POLITICAL SHAMS
THE reforms I have so far advocated have one peculiar
characteristic. They are urgent, easy to grasp, indisputable in
principle, and enormously advantageous; but they need international
co-operation, and we are only just beginning to form those friendly
international contacts which may lead to agreement. Hence it is that,
although very contentious reforms have already been realised, these
linger, as we say, outside the range of practical politics. But this
very phrase reminds us at once of another fundamental irregularity of
our life. The man who thinks a proposal dismissed because it is not
within the range of practical politics illustrates admirably the
indolence of mind which I am assailing. If a useful and economical
device were put before him in his business-capacity, and he were told
that his business had no room for it, he would at once ask what was
wrong with the business. I am contending all through for the
application of this progressive spirit to larger concerns than stores
or workshops. If our political system, to which we entrust these large
concerns, absolutely ignores some of our finest chances of profit,
there is something wrong with the system. Our servants are not doing
what they are paid to do.
As I have already briefly contended, our recent experience furnishes a
very ghastly confirmation of this suspicion. The British Empire will
survive the dangers that beset it, though it will be deeply impaired
economically, for two fundamental reasons: the Allies have double the
population of the Central European Powers, and they have, including in
this respect the United States, far larger ultimate resources in
material and money. The fact that we do eventually muddle through
will, one fears, content the majority of our people, but the
thoughtful patriot will ask two questions. How many hundred millions
has our slowness in mobilising our resources cost us, by protracting
the war? And what is likely to be the fate of the British Empire if,
with a similar slackness, it has at some later date to meet a
numerically equal and far more alert enemy?
Let me briefly recount the facts which show that our national business
has been grossly mismanaged. Can any person look back on all the facts
which are now public property and say that our soldiers and statesmen
were innocent in not perceiving the grave possibility of war with
Germany at any time in the last three years? That, however, will
scarcely be said: the readiness of our fleet is a sufficient reply. We
know further that the general character of the war was foreseen.
England was to help France and Belgium, on French or Belgian soil.
England's co-operation on land was, as events have shown, vitally
necessary. Yet the unpreparedness of Britain for a great continental
campaign was entirely scandalous. No doubt there would have been a
risk in openly enlarging the army or creating great stores of
material. Germany would, in its unamiable way, have asked questions.
Tender-hearted Members of Parliament would have denounced our
provocative proceedings. But a preparation of plans, a census of our
resources, a scheme for the immediate enlistment of the
business-ability of the country and the full use of all our industrial
machinery--these and a dozen other most important measures could have
been taken in this country as safely and secretly as they were in
Germany. Not only were they not taken, but the military preparations
were actually relaxed. It has transpired, and is not disputed, that
our great Arsenal was only partially occupied; and Mr. A. Chamberlain
has publicly stated that Kynochs had for the year 1914--the expected
year of war--a Government order two-thirds less than they are capable
of executing in a week, and do now execute in a week.
The second fact is the remarkable failure to forecast the conditions
of the war. If it be urged that a layman cannot judge how far such a
failure is culpable, the answer is prompt: the German authorities, who
had had no more experience of war than we, did forecast the
conditions. Their minute and energetic elaboration of the whole scheme
of the war contrasts extraordinarily with the sluggish and
conventional ease of our authorities.
The third and gravest fact is our appalling and costly slowness in
mobilising our resources when the war began. Six months after the
outbreak of war I went over a very large engineering shop in the
north. Out of hundreds of men only a score or two were engaged on
war-material: and one of the two objects on which this mere handful of
men were engaged has proved to be wholly valueless. At that time, and
for months afterwards, the workers of Britain were encouraged in their
easy ways, and the bulk of the manufacturers were encouraged to go on
with their usual business, by official assurances that no greater
effort was needed. When our disgusted soldiers sent us a message that,
not "the weather," but a scandalous shortage of ammunition and
machine-guns kept them back, the Prime Minister, quoting the
"highest available authority," publicly declared this to be
untrue. We were asked rather to admire the way in which we had
dispatched the greatest expeditionary force known in history: as if
the enormous progress of modern times did not make this superiority a
matter of course. When criticism increased, we cried for the gag and
the public prosecutor, and we garlanded the portraits of the very men
who had disgraced us; and we agreed to the retention or promotion of
incompetent men, on obvious party-grounds.
Happily one minister had the grit and patriotism to call to his aid a
group of business-men, and the facts could no longer be concealed. Mr.
