TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE M.P.
1
At every General Election there is seen the old and familiar, but
ever curious and interesting, spectacle of about twelve or thirteen
hundred men—who, though selected at random from the general mass, yet
vary so much in position, ability and temperament that they may be
said to reflect collectively the very image of the Nation—engaged in
wooing the constituencies which have at their disposal the 707 seats
in the House of Commons. What are the irresistible allurements that
compel this large body of men, the majority of them actively engaged
every day in business or professional life, to spend their money and
time, their strength and temper, in order that they may be given the
chance of making a gift of their professional capacity and business
experience to the Nation, expecting in return, as regards the mass of
them, neither fee nor reward beyond a salary of £400 a year?
Macaulay on the subject is well worth giving ear to. Writing to his
sister Hannah (subsequently Lady Trevelyan) on June 17, 1833, after a
few years’ experience of the House of Commons, he says:
I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts men, who
could sit over their tea and their book in their own cool, quiet
room, to breathe bad air, hear bad speeches, lounge up and down the
long gallery, and doze uneasily on the green benches till three in
the morning. Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary for me.
My pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister’s company is
sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well and cheerful,
and let offices in Government and seats in Parliament go to those
who care for them. If I were to leave public life to-morrow, I
declare that, except for the vexation which it might give you and
one or two others, the event would not be in the slightest degree
painful to me.
Sir George Trevelyan, in his _Life of Lord Macaulay_, not only
corroborates his uncle as to the inexplicability of the charm of
the House of Commons, but gives also from personal experience a
still more forbidding description of what he calls “the tedious and
exhaustive routine” of an M.P.’s life:
Waiting the whole evening to vote, and then walking half a mile at
a foot’s-pace round and round the crowded lobbies; dining amidst
clamour and confusion, with a division twenty minutes long between
two of the mouthfuls; trudging home at three in the morning through
the slush of a February thaw; and sitting behind Ministers in the
centre of a closely packed bench during the hottest week of the
London summer.
If this were all that was to be said, it would, indeed, be hard to
understand why a seat in the House of Commons should be regarded as
an object to be sighed for, and schemed for, and fought for, and paid
for by thousands of very astute and able men. The constituencies are
not engaged at the General Election in fastening this burden upon
unwilling shoulders. How incomprehensible, then, is the action of
these who, having had experience of the hard and thankless lot of the
Member of Parliament, its mental strain, its physical discomforts,
yet labour unceasingly night and day during the weeks of the General
Election to induce the electors to send them back again to the dreary
round of routine tasks at Westminster. Indeed, Macaulay himself felt
keenly the loss of his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, though at the time
he was absorbed in his _History of England_; and in 1852, with his
great work still uncompleted, he was delighted to be returned again
to Parliament by his old constituency. But the truth is, we have been
given thus far only the dark side of the picture. There is a silver
lining also to the cloud. The life of a representative of the people
has of course its compensations.
Still, the tribulations of an M.P. are undoubtedly many. There are,
to begin with, the torments of the post. Cobden, in a letter to a
friend early in 1846, when his name as the leader of the agitation
for the repeal of the Corn Laws was in all men’s mouths, gives a
glimpse into the contents, half laughable and half pathetic, of the
letter-bag of an M.P. He says:
First, half the mad people in the country who are still at large,
and they are legion, address their incoherent ravings to the most
notorious man of the hour. Next, the kindred tribe who think
themselves poets, who are more difficult than the mad people to
deal with, send their doggerel and solicit subscriptions to their
volumes, with occasional requests to be allowed to dedicate them.
Then there are the Jeremy Diddlers, who begin their epistles with
high-flown compliments upon my services to the millions, and
always wind up with a request that I will bestow a trifle upon
the individual who ventures to lay his distressing case before
me. To add to my miseries, people have now got an idea that I am
influential with the Government, and the small place-hunters are at
me.
Cobden supplied a specimen of the begging letters he was accustomed
to receive. It was from a lady asking him to become her “generous and
noble-minded benefactor.” As she desired to begin to do something
for herself, she hoped he would procure her a loan of £5,000 “to
enable her to rear poultry for London and other large market towns.”
In another letter, written July 14, 1846, after the taxes on
bread-stuffs had been repealed and the Corn Law League disbanded,
Cobden says:
I thought I should be allowed to be forgotten after my address
to my constituents. But every post brings me twenty or thirty
letters—and such letters! I am teased to death by place-hunters of
every degree, who wish me to procure them Government appointments.
