THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
THE 
 TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 A STUDY IN THE EVOLUTION OF 
 PARLIAMENTARY CORRUPTION 
 
 The Florentine secretary's trb never quite sets." 
 
 LORD MORLEY. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1920 
 

 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE following pages attempt to give precision and 
 usefulness to the vague feeling that there is some- 
 thing wrong with politics. Our conduct, in regard 
 to grave national affairs, is neither wise nor con- 
 sistent. There is no class of men amongst us whom 
 we more generously flatter with public notice and 
 high-sounding titles, yet, the moment the affairs we 
 have entrusted to them reach a critical stage, we 
 clamour for the business-man. There is, in normal 
 tunes, no saying more common amongst us than that 
 the party-system suits what we are pleased to call 
 the genius of our race, yet we are very apt at the 
 close of a long period of trial and peril to assure 
 each other, with an appreciation of relief, that the 
 party-system is now dead and ingloriously buried; 
 and almost in the same hour we follow with admira- 
 tion the attempts of politicians to distribute us 
 afresh in new parties. 
 
 It were wiser, since the affairs entrusted to the 
 politician now lie at the roots of our personal and 
 common weal, to give a precise shape to this dark 
 suspicion we constantly mutter and as constantly 
 ignore. Is our political system corrupt? Are we 
 merely foolish, or duped, when we hear of political 
 scandals abroad and thank the gods that we are 
 not as other men ? Why do our politicians feverishly 
 seek, as they did in a recent debate, to shift from 
 their House the " opprobrium," as they called it, 
 which the country casts on it? I seek to answer 
 these questions, not by making a piquant collection 
 of rumours which one is obliged to keep in anony- 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 mous form, not by strained conjectures and inter- 
 pretations, but by a patient study of recorded facts. 
 If these facts belong in large part to former days, 
 if the earlier chapters of this work are historical, 
 they have not the less interest and pertinence. No 
 part of our national life is so shaped and coloured 
 by its past as our political system. The quaint pro- 
 ceedings of our Houses of Parliament are not more 
 unintelligible apart from history than is the be- 
 haviour of our politicians. They are the heirs of a 
 political system which a century and a half ago was 
 revoltingly corrupt, a century ago still fiercely re- 
 sisted every demand for the reform of its corruption, 
 and half a century ago still cheated the country by 
 mere pretences and the most grudging instalments 
 of reform. The taint is still there, but we citizens 
 have set up something in the nature of a system of 
 sanitation which compels it to seek new forms. The 
 story of this evolution or transformation occupies 
 much of my space, since it gives the inquirer a special 
 equipment for studying the subject. We then sur- 
 vey the existing political system in all its branches, 
 from the constituencies to the cabinet, and easily 
 define for ourselves its precise measure of lingering 
 corruption, dishonesty, chicanery, sophistry, and in- 
 competence. Beyond that it is not proposed to go. 
 When we have reached a mood of genuine and 
 serious resentment, when we no longer laugh to hear 
 politicians call each other knaves and cozeners, 
 knowing that to them we have entrusted what is far 
 more precious than a man's single bank-balance, 
 we shall soon find a remedy. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE. 
 
 I. THE STATE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 9 
 
 II. THE SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION . 26 
 
 III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 39 
 
 IV. THE " GOLDEN " AGE OF POLITICS . . 52 
 V. THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM . . .68 
 
 VI. THE " GREAT " REFORM BILL . . 86 
 
 VII. THE " REFORMED " PARLIAMENT . . 104 
 
 VIII. AMERICA INVENTS IHE CAUCUS . . 125 
 
 IX. THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION . . 149 
 
 X. OUR POLITICIANS AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS 170 
 
 XI. THE PARTY SYSTEM . . . .191 
 
 XII. THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS . . 208 
 
 XIII. THE REPRESENTED AND THEIR REPRESENTA- 
 
 TIVES ..... 227 
 
 XIV. IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH . . 244 
 XV. THE OUTLOOK 257 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STATE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 
 
 ON November 21st, 1918, a remarkable appeal to 
 the British people was issued by what were generally 
 regarded as the two most gifted and most conscien- 
 tious statesmen we then possessed. Inheriting a 
 power which had been scandalously misused during 
 one of the gravest crises into which the country had 
 ever passed, Mr Lloyd George and Mr Bonar Law 
 had nevertheless contrived to avert disaster and to 
 restore the drooping prestige of the nation in the 
 eyes of a wondering world. It was Carthage that 
 fell. We, as is our wont, genially overlooked the 
 small vanity of our politicians, and knew that only 
 a large infusion of non-political energy had enabled 
 our nervous administration to bring our massive 
 resources to the point of victory. But we at least 
 trusted that we had found statesmen sagacious 
 enough to perceive, and disinterested enough to 
 accept, the moral of their experience. In the fulfil- 
 ment of that not less grave task which, we dimly 
 foresaw, the era of peace would lay upon us, there 
 was to be no dallying with " the game of politics." 
 England had, in the stress of a mighty struggle, 
 suddenly matured. Politics would be henceforward 
 a scientific conception and manly discharge of the 
 vastest enterprise in the world. 
 
 The letter which Mr Bonar Law and Mr Lloyd 
 George issued gave that impression to the entire 
 nation, except to the adherents of a few small 
 
 9 
 
10 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 minorities whose personal interests would be en- 
 dangered if that conversion were genuine and sus- 
 tained. This letter evinced a quite serious and 
 comprehensive grasp of the nation's needs, as far as 
 they could then be discovered. Our swords were to 
 be turned into ploughshares with the speed and 
 economy which an ordinary commercial firm would 
 devote to the dispatch of its comparatively trivial 
 affairs. We pictured our five million soldiers and 
 three million further war-workers incorporated in 
 that depleted industrial army which had so heroic- 
 ally met our needs, and even sustained our comfort, 
 during five exacting years. We imagined the great 
 dynamo of our industrial life pouring a doubled 
 energy into the work of restoration. We talked of 
 a thousand million sterling of salvage from our 
 colossal stores. We pointed eagerly to the empty 
 markets of the world and lovingly counted our profit, 
 A few months of brisk, cheerful " conversion of in- 
 dustries," and by Easter our streams of exports 
 would restore the welcome spectacle of incoming 
 streams of gold, or the equivalent of gold. 
 
 The lessons of our tense experience and dire need 
 were to be applied richly to our new economy. Full 
 employment for all and an output far exceeding 
 that of 1913 were to be secured by " the develop- 
 ment and control hi the best interests of the State 
 of the economic production of power and light ; of 
 the railways and means of communication; by the 
 improvement of the consular service; and by the 
 establishment of regular machinery for consultation 
 with representative trade and industrial organisa- 
 tions." Just what the more thoughtful of us had 
 dreamed of for ten years ! The war had brought a 
 premature tinge of gray to many a head, but we 
 were reconciled. We were to reward out " heroes," 
 without materially lightening our pockets, by 
 putting them on the land. Afforestation and recla- 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 11 
 
 mation were to proceed at once. Our splendid 
 women were to be encouraged by our sweeping away 
 " all existing inequalities of the law as between man 
 and woman." Our agriculture was to be awakened 
 to a full activity by a new and better system of 
 transport. Our artisans were to be won by an ample 
 provision of houses, " unproved material condi- 
 tions, and the prevention of degrading standards of 
 employment." 
 
 Now, these things were practicable. They were 
 obvious statesmanship. They promised a solution 
 of the very grave problem which alone seemed to 
 mar our splendid prospect. The one shadow on the 
 brightening landscape was, of course, the shadow of 
 Labour. The criminal blunders of the first two 
 years of the war had thoroughly perverted the 
 standards of economy hi the mind of the workers. 
 No one, it is true, expected them to return to the 
 conditions of 1913. It is not too much to say that 
 in the winter of 1918 there was quite a general dis- 
 position to meet this legitimate aspiration of the 
 workers. The series of economic reforms sketchily 
 set forth in the Coalition-program were the obvious 
 means of doing it. The organisation of power and 
 transport, the improvement of the consular service, 
 and the scientific direction of agriculture, meant 
 larger markets, cheaper production and distribu- 
 tion, and a vast surplus of profit for the improve- 
 ment of wages. This was, said the Times cordially, 
 " an unimpeachable document." 
 