Lloyd George admitted that since the beginning of the war, we had
increased a thousandfold our production of munitions, yet were still
far behind the Germans and far short of our needs; and at last, eleven
months after the outbreak of war, we began to organise, or at least to
ascertain, our resources. Again we loudly congratulated ourselves on
our energy. We cried shame on all critics and pessimists and people
who wanted more. We fancied ourselves in the character of Atlas,
taking the whole burden on our massive shoulders, to spare our weaker
Allies. But the sinister light which this late increase of output
threw on the first six months, or more, of indolent incompetence was
quite disregarded. We genially overlooked the fact that the delay of
our advance was costing us nearly a hundred millions a month. We
allowed less prominent affairs to be conducted with the same indolent
insufficiency. The most absurdly inadequate measures were taken to
control the prices of food and coal, and scarcely a thought was given
to the tremendous economic problem which will confront us when the war
is over, or to the means of recouping ourselves by a systematic
promotion of our oversea-trade.
In a word, the magnificent organisation and ordered national devotion
of the German people make the conduct of England during the first year
of the war seem clumsy, lazy, and full of danger for the future. For
this the chief blame quite obviously falls on our statesmen. English
soldiers have at least been second to none in the field: English
artisans have, since the need was acknowledged, worked magnificently.
It is the directing brain that was sluggish and incompetent. The
magnitude of the sudden task does not excuse our rulers, nor does the
very large service that was actually done--which I do not for a moment
overlook--lessen the scandal. If a political machine does not know how
to enlarge itself in less than twelve months to meet a new and very
urgent task, especially a task that it ought to have foreseen, it is
unfit to control our national destiny. Our governmental system has
proved itself most dangerously and mischievously unfit to meet such a
national emergency, and this catastrophic experience may encourage the
reader to examine with patience the criticisms which I propose to pass
on it.
Here again we submit to the tyranny of a largely obsolete tradition.
When the story of the development of human institutions can be written
with a detachment of which we are yet incapable, one of the strangest
pages will be that which tells of the evolution of Church and State.
From the early days when some exceptionally powerful warrior is raised
on his shield and saluted as chief or king, and when some weird
individual earns the repute of being able to control or propitiate the
mighty powers of the environing world, government and religion
steadily advance to a commanding position in the life of the people.
The two men of power, the king and the priest, must have
establishments in accord with their value to the tribe, and the palace
and the temple rise in spacious dignity above the mean cluster of
huts. Time after time the race turns to examine the tradition which
has been so deeply impressed on it, and kings and gods are cast from
their thrones; but new dynasties always arise. Of Rome, no less than
of Thebes or Nineveh, it is the monuments of kings and gods that
survive. Only a few centuries ago the European city consisted mainly
of two institutions: the palace and the cathedral. The bulk of the
citizens huddled in squalid fever-stricken houses beyond the fringe of
the estates of their secular and priestly rulers.
The modern age, with its inconvenient questions and its bold speech,
arrives. Commerce develops, and the palace and cathedral disappear, in
the forest of soaring buildings. When the roofs of the new commerce
and the new commoner rise to a level with the roof of the palace or
the cathedral, when men are no longer overshadowed by the old powers,
the imagination is released. The divine right of kings goes in a fury
of revolutionary flame: kings must henceforth rule by human right and
answer at a human tribunal, which is more exacting and alert than the
old tribunal. Yet the power of the dead tradition is amazing. In England
men still bow reverently when the king addresses them as "my subjects"
and talks of "my empire": still crown every entertainment, spiritual
or gastronomic, with fervent aspirations which would lead an
ill-informed spectator to imagine that they regarded the king's health
as mystically connected with the health of the nation: still describe
bishops and the heads of families which have been sufficiently long
idle and wealthy as their "lords."
These archæological survivals are, no doubt, innocuous, if
irritating. The more serious feature is that they help to make so many
people insensible of the miserable compromises we endure in our
reorganised State. They are part of that superabundant ash which
clogs and dulls the fire of the nation's life. The nineteenth
century, rightly and inevitably, adopted a democratic scheme of public
administration. It was seen that, if the king were not so close a
friend of the Almighty as had been supposed, there was no visible
reason why the destinies of the nation should be entrusted to his
judgment: which was, as a rule, not humanly impressive. Luckily,
certain nations had won the right to do a good deal of talking before
the king came to a decision, or the right to hold Parliaments, and
Europe generally adopted this model. The Parliament House now towered
upward in the city, and it did the real business of directing the
nation's affairs. The king became a kind of grand seal for the
measures enacted by Parliament. Some nations, the number of which is
increasing, regarded the seal as a costly and avoidable luxury, and
abolished it: some kept the king, with all his stately language and
pretty robes and sparkling jewellery, and abolished the "lords":
some kept the king and the lords, but deprived them of real power. The
English nation, which is famous for its common-sense, its audacity,
and its ability, belongs to the last group. It invented that
remarkable phrase, "self-government": which ingeniously preserves
the fiction that someone has a right to govern other people, yet
conciliates the modern spirit by intimating that the people really
govern their governors.