Brothers of peers—aye, “honourables”—are amongst the number. I have
but one answer for all: “I would not ask a favour of the Ministry
to serve my own brother.” I often think what must be the fate of
Lord John, or Peel, with half the needy aristocracy knocking at the
Treasury doors.
2
Happily, things have greatly improved since the time of Cobden. It
is probable that the average elector still fails to see that his
representative deserves any gratitude or thanks for his services in
Parliament. On the contrary, the elector may think that it is he
who is entitled to some return for having helped his representative
to a seat in the House of Commons in preference to another who was
equally eager for the honour. The spectacle of so many men competing
for the voluntary service of the State in the capacity of a Member
of Parliament cannot but tend to convince the ordinary elector that
he is conferring a favour on the particular candidate for whom he
votes. Constituents, certainly, are often very exacting. And as the
representative desires to retain his seat, he cannot afford to ignore
a letter from even the humblest and obscurest of the electors. The
General Election may come round again with unexpected suddenness,
bringing with it the day of reckoning for the Member who has been
neglectful of communications from his constituents. Then it is that
the voter, however humble, however obscure, can help to make or mar
the prospect of the Member’s return to Westminster. The worst of
it is that some constituents will unreasonably persist in asking
for things impossible. In the post-bag of the M.P. appointments
used to be greatly in demand. There was a time when the M.P. had
some patronage to distribute in the way of nominations to posts
in the Customs and the Inland Revenue, for which no examination
was required, should the Party he supported be in power. But that
good time, or bad, is gone and for ever. The throwing open of the
Civil Service to competition deprived the M.P. of this sort of
small change, which he once was able to scatter among the electors
so as to reward past services and secure future support. Now he
has absolutely nothing in his gift, except, perhaps, a nomination
for any vacant sub-post office in his constituency. Yet numbers of
the electors still imagine there are many comfortable posts in the
public service which are to be had merely for the saying of a word by
their representatives to the Minister of the Department concerned.
An example of what the M.P. has occasionally to put up with may be
seen in the terms of a blunt and abusive epistle—admittedly a very
rare one—sent by a disappointed office-seeker to the man he says “he
carried in on his own shoulders” at the last election. It opened:
“You’re a fraud, and you know it. I don’t care a rap for the billet
or the money either, but you could hev got it for me if you wasn’t
so mean. Two pound a week ain’t any more to me than 40 shillin’s is
to you, but I objekt to bein’ maid a fool of.” It went on: “Soon
after you was elected by my hard workin’, a feller here wanted to
bet me that You wouldn’t be in the House more than a week before you
made a ass of yourself. I bet him a Cow on that as I thort you was
worth it then. After I got Your Note sayin’ you deklined to ackt in
the matter I driv the Cow over to the Feller’s place an’ told him he
had won her.” And thus concluded: “That’s orl I got by howlin’ meself
Hoarse for you on pole day, an’ months befoar. I believe you think
you’ll get in agen. I don’t. Yure no man. An’ I doant think yure much
of a demercrat either. I lowers meself ritin to so low a feller, even
tho I med him a member of parlerment.”
Other electors argue that as M.P.’s are law-makers they should
consequently be able to rescue law-breakers from the clutches of the
police and gaolers. Accordingly there are appeals for the remission
of fines imposed on children for breaking windows, and even to get
sentences of penal servitude revoked. The respectable tradesman on
the verge of bankruptcy, who could be restored to a sound financial
position by the loan of £100, is perhaps the worst pest of all
the cadging letter-writers. He usually declares that he not only
voted for his representative, but also attended every meeting that
gentleman addressed in the course of the election. The best reply the
M.P. could make to such an attempt to fleece him is to advise his
correspondent to attend more to business and less to politics; but he
probably never makes it, for he can rarely afford to speak out his
mind to a constituent. An Irish Member who was elected for an Ulster
constituency after a close contest showed me a letter he got from
one of his supporters asking for some favour. “I voted for you under
thirteen different names,” said the writer, “and could I do more for
you than that?” No Member would think of offending so invaluable a
supporter. Inventors are also of the plagues from which the M.P.
suffers. The man who knows how to make soap out of sawdust writes
glowing letters about the fortune awaiting a company which would work
the process. Almost every post brings samples of tonics and boxes of
lozenges calculated to transform the harshest croak into the clearest
and mellowest of voices. “I shall be thankful for a testimonial,”
said the maker of one mixture, “that after you had used my specific
the House was spellbound by the music of your tones, and I guarantee
to extend your fame by publishing it, with your portrait, broadcast.”
Tradesmen are very importunate. For instance, the Labour Members
receive circulars from too enterprising firms soliciting their custom
for things which, it was declared, were most requisite for the
maintenance of the state and dignity becoming a Member of Parliament.
