sinecure, or a position in which he was free to accumulate great sums;
he and his would vote themselves an exaggerated salary; he would vote
out of the taxes great sums to his colleagues, and he would take many
private opportunities for enriching himself, as the natural action of a
man possessed of the power to do so through a public post.
But your eighteenth-century aristocrats who gave the tone to all that
system, the big squires of the time, and the great merchants whom
they digested into their body, were neither influenced in policy nor
lowered in dignity by what they did. They did not profess to be acting
otherwise, they did not put themselves into an absurd position, nor
live in panic of exposure. A man would take money or honours as the
wages of voting for the Government, but members of the Government
themselves would not habitually take money in order to advantage
company promoters who desired to fleece the public. There were
occasional examples of this sort of thing, but it was not normal. You
cannot imagine Walpole, for instance, or the younger Pitt, at either
end of the period, taking money from a chance financial adventurer who
should have come to him to get a new duty put on, or an old duty taken
off, or a new kind of monopoly invented, whereby to fill his pockets.
I cannot imagine a man going to the younger Pitt, and saying: ‘My
brother who is your colleague in the Government and I have a project
for fitting sailing-ships with such-and-such a device. If you will help
us to make it a law that all British ships shall carry this device and
purchase it from us, we will give you a share in the proceeds.’ Our
modern politicians act in this fashion; and, what is perhaps worse for
the authority of Government, they do so in a fashion which makes them
ridiculous: they loudly protest their innocence on the eve of exposure,
and live always in some trepidation, and in a sort of incessant
wrestling match with those who could make their lives intolerable by
public insistence on their little habits.
Here is, I think, the core of the whole matter. Those patriots who
rightly think they serve the country by strengthening the authority
of even nominal governors, but who are persuaded that the toleration
of political vice strengthens such authority, make in this second
postulate of theirs a very obvious error. It is an error which they
would not make, I think, if they lived the life of their fellow
citizens and knew the average Englishmen better than they do.
All politicians live a life apart from the general mass of the less
wealthy, less privileged classes, though they themselves are so largely
drawn from these strata. It is astonishing when one hears them talking
among themselves to discover how remote they are from the general
interests of the public, and how seriously they take their own sham
divisions and sham battles, and with what strange simplicity they
believe that these sham battles are of vast moment to the electorate.
The public as a whole is now fully acquainted with the nastiness and
degradation of public life. It certainly does not appreciate the
ultimate consequences of these, but at any rate it is no longer under
any illusions. Indeed, my experience is that the ordinary member of the
public, the average man in the liberal professions and in commerce,
rather exaggerates the evil than otherwise, although he does not
recognise its danger. He is ready to believe that pretty well any
politician may be found taking money, and he does not distinguish as
he should between the two sharply different types of Parliamentarians:
those with a dirty record of their own, and those with a clean record
who permit and support the dirt in the midst of which they live. For it
must be admitted that public life is full of men who would never dream
of themselves doing such actions as have come to mark their profession
as a whole; but these men do not on that account stand excused. They
support the nastiness in the midst of which they live; they refuse to
correct it; they even, as a rule, join those who would prevent its
exposure. They are accessories to all those acts which they not only
personally despise and are disgusted with, but which in private they
denounce. For they could put an end to the system if they preferred
justice to their own little careers and the general good of England to
their personal ease or notoriety.
Sometimes they try to salve their consciences by substituting a general
for a particular condemnation—the oldest device known to governing man
for shirking the duties of government.
I remember an excellent comedy of this sort in which I myself took
part. The Admiralty had given an order for the making of an important
part of a man-of-war to a small company (what is called a ‘one-man’
company) run for the profit of a friend of the Prime Minister of the
day.
There was nothing excessive about that bit of favouritism. It was
natural that a politician should help a friend: some one must have the
order, and there was no great harm done to the State. But the next step
was of real importance.
It turned out that the part supplied was defective. Those who supplied
it might plead that they did not know the defect to exist, nor indeed
would it be to their advantage to have allowed such a defect. It was
probably an accident, though it did point to the work having been given
to people inadequate to its gravity. The part was sent back to be put
right. Instead of being put right, as it should have been, an operation
was performed with the effect of concealing the defect, instead of
remedying it. The part was sent back in such a condition that, had the
flaw not been discovered, the great man-of-war itself and its crew
might have perished. This was obviously a very serious matter indeed.
