The other day on a stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I climbed up upon
one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards from which the dead seem
to look down upon all the living. It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus
was a mountain of gods. In that church lay the bones of great Puritan
lords, of a time when most of the power of England was Puritan, even of
the Established Church. And below these uplifted bones lay the huge
and hollow valleys of the English countryside, where the motors went by
every now and then like meteors, where stood out in white squares and
oblongs in the chequered forest many of the country seats even of
those same families now dulled with wealth or decayed with Toryism. And
looking over that deep green prospect on that luminous yellow evening, a
lovely and austere thought came into my mind, a thought as beautiful as
the green wood and as grave as the tombs. The thought was this: that
I should like to go into Parliament, quarrel with my party, accept the
Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, and then refuse to give it up.
We are so proud in England of our crazy constitutional anomalies that
I fancy that very few readers indeed will need to be told about the
Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. But in case there should be here or
there one happy man who has never heard of such twisted tomfooleries,
I will rapidly remind you what this legal fiction is. As it is quite a
voluntary, sometimes even an eager, affair to get into Parliament, you
would naturally suppose that it would be also a voluntary matter to get
out again. You would think your fellow-members would be indifferent, or
even relieved to see you go; especially as (by another exercise of the
shrewd, illogical old English common sense) they have carefully built
the room too small for the people who have to sit in it. But not so,
my pippins, as it says in the “Iliad.” If you are merely a member of
Parliament (Lord knows why) you can't resign. But if you are a Minister
of the Crown (Lord knows why) you can. It is necessary to get into the
Ministry in order to get out of the House; and they have to give you
some office that doesn't exist or that nobody else wants and thus
unlock the door. So you go to the Prime Minister, concealing your air of
fatigue, and say, “It has been the ambition of my life to be Steward of
the Chiltern Hundreds.” The Prime Minister then replies, “I can imagine
no man more fitted both morally and mentally for that high office.” He
then gives it you, and you hurriedly leave, reflecting how the republics
of the Continent reel anarchically to and fro for lack of a little solid
English directness and simplicity.
Now, the thought that struck me like a thunderbolt as I sat on the
Chiltern slope was that I would like to get the Prime Minister to give
me the Chiltern Hundreds, and then startle and disturb him by showing
the utmost interest in my work. I should profess a general knowledge of
my duties, but wish to be instructed in the details. I should ask to see
the Under-Steward and the Under-Under-Steward, and all the fine staff
of experienced permanent officials who are the glory of this department.
And, indeed, my enthusiasm would not be wholly unreal. For as far as I
can recollect the original duties of a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds
were to put down the outlaws and brigands in that part of the world.
Well, there are a great many outlaws and brigands in that part of the
world still, and though their methods have so largely altered as to
require a corresponding alteration in the tactics of the Steward, I do
not see why an energetic and public-spirited Steward should not nab them
yet.
For the robbers have not vanished from the old high forests to the west
of the great city. The thieves have not vanished; they have grown so
large that they are invisible. You do not see the word “Asia” written
across a map of that neighbourhood; nor do you see the word “Thief”
written across the countrysides of England; though it is really written
in equally large letters. I know men governing despotically great
stretches of that country, whose every step in life has been such that a
slip would have sent them to Dartmoor; but they trod along the high
hard wall between right and wrong, the wall as sharp as a swordedge, as
softly and craftily and lightly as a cat. The vastness of their silent
violence itself obscured what they were at; if they seem to stand for
the rights of property it is really because they have so often invaded
them. And if they do not break the laws, it is only because they make
them.
But after all we only need a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds who really
understands cats and thieves. Men hunt one animal differently from
another; and the rich could catch swindlers as dexterously as they catch
otters or antlered deer if they were really at all keen upon doing it.
But then they never have an uncle with antlers; nor a personal friend
who is an otter. When some of the great lords that lie in the churchyard
behind me went out against their foes in those deep woods beneath I
wager that they had bows against the bows of the outlaws, and spears
against the spears of the robber knights. They knew what they were
about; they fought the evildoers of their age with the weapons of
their age. If the same common sense were applied to commercial law, in
forty-eight hours it would be all over with the American Trusts and
the African forward finance. But it will not be done: for the governing
class either does not care, or cares very much, for the criminals,
and as for me, I had a delusive opportunity of being Constable of
Beaconsfield (with grossly inadequate powers), but I fear I shall never
really be Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.