From one firm a Member, fresh from working in the coalmines, had a
tender for a Court dress of black velvet, to cost, with sword, only
£50. A company of wine merchants offered to stock with the choicest
brands the wine-cellar of the establishment they presumed he was
about to set up in London.
The day after the announcement of a birth in a Member’s family a van
pulled up at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament containing
three different sorts of perambulators. The tradesman who brought
them was extremely indignant because the police refused him admission
to the House to display their good points and conveniences to the
happy father! Poets ask for subscriptions to publish their works,
or, enclosing some doggerel verses as samples, appeal for orders for
odes for the next General Election. “If you would quote in the House
a verse from my volume, _Twitterings in the Twilight_, what a grand
advertisement I’d get!” wrote one rhymester to his representative.
“You might say something like this: ‘One of the most delightful
collections of poems it has ever been my good fortune to come across
is Mr. Socrates Wilkin’s _Twitterings in the Twilight_. Could the
situation in which the Empire finds itself be more happily touched
off than in the following verse of that eminent poet?’ and then
go on to quote some lines from my book, which I enclose.” Members
who are lawyers and doctors are expected by a large section of
their constituents to give professional advice for nothing. If one
of these unreasonable persons has a dispute with his landlord as
to the amount of rent due, or finds it impossible to recover a
debt, he expects, as a matter of course, his representative, if a
gentleman learned in the law, to help him out of his difficulty; or,
if a doctor, he favours him with long and incoherent accounts of
mysterious complaints from which he has suffered for years. The M.P.
is also expected to throw oil on disturbed domestic waters. Here is a
specimen of a communication which is by no means uncommon:
DEAR SIR,
Me and the wife had a bit of a tiff last Saturday night, and she
won’t make it up. If you just send her a line saying Bill’s all
right, she will come round. She thinks the hell of a lot of you
since you kissed the nipper the day you called for our votes.
But pity the poor M.P. who receives from a female voter so
embarrassing a letter as the following:
HONOURED SIR,
I hear that Mr. Balfour is not a married man. Something tells me
that I would make the right sort of wife for him. I am coming to
London to-morrow, and will call at the House of Commons to see you,
hoping you will get me an introduction to the honourable gentleman.
I am only thirty years of age, and can do cooking and washing.
AGNES MERTON.
P.S.—Perhaps if Mr. Balfour would not have me, you would say a word
for me to one of the policemen at the House.
During the evening the Member who received this strange epistle
cautiously ventured into the Central Hall, and, sure enough, espied
an eccentric-looking woman in angry controversy with a constable, who
was trying to induce her to go away. But she refused to leave, and
ultimately found sympathetic companions in the crazy old party who
has haunted the place for years in the hope that some day she will
induce the Government to restore the £5,000,000 of which she declares
they have robbed her, and the other lady, younger, but just as mad,
who is convinced that some M.P. has married her secretly and left her
to starve, and has come to Westminster to claim him “before all the
world.”
3
The Member of Parliament is liable to receive other communications
of even less flattering and more exasperating character. Bribes are
occasionally dangled before him through the post. Will he allow his
name to be used in the floating of a company, or in the advertising
of some article of common use or a patent medicine? Will he use his
influence in obtaining a Government contract for a certain firm? If
he will, there is a cheque for so-and-so at his disposal. In the
course of a debate in the House of Commons on the payment of Members,
John Burns, for many years a well-known Liberal Minister, evoked
both laughter and applause by reading his reply to an offer of £50
received during his previous service as a Labour representative if
he obtained for a person in Belfast a vacant collectorship of taxes.
“Sir,” he wrote, “you are a scoundrel. I wish you were within reach
of my boot.”
But the sane and the righteous give the M.P. more annoyance
than the knavish and the crazy. Think of the numerous local
functions—religious, social, and political—to which the Member of
Parliament is invited! When a meeting is being organized in the
constituency, naturally the first thought of its promoters is to
try to get the Member to attend. The more conspicuous he is in
Parliament, and therefore the more likely to attract an audience,
the greater is the number of these invitations; and if he fails to
respond, the more widespread is the dissatisfaction among his baulked
constituents. He is expected to preside at the inaugural meetings of
local amateur dramatic societies and local naturalists’ field clubs,
and “to honour with his presence” the beanfeasts of local friendly
societies. The literary institution, designed to keep young men of
the constituency out of the public-houses, must be opened by him. He
must attend entertainments of a mixed political and musical sort, at
which his speech is sandwiched between a sentimental song and a comic.