 The defect of the scheme did not escape notice. 
 A few days later Lord Dunraven wrote in the Times 
 that the Coalition leaders had indeed expounded 
 " an admirable and an elaborate and ambitious 
 scheme of social reform and reconstruction, but they 
 had omitted from it any reference to the instrument 
 by which the scheme was to be put into operation." 
 They had, he rightly said, put forward a program 
 
12 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 " equal in importance, and probably in bulk, to the 
 whole achievement of social reform in the last 
 century." But they had promised no improvement 
 whatever hi the machinery of State which had so 
 pitilessly revealed its ineptness during the war. 
 
 Our politicians hastened to supplement their fair 
 promises with declarations of stern purpose. Mr 
 Lloyd George at once corned a brand-new formula 
 of statesmanship : "To make Britain a fit country 
 for heroes to live in." It is humorous to recall that 
 in the same speech, delivered at Wolverhampton on 
 November 24th, he said : " There is no time to 
 lose." Mr Churchill, on the same day, assured the 
 apprehensive north that " the world cannot be 
 allowed to slip back and to settle down into the 
 narrow pre-war rut." Mr Bonar Law, next day, 
 solemnly avowed that the aim of his contingent of 
 the Coalition was " to raise the condition of the mass 
 of the people of this country " ; and their condition 
 then, in 1918, was far better than it had ever been 
 in the history of England. Mr Asquith, watching 
 this conversion with genuine concern, eager to prove 
 that Codlin is the friend, not Short, promised, on 
 November 26th, " a life worth living for every man, 
 woman, and child in the kingdom," if we would 
 ignore these mendacious opponents of his, and send 
 him and his friends to Westminster. Mr Lloyd 
 George, not to be outdone, assured us that his im- 
 mediate and sacred task would be " the lifting of 
 the mass of misery, of wretchedness, of hopelessness 
 there has been in an old country like this, the sweep- 
 ing away of slums," etc. Mr Asquith raised his bid ; 
 and on December 5th, the eve of the election, Mr 
 Lloyd George drove his Right Honourable friend 
 from the democratic market by a letter which ought 
 to have been printed in gold. He was going, really, 
 to " change the whole face of existence." He 
 pointed to Mesopotamia, which was soon to be the 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 18 
 
 orchard, the kitchen-garden, the new exclusive 
 market of England. He directed our eyes to the 
 depleted markets of the world, and conjured up a 
 vision of our magnificent war-industry, reinforced 
 by six million demobilised soldiers, doing a porten- 
 tously profitable business. And he said : " The 
 government have schemes for developing the re- 
 sources of our own country in a way they have never 
 been opened up before." 
 
 This was decisive. The country gave Mr Lloyd 
 George and Mr Bonar Law such power as statesmen 
 have rarely enjoyed before. Labour, inexperienced, 
 vague in its aims, conspicuously lacking in ability, 
 and enfeebled by a dreamily unpatriotic element, 
 was thrust aside. The ambition of the Asquithites 
 was sternly punished. Independent members were 
 scattered to the winds. We were familiar enough 
 with the turning of England into a land of promises 
 on the eve of an election, but there seemed to be 
 something definite, serious, organic in these pro- 
 mises. In any case, il fallait parier, to adapt the 
 famous motto of Pascal. The alternative was an 
 Irish-Labour-Asquith combination, which would 
 have been pathetically feeble. We bet on the tried 
 statesmen and their " schemes " ; and to-day we 
 nurse our sorrows with whatever air of philosophy 
 we can command. 
 
 They have certainly " changed the face of exist- 
 ence." It was as much brighter a year ago as a 
 hill-side in Tuscany is brighter than a suburb of 
 Manchester. The shadow of Labour has grown 
 gigantic. The statesmen who a year ago pictured us 
 restoring and decorating the universe, at a pro- 
 digious national profit, now set before us the spectre 
 of national bankruptcy. We have added, airily, 
 nearly 1,000,000,000 since the armistice to a debt 
 which already towered high above the world's 
 record. We forget that this debt was to be " paid 
 
14 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 in full " by Germany, and we wrangle over rival 
 schemes of confiscation and production, while our 
 statesmen sit dumb and our remaining capital is 
 converted into diamonds and cars and other luxuries 
 with a frivolity never known before in the history 
 of England. Our scanty production is incessantly 
 suspended by strikes, and we wait twelve months 
 before we place any restraint on a greed of dealers 
 which has almost irreparably torn the fabric of our 
 life. We have an army of 900,000 men a year after 
 Germany was reduced to impotence. We keep a 
 navy of 170,000 officers and men, and an Admiralty 
 staff of 16,500, a year after the complete annihila- 
 tion of the only fleet that ever threatened us. Our 
 Ministry of Munitions has still a staff of more than 
 20,000. We (in November, 1919) pay weekly alms, 
 on a princely scale, to 350,000 men and women, 
 while we wear out our shoes in the search for ser- 
 vants and houses. Our British pound, once the 
 envy of the world, lingers at an ignominious rate of 
 exchange. Our imports (largely of things which we 
 could make) are as opulent as our exports are 
 beggarly. The ugly phrase " civil war " is heard 
 every few days. 
 
 For this criminal folly and extravagance, this 
 dance of death, this shameless failure to grasp the 
 greatest opportunity ever offered to the nation, our 
 statesmen are responsible. The dangers they had 
 to encounter were foreseen. One did not need to be 
 a statesman to know that the myriads of temporary 
 workers would evade demobilisation by every lie 
 and trick in the ample resources or human nature. 
 It was plain even to the man who knew as little of 
 economics as of teratology that unrestricted profit- 
 eering meant higher wages, and higher wages 
 further profiteering, until the process would ap- 
 proach criminal lunacy. (Ten months after the 
 armistice I pay for the paper on which I write this 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 15 
 
 a price which I know to be 200 per cent, higher than 
 the retailer need charge.) It was obvious that delay 
 was profoundly dangerous, yet, although Foch con- 
 fidently predicted the issue from July, 1918, so little 
 preparation was made that the statesmen of Europe 
 and America took three months to marshal their 
 gorgeous staffs and camp-followers for a glorified 
 parliament, six further months to conduct it, and six 
 months more to recover from the effort. It was 
 obvious that our domestic enterprise ought to run 
 concurrently with this prolonged orgie of diplomacy, 
 yet it was suspended as completely as if there were 
 only one Englishman who knew the elementary con- 
 ditions of it. It was clear to any sagacious observer 
 of current events that if the quarter of a million 
 Socialists who, whatever their motives, did not want 
 to see the country settled, had time and opportunity 
 and pretext to leaven the mass of the workers before 
 production reached its full development, they would 
 succeed in doing it. Not a single thing of import- 
 ance has happened in the last year which could 
 not have been foreseen. 
 
 Lord Dunraven was right. The program of 
 November 21st was an electioneering window-show, 
 not a business-agenda. Before the election took 
 place the Coalition-leaders were compelled, by 
 electoral strategy, to postpone this sane program to 
 certain catch-vote cries that were forced upon them. 
 We were to hang the Kaiser (whom they knew 
 to be securely entrenched behind a hedge of 
 Dutch lawyers) and demand an indemnity of 
 30,000,000,000 or so from bankrupt Germany. 
 Most of us genially recognised at the time that these 
 sops to Cerberus were merely verbal. We thought 
 the constructive program safe. And to-day, after 
 twelve precious months, we understand, vaguely, 
 that about 5000 houses have been built out of the 
 promised 500,000; we learn that our national ex- 
 
16 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 penditure is nearly 4,000,000 a day, or more than 
 half our total national production per day; we find 
 our transport in a state of costly anarchy, lighting 
 and heating worse than ever, and the great power- 
 scheme postponed to the Day of Judgment ; and the 
 only instalment of the glorious plan is that Mr Lloyd 
 George has called the agriculturists together and 
 told them that the country expects them to produce 
 more, and expects the banks to finance them, and 
 expects the labourers to be good, and will grant 
 (or guarantee) them a further subsidy out of our 
 overflowing exchequer! Parturierunt monies. 
 
 The political system is inept, dishonest, archaic, 
 and contemptible. Never again would we have a 
 party-system in England, our journals assured us in 
 1918. The situation is such that, unless the 
 machinery be altered, we shall have to seek refuge 
 in a party-system from the costly inefficiency of its 
 rival. Can the machinery be altered ? What is 
 wrong with it ? How is it that, at a time more 
 momentous than any we have yet witnessed, in the 
 hands of the strongest men to whom we could en- 
 trust it, there has been such a catastrophic failure ? 
 
