The Chancellor has tendered his resignation. All well-intentioned
persons must sincerely regret this step, especially after yesterday’s
event. But the Chancellor is said to be in an overwrought and nervous
state. And, indeed, this can scarcely be wondered at, for he has had a
hundred times more thought and work than any chancellor under the old
system had. The ingratitude of the mob has deeply wounded him, and the
incident of yesterday was just the last drop which has made the cup run
over.
It has come out, however, that the boot cleaning question was really
at the bottom of the ministerial crisis. It is now known that the
Chancellor some little time back handed over to the Cabinet an
elaborate memorandum, which memorandum, however, the other ministers
always contrived to persistently shelve. The Chancellor insists now
on attention being paid to his memorandum, and he has had it inserted
in the _Onward_. He demands that class differences be instituted, and
says that for his part he cannot possibly dispense with the services
of others. The maximum eight hours’ day simply cannot and does not
exist for a chancellor, nor could otherwise exist than by having three
chancellors to govern in shifts of eight hours each of the twenty-four.
He urges that he, as Chancellor, lost a lot of valuable time each
morning over cleaning his boots, brushing his clothes, tidying up
his room, fetching his breakfast, and similar offices; and that, as
a consequence, matters of grave State import, which he alone was in
a position to attend to, were subjected to vexing delay. He had no
other choice, he says, than either to appear occasionally before the
ambassadors of friendly powers minus a button or two on his coat, or
to, himself, (the Chancellor, as is well known, is not married,) do
such small repairs as were too pressingly urgent, or too trifling, to
be sent to the great State repairing shops. He argues further that by
having a servant to perform such little offices much valuable time
would have been saved to the public. Then again the having to take his
meals at the one appointed State cookshop was very irksome, by reason
of the crowd of suppliants who daily organised a hunt after him. As for
his carriage-drives, he never took them except when, from the limited
time at his disposal, it was otherwise quite impossible to obtain a
mouthful of fresh air.
All this sounds, of course, very plausible, but there is no denying
that a proposition of this kind is diametrically opposed to the
principle of social equality, and that it would only too strongly tend
to introduce the system of household slavery once more. That which
is demanded by the Chancellor for himself others might with equal
right demand, and we should soon have his colleagues in the Cabinet,
and others, such, for instance, as heads of Government departments,
directors of the numerous State institutions, mayors of towns, etc.
etc., making the same pretensions. On the other hand, however, it
certainly does seem a pity that the whole vast machinery of the State,
upon whose smooth working such mighty issues depend, should now and
then come to a stop because the Chancellor has to sew a button on, or
to polish his boots before he can receive someone in audience.
This is a question of greater moment than is apparent to everyone
at first sight. But that such an excellent Chancellor, and such a
consistent Socialist should in the course of his career be tripped up
by a stumbling-block of this kind cannot be too much regretted.