If there is one thing the politicians must not be allowed to play
tricks with, it is the Navy.
Now, the Parliamentarians appointed to look into public accounts issued
a fine bombastic denunciation of the awful business, and used such
words as would have satisfied Jeremiah. _But they were very careful not
to mention a single name._
That seemed to me something of a defect. I was in Parliament at the
time, and I set out to find out who were the actual human beings
responsible for this crime. Unless one got on to them and punished
them, one might as well have done nothing in the matter. If things of
this sort can be done with impunity, they will certainly be done again.
I found the greatest difficulty in getting any single one of those
six hundred-odd men in the Commons to act with me in the matter. I
did not, of course, approach more than a few, because there were not
more than a few who would even consider the public good; but by one
of those few I was told that it was not usual to act in this fashion;
that such action was regarded as ‘personal’; that the thing was now
some months concluded and ought to be buried; that it was difficult
to arrive at the ultimate responsibility in these affairs—and so
on. They all applied to a principal unit of the British Navy, to an
English man-of-war and a thousand English lives, the principle that the
politician was more important than ship or crew, and that their own
Parliamentary skins were more important than the country.
The individual private member of Parliament has no power of action in
Parliament except the chance of the ballot or the putting-down of a
question. I put down my question. It was answered in the most pathetic
manner by the politician directly responsible, who called Heaven to
witness that I had traduced by my question an old and valued friend
of his own whom he loved as a brother. That the fault was that of ‘a
subordinate.’ The House murmured its sympathy. I pointed out that I had
traduced no one, that I had only asked for the names of the responsible
people and for their prosecution. Whereupon, as another journalistic
phrase goes, ‘the matter was allowed to drop.’ But I need hardly add
that the person nominally responsible was promoted to a public honour,
and that no ‘subordinate’ appeared.
It was only a small episode, though it would not have seemed small to
the officers or crew if their ship had struck in the middle of the
night owing to a defect in the steering gear—still, honestly, it was a
small matter as politics go. There are hosts of much graver instances,
but it was a characteristic one.
The argument that this now universal taint covering public life is
tolerable because the same thing goes on in every country where there
is a Parliament, and therefore does not weaken us in the face of our
rivals, has two bad flaws in it.
The first is a neglect of the fact that the cancer called Parliament
is no longer universal. Some of our rivals are already rid of it: all
are disgusted with it; most will probably have cut it out within a
generation.
The second is that nowhere is Parliament bound up with the Nation as it
is in England.
The French parliamentary system is at least as corrupt as the English:
from the little I know of it, I should say it was worse. The American,
I understand, is not so bad; but it is still sufficiently corrupt to
excite the perpetual vigilance of the American electorate and press,
which are as ruthless in exposing such evils as we are resolute in
concealing them. Of the Polish and German systems, which have just come
into existence, I know nothing. The Italian was contemptible, and the
Spanish a joke. They have both been happily kicked into the street, and
I trust we shall hear of them no more.
But the parliamentary corruption of other countries is attached to an
institution which in those countries is subsidiary to the national
life. No one in France, for instance, regards the Parliament as a
necessary, or even a properly working, part of the national existence;
it is a modern experiment, very unpopular, and standing in some dread
of far more permanent and deep-rooted institutions, such as the
University, the Army, the Church, and the landed system, with which it
has to work as best it may. The politicians in Paris can and do work
great harm in all departments, but they do not form the traditional
organ of government, rooted in the country, as the Commons do here.
They live under perpetual protest.
In the United States, as everybody knows, the central representative
assembly is altogether subordinate. The Senate is far more powerful,
and far more respected. The President is high above both. He has
monarchic powers superior to anything of the kind in Europe—superior
by far to those exercised by the King of Prussia in the days when that
individual was also military head of the Reich.
But in England Parliament is the great national institution. It is
bound up with the whole life of the country. A disease attacking it is
a national disease. The lawyers’ guild, which is in England far, far
more powerful than in any other country, is inextricably bound up with
Parliament. There can in England never be any question of the armed
forces acting apart from Parliament; nor can there be apparently (and
unfortunately) as yet a kingly power, like that of the President of
the United States. A King of England would to-day find ample popular
support against Parliament; but how is he to move?