 It is inefficient because it is corrupt and archaic. 
 It is corrupt and archaic because, while we re-adapt 
 the machinery of our businesses in each advancing 
 decade, we suffer the vastly more important 
 machinery of State to escape re-adaptation. We 
 suffer this because most of us are dazed and duped 
 by the verbiage of politicians who do not want it 
 altered. We should howl with laughter if we read 
 that the shareholders of some important syndicate 
 had chosen a managing director because he was a 
 pretty speaker; but we still choose the managing 
 directors of our national business on their oratorical 
 qualifications, their powers of mystification. 
 
 Let us try to determine coldly, patiently, and 
 summarily the defects of our political system. The 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 17 
 
 man who dislikes the words " taint " and " corrup- 
 tion " has to face the fact that we were, somehow, 
 grossly deceived at the last election. We were 
 deceived at every other election, but in this case the 
 deception was as indelicate in its opportunity as it 
 was disastrous in its consequences. Each party 
 promised us an earthly paradise. Not one would 
 have done differently than has been done. But it 
 will be best in this summary analysis to take the sys- 
 tem in its actual form, leaving to later chapters the 
 justification and the enlargement of the indictment. 
 
 The general judgment of the country, that, if a 
 few statesman were to be supremely entrusted with 
 the great task of reconstruction, Mr Lloyd George 
 and Mr Bonar Law were the best for the purpose, 
 is as defensible to-day as it was in 1918. It is as futile 
 to quarrel with democracy as it is to say that the 
 present Government does not represent the British 
 people. When the Daily Mail cast its influence into 
 the scale against the Coalition, it was pressed to 
 suggest an alternative group of statesmen or an 
 alternative program. It refused to publish, much 
 less to comply with, the request. An Asquith re- 
 gime was, after the horrors of 1914-1916, unthink- 
 able. A Henderson- Webb regime seemed hardly less 
 ludicrous or dangerous at such a time. A conflict- 
 ing batch of fairly evenly balanced groups would 
 have been still worse. 
 
 But in choosing Mr Lloyd George and Mr Bonar 
 Law we, against our hope, gave renewed life to 
 some of the worst features of the party-system. In 
 our eagerness and cheerfulness we thought that 
 coalition meant coalescence; that party distinctions 
 had gone. We were soon undeceived. Each leader 
 had to contribute a party and a party fund to the 
 enterprise, and the offices of second and third rank 
 had to be distributed on the oldest traditions of the 
 division of spoils. While private firms were pre- 
 
 B 
 
18 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 paring with every modern device to meet the strain 
 of the new era, our politicians, the directors of our 
 vast imperial business, were consulting precedents 
 of the time of William the Third and Anne, or 
 clinging to the methods of Earl Danby and Sir 
 Robert Walpole. Mr Bonar Law apparently stipu- 
 lated that inherited mediocrities or enfeebled 
 veterans of his party should occupy positions of vital 
 importance. Mr Lloyd George had to reward men 
 who speculated on his fortunes rather than on those 
 of Mr Asquith. As to competence . . . We 
 would muddle through. 
 
 Similarly in regard to funds. The Conservative 
 Party being in a position to devote its whole accumu- 
 lated funds to the campaign, while the Liberal funds 
 were confiscated by an ambitious minority, it 
 followed that the Conservatives must form two-thirds 
 of the Coalition representatives in Parliament. We 
 have, of course, got rid for ever of bribery at elec- 
 tions. A man no longer needs 20,000 to persuade 
 2,000 voters that he will be their loyal and attentive 
 servant. An enlightened constituency calmly chooses 
 its representative. But somehow it still costs from 
 one to two thousand pounds to direct the judgment 
 of this enlightened constituency to a sound conclu- 
 sion. Take a fairly typical case at the last election. 
 A, B, and C contested a certain " cheap " division. 
 I happen to know that B's modest expenses were 
 500, and on that basis may confidently assume that 
 C's expenses were not more than .300, and A's ex- 
 penses not less than 1,000. The issue of the elec- 
 tion faithfully reflected this expenditure. A, a 
 Coalition-Conservative, ran away with the -election. 
 C, a Labour candidate, did not poll enough to get 
 back his deposit. A was not a wealthy man. Now 
 that the salary of a Member of Parliament is 400 
 a year, and will soon be 500 or 600, it is possibly 
 a reasonable speculation to invest 1,000 in an 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 19 
 
 election, seeing that the duties are not onerous 
 enough to exclude other employment. In all pro- 
 bability, however, A received half or more of his 
 election expenses hi return for his promise of faith- 
 ful support. In other cases the candidate is wealthy 
 enough to " nurse " the constituency for years and 
 dispense with party aid. The majority of such 
 candidates are Conservatives. Instances of both 
 types will be given in a later chapter. 
 
 It will be shown later how the policy of a Govern- 
 ment was modified, even under so stern a Puritan 
 as Mr Gladstone, by a rich donation to the party 
 funds. Such incidents rarely get publicity, for it is 
 not to the interest of any party to encourage 
 detectives. Journals like the Herald or the Labour 
 Leader, which call to us to rend this veil of secrecy, 
 would not dare to publish a complete budget and 
 subscription list of their own. Incidents enough 
 will be given later, but they are hardly necessary. 
 Those who pay the piper call the tune, or they are 
 in some other way rewarded for their modesty. 
 Some of the more remarkable " honours " which 
 have appeared in the lists since December, 1918, 
 have an obvious implication. Mr Lloyd George had 
 to create a fund of, one supposes, at least a quarter 
 of a million. The Conservatives had far more than 
 that, and they became the predominant partner of 
 the Coalition. It was the party game in all its 
 virginal freshness. 
 
 But the program? It is unnecessary to attempt 
 to analyse the minds of politicians. The chief 
 feature which had ensured success in the business of 
 the war was organisation. It was obvious to sug- 
 gest an application of this to the new tasks of power- 
 supply, production, distribution, and commerce. 
 This would attract the imagination of the country; 
 and it really might prove possible to do something. 
 The Conservatives agreed, because they had a vague 
 
20 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 idea that the most profitable form of organisation 
 had been that which not merely did not supersede 
 private enterprise, but actually enriched it with 
 guarantees and subsidies and protection. 
 
 The great plan was nothing more than a superficial 
 synthesis of current ideas. There was no elabora- 
 tion, no agreement on basic ideas as to the form of 
 this new national organisation. Both sides probably 
 knew that there would be no Coalition at all if the 
 discussion were pushed too far. Possibly Mr Lloyd 
 George, certainly some of his supporters, thought of 
 genuine national action in the nation's interest. The 
 vast profit which would accrue from this organisa- 
 tion of the basic factors of the national economy 
 would pay the inevitable increase of wages that 
 would be demanded. Here the more powerful 
 element of the Coalition used its power. Private 
 enterprise that is to say, the enterprising manu- 
 facturers and dealers who create party-funds was 
 to have a large share of this vast new profit. The 
 proper function of Government is to protect them, 
 subsidise them, or guarantee them high prices. 
 Witness the miserable form in which the Govern- 
 ment's agricultural proposals have at length 
 appeared. So the whole scheme was wrecked, and 
 we look forward to a long, sullen, costly, and danger- 
 ous conflict of Labour and Capital. 
 
 The network of interests in which the procedure 
 of our politicians involves and enmeshes them 
 accounts also in large part for the appalling financial 
 scandal of the last twelve months. Mr Lloyd George 
 quite plainly told the country last November that, 
 in the conviction of our financial experts, nothing 
 like a full indemnity could be expected from Ger- 
 many. Those of us who knew Germany agreed. 
 But under the pressure of journals which threatened 
 to divert a million votes from the Coalition, Mr 
 Lloyd George was compelled it is to his credit that 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 21 
 
 he at least tried hard to mitigate the folly to adopt 
 the slogan. As a financier, he must have known 
 that we would in reality get little more than a tithe 
 of our indemnity, and that we must set about a 
 drastic and speedy economy, in face of a formidable 
 reluctance of departments, and put a master-brain 
 in control of our finances. One can imagine his feel- 
 ings when he found himself compelled to accept Mr 
 Austen Chamberlain. It was part of the price of 
 securing power. Behind Mr Chamberlain were 
 several hundred Liberal and Conservative members 
 whose knowledge of economics consisted only in the 
 magic formula " increased production." They re- 
 presented wealthy or comfortable folk who were 
 going to be wealthier or more comfortable than 
 ever; while their income-tax would sink to a 
 shilling, because Germany would undertake the in- 
 terest on the Debt. As to Labour, it would, of 
 course, profit by its increased production possibly 
 get a few shillings more than it did in 1913 and so 
 it might reasonably be expected, or in the event of 
 reluctance be compelled, to roll its shirt-sleeves up 
 to the shoulder. England was going to be a merry 
 country. 
 