Into the extraordinary confusion of forms and formulæ which has
resulted from this compromise it would be waste of time to enter. Does
it really matter that we allow our king to put on our coins a
flattering portrait of himself, with an intimation that he rules as
"by the grace of God"? He is quite conscious that he rules us--if
his melodramatic relation to us may be called ruling--on the
understanding that he never contradicts us. We are not now knocked on
the head, except by an intoxicated patriot, if we refuse to stand
while our neighbours chant their insincere incantation about his
health: we go, not to the Tower, but to the ordinary law-court, if we
mention his personal frailties; and the portentous seriousness with
which he takes his robes and his formulæ injures none, and amuses
many. No doubt, slovenly mental habits are always to be deplored, yet
these things are not in themselves important enough to be included in
a list of serious reforms. What we do need to examine critically is
this scheme of self-government by which we now manage our national
affairs: very badly, it appears.
This political machinery is divided into two sections: municipal
government and national government. The former, from which every
element of "government" except the name has departed, need not be
considered at length. It consists of groups of citizens who are
understood to excel in public spirit and self-sacrifice, so that they
devote a large part of their time to the unpaid service of their
fellow-citizens. Every few years a man, of whom you had probably never
heard before, calls to implore you, with a quite painful humility and
courtesy, to allow him to discharge this self-denying function. The
next day another man, of whom also you had never heard before, calls
to inform you, in discreet language, that his rival is a spendthrift,
a rogue, or a fool; and that _he_ is the man to represent you with due
regard to economy and with absolute disinterestedness. You probably
refrain from voting for either, since you have not the abundant
leisure of a libel-court. Your streets will somehow get paved, and
your children schooled, and you will pay the bill. But you may
discover after a time that the air is thick with charges of
"jobbery," or that some local councillor has been promoted to the
higher and more lucrative political world on the ground of "many
years' experience of local administration."
If you happen to live in the Metropolis, where the intelligence of the
nation is clotted, so to say, you find municipal life even more
complex than this. The eager rivals who solicit the honour of doing
your work for nothing are divided into bitterly hostile schools. Each
school spends hundreds of thousands of pounds in a periodical effort
to convince you that the other school is going to swindle you. Each
plasters the wall with repulsive typical portraits of its exponents,
and you see yourself depicted as a weak and amiable, but small-witted,
figure (or, perhaps, as a burly and very stupid-looking farmer), whose
pockets are being picked. Each produces a most exact statistical proof
that its opponents have actually picked your pockets, and that the
"reds" or "blues" are the only people with a really disinterested
desire to spend some hours every day in the gratuitous discharge of
public duties. They spend great sums of money every few years for the
purpose of securing this thankless burden and facing the vituperation
of their opponents. You seek illumination in the press, and you find,
in rival journals, a mass of contradictory statements and mutual
accusations of lying. However, the system is thoroughly British in
its encouragement of individual action and public spirit, and you
overtook all the direct and indirect corruption it fosters.
What is a man to do? One can at least search very rigorously the
credentials and the public action of the man who "solicits your
vote," and encourage the appearance of really independent and
fine-spirited men and women. I have, naturally, described the broad
features and general abuses of the system, but there are, of course,
large numbers of men in it who are sincerely disinterested. In the
main, however, municipal politics is tainted and complicated by the
party-system of the large political world, and to this we may turn.
That section of the political machine which controls national affairs
is obviously of the first importance. On its working rests the grave
issue of peace or war; to it is entrusted, in the last resort, the
great task of educating the nation; and through it alone can we secure
any of those numerous reforms which are to undo the tyranny of shams
and abolish so much avoidable misery and confusion. One ought
therefore to be gratified to see how large a place politics occupies
in the public mind, which is otherwise so little inclined to serious
matters, and in the public press, which so faithfully mirrors the
thought of the nation: to see how the prominent or eloquent politician
surpasses in public esteem the greatest artist or scientist, and even
rivals in popularity the prettiest actress of the hour: to see that
four-fifths of our public honours are reserved for politicians and
statesmen, and for those less gifted but more wealthy men who give
them practical support. Unhappily, when one looks closely into this
apotheosis of politics, one finds that its merit is merely
superficial: that a very large proportion of the more thoughtful
people in every civilised community look on politics with disdain, and
that some of the more independent of our politicians confess that one
must almost lay aside one's honesty and ideals on entering the
political world.
A series of grave struggles and threats of civil war in the first half
of the nineteenth century inaugurated the present political phase in
Europe. It transpired after Waterloo that the English parliamentary
system, in which our statesmen took such pride, was a hollow and
corrupt sham. A comparatively few wealthy landowners controlled the
nation, and bought votes for their nominees. After some years of
agitation the working men of the great manufacturing centres formed
armies and threatened to force the doors of Westminster at the point
of the pike. This elicited a system of restricted, but real, popular
representation. Later enlargements of the franchise improved the
system, and to-day some six or seven million adult males elect our
legislators. Until recently this scheme was largely frustrated by the
power of a non-elected House to suppress any measure which did not
please a privileged minority, but this is now materially modified. Six
million free and adult representatives of the nation appoint and
control the men who make our laws, and direct the king how to act.
