that "general staff"
which the movement badly needs, and Mr. and Mrs. Webb's criticism both
of this and of the whole question of what may be called the Trade
Unions' "civil service" is very much to the front.
The history of Trade Unionism in this century, however, is by no means
exhausted by the records of its membership and organisation. Side
by side with this it has won an enhanced status, and not the least
interesting of the three new chapters is devoted to an account of this
achievement. Mr. and Mrs. Webb give us an elaborate criticism of the
famous Taff Vale judgment; they discuss the Osborne case and the Trade
Union Act of 1913, the relations of the Unions and the Government
during and after the war. And last, but not least, they describe the
"revolution in thought," the influence of Syndicalist and of Guild
Socialist theories in shaping the demand for "self-government in
industry" and in determining the attitude of the workman to strikes and
Parliamentary action.
The final chapter deals with the political side--the rise of the
Labour Party, from its stormy birth just over twenty years ago, to
the new era which opened for it at the election of 1918. Mr. and Mrs.
Webb have much friendly criticism to offer on the subject of the
present political organisation of the Labour movement. It suffers,
they observe, not merely from a lack of "Party loyalty" on the part of
Trade Unionists, but also from a confusion of central machinery. It
suffers too (some say these are its chief shortcomings) from a failure
to develop a staff of trained political officers and from a scarcity
of trained Parliamentary representatives. But these weaknesses, we
suppose, are on the way to be remedied, if the Party as a whole, as
well as its leaders, is alive to them.
The reader is not to look in this history, as its authors remark,
for any argued judgment on the validity of Trade Union assumptions
or ultimate ideals. Nevertheless, what little they have to say on
this hand is of profound interest. "The object and purpose of the
workers, organised vocationally in Trade Unions and Professional
Associations, and politically in the Labour Party," they warn us, "is
no mere increase of wages or reduction of hours. It comprises nothing
less than a reconstruction of Society, by the elimination, from the
nation's industries and services, of the Capitalist profit-maker, and
the consequent shrinking up of the class of functionless persons who
live merely by owning." What form in that reconstructed Society is
the organisation of industry to take? Mr. and Mrs. Webb expect to see
"the supreme authority in each industry or service vested, not in the
workers as such, but in the community as a whole.... The management
of industry ... will not be the sole sphere of either producers or
consumers, but is clearly destined to be distributed between them--the
actual direction and decision being shared between the representatives
of the Trade Union or Professional Society on the one hand and those
of the community in Co-operative Society, Municipality, or National
Government on the other." They do not see eye to eye in every detail
with the Guild Socialist. But still less do they see eye to eye with
that fabulous monster who stalks through the writings and speeches both
of Revolutionaries and Conservatives--the bureaucratic Fabian Webb,
harbinger of the Servile State! There may be some, we suppose, who will
find a less "detached" outlook in this volume than in the original
edition. If there is a difference of outlook, it is natural enough,
for Mr. and Mrs. Webb are more "inside" the Labour movement now than
they were in 1894, and their judgments and criticisms must inevitably
show a subtle difference of tone. But this is not to accuse them of
undue partiality. No man can write an "impartial" history that is worth
reading of his own time and his own friends. And we need not regret
that Mr. and Mrs. Webb, in their detailed descriptions, for example,
of the great railway strike or the miners' dispute of last year, put
the workmen's case confidently and strongly since they see it as their
own case also and that of the nation. The appearance of these three
new chapters, we do not hesitate to say, constitutes an event in the
world of politics and of letters. The _History of Trade Unionism_ will
remain, as it has been, a work which every student of industry and
every man of affairs must read and re-read and inwardly digest.
MY SECOND COUNTRY (FRANCE). By ROBERT DELL. Lane. 7_s._ 6_d._
This study of the people and institutions and spirit of France is in
a class apart from the volumes of "impressions" of foreign lands with
which "week-enders" and passing travellers are prone to favour us.
"France," says Mr. Dell, "has been my home for more than twelve years,
but it was already my second country long before I went to live there.
Indeed I cannot remember a time when France had not a large place in my
affections." It is with an intimate knowledge, therefore, as well as
with a profound sympathy that he discusses the many phases of French
life. But his book is by no means a mere panegyric. He is throughout
candid and critical--often bitterly critical. He exposes ruthlessly
the undemocratic character of the "Democratic Administration," the
impotence of Parliament, the demoralising influence of small property,
the evils of the _petit bourgeois_ spirit, the avarice and egotism of
the _grande bourgeoisie_. How far his view of all these things is a
just one will be a matter of controversy. Some may say he is violently
prejudiced; no one, after reading this book, could deny that many
of his judgments are biased. In the final chapters there is really
no pretence of impartiality; he argues his case and "maintains his
propositions," like Doctor Pancrace in the play, _Pugnis et calcibus,
unguibus et rostro_. Mr. Dell is a Socialist, but not an "Etatiste";
he is a "libertine" and a revolutionary, with an equal dislike of
bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. And his feelings in this matter are
so strong that we may venture to doubt his predictions as to how
the Revolution will come. For the rest, Mr. Dell is a determined
Rationalist. "La France de Voltaire et de Montesquieu," he says with
M. Anatole France, "celle-là est la grande, la vraie France." For
"religious" France he has no use--neither for "irreligious" orthodoxy,
nor political Catholicism, nor Modernism. Bergsonism, too, he holds
to be a baneful influence, as reactionary as the Church which eschews
it. But the old superstitions and the new philosophies, he believes,
are losing their hold; "the spirit of the true France is coming into
its own again, and the young intellect of France is returning to the
rationalism of Voltaire." In all this, and much else, he may be wrong,
but he has given us a book that is at any rate profoundly interesting.