 When this child-like philosophy was shattered on 
 realities, both Treasury and Parliament were ludi- 
 crously impotent. Mr Austen Chamberlain sat in 
 tears : Parliament in a sort of mild bovine wonder. 
 Taking advantage of the archaic simplicity of the 
 political scheme, departments snapped their fingers 
 in the face of the Treasury, and hundreds of thous- 
 ands of incompetents continued to find shelter in 
 their enlarged premises from the keen winds of the 
 open labour-market. Day by day any person who 
 cared to take the trouble could see highly-paid 
 officials in London doing half the work of a third- 
 rate clerk. At Woolwich Arsenal they were still 
 making guns in March, 1919, and clerks in White- 
 
22 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 hall were keeping the accounts. In the provinces 
 and abroad the scandal was even worse. In 
 October there were firms making tanks. The army 
 mutinied, and the trouble was met by the one 
 remedy known in Westminster : more money. So 
 large a proportion of our officers now got more than 
 they had any hope of getting in an open competi- 
 tion for employment that they resisted demobilisa- 
 tion. In short, while we bled at every financial pore, 
 the machinery of State proved itself ridiculously in- 
 adequate and the responsible authorities ludicrously 
 powerless. Parliament would not seriously inter- 
 vene because the members did not want another 
 election. The man who had staked a thousand 
 pounds on his parliamentary chances wanted five 
 years' profit on his capital. The men whose ex- 
 penses had been met by " the party," or by some 
 wealthy adherent of the party who was grateful for 
 favours to come, were very uncertain of re- 
 election. Up to the date at which this is written, 
 during nearly a year of the grossest extravagance 
 and criminal maladministration, Parliament has 
 only found courage once to question the high wis- 
 dom of the Cabinet ; and that was over a matter of 
 twenty-four French pilots, and the revolt was accom- 
 panied by warm assurances that the censure must 
 be understood not to go beyond this trivial point ! 
 
 Thus, without putting the least reliance on 
 rumours, without any indulgence in the not uncom- 
 mon practice of converting dark suspicions into 
 positive facts, we find the machinery of State en- 
 tirely unworthy of the age in which we live and 
 scandalously inadequate to its tasks. We suffer 
 the great modern work of national administration 
 to be blended with, and perverted by, a political 
 system which is thoroughly tainted; and the taint 
 spreads through the army and navy and civil ser- 
 vices which depend upon the political system. 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 23 
 
 Instead of choosing administrators on the ground 
 of their ability, we see our democratic choosers 
 drenched by an outpour of insincere oratory and 
 promises, and enmeshed in a network of paid enter- 
 prise and organisation, the power of which they fail 
 to perceive. We find this organisation centring 
 about the persons of a few professional, and to a 
 large extent hereditary, politicians, who fight each 
 other much as the Blues and Greens fought in the 
 ancient Roman Circus. Each has his large group of 
 prospective placemen, or " careerists," the last 
 qualification of whom is mere ability. From the 
 youngest aspiring secretary to the would-be minister 
 they are in a great measure mere servants of the 
 sacred " party " : men whose fathers richly en- 
 dowed its funds, men who have inherited names of 
 party-significance, men of the hereditary caste of 
 legislators, men who by open speech or secret in- 
 trigue served the party, unpaid, for years in the 
 certain hope of rising higher, men who have a follow- 
 ing that it is the party's interest to conciliate. So 
 we get Hendersons at the Board of Education, 
 Illingworths at the Post Office, Chamberlains at the 
 Treasury, Cecils at the Foreign Office, Herbert Glad- 
 stones as Viceroys, and so on. 
 
 Having thus secured office in a contest of promises 
 which have the maximum of speciousness and the 
 minimum of practicability, having secured in ad- 
 vance (by distribution of the party-funds) that the 
 representatives of the people shall be a "tied house," 
 the group of speculators who have successfully 
 floated their company distribute its better-paid 
 offices amongst themselves and their necessary sup- 
 porters. Their depleted treasury is re-filled by a 
 shower of honours (apart from genuine rewards of 
 merit) nicely graduated according to contributions. 
 Each of the honoured men has, of course, done some- 
 thing or other which may be dressed into a pretext 
 
24 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 in the " List of Honours." No one supposes 
 that the successful boot-manufacturer has crudely 
 approached a Liberal or Conservative official with a 
 cheque for ,17,000 and said : "I want a baronetcy 
 for this." It is therefore possible for the higher 
 representative of the party in the House to deny 
 indignantly that honours are sold. But the wealthy 
 man who is desirous of such things may learn in any 
 London club what the respective contributions to 
 the party-funds of the latest baronet and knight 
 were; and the man of leisure who cares to inquire 
 what precisely were the " local services " which are 
 appended to the name of Sir Algernon Pumpkin, 
 Bart., in the last Honours List will be greatly 
 edified at the extreme generosity with which such 
 things are rewarded by our politicians. The party- 
 chest steadily fills for the next election. 
 
 Our successful politicians then settle down to the 
 dual task of retaining office, which comes first, 
 and administering the country. Our unsuccessful 
 politicians devote themselves to the single task of 
 ejecting their rivals as speedily as possible. It 
 would be a fascinating game to watch if, meantime, 
 we had not entrusted them with the care of a 
 national business worth 2,000,000,000 a year. The 
 tricks, precedents, conventions, subtleties, and 
 tactics of the game are so numerous that we have 
 to pay a speaker and his staff about 10,000 a year 
 to be umpires. One has to keep a " good House," 
 a " good Press." One has to watch malcontents, 
 and weigh the chances of buying them or suppress- 
 ing them. One has to study daily the open tactics 
 and secret intrigues of an opposition which is led 
 by a man who has been playing the game, perhaps, 
 for fifty years. One has to help the incompetents 
 out of their difficulties and chasten the undue ambi- 
 tion of the competent. One has to keep a reserve 
 of pensions, offices, and occasional jobs for literary 
 
STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY MACHINE 25 
 
 and other servants outside. One has to give un- 
 truthful answers to questions, and untruthful 
 accounts of our progress, without the possibility of 
 being found out. It is a great game for the 
 players. We others must be content with the pros- 
 pect of a ten-shilling income-tax, a levy on capital, 
 or bankruptcy. 
 
 This tainted system is quite unintelligible unless 
 you know something about its history. It is the 
 slightly modernised version of a very ancient and 
 disreputable game. Everybody knows that a vote 
 was once worth ten or twenty guineas, and that the 
 taps once ran beer or wine (according to the number 
 of voters) on election-day. But, since we have sup- 
 pressed this open bribery, few realise how stubbornly 
 a corrupt past lives still in our political system : 
 how the taint has merely changed its forms in order 
 to elude our modern political sanitation. A few 
 chapters will therefore be devoted to tracing the rise 
 and culmination of political corruption, and its 
 evolution, under the pressure of reform-movements, 
 into its modern shape. Then I return to the 
 machinery of State as we know it to-day, and fur- 
 nish abundant evidence for the summary indictment 
 which I have given in this chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 
 
 THE sources of English political corruption are 
 usually located in the reign of the Stuarts, but, 
 although it is not expedient here to wander far from 
 our proper subject, it is advisable to realise that 
 political life nearly everywhere is, and always has 
 been, more or less tainted. We are not more corrupt 
 than the Athenian democracy was in the days of 
 Epicurus or the Italian democracies of the Renais- 
 sance were. Our parliamentary life is not inferior 
 to that of France, and it is far purer than that of 
 Spain. Our politicians need not blush in the pre- 
 sence of the politicians of Australia and New 
 Zealand, and they will assuredly not be recom- 
 mended to take the Congress of the United States 
 as a model. Nor is the taint in the least peculiar 
 to democracies. It was at its worst in England 
 under the later Stuarts and the House of Brunswick ; 
 and the foulest European exhibition of corrupt 
 statesmanship was afforded by the ministers of an 
 autocratic Tsar. Indeed, we must not in our indig- 
 nation forget that dishonesty is as rife in law or 
 commerce as in politics. It is the far graver cost of 
 the taint in national enterprises which ought especi- 
 ally to inflame us against political irregularities. 
 