But in practice this admirable theory becomes a mockery and an
illusion. It may be taken as a Euclidean postulate that out of six
million people of any civilised nation four or five millions will
be--shall we say?--somnolent: not from want of brain, but from want of
constant exercise of it. A very earnest idealist of the last century,
Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, proposed that, for the great efficiency of
our political machinery, every elector should, before he received a
vote, be compelled to pass an examination in political economy and
constitutional history. Since few Members of Parliament, to say
nothing of voters, would have passed the examination, the proposal was
rejected, and the education of the voter was left to the interested
political parties and to the press which supported them, or was
supported by them. The result was that two rival organisations,
roughly corresponding to the two attitudes of the modern mind toward
new ideas (progressive and conservative), gradually increased in
wealth and power until they were able to control the electorate and
exclude from representation every finer shade of political thought.
The machinery by which this is done does not leap to the eyes, as the
French say, and the average elector proudly contrasts our political
system with that of most other nations.
Candidly, we may take some pride in the contrast. The struggles and
sacrifices of our fathers have won for us a system which is far
superior to that which has hitherto prevailed in Russia, to the
despotic medievalism of Prussia, to the grave insincerity of Spanish
political life, to the confusion and occasional corruption of French
or Italian politics, to the remarkable activity which precedes a
presidential election in the United States. Our political life is
relatively free from large corruption. I happened to be in New Zealand
when the "Marconi Scandal" was agitating England, and I remember
politicians of that progressive little land smiling at the word
"scandal" and hinting that they were more adventurous. Some of our
discontent is, no doubt, due to women writers who magnify the evil in
order to persuade us to enlist their refining influence. I do not, in
fact, think that Mr. Belloc and Mr. Cecil Chesterton have proved some
of the graver charges which they brought in their indictment of our
"servile State." It will need something more than a list of
matrimonial connections to persuade us that Mr. Lloyd George and Mr.
Winston Churchill were in the habit of meeting, amiably and
clandestinely, Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. F. E. Smith for the collusive
arrangement of our laws.
Yet there is enough in the familiar criticisms of our political
machinery to justify one in saying that the political sham is, even
now, intolerable. What, candidly, is the procedure? A general election
is announced, and two men call, or send agents, to solicit the honour
of representing you in Parliament. In the district in which I write at
the moment one candidate is a wealthy and muddle-headed Liberal: the
other is a wealthy and (politically) equally muddle-headed
Conservative. Neither of them has the remotest idea of representing my
national wishes,--they would blush to be suspected of it,--and neither
has ever spoken in Parliament; so I have never yet voted.
But I am an eccentric man. Let us take a normal case. You notice, as a
rule, that during the few years before the election a wealthy man has
been openly suffered, or directed from his party-headquarters, to
"nurse" the constituency. Hundreds will cast votes for him solely
because they fear a withdrawal of his subscriptions to their chapels
and football clubs, and of his open-handed philanthropy. As the
election approaches, another candidate appears. He also is, as a rule,
a wealthy man, and he spends between one and two thousand pounds in
disturbing the judgment and inflaming the emotions of the voters.
Pictorial posters, which might have adorned the walls of some Pyrenean
cavern in the Old Stone Age, are massed near the doors of some dark
"committee room" or spread over the town. The brain struggles
feebly with the contradictory statements of orators and journals. And
on the day of the election the two wealthy rivals for the honour of
printing M.P. on their cards, and the duty of voting as they are
directed by their superiors, flood the district, although it has an
excellent tram-service, with expensive cars and carriages, to take the
tired working man to the poll.
Possibly one of the candidates is not a wealthy man, and you begin to
speculate on the source of his thousand pounds, or even three hundred
pounds. Very few voters do inquire, of course; most of them would be
surprised to know how much a man spends in soliciting the honour of
representing them--he has usually a great contempt for them--in
Parliament. The more inquisitive voter, however, would discover that
the poorer candidate is in a special sense the representative of a
particular party, and he would touch the fringe of a peculiar and
ingenious system. I happened one day to mention to a friend certain
advanced opinions of a Member of Parliament. "That," he said
grimly, "will interest my father-in-law; he finances Mr. ----."
Through the party-organisation this wealthy and highly respectable
manufacturer paid the election expenses and part of the
income--Members of Parliament had not then a salary--of candidates or
Members in various remote towns. The manufacturer, or the various
manufacturers who do this sort of thing, will eventually be knighted
or baronetted; their sons will have a chance of a secretaryship, or
even of Cabinet rank. The secretly subsidised Member will go to
Westminster, an automatic voter. In fact, since a candidate must
generally have the sanction of the central organisation of one or
other party before he can venture to solicit votes, even wealth does
not usually relieve him of the party-tyranny.