But perhaps the Member of Parliament is most worried by the appeals
to his generosity and charity which pour in upon him in aid of
churches, chapels, mission-halls, schools, working men’s institutes,
hospitals, asylums, cricket and football clubs, and in fact societies
and institutions of all sorts and sundry. It is only proper that if
money be needed for an excellent local purpose, the representative
of the district in Parliament should be included in the appeal. Many
wealthy Members of Parliament spend from £1,000 to £4,000 a year on
local charities, and they spend it willingly when the objects appear
to them to be deserving. But of the 707 M.P.’s there are never a
great many who can be described as wealthy.
Besides that, many representatives—among them being some of the
most charitable of men—always refuse to send contributions to local
objects, influenced by a sense of honour and the fear that it might
be regarded as bribing the electors. In so doing they run a grave
risk of being misunderstood by their constituents. If a Member of
Parliament should refuse to help in providing them with coals,
blankets, footballs, cricket-bats, big drums, billiard-tables, church
steeples, sewing-machines, he is set down as mean, and numbers of
his constituents vow that he shall not have their votes again at the
General Election. There is a story told that when John Morley was
seeking re-election for Newcastle-on-Tyne an elector who was asked to
vote for this statesman of the highest and purest ideals indignantly
exclaimed: “Not me! What has John Morley ever done for the Rugger
Football Club?”
The representative is to be commended by all means in resisting these
illegitimate demands. Macaulay, when Member for Edinburgh, was asked
to subscribe to a local football club. “Those were not the conditions
upon which I undertook to represent Edinburgh,” he answered. “In
return for your generous confidence I offer parliamentary service,
and nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objectionable
that I must plainly say I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds
than comply with it. If our friends want a Member who will find
them in public diversions, they can be at no loss. I know twenty
people who, if you elect them to Parliament, would gladly treat
you to a race and a race-ball each month. But I shall not be very
easily induced to believe that Edinburgh is disposed to select
her representatives on such a principle.” On the other hand, there
is something to be said for the constituents. Surely they may very
properly ask: “From whom can we more reasonably seek aid for our
deserving local charities than from our Member of Parliament?” They
recall to mind his accessibility and graciousness while he was
“nursing” the constituency. Was he not ever ready to preside at the
smoking concerts of the Sons of Benevolence, to sing songs or recite
at the mothers’ meetings, to hand round the cake at the children’s
tea parties, to kick off at the football contests?
His speeches are also remembered. Did he not regard service in the
House of Commons while he was seeking it more as a distinction and
privilege than as a public duty? Did he not tell the electors from
a hundred platforms that for all time he was absolutely at their
service? Did he not come to them literally hat in hand begging the
favour—mind you, the “favour”—of their vote and influence? Yet to
this cynical end has it all come, that, badgered by requests for
subscriptions to this, that or the other, he replies—to quote the
prompt, emphatic and printed answer which one representative has sent
to all such appeals: “I was elected for —— as Member of Parliament,
not as Relieving Officer.”
4
In the House of Commons itself some disappointments also await the
M.P. The motives which induce men to seek for a seat in Parliament
are many and diverse; but there is hardly a doubt whatever that the
main reason is a genuine desire to serve the State and promote the
well-being and happiness of the community. Accordingly, in the first
flush of enthusiasm after election our representatives zealously set
about informing themselves of the subjects which are likely to engage
their attention in Parliament. But soon comes a rude awakening,
bringing with it the first of the disappointments that await them.
They find that to instruct themselves properly in questions that are
ripening for legislation would leave them very little time for the
calls of business and social life.
The breakfast table of the M.P. is heaped almost every morning during
the session with parliamentary papers of one kind or another—Blue
Books, Bills, reports and returns. Blue Books are popularly supposed
to be unattractive reading. This is a mistake. They may look
ominously ponderous in outward appearance, but their matter is not
therefore portentously dull. With a little delving, illuminating
facts for the serious student of the condition of the people—the
supreme and all-embracing question of politics—come to light. There
are, however, not only too much of them, but too many. On an average,
eighty are issued every year, making an impossible demand on the
attention of even the most conscientious representative. The Bills
are more inviting than the Blue Books, for, embodying as they do
the fads and hobbies of the 707 Members of the House of Commons,
they bring one into touch with curious manifestations of common
human nature and individual political ideals. About 300 of them are
introduced every session. After the formality of a first reading,
they are printed and circulated among the representatives, who are
expected to make themselves acquainted with their provisions.
It is to be feared that many M.P.’s give up this task in despair.