 The truth is that the taint set in as soon as men 
 began to achieve by wit what in a more primitive 
 state they had won by the sword : in other words, 
 as soon as politics was born. The development is 
 naively depicted in Wagner's dramas, where Loge, 
 
 26 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 2? 
 
 the embodiment of craft and duplicity, is as valu- 
 able a servant as Siegfried and as great a power as 
 Wot an. Wit was born in an age when the law of 
 the stronger still ruled. The stronger wit was as 
 ruthless as the stronger arm. Witless warriors, 
 whose vocation was threatened, might gird and rail 
 at the new development. Kings found that it paid, 
 and the counsellor stood equal with the soldier. 
 Secret diplomacy, chicanery, and deceit were born 
 in barbarism. Even such an Empire as the Musco- 
 vite was largely based on it; for Ivan III., centuries 
 before Russia was civilised, realised that the pen was 
 mightier than the sword and far cheaper and safer. 
 
 It is not unusual to trace the poisoning of 
 European politics to Machiavelli, and that cold- 
 blooded codification of corrupt procedure, The 
 Prince, has not been without influence. In this age 
 of apologists even Machiavelli has found at least 
 extenuating writers. He had, it seems, a deep 
 sympathy with the people of Italy who groaned 
 under a score of petty tyrants, and in hailing Cesare 
 Borgia he hailed the deliverer of men from a sordid 
 despotism. Cesare, it is suggested, concealed from 
 Machiavelli the selfishness of his aim and the moral 
 obliquity of his character. The seventh chapter of 
 The Prince, the longest of the book, undoes this 
 apology. It positively chuckles over Cesare 's 
 appallingly unscrupulous actions in founding an 
 Italian princedom, even over the piece of brutality 
 he perpetrated at Sinigaglia. " Having thus re- 
 corded all the actions of the Duke," says Machia- 
 velli, "I see not one to blame. It seems to me 
 clearer than ever that we must, as I have done, set 
 him forth as an example for all those who have, by 
 good fortune and the arms of others, covered the 
 distance which separated them from the throne." 
 
 Machiavelli, in other words, codes, but codes with 
 entire approval, the unscrupulous statesmanship of 
 
28 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 his time, or the mixture of lying, cozening, and 
 fighting that went by the name of statesmanship. 
 He had no influence in corrupting his own age, for 
 he merely reflects and analyses its corruption, and 
 one may doubt if his counsels really added anything 
 to the native ingenuity of t such monarchs as 
 Frederick the Great or such statesmen as Mazarin 
 and Metternich. He is but a literary monument of 
 the politics of his time, a witness that already states- 
 manship was synonymous with craft amongst the 
 young nations of Europe. When Machiavelli was in 
 his cradle there was not one of the leading powers 
 of Italy Naples, the Papacy, Florence, Milan, and 
 Venice that was not, as we should now say, 
 thoroughly Machiavellian. There was hardly a 
 great family of Italy the Sforze, Colonne, Orsini, 
 and so on that was not corrupt. And France, 
 Spain, and the Empire were little inferior to them 
 in cunning, and only less skilful in lying. The 
 Prince was written in 1513, the year in which 
 Giovanni de Medici assumed the Papal tiara and the 
 name of Leo X. At his thoroughly corrupt court, 
 in his chancellory (which broke all European re- 
 cords of duplicity), the book was received as a clever 
 and entertaining compilation of the laws of nature. 
 
 A complete account of the evolution of political 
 corruption would therefore fill volumes, and it will 
 suffice here to describe how justly lay monarchs and 
 statesmen might have pleaded that they did but 
 mould then 1 ways as they were exhorted, on the 
 model of the Eternal City. Corruption in England 
 begins so markedly with a Prince of the Church, 
 Wolsey, and so particularly in his relations with 
 Rome, that a glance at the evolution of Papal 
 politics will not be regarded as superfluous. 
 
 With the casuistic aspect of this development, the 
 question whether the towering ideal of Rome justi- 
 fied means of realisation which were in themselves 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 29 
 
 irregular, we have nothing to do. The plain fact is 
 that perverse wit began to rival the sword of the 
 Teuton in the new Europe when Churchmen based 
 their power upon such acknowledged forgeries as the 
 Donation of Const antine, the Donation of Charle- 
 magne, and the False Decretals. Even the most 
 profoundly religious of the Popes, such as Innocent 
 III., countenanced a diplomacy which would have 
 extorted the admiration of the Florentine secretary. 
 One need only instance Innocent's dealings with the 
 youthful Frederic, with Otto of Germany, with John 
 of England, or with the revolting authors of the Albi- 
 gensian crusade. The sojourn of his successors, a 
 hundred years Later,, at Avignon, developed this casu- 
 istry in less reputable form, and for less unselfish pur- 
 poses, and the Papal Court became a bye-word in 
 Europe for diplomatic and administrative corruption. 
 It will, however, be enough if we briefly examine the 
 procedure of the Papacy in the time of Machiavelli. 
 
 Papal politics, which had always been casuistic, 
 assumed a quite unscrupulous form in the early 
 decades of the sixteenth century. The corruption 
 began in one of those amiable weaknesses which the 
 delinquent Popes would have been painfully 
 astonished to hear described as criminal, yet which 
 in their grave and far-reaching consequence must 
 be so described. It began with nepotism. A 
 learned and quite pious Spanish bishop, Alfonso 
 Borgia, obtained the tiara in 1455, and he had little 
 suspicion that the young nephews, for whom he made 
 smooth the path of ecclesiastical promotion, would 
 cause the name of his family to linger in history as 
 the very personification of corruption. Twenty years 
 later a pious monk of the obscure family of the 
 Rovere mounted the Papal throne. He thought 
 virtue quite consistent with nepotism, and a fresh 
 brood of nephews, spoiled by sudden luxury and 
 almost destitute of moral principle, assisted in the 
 
30 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 degradation of Rome. Innocent VIII., again a man 
 of piety and of regular life, brought a third strain 
 of unscrupulous nephews. Between these and the 
 older Roman families there set in a contest for the 
 wealth of the Vatican in which bribery and treachery 
 were the most familiar and the most humane weapons. 
 
 Out of this fetid struggle of ambitions Alexander 
 VI., at a cost of about one million sterling and a 
 few score murders, rose to the Papal throne and 
 wrote an unforgettable page of history. I am con- 
 cerned here only with the way in which he and his 
 cardinals infected, or more deeply infected, the 
 chancellories of Europe. His quick-change alliances 
 represented an entirely unscrupulous application of 
 cunning to statesmanship. He had not the feeblest 
 sense of honour, but changed secretly from France 
 to Naples, or Milan to Florence, the moment his 
 interest altered ; and he took a cynical delight in 
 deceiving his friends of the previous hour. His 
 method of ruining the cardinals of the older Italian 
 houses, the rebellious barons of his court, provided 
 a plain precedent for his son, and every step in 
 Cesare's infamous career was approved and ap- 
 plauded by him. In ten years of this utter disregard 
 of every dictate of honour and justice he, the central 
 figure of Christendom, doubled the lamentable 
 quantity of political poison in the veins of Europe. 
 
 On this one need not dwell at any length, since 
 the whole world now acknowledges the complete 
 immorality of Alexander VI. What is not generally 
 recognised is that the political corruption of the 
 Borgia did not merely linger for twenty years at the 
 Vatican, but was deepened under his two famous 
 successors, Julius II. and Leo X. Creighton is not 
 an illiberal historian of the Popes, but he is moved 
 to call the diplomacy of Julius II. " as revolting as 
 the frank unscrupulousness of Alexander VI." The 
 terms of his censure are not happily chosen, for 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 81 
 
 Julius was just as frankly unscrupulous as his pre- 
 decessor and life-long rival. From the hour of his 
 accession, which he had secured by bribery, he 
 entered upon a campaign for the recovery of the 
 Papal States in which every principle of honour and 
 truthfulness was violated. Like Alexander, he re- 
 garded alliances as temporary expedients in a grand 
 game of deception. On one occasion he carried his 
 policy to a point which outraged even the insensitive 
 princes of Italy. He granted a safe-conduct to the 
 Duke of Ferrara, to come to Rome to negotiate, and 
 then wished to ignore it and destroy his captive oppo- 
 nent on the ground that he had now discovered fresh 
 crimes which were not covered by the safe-conduct. 
 He died in 1513, the year in which Machiavelli 
 wrote his treatise of political casuistry. In that year 
 Giovanni de Medici, son of the famous Lorenzo, be- 
 came Pope, and it would be difficult to match his 
 duplicity from the annals of diplomacy. The 
 doctrine of Treitschke, and those other German 
 political theorists who held that a contract bound 
 a State only as long as the circumstances remained 
 unchanged, is quite respectable in comparison with 
 the maxims of Leo X. " When you have made a 
 league with one man," he used to say, " there is no 
 reason why you should cease to negotiate with his 
 opponent." The way in which the corpulent pontiff 
 carried out this maxim in practice causes even the 
 Catholic historian Pastor to blush for his " un- 
 paralleled double-dealing." Before he had been a 
 year on the throne he signed a secret treaty with 
 France against Spain and a secret treaty with Spain 
 against France. At a later date he signed two 
 similar treaties within a fortnight. In all such cases 
 the interest of himself and his relatives was secured, 
 whoever won in the ceaseless conflicts. His whole 
 pontificate was spent in double-dealing of this kind, 
 and the movements of his troops, as one or other 
 
82 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 monarch pressed for the fulfilment of his secret 
 obligations, present a humorous spectacle to the eye 
 of the historian. It is estimated that in eight years 
 he entered into one hundred secret treaties; and it 
 may be added, lest any person imagine that he was 
 driven by an overpowering sense of the importance 
 of his charge, that in the same period he spent about 
 2,500,000 and again degraded the Vatican. 
 