What, then, is the party? It is not so much a creed as a wealthy and
powerful organisation. Once it was a group of men who happened to have
the same ideas. By a natural evolution of organisation--one sees the
same thing in the evolution of Churches--it has become rather a
machine for impressing those ideas on men. In a sense, it is an
oligarchy. We must remember such facts as the dismissal of Mr.
Balfour, and the powerlessness of Mr. Asquith to get rid of a certain
Minister whom he disliked. The power of the front-benchers is not
absolute. But on the whole the party is an aristocracy of wealthy men,
titled men, and able men, which rules the country for a term of years.
Its leading agents are the Ministers and Whips: the body of the party
is an association for carrying out its will, and for adding the
attractions of parochial entertainment and cheap club-life to the more
austere cult of ideas. Its revenue is, to a great extent, secret; but
the annual lists of honours reveal very plainly that it conducts an
unblushing traffic in such things. The reasons allied in the published
list are often too ludicrous for words. Privately one can often
ascertain the exact price.
With this wealth the party-aristocracy controls the electoral campaign
and the elected Members. It has, further, at its disposal a large
number of highly paid positions, or functions which lead to highly
paid positions, or profitable little occasional jobs, or political
pensions, or a Civil List (which is grossly abused), and so on. These
it dangles before the eyes of impecunious or ambitious critics. Here
are two facts within my slender personal knowledge of these matters. A
very influential Socialist (my informant) was invited to a small
dinner of the party-aristocrats and diplomatically informed that he
might be useful in office: another drastic critic was assured by a
Cabinet Minister, through a mutual friend (my informant), that nothing
would be done for him until he ceased to criticise.
The system is, on both sides of the House, corrupt, demoralising, and
intensely prejudicial to the interests of the country. We found its
danger during the South African War, and we perceive it far more
plainly to-day. What ought to be the brightest intellectual fire in
the land is sluggish, choked with ash, served often with inferior
material. The permanent departments of State which depend on it are
correspondingly sluggish. In an emergency it--after a humiliating
trial of its own ability--turns to business-men. Its whole tradition
and procedure are abominable. Men who are poor and independent may
bruise their shins on the doors in vain. Men of no ability are
promoted, even to peerages and the Cabinet, because their fathers
contributed much to the party's purse or prestige, and they
themselves will at least be loyal. Men who raise critical voices in
the House are snubbed and suppressed: men who criticise outside are
safely ignored. The ablest and the most sincere men in the party--men
like Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Lloyd George--acquiesce in all this.
The electoral system and the procedure of the House of Commons are
designed to protect this monstrous scheme. The large fee which is
exacted of candidates and the very large sums which wealthy men are
allowed to spend on elections intimidate able and independent, but
impecunious, men. The election is spread over a week or two in order
to give wealthy men, who may be relied upon to support the
constitutional parties, an opportunity of voting in several
constituencies, and in order that Ministers may give more aid to their
weaker supporters. For the polling-day Saturday is avoided as much as
possible, because on that day a larger percentage of the workers would
vote, and they are apt to vote against the constitutional parties.
Cars and carriages are permitted because the candidates of the workers
will easily be surpassed in this well-known advantage by candidates of
the great parties. Minorities are hopelessly excluded from
representation, such as they would have under a system of proportional
representation, because they would send to the House a number of
independent Members who would disturb all the calculations of the Whip
and all the tricks of party-government. Under a system of proportional
representation it would be quite easy for some scores of able and
earnest men to secure election at very small cost, by merely
circulating declarations of their views; but this, or a grave increase
of the Labour Members, would wreck the party-system, and therefore the
most democratic of our orthodox politicians maintain all the abuses
and injustices of our system.
The division of constituencies is further designed to protect this
iniquitous and corrupt scheme. Universities, the City of London, and
boroughs like Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, and Montgomery--each of which
has a population of less than 17,000 souls--have an equal right to one
unit of representation in Parliament with Wandsworth, the Romford
division of Essex, or the Harrow division of Middlesex, each of which
has more than a quarter of a million inhabitants. Eighty-three
constituencies, most of them having a large proportion of the more
intelligent workers, have a population of more than 100,000 each:
forty-four constituencies have a population of less than 40,000 each.
In other words, half the people of England and Wales elect 167 Members
of Parliament: the other, and notoriously less intelligent half, elect
323 Members of Parliament.
From Gladstone downwards even our most "democratic" statesmen have
acquiesced in these enormities of our electoral system; and they have
meantime expended much eloquence on the injustice of the Prussian
system, and have expressed ardent hopes for the emancipation of the
people of Italy, or Bulgaria, or Persia, or some other remote land.