Instead of attempting to arrive at independent conclusions by
personal investigation and study, they are content to rely upon
their Party leaders to direct them on the right path in regard to
Government measures dealing with the main public questions of the
day, and upon their Whips as to whether they should oppose or support
the Bills of private Members. Yet it is not always plain sailing,
even when the lazy course is pursued of just giving one’s ear to the
leaders on both sides attacking and defending. “The worst effect
on myself resulting from listening to the debates in Parliament,”
writes Monckton Milnes, “is that it prevents me from forming any
clear political opinion on any subject.” Of the 300 Bills brought
in every session, very few are passed. So supreme is the command of
the Ministry over the time of the House of Commons that the private
Members have little chance of carrying legislation. Only the Bills
of the Government set out on their course through both Houses of
Parliament with a fair prospect of reaching the Statute Book.
Furthermore, the M.P. who is ambitious “the listening Senate to
command,” also soon discovers that the opportunities for talking are
flagrantly restricted in the interest of the Government. He may have
devoted many days to the making and colouring of artificial flowers
of rhetoric with which to decorate his speech in a great debate.
Sometimes he may get the chance to deliver it in a House almost
empty, and containing but two interested listeners—one the hon.
Member who hopes to follow, and is impatient of his prolixity, and
the other his wife in the Ladies’ Gallery, fuming at the indifference
with which his eloquent periods are being received. That is bad
enough; but there is a worse fate still. He may sit night after night
on the pounce to “catch the Speaker’s eye” and yet fail to fix the
attention of that wandering orb. Meanwhile he may hear his arguments
and his epigrams made use of by luckier men, who probably got them
in the Library from the same shelf, the same book, the same page as
himself. Finally, the debate may be brought to an end, leaving him
baulked in his design, with a mind further oppressed by the burden
of a weighty unspoken speech. Then his constituents say unpleasant
things of him because they do not see his name in the newspaper
reports. He is neglecting his duty, or he is an empty-minded “silent
Member,” who, having nothing to say, says it.
There is an old proverb at Westminster which declares that “they are
the wisest part of Parliament who use the greatest silence.” Again,
in the opinion of the leaders of the Party in office he is the most
useful of Members who never consumes valuable time by speaking, but
is ever at hand to vote when the bells ring out the summons to the
division. The man who always votes at his Party’s call and never
dreams of thinking for himself at all is to be found by the score
in the House of Commons. But to many another M.P. it must be a sore
trial to find his opinions often dictated by his leaders and his
movements in and out of the House controlled by the Whips. Party
discipline is strict in all the political groups, and violations of
it are rarely condoned. The speech of the Member who is sincere and
courageous enough to take up an attitude independent of his Party
in regard to some question of the day is received with jeers by his
colleagues, and, what is perhaps more disconcerting, with cheers by
the fellows on the other side. There are, to be sure, representatives
to whom the House of Commons is but a vastly agreeable diversion
from other pleasures and pursuits. Imagine the feelings of such an
easy-going Member when, on a dull night off, an urgently worded
and heavily underscored communication from the Whips demanding his
immediate attendance is delivered by special messenger at some most
inopportune moment, perhaps as he is just sitting down to a pleasant
dinner or is leaving his house for the Frivolity Theatre. If, prone
as he is to yield to the temptation of the flesh, he should ignore
this peremptory call of Party duty, he is held guilty, like the crank
and the faddist, of a grave breach of discipline. His past services
in the division lobbies—on nights when the proceedings in the House
were to him a most enjoyable lark—are forgotten. He gets a solemn
lecture from the Chief Whip on the enormity of his offence. Worse
still, his name is published in an official black list of defaulters,
or a nasty paragraph exposing his neglect of duty appears in the
newspaper which most widely circulates in his constituency.
And yet what model M.P., Liberal or Unionist or Labour, with all his
sincere attention to the desires, the whims, the caprices of his
constituents, with all his willing surrender of private judgment to
his leaders, of personal pleasures to the Whips, can confidently feel
that his seat is safe? It is hard to get into Parliament. To remain
there is just as difficult. The insecurity of the tenure of a seat in
the House of Commons is perhaps the greatest drawback of public life.
Many a man with ambition and talent for office does years of splendid
service for his Party in Opposition. The General Election comes. His
Party is victorious at the polls. But he himself has been worsted in
the fight, and he has the mortification of seeing another receive the
office which would have been his in happier circumstances. To such
a man with his capacity for public life, with his keen enjoyment of
the Party fights in Parliament, existence outside must be barren and
dreary indeed. Yet never again may he cross the charmed portals of
the House of Commons.