 One need not describe how Paul III., brother of 
 Alexander VI. 's golden-haired mistress, pursued the 
 same policy in meeting the Reformers, but it is 
 piquant to recall how the chief element of the 
 Counter-Reformation, the Jesuists, notoriously con- 
 secrated the same procedure of cunning and decep- 
 tion. It is enough to cite the amusing cases of Father 
 Nicolai and Father de Nobili. The former not merely 
 penetrated the Protestant defences of Sweden in the 
 guise of a Lutheran pastor, but actually taught 
 Lutheran theology in a Swedish seminary. Ths latter, 
 an Italian of high birth, deceived the most rigorous 
 Brahamists of India for years by so thoroughly adopt- 
 ing their language, rites, and costume that he passed 
 for a Swami of the most exclusive caste and of the 
 strictest Hindu orthodoxy ! These eccentricities of 
 virtue need not detain us, but we must remember 
 that it was men of this diplomatic school who for 
 years guided the decisions of the monarchs of France, 
 Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Austria. 
 
 The influence of Machiavelli's Prince on the 
 development of European politics is minute in com- 
 parison with this prolonged perversion of the very 
 shrine of European idealism. From the fifteenth 
 century onward every European Power had resident 
 agents at Rome, and their extant letters to their 
 monarchs generally reflect an amused admiration of 
 the corruption of the Papal court. It was there that 
 statesmen first learned that every man had his price. 
 There was the greatest market of honours and offices 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 33 
 
 which the world had yet seen. There even crime 
 could purchase immunity, and dishonesty could 
 thrive more luxuriantly than honesty. Spain, 
 France, Naples, the Empire, and the Italian princes 
 learned to meet duplicity by duplicity, and their 
 statesmen were encouraged in developing the taint 
 which they would eventually share with Parliaments. 
 
 England is one of the most conspicuous examples 
 of the transmission of this taint from the clerical to 
 the lay statesman. The plea one sometimes hears, 
 that this rapid spread of immoral maxims was due 
 to the renascence of pagan letters, cannot seriously 
 be sustained. The nepotist Popes of the fifteenth 
 century were wholly ignorant, and rigorously 
 isolated from the influence of the new literature. 
 Alexander VI. knew no more of the classics than the 
 occasional loose play of Plautus or Terence which 
 was enacted in the Vatican; and Leo X. had little 
 more acquaintance with them. Julius II. knew 
 nothing of either Latin or Greek writers. The most 
 serious contribution of the Renaissance to the litera- 
 ture of Europe was, in fact, not Plautus or Apuleius, 
 but the grave idealism of Plato and Plutarch, 
 Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 It is therefore not the first breath of the Renais- 
 sance in the time of Henry VIII., but the fact that 
 his chief statesman was a Churchman, to which we 
 must look for the first notable beginning of corrupt 
 statecraft in England. Under the Tudor Kings the 
 last trace of Parliamentary power, in its earlier 
 form, had been suppressed, and the only "poli- 
 ticians " were the King's personal friends and 
 counsellors. Modern history is usually most severe 
 on the earliest records of a nation, but the tradition 
 of a large measure of democracy and comparative 
 purity in Anglo-Saxon days is not seriously chal- 
 lenged by recent research. The Norman Kings 
 endeavoured to substitute their docile bishops and 
 c 
 
84 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 abbots and barons for the older representatives of 
 the people, and, although they were still often forced 
 to call Parliaments, genuine representation fell into 
 decay. Magna Charta was rather a charter of the 
 barons, on whose rights the despotic monarchs had 
 encroached. It is true that Parliaments can be 
 traced throughout the whole period, but under the 
 Tudor s, when the enfeebled barons were finally 
 checked or replaced by a new type of court-favourites, 
 the representation of the people counted for little. 
 The right of the householders of the boroughs to elect 
 representatives was still recognised in theory, and 
 often put into practice, but the monarchs now neu- 
 tralised this impediment to their autocracy by a 
 practice of manipulating the boroughs which would 
 continue in great freedom until the Civil War. 
 
 When the prolonged internal disorder and strain 
 of the French War came to an end under the Tudor s, 
 the use of a Parliament was obvious, but Henry VII. 
 had completed the despotism which foreign monarchs 
 and their adventurers had opposed to Anglo-Saxon 
 democracy. When, therefore, under Henry VIII., 
 England became entangled in continental politics, the 
 guidance of the nation was left to the King and his 
 principal advisers, and the familiar type of corrupt 
 statesman was evolved in this country. The removal 
 of the great abbots and the subjection of the bishops 
 to the State at the Reformation completed the process 
 of royal autocracy, and favoured the rise of these new 
 types of adventurous politicians. 
 
 Wolsey, a churchman in name, but a quite un- 
 scrupulous adventurer, may be regarded as found- 
 ing the tradition. He seems to have been the son 
 of a modest trader whether he was a butcher or no 
 is disputed but he was educated at Oxford and 
 became a royal chaplain. His astuteness soon 
 caught the eye of Henry, and he was frequently 
 employed on diplomatic missions. This was at a 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 35 
 
 period of the lowest depth of political corruption at 
 Rome, and the blunt Henry was dazed at first by 
 the gross deceitfulness and quick and secret changes 
 of policy of the Popes and the monarchs who sought 
 his alliance. France, Spain, the Empire, and the 
 Vatican, sharpened by twenty years of intrigue and 
 deception, regarded the simple-minded Englishman 
 as an easy dupe. Wolsey entered with native zest into 
 the battle of wits and quickly learned its laws. Every 
 man had a secret aim and a price : every treaty might 
 have a secret counter-treaty. He coached his royal 
 master, and in a few years they rivalled in diplomatic 
 perfidy the most accomplished of French courtiers 
 and the most supple Italians of the diplomatic staff 
 of Leo X. In their dealings with France, which had 
 thought it easy to outwit them, they laid a secure 
 foundation for the fame of "perfidious Albion"; 
 and even Leo X., Wolsey 's great ally and model, 
 found the cardinal, who aspired to replace him on the 
 Papal throne, a master of the prevailing art. 
 
 Wolsey was at length beaten, and compelled to 
 retire, by the Papal Court; whose action in the 
 matter of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon is now 
 plainly recognised as a piece of diplomacy. But 
 Wolsey's heirs in statecraft, Cranmer and More, 
 were not disposed to desert the profitable ways of 
 the new politics. How Cranmer bribed the universi- 
 ties of Europe to express a grave moral doubt about 
 the validity of Henry's marriage is well known. 
 Some may express surprise that Sir Thomas More is 
 included amongst the founders of our political cor- 
 ruption. However enigmatic More's character may 
 remain, it is certain that as a servant of Wolsey and 
 the King he readily took part in their cozening ; and 
 the careful reader of the Utopia will know that in 
 doing so he did no violence to his own principles. 
 Unlike Machiavelli, More surveys the corrupt politi- 
 cal world of his time with disapproval. It is, how- 
 
86 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 ever, rather a genial cynicism than a strict virtue 
 that inspires his caustic observations. He thinks, 
 not that honesty is, but that honesty would be, the 
 best policy, if all would practice it. Meantime, one 
 has to deal with knaves, and there must be no 
 quixotism. A statesman, he says, must not leave 
 a commonwealth because his high ideals cannot be 
 realised. " You must with a crafty wile and subtle 
 course study and endeavour yourself, as far as in 
 you lies, to handle the matter wittily and hand- 
 somely for the purpose ; and that which you cannot 
 turn to good, so to order that it be not very bad." 
 More seems, however, to have returned in age to the 
 piety of his youth and sacrificed his life for a prin- 
 ciple. He was no democrat. His ideal common- 
 wealth is an aristocratic republic, in which most of 
 the work is done by slaves. He was not the man to 
 give any aid to the feeble efforts of Tudor Parlia- 
 ments (in which he had opposed the King before he 
 received office) to recover their ancient power. 
 