Yet these features of our electoral scheme are retained solely in
order to protect the party-system: to keep in the hands of a group,
which is largely hereditary and is at all events a small and jealous
caste, all the prestige and emoluments of the higher positions. Even
the grave peril of a national catastrophe, owing to this restriction
of power and responsibility to a group of moderate talent, does not
shake their tradition. We shall, when this war is over, see them
resist reform as energetically as ever.
Within the House of Commons itself a mass of old rules and customs are
maintained for the same purpose. The hours of work are still arranged
on the old supposition, that a Member of Parliament is a man who, with
great self-sacrifice, devotes a large part of his time gratuitously to
the service of his country. The most important work in the nation's
economy is relegated to the hours when every healthy man is disposed
to rest and recreate himself: indeed, the more important the issue at
stake, the more certain it is to be discussed during the worst working
hours out of the twenty-four. One has only to glance at our
legislators on their benches after dinner to realise the significance
of it. The majority of them are plainly reconciled to the theory that
the heads of the party have done the necessary work during the day:
_their_ business is to keep sufficiently awake to vote correctly.
The arrangement of business is not less iniquitous. The Ministry
decides that certain measures of reform are needed, either in the
interest of the people or in their own interest, and, since they have
an assured majority of "Ayes," the lengthy debate is almost
superfluous. The passing of the measure has been secured in advance,
or it would not be put forward. The rare event of miscalculation, and
the still rarer event of independent action, need not be regarded. No
Member is, even in these cases, influenced by the long and tiring
speeches which are made about the matter. At one time the debates had
a certain elocutionary elegance, at least; now they represent an
unattractive sham-fight, and abuse is being increasingly substituted
for rhetoric. The most paltry trickery is employed on both sides,
because every man is aware that his speech is really addressed to his
followers outside the House, and he must, _in_ the House, rely on
quite other devices than eloquence. Yet all this pseudo-gravity is
lightened occasionally by sittings in which some measure of the
greatest importance, but not introduced by the Government, is treated
as flippantly as it would be in a humorous debate during a long
sea-voyage.
If a man is instructed by his constituents to represent in the House
some special need of theirs, or some public reform which has millions
to support it, he finds that "the rules of the House," or the
rules of the oligarchy, will not allow him to introduce it. A very
small fraction of the time of the House is granted for the discussion
of such proposals; but the debate is farcical, and is often looked
forward to in advance as such, because everybody knows what will be
the issue, even if a majority of the House really favours the
proposal. Measures of grave social importance, like women-suffrage,
have been arbitrarily crushed by the oligarchs for thirty years,--as
early as 1886 women-suffrage had 343 supporters on the benches,--and
this tyranny and injustice of a few ministers have led to the most
violent and bitter recrimination.
This is the political machinery to which we entrust the most dedicate
and momentous issues of our national life, and to which we have to
look for the realisation of our most treasured hopes of reform. The
impartial critic will not question that there are men in the political
world as eager for reform as he, or that during the last half-century
some excellent social legislation has been passed. These measures are,
however, due in great part to a studied endeavour to retain or gain
support in the country,--the Insurance Act, for instance,--and many of
them--relating to the sale of cigarettes, to the admission of children
into public-houses, to the flogging of procurers--are small
sentimental reforms which occupy time that could be better employed.
We think that we open a new epoch of civilisation when we give a very
small pension to a very aged worker, but the problem of the roots of
poverty or the abolition of warfare does not enter the party-programme.
Our bishops enthuse over their success in inducing a complaisant Home
Secretary to lay the lash on the backs of a sordid little group of
criminals, and even offer to roll up their own lawn sleeves for the
job; but they are indifferent, or hostile, when other people would
induce our Ministers to amend those brutalities of our marriage-laws
which tend to foster prostitution.
This political machine must be radically and comprehensively reformed
before it can be a fit instrument for the reform of the nation. All
the pyrotechnic distractions and gross irregularities of an election
must be suppressed: all plural voting must be abolished: the comedy of
cars for feeble voters must be forbidden: all indirect bribery, either
of voters or candidates, must be rigorously punished. Candidates must
put a simple and sober statement of their views and proposals before
the electorate, and no further expense should be permitted. Some
system of proportional representation and secondary elections should
ensure that large minorities would not be entirely without
representation. The election should be confined to one day, preferably
a Sunday, and stripped of all melodramatic nonsense and occasion for
corruption.
The party-system will, no doubt, long survive in English political
life. Within twenty years or so the word "Conservative" will, as
in other countries, pass out of use, and the Conservative elements
will unite under the banner of "Liberalism," in opposition to
"Labour." It is, of course, the dread of this issue which at
present unites the constitutional parties in opposing reform. One can,
by studying advancing countries, even foresee a next phase. The
Conservative elements will unite in a "Labour" party against the
Socialists; and in the dim future we may, like Anatole France, foresee
a Socialist commonwealth established and an Anarchist party furiously
assailing it.