RUSSIA IN RULE AND MISRULE. By Brigadier C. R. BALLARD, C.B., C.M.G.,
with a Foreword by General SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON. Murray. 6_s._ net.
This is a curious and nondescript book. Beginning as a history of
Russia from the earliest times, it ends rather as the impressions
of a soldier who, attached to the Eastern front during the war, saw
something of the Russian revolution. It is a soldier's book, breezy,
untrammelled by literary and historical conventions, and distinguished
by a direct simplicity which disarms criticism. The General gives an
interesting account of what happened subsequently to the revolution;
but his account often gives only one out of many views of the facts.
Thus his chapter on the Kornilov incident is, as he states, merely a
summary of Kerenski's book, and cannot therefore be accepted without
considerable reserves. On pages 214-216 he gives ten outstanding facts
about the Bolshevik _régime_ "which can be proved over and over again
if proof be required." We should like to see the General's proof of
the first sentence in his tenth "fact," namely, that "there are no
elections of any kind...." The General has also succeeded in adding a
new complication to the already complicated problem of the spelling of
Russian names. The gentleman whose name we have seen spelt variously by
other writers Cheidze, Chheidze, and Tshcheidze appears in his book as
Cheidsi.
THE PEACE IN THE MAKING. By H. WILSON HARRIS. Swarthmore Press. 6_s._
net.
It would be unfair to compare Mr. Harris's book with Mr. Keynes's,
though it covers something of the same ground. Mr. Keynes is analytic
and, in the end, constructive, and his subject is the rebuilding of
a ruined Europe. Mr. Harris is historical and reminiscent. Like a
good journalist--and it is unnecessary to say how good a journalist
he is--he tells us how they made the peace rather than what kind of
a peace they made and should have made. It is true that in telling
us the story of peace-making at Paris he does tell us also what kind
of peace they made. In fact his book has a distinct value as a clear
summary of the terms eventually hammered out by the three Great Powers
and accepted by Germany. But the angle of Mr. Harris's approach to his
subject is that of the journalistic historian. The result is a very
readable and interesting book. Putting ourselves into Mr. Harris's
skilful hands, we are enabled to see, through the various journalistic
spectroscopes, something of what took place behind the shuttered and
curtained council chamber of the Big Four, which in effect was a Big
Three.
LEAGUES OF NATIONS. By ELIZABETH YORK. Swarthmore Press. 8_s._ 6_d._
net.
This is a useful book for those who wish to study the long and slow
development of the idea of a League of Nations. The author begins with
the idea of a League in ancient Greece and traces it through Dante,
the "Grand Design," Grotius, Penn, Saint Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, and
Bentham to Alexander I. of Russia and the Holy Alliance. The value of
the book is considerably enhanced by its careful documentation, and
by the fact that it gives us a translation of the text of many of the
schemes and "covenants" which are not easily obtainable by the ordinary
reader.
THE NEW OUTLOOK. By LORD ROBERT CECIL, M.P. Allen & Unwin. 1_s._ net.
This brochure has a double claim to interest all who concern themselves
with politics. In the first place it is a remarkable revelation of
the advancing spirit of democracy, of the new social conscience and
widening outlook of our time. For here we have a Cecil, the type of the
grand seigneurial family of high Tory traditions, calmly--or rather
enthusiastically--offering us a political programme that a few years
ago would have been greeted as wildly Jacobin. In the second place the
views of Lord Robert derive a peculiar importance from the position
which he occupies to-day in the public estimation. His high personal
character, his idealism, and his ability single him out among the
members of his Party--if indeed he can be said in the present political
confusion to be of a Party. He gives us here half-a-dozen short essays
dealing with the League of Nations, the industrial problem, finance,
the reform of Parliament, and the Irish question. His practical
proposals under each of these heads will not commend themselves to
everyone in all their details, but none will fail to admire the
generous and constructive spirit which underlies them. Those who are
pessimistic about foreign affairs may well wish that we had more men
of this stamp to put Europe on its feet again. Those who are exercised
about the situation at home will look anxiously for the next step of
this aristocrat among the democrats.
EMPIRE AND COMMERCE IN AFRICA. By L. WOOLF. Labour Research Department
and Allen & Unwin. 20_s._ net.