 This corruption in the central part of such political 
 machinery as the nation then possessed was in- 
 creased by the rapidly growing wealth of the coun- 
 try and the large importation of ideas of luxury. 
 Bribery and the sale of offices took the place of the 
 old practice of rewarding a stout soldier, a flattering 
 courtier, or a drunken comrade. The distribution 
 of Church-wealth was as corrupt in procedure as it 
 was useless from the point of view of national 
 economy. Honestly and dishonestly, princely for- 
 tunes were made or begged, and a score of greedy 
 adventurers flocked to the door of the Court when- 
 ever one man issued with spoil. The standard of 
 material life rose as rapidly as the moral standard 
 deteriorated. London was passing into its Augustan 
 Age, from the effects of which only a strong infusion 
 of healthy provincial blood would redeem it. 
 
 In our day we see plainly the double development 
 
SOURCES OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION 87 
 
 which few then realised. London and the great 
 houses which depended on it encouraged the growth 
 of the corrupt but gold-scattering autocracy of the 
 Tudor s. The provinces, on the other hand, were 
 producing in increasing numbers the men who would 
 presently be known as Puritans. Partly because 
 they shared what small amount of religious revival 
 there was in the English Reformation, partly from 
 the provincial hostility to metropolitan corruption 
 and effeminacy, the " country gentry," as they would 
 come to be called, developed a shade of antagonism 
 to the new Court. They were found in the Parlia- 
 ments which were still summoned, and the Tudor 
 tendency to ignore their rights more than once 
 brought out their spirit. The new commerce was 
 greatly enlarging the mercantile class, and the Port 
 of London was by no means the only one to derive 
 advantage from the inflow. Feudalism was receiving 
 a severe blow, and before the middle of the sixteenth 
 century a conflict between Court and Parliament 
 came within the range of possibilities. 
 
 It was clear how such an issue would be met. The 
 statesmen or servants of the Court were now accus- 
 tomed to meet almost every problem with what they 
 regarded as diplomatic methods, and they would in- 
 evitably seek to disarm a Parliamentary opposition 
 by bribing its weaker or corruptible elements and 
 coercing or ignoring the remainder. Political life was 
 evolving toward its modern form and, from the force 
 of circumstances, developing also the taint which 
 lingers in it to-day. Kings and chancellors who had 
 found foreign courtiers, prelates, and even scholars, 
 open to golden persuasion would naturally assume that 
 the plain Commoner would be attracted by opening the 
 door to him of the luxurious life of the new metropolis. 
 
 The development was suspended for a time by 
 a national peril which dwarfed domestic differences. 
 The Catholic episode of the reign of Mary ended the 
 
38 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 long continental intrigue by a definite alliance with 
 Spain. In six years the policy brought its inevit- 
 able reaction : the establishment of Protestantism 
 and a sturdy defiance of Spain. All England united 
 to meet the vindictiveness and fanaticism of Philip 
 of Spain, now the most powerful and the wealthiest 
 monarch of the world, and the chief pretext of 
 Parliament, reluctance to find money, had to be 
 temporarily abandoned. In Elizabeth's earlier years 
 the Commons had given more than one proof of their 
 growing strength. At the close of the session of 
 1566 Speaker Onslow had boldly reminded the 
 Queen of the limits of the royal prerogative, and in 
 1601, when the national peril was past, a speaker in 
 the Commons had repeated the reminder. 
 
 On the whole, Elizabeth completed the Tudor 
 disdain of Parliament. In one year she rejected no 
 less than forty-eight measures which had passed 
 both Houses, and she sent more than one insurgent 
 member of the Commons to the Tower. Thirty-six 
 boroughs had been added to the electorate during 
 the reigns of her two predecessors. Elizabeth 
 created sixty-two new members, and took care, 
 generally, that the new constituencies were favour- 
 able to the pretensions of the Court. The decay of 
 the constituencies, as some of the earlier mediaeval 
 towns crumbled into ruin or the franchise was cor- 
 ruptly restricted, fostered the designs of the Court 
 and courtiers. The crown could artificially prolong 
 their voting strength and entrust it to safe men. 
 As the Puritans grew in strength, it became neces- 
 sary to sink deeper into corruption in order to pro- 
 vide a counterpoise to their strength within the 
 limits of the Constitution. Bribery and venality 
 developed at equal pace. We have to see how the 
 taint developed under the Stuarts in such strength 
 that it lingers to-day in the political veins of England 
 and of its parliamentary offspring beyond the seas. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 
 
 WHAT we have seen so far is rather the preparation 
 for, than the beginning of British political corrup- 
 tion. There were at that time no politicians in the 
 modern sense of the word; no ministers, and cer- 
 tainly no cabinet. In the country were municipali- 
 ties or corporations which, by ancient right or recent 
 charter, were empowered to send representatives, 
 like the counties, to Parliament. Nominally these 
 Parliaments limited the monarch's power to do as 
 he willed, especially in the levying of funds. But 
 the crown had the right to veto their measures, to 
 punish recalcitrant members, and to vary the con- 
 stituencies with a view to altering the complexion 
 of Parliament. The Tudors had used these powers 
 to the full, and Parliamentarians were almost im- 
 potent. Not from them, but from the gay crowd 
 at his Court, did the practically autocratic monarch 
 choose his advisers; and the favourite maintained 
 his position by impelling the monarch still further 
 to ignore the archaic and enfeebled relic of Saxon 
 days which men called Parliament. The king was 
 the politician. 
 
 The rapid advance of the nation under Elizabeth 
 not only brought with it the need to create some 
 sort of political machinery, but led to an acute con- 
 flict of ideals in regard to political power. To Essex 
 and Buckingham the doctrine of divine right com- 
 mended itself as equally august and profitable. 
 The Reformation had been so partial and imperfect 
 
 39 
 
40 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 in England that there were plenty of divines ready 
 to construct a theological basis for a doctrine of 
 divine right, while there were, until quite recent 
 years, none whatever to take the side of the people. 
 This, however, had little real influence on the situa- 
 tion. The vital issue was money. The standard of 
 luxury rose higher and higher, and one of the weak- 
 nesses of the humane conversion of coats of mail 
 into silk doublets was that the Court now swarmed 
 with greedy adventurers of a new type. From these 
 were drawn the advisers of the arch-politician, the 
 king, and it was their interest to keep the country 
 in the character of a patient milch-cow. The first 
 two Stuarts failed in this plan because they under- 
 rated the growth of Puritanism and endeavoured to 
 carry their aim by bluff and force. The later 
 Stuarts adopted the plan of bribery and corruption, 
 and made it a normal feature of English political 
 life. 
 
 It must seem to the foreign historian ironic that 
 the Englishman, the most stoutly patriotic and self- 
 sufficient of all national types until recent years, 
 has had one dynasty after another of foreign kings 
 to override or pervert his native traditions, which 
 were amongst the best of the Teutonic family. The 
 Normans shattered the democracy of Anglo-Saxon 
 life and emasculated Parliament. The Scots tried to 
 reduce England to the condition of France under 
 Louis XIV. The Germans succeeded in neutralis- 
 ing the revived measure of self-government by 
 fostering a system of parliamentary corruption 
 which enabled them to combine nominal democracy 
 with a very real and lucrative autocracy. The his- 
 tory of Parliament throughout these changes is not 
 merely interesting. It is as necessary for the under- 
 standing of some features of our life to-day as a 
 knowledge of mediaeval ways is for the understand- 
 ing of the red and white pole that hangs outside 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 41 
 
 the barber's shop or the painted blue lion outside 
 an inn on the public road. 
 