But, though the party-system be retained (very much modified by
proportional representation), this disgusting sale of honours and
offices, this oligarchic tyranny over the House and the
constituencies, will not survive. Reform of the electoral procedure
will enable a large group of independent men--independent of the large
parties--to enter Parliament, and the removal of the Irish and other
Members, who concentrate on a single issue and are willing to traffic
on other issues, will reduce the old majorities. I do not doubt that
fresh complications will arise. The weakness of proportional
representation is that it will certainly lead to a number of sectarian
groups. "We Catholics" will, of course, return Catholic Members,
ready to sell their votes on various issues in the interest of the
sect; and the Baptists and Methodists, and so on, will be tempted to
retort. We shall have a teetotal group, and a Puritan group, and an
anti-wallpaper group, etc. We must hope that the sterner education of
the electorate will secure that these trivialities do not endanger
grave national interests. The dissolution of the old Conservative
party will leave the Liberal party unable to defend its abuses; it
will have no opportunity of collusion or retaliation. So we may have
in time a political machine--a body of men, appointing their own
leaders, soberly chosen by each 100,000 of the population, regarding
Parliament as a grave national council, not a theatre for the display,
of wit and rhetoric--which will effectively carry out the will of an
advancing people and enlist the interest of the most thoughtful.
I am in all this assuming that sex-barriers and privileges will be
entirely abolished, but I prefer to discuss the position of woman in
its entirety in a later chapter. It must be explained, however, that
in taking 100,000 as a unit of representation, I am contemplating an
electorate of thirteen or fourteen million voters. Something between a
hundred and two hundred Members of Parliament are surely sufficient,
and would make a much more practical and alert body than our present
stuffy, sleepy, and overcrowded House.
It seems very doubtful if a Second Chamber, in any form, is a real
social need. A House of "Lords" is, of course, an insufferable
anomaly and medieval survival. It is amazing that this hereditary
transmission of titles--and such titles!--and wealth has so long
survived the stinging raillery that men like Thackeray poured on it
long ago: it is still more amazing when we measure the intelligence
and public spirit of our "lords." Even if we weed out the less
intelligent, or those whose interest in horses or actresses or
theology is more conspicuous than their interest in the nation's
affairs, it is preposterous that such a body should retain the least
control of a properly elected House of Commons. We may trust that
before many decades all hereditary titles will be abolished, and this
will demolish at once the name and the more offensive part of the
character of the Second House. The idea that because one had a
distinguished or fortunate or unscrupulous ancestor, or one has large
estates or an American wife, one is fitted to control our legislators,
is too ludicrous for discussion. It is sometimes pleaded that they
"have a large stake in the country." One may surely reply, not
only that they would do well to have their large stake more ably
represented, but that poverty has an even greater and more pressing
right to representation.
As to the bishops, it is still more difficult to discover why they are
allowed to control secular legislation. They have been chosen for
certain doctrinal and administrative functions, partly because of
their ability to discharge those functions, partly because they had a
convenient income, and partly because they could command political or
domestic influence. But even the men who have earned a mitre because
they were admirably fitted to wear it, and could hold together a large
group of clergy with conflicting doctrinal ideas, are not obviously
qualified for the work of legislation. Their record in the legislative
assembly is deplorable. They have for ages blessed our militarist and
bellicose traditions. They have, in their own interest, resisted
nearly every important social reform until recent years, and even now
they display a keen social sense only when there is question of
flogging a few score of perverts, or something of that kind. They have
no place in a modern political system, and their presence in it is an
anachronistic reminder of the time when they monopolised education.
Another element of our Second Chamber consists of men who have been
promoted from the First Chamber, generally in order to watch the
interest of their party, or made peers for public service or service
to the party. The various creatures of the party are one of the abuses
we have to correct. Even the others are of questionable value. Is Lord
Morley more judicious, or more alive to the highest interests of the
nation and the race, than the Right Honourable John Morley was? Does
age give wisdom to Lord Gladstone, or did it enhance that of Lord
Roberts? Is it not a fact that nine men out of ten adopt a sluggish
and reluctant attitude in age, and are unfitted to deal with the
proposals of middle-aged men? There is, at all events, occasion for
very careful discrimination, whereas our present practice is to
reward, indiscriminately, a supposed merit or a service rendered to
the party with a seat in the "Upper" House.
The third class of peers calls for the same observation. Success in
manufacture or finance or law, or a willingness to give large sums to
the party-funds, is not an obvious qualification for controlling
legislation. While these men are in the prime of their vigour and
judgment the nation dispenses entirely with their services. We invite
their co-operation in the national business when they are understood
to be too old and inelastic to attend any longer to their less
important commercial concerns. It is, in fact, impossible to frame a
really impressive plea for a Second Chamber of any description. I
venture to say that if an historical inquiry were made into the
services rendered by Second Chambers since the beginning of the
parliamentary system, it would be found that they have rendered little
or no real service, while they have obstructed the work of reform in
every land. Their record--the first thing we ought to consult--condemns
them emphatically. If the Members of a Second Chamber are not elected
by the people, they invariably consult class-interests: if they are
elected, they, as one sees in Australia, are superfluous.