Therein lies the gravity of the situation. Parliament will not reform
itself, and yet there is no power external to Parliament capable of
reforming it. Though the nation were in the last extremity of peril, we
have not at hand some force external to Parliament capable of pushing
aside its maleficent impotence and taking over the reins. Indeed,
when certain politicians were secretly trying to make peace behind
the back of the Allies during the crisis of the Great War, no one
moved—except a few humble seamen, who stopped one important voyage of
their own accord. Should we live to see an invasion of this country,
or a shameful capitulation, I fear that the disaster and the shame
would still be presided over by the politician. During the Great War
we owed half a dozen insanities to the fact that with us a politican
can order the movements of armies, in spite of the soldiers, and
affect—though he can hardly direct—the foreign policy of the country,
in spite of its competent permanent officials. It is true that the
millionaire newspaper-owner, especially if he be devoid of instruction,
and therefore of all responsibility, has more to do with the framing
of a policy than has the politician, and it is true that the great and
weighty financial interests are much more powerful. But Parliament
is the door through which everything must pass—or, to change the
metaphor, it is the instrument which alone can be used for direct
effect; and its decline is on that account of very grave moment to the
future of the country. It is therefore a despairing thing to say that
the decline cannot be checked, that the disease must run its course;
yet I fear there is nothing else to say. It is manifestly too late to
set things right. There came one moment after another in which a remedy
could have been applied; but each opportunity was refused, and I do not
see how any sufficient one can arise in the future.
To have checked the rot at the very beginning, as, for instance, during
the telephone scandal, would have been easy enough (already, a few
years before, Mundella had been thrown out of public life for what was
then thought a monstrous lapse, but what would now be thought hardly an
irregularity). It was even possible to turn the current as late as the
Marconi scandal. One virile decision in that crisis might still have
saved Parliament. But I do not see, nor do I think any one else can
tell me, how it can be saved now.
The test is very simple. On the day when a Cabinet Minister is heavily
fined or imprisoned for irregular action in connection with money the
tide will have turned. Does any one believe that such a day will come?
I for my part certainly do not. Therefore the decay will continue. The
system, already deep-rooted and established, will become a matter of
course, and there will happen in the long run to the House of Commons
what has happened to every institution which gets past praying for;
but, meanwhile, what of us who have no other instrument? What of the
nation?
One point of view was presented to me by a wise old gentleman who had
spent about thirty years (doing nothing) in the House of Commons and
then wangled a peerage (for nothing) out of his colleagues; for he
desired to live on under the same roof and to spend the last of his
days amusing himself—remaining an indulgent spectator of what was
still, to him, a slightly interesting affair.
It was on the evening of a day when I had been trying hard to dig one
of the more noisome of the politicians out of the earth in which he had
taken refuge after a particularly unpleasant affair. The old fellow
had watched the process with an active amusement, and I think he was
grateful to me for having provided him with an entertaining day. He had
been watching from the gallery, but that evening, as I dined with him,
he warned me against wasting too much energy in such a pastime.
I assured him that it was no pastime—that I took it very seriously
indeed.
‘I know you do,’ he answered, ‘and that is just what I am warning you
against. The country is carried on not by these fellows,’ jerking his
thumb towards the door, ‘but by the general activity of its people:
that people is sound and will come well out of any ordeal.’
The war proved him right.
‘What the mass of the people do not do for themselves,’ he said, ‘is
done by a rather too large but very conscientious body of permanent
officials, underpaid, industrious, and exceedingly competent. The
politicians are only the scum on the top; they have very little to do
with the happiness or the unhappiness of the nation, and not much to do
with its strength. Even the points of policy are, as a rule, decided
outside their circle in the weightier financial world. It is a waste of
energy to draw that covert too long.’
There is a great deal to be said for the old boy’s attitude. But I
could not help asking him what Mr. Gladstone would have done if he had
been faced with a Chancellor of the Exchequer taking shares over the
breakfast-table; for he remembered Mr. Gladstone well, and had for him
that odd half-worship which so many men who knew that powerful, short,
oratorical genius of a better past were smitten with. I said, ‘In Mr.
Gladstone’s time the Secretaries of State had more privacy than our
modern politicians, and their actions interfered less with the general
life of England than they do to-day: with the permanent officials far
less; yet you know as well as I do what Mr. Gladstone would have done
if he had found a member of his Government taking shares from a company
promoter over the breakfast-table.’
The old man answered to this that the standard was altogether higher in
his own youth than it was now, and that though he could not deny that
Cabinet Ministers’ present habit of taking money was a weakness to the
country, yet he thought it a small weakness. He added a thing which I
have since discovered to be profoundly true, ‘At any rate, it cannot be
remedied, and so you are wasting your time.’
In all the discussions—far too many!—in which I have engaged upon
this subject I found only one really enthusiastic defender of the
system, and that was a wealthy young Anglo-American who either just
had taken up, or was just about to take up, a place in public life.
To him our present way of going on had a sort of special excellence
peculiar to this country and worthy of Bacchic praise. He spoke like a
man who has come into a promised land, and he was moved to indignation
by my criticisms against certain recent events. He applauded a Cabinet
Minister who had just given a valuable monopoly to a company promoter
and then resigned, and accepted a permanent highly salaried post in
that company: for he repudiated any connection between the selling of
the monopoly and the immediate subsequent acceptation of the salary.
He was indignant that such a connection should be dreamt of. They were
separate acts.
First the politician, in his capacity of public servant, honestly
weighing all the pros and cons, decides that a company promoter is the
right man to have a great public monopoly—worth millions. He gives him
that monopoly. There the matter ends.
Then begins quite another set of actions. The politician as a private
individual accepts a highly salaried post in the pay of the said
company promoter and lives on the profits of the monopoly.
Only insane suspicion could connect the two acts.
It was a startling theory to hear: it was also completely new to me.
But it had this advantage: it made him a contented supporter of that
which others either laughed at cynically or held their tongues about.
I shall be interested to see, as I grow older, whether this type of
defence develops, and whether we shall find the taking of bribes and
the levying of blackmail a matter, not for commonplace acceptance,
but for indignant praise. I do not think that we shall have much of
that argument. It is exotic. No man of our blood is really comfortable
in the presence of financial corruption. He may tolerate it: he may
practise it; but it does not fit in with his conscience, still less
excite his enthusiasm.
However, one never knows. There are very vile commercial transactions
which certainly excite admiration to-day as surely as they would have
excited in our fathers the determination to hang the culprit. Laxity in
the relations between men and women which our fathers would at least
have condemned is to-day not so much condoned as defended and made
into a sort of religion. Direct treason in time of war merits a few
months in the second division. So it is on the cards that I shall live
to hear men say in awestruck tones, ‘What a fellow Binks is! The Prime
Minister’s agent offered him ten thousand pounds to clear out, but he
got one hundred thousand pounds in solid cash before he had done with
him. He frightened the old fool to death by showing he knew all about
Chapel Street.’
After all, I have heard much the same tone of religious veneration in
those describing some stock-exchange swindle of our day, and a fortune
made in a few weeks by the deception of the multitude and the ruin of a
thousand families.
So there is still hope.
The authority and prestige of Parliament have sunk like water in a
river lock, sogging away rapidly before our eyes.
The process should normally have been more rapid, and the ultimate
crisis to which it should surely lead was due to come long before this.
It would have been much better for the country if it _had_ so come. The
Marconi scandal was an excellent opportunity for an explosion and a
thorough clearing of the air. The far worse Dope scandal, taking place
when the nation was fighting for its life, was perhaps the last chance
offered. If half a dozen of the politicians and company promoters
compromised in the Dope scandal had been openly tried and sent to penal
servitude during the war, we should have been the better for it to-day.
Instead of that the whole thing was hushed up, and the loot remained in
the hands of the looters: an example followed by I know not how many
others in the short seven years which have elapsed since that worst of
abominations was condoned.
Perhaps the strongest brake that was put upon the pace downhill, the
strongest force restraining a final collapse, and thereby condemning
the country to the gradual and certain extinction of Parliamentary
authority, lay in the momentum of the old Parliamentary prestige.
To an older generation, of whom some few survive, the idea of a seat in
Parliament was connected with honour and a social position worthy of
ambition. That generation carried on an admixture of the old tradition
which only slowly died, and while it lasted supported the collapsing
fabric with which it was intertwined.
Such men, before the present nastiness began, had already acquired a
habit of the House of Commons, they lived in the thoughts and customs
of an older and much better time, and lent to the diseased institution
of their age the memories of its health during their own early youth
and manhood.
Some very few still survive to lend the corruption of professional
politicians a remnant of moral support. When they are gone we shall
have the problem to face in full as we have not yet had to face it.
Of those men who had thus obtained a habit of the House of Commons,
as it were, and who for long lent it a fictitious value which it had
long ceased to possess, I would particularly recall—for I followed
his public action closely and often discussed it with him—Sir Charles
Dilke.