This political system is completed by the royal assent to Bills and
the royal power to choose Ministers. The former is now an idle form:
the latter is an intolerable abuse. If the people are self-governed,
the leading agents in the Government are Ministers of the people, not
of the king. The Members of Parliament ought to choose the Ministers.
Kingship is a medieval survival, and it is inconsistent with a clear
and practical conception of the nation's business to retain these
archaic forms and institutions. The trend of political evolution is
visibly from kingdoms to republics. A "monarch" in the twentieth
century is as anachronistic as a "lord"; an hereditary monarch is
an outrage of modern sentiments. Once more, we need to test the
institution by its historical merits or demerits.
Many people seem to regard our Constitution much as certain lowly
tribes regard the mysterious stone which has dropped from heaven
amongst them. Some even of our politicians display a kind of
fetishistic terror if a measure is projected that seems to them to
infringe or enlarge our Constitution. They brandish their spears
before the idol and talk of shedding their blood in its defence. They
are at times "Balliol Scholars," or something of that kind, yet
one would suppose that they were quite unaware how our Constitution
arose, and what plain and indisputable right we have to revise and
improve it. It is a sort of ancient mansion to which a modern owner
has added billiard-rooms and workshops and a garage. But it has
assuredly not the æsthetic charm of a medieval building, and this age
of ours needs to reconsider, if not reconstruct, it. It will be a fine
day for England when we have a Royal Commission sitting in judgment on
our Constitution: calmly discussing, amongst other matters, the
expediency of asking the throne to retire on half-pay, and all its
parasites to retire on no pay.
I have already described the changes which are likely to occur in that
large political structure, the Empire. The various regions of the
earth which constitute it cling together on the understanding that we
are quite insincere when we talk of them as our "possessions." It
is a federation of free nations, bound together by thinning ties of
blood and by the advantage of a collective defence. When the military
system is abandoned there will merely be a somewhat faded and amiable
sentiment uniting the imperial fragments to each other more closely
than to their nearer neighbours. One may hope that they will remain
united, for a large empire is a good thing, if it has large ideals: it
is a university of civilisation. But unless we purge our
correspondence of archaic forms the "Colonies" may grow impatient.
The Colonial of the third generation, and often of the second, has
very little respect for England. Candid Australians would make some of
our Imperialists tremble with concern. Our colonial "governors,"
of course, report that loyalty is undiminished, because a few hundred
families in Melbourne and Sydney press with undiminished snobbishness
to their garden-parties. These ornamental nonentities ought to be
withdrawn. Perfect sincerity in our relations with the Colonies will
do most to maintain the federation. The splendid co-operation of
Australia and Canada in the war has shown that we have little to fear.
India and Egypt form a special problem, complicated by the fact that,
in their condition of dependence, they are large and nutritious fields
for the employment of our sons. It would, however, be foolish to
ignore the great change that is taking place in them. Hindus tell me
that, when Lord Morley became Secretary of State, the advanced
Nationalists sent him a private message to the effect that they would
co-operate with a humanitarian like him; and he snubbed them. A very
large proportion of them are beyond the stage of being impressed by
_durbars_, and are impatient that the masses should be kept in that
childlike state of mind. We set up a fictitious "Oriental
imagination," and try to make the Orientals live down to it. The
example of China and Japan ought to have destroyed our illusions about
"the East." The difference is one of culture, which may at any
time be changed. We shall have to deal more frankly and generously
with Egypt and India, or else cease to rail at Prussian or Russian
despotism.
However, Imperialism is not a grave or pressing problem. The Empire
will run its destined evolutionary course. For us the grave matter is
the corruption which clogs our political machine and the perverse
tradition which prevents the multitude from seeing it. The awarding of
honours and lucrative positions should be withdrawn entirely from
politicians, because, even if we compelled them to publish accounts,
they would still add to their resources or prestige by this inveterate
traffic. The king might at least render us the service of purifying
this department of national life: perhaps have a list prepared by the
Privy Council and checked by independent inquiry. I remember how Sir
Leslie Stephen told me that he shrank from being added to the
inglorious list of mayors who had entertained princes or coal-owners
who had financed elections or built chapels. This would cut one of the
chief roots of our present political corruption, but we need to press
for a thorough education of the people. It must realise that the
political machine is dangerously clogged and sluggish: that its
"democratic" character is a sham: and that its energy is wasted on
measures which are insignificant in comparison with the mighty tasks
of education, pacification, and industrial organisation which it ought
to undertake.