 Under James I. the sober Puritan element in 
 Parliament grew stronger and on more than one 
 occasion asserted its power. James was indolent 
 and scholarly, but accustomed from youth to bloody 
 reminders that, whether kings had divine rights or 
 no, their subjects had very material weapons. He 
 left Elizabeth's ministers, and the host of needy 
 Scots he brought with him and enriched, to gather 
 and protect their wealth as they could. He shrewdly 
 informed the Commons that he did not require a 
 " subsidy " when the Court-party in the Lords 
 showed an intention of extorting on^ from them; 
 and, when he later pressed for a subsidy, the Com- 
 mons used very plain language about his needs and 
 his prerogatives. Nominal or sinecure offices were, in 
 fact, being multiplied for Court-favourites and their 
 favourites or agents, and the temper of the Commons 
 rose. They impeached Sir Giles Mompesson, then 
 Bacon. Under such leaders as Sir Edward Coke 
 and Pym, in face of the king's assertion that their 
 rights were granted by the throne and at the dis- 
 cretion of the throne (a monstrous mis-statement), 
 they laid it down that " the liberties, franchises, 
 privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the 
 ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance 
 of the subjects of England." James could retort 
 only, in Tudor fashion, by dissolving Parliament 
 and imprisoning its leaders. 
 
 James left the quarrel to his son, Charles I., and 
 it is enough for my purpose, since the corruption of 
 Parliament itself comes later, to recall that it ended 
 in the Civil War and the supremacy of Parliament. 
 The Tudor and early Stuart way of dealing with a 
 recalcitrant Parliament had failed. There was, of 
 course, already much taint in the parliamentary 
 system. There were rotten boroughs and bur gage- 
 
42 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 voters. There were tied electors in the country and 
 placemen in the House. But the consistently and 
 sternly democratic nature of Charles's Parliaments 
 shows that this corruption was limited. The Long 
 Parliament which met in 1640, twenty-five years 
 after the beginning of Charles's attempt to win 
 autocracy, is a proof that the parliamentary system 
 was still sufficiently sound to express the deliberate 
 will of the literate minority of the people. The real 
 and thorough corruption of the British political 
 system begins, ironic as it may seem, after the 
 triumph of Parliament in the Civil War. Yet the 
 brief sketch we have seen of the earlier form of 
 corruption tl^e corruptness of monarchs and their 
 advisers is by no means irrelevant. This was the 
 fount from which the taint would now pervade the 
 entire system. 
 
 The failure of the Commonwealth is not surpris- 
 ing. Cromwell succumbed to the besetting tempta- 
 tions of political power, and manipulated elections 
 and Parliaments as freely as a Stuart had done : 
 as freely as Lenin does in modern Russia and, pre- 
 sumably, any other democratic leader would do. 
 The end justifies the means. In the realisation of 
 that maxim, which no one professes, politicians are 
 as adept as Jesuits. The spectacle of Oliver Crom- 
 well sitting in the House, debating with the Lord 
 and his conscience whether he shall use his three 
 hundred soldiers to do what he had fought a Civil 
 War against kings for doing, is a common political 
 situation. My ideal, my party, my personality, is 
 so important for the country that I may adopt with 
 moral immunity those methods which I reprobate 
 in my opponents. It is to-day the language of 
 Liberals in opposing Conservatives : of Socialists in 
 opposing Liberals. 
 
 The spectacle of these inconsistencies might not 
 of itself have destroyed the new democracy of Eng- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 43 
 
 land, but it was reinforced by an utter and general 
 disgust of Puritan ways. Merry England had be- 
 come too dreary a comedy. The autocracy and 
 greed of kings were lost in the shining memory of 
 the gaiety, license, prodigality and sparkle of the 
 Stuart days. Probably many thought that they 
 could restore the fun without restoring the auto- 
 cracy. Surely the Cavaliers had realised in their 
 exile that there was now in England a will of the 
 People as well as a will of Kings ? In a burst of 
 pent-up joy and gaiety the Stuarts were welcomed 
 back to England; and the next, and most sordid, 
 phase of English political life began. 
 
 It was natural that the new Parliament should 
 consist almost entirely of Royalists. The country 
 was sick of the austerities, hypocrisies and bilious- 
 ness of the Roundheads. It was equally natural that 
 this Royalist body should prove subservient to the 
 Court, and that in the intoxication of a general 
 return to gay and free ways the Court should regard 
 the Puritan episode as completely obliterated, and 
 think only of emulating the opulent license of Louis 
 XIV., with which it was most pleasurably familiar. 
 There began a new race for wealth and luxury, 
 madder and more unscrupulous than ever. In such 
 periods there is little delicacy about the means of 
 acquiring money. In army, navy, Church and 
 State-services the taint spread rapidly, but, says 
 Macaulay, the sober censor of all this frivolity, 
 " those who made politics their business were per- 
 haps the most corrupt part of this corrupt society." 
 To put it differently, politics now came into exist- 
 ence as a distinct and unsavoury profession for the 
 making of money. The recent history of England 
 had not tended to develop an inflexible sense of 
 principle. The famous window in Whitehall still 
 recalled to living memories the most tremendous 
 event in English history, the execution of a king, 
 
44 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 yet there was the king's son as luxuriously lodged, 
 and almost as autocratic as his father had been. 
 Moreover, two, if not three creeds enfeebled by their 
 mutual obloquy the standards of conduct in the 
 minds of the less robust, while a more or less 
 obscure Deistic movement spread a not very austere 
 scepticism in the minds of the cultured. 
 
 At this period the necessity arose for the Court- 
 party to apply the familiar methods of diplomacy 
 to the domestic political system. The reaction 
 against Puritan sourness went so far that it in turn 
 brought about a reaction toward Puritanism. A 
 grave suspicion that the king leaned to Popery 
 accentuated this feeling, and the successors of the 
 Roundheads carried repeated bye-elections and 
 strengthened their party in the House. Soon there 
 was a "Country Party " with which the frivolous 
 Londoners had to count. It included, of course, 
 sober London merchants, but its chief strength lay 
 in the country. The Earl of Clarendon, the king's 
 most intimate counsellor, was impeached (1667) for 
 venality and peculation, and banished. 
 
 Power now passed to what may be regarded as 
 the first Cabinet in English history, the " Cabal " 
 (Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and 
 Lauderdale), and the work of tainting politics pro- 
 ceeded merrily. Money and places were freely dis- 
 tributed among members of Parliament. Sir 
 Thomas Clifford, a secret Catholic and head of the 
 Government, was the arch-eorruptor. While the 
 country was in open and popular alliance with Pro- 
 testant Holland and Sweden against France, Clifford 
 and Arlington (another Catholic) assisted Charles to 
 enter into a secret treaty with Louis, in which the 
 French king engaged himself to supply Charles with 
 sufficient funds to be independent of Parliament and 
 sufficient men to crush a new civil war ; and Charles 
 promised to make open profession of Catholicism at 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 45 
 
 the earliest convenient moment. To prepare Parlia- 
 ment for the disclosure of this disgraceful piece of 
 Machiavellism, Clifford had liberal recourse to 
 bribery. A seat in the House began to have a 
 peculiar monetary value. A vote in the constitu- 
 ency sympathetically rose in value. Even French 
 gold poured by these secret channels into England. 
 It is material to note that Clifford was not in person 
 a venal or corrupt man. One understands the 
 temptations of the higher political world better 
 when one finds such men assuming with ease the 
 character of corruptors. 
 
 The sober elements of Parliament were still 
 strong. They shattered the Cabal, impeached Ar- 
 lington and drove Clifford into obscurity. But the 
 change of politicians was infelicitous, for the Earl 
 of Danby, who succeeded Clifford, was far worse 
 than his predecessor. Corrupt and covetous him- 
 self, he quickly seized upon the proved venality of 
 members of Parliament and made it one of the chief 
 means of sustaining his own power. During his 
 long public career he did more, perhaps, than any 
 other man to deepen the taint in English politics; 
 though there was hardly a high politicial personage 
 of the time who did not resort to such methods. 
 Even the chivalrous and high-minded Republican, 
 Algernon Sidney, was convicted of taking a thousand 
 guineas of French gold; and the excuse that he 
 expended it in the spread of his idealism only shows 
 the perversity of the times. Leaders of the Country 
 Party the Whigs, as they would presently be 
 called were not less open to bribery. Sir Thomas 
 Lee and Sir Thomas Meres accepted thousands of 
 pounds in money, and lucrative offices, on condition 
 that they would use their influence in their party to 
 secure the grant of ample subsidies to the king. 
 There are political historians who blame the Whigs, 
 of later reigns, for the adulteration of public life. 
 
46 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 We shall see that, in fact, the corruption reached its 
 lowest depth under Whig ministers, but in the reign 
 of Charles II., when the taint so rapidly and fatally 
 developed, it was the Tories who corrupted the 
 Whigs and educated them in the value of parlia- 
 mentary corruption. 
 
 It was about this time that the distinction of 
 Whig and Tory came into use in English literature. 
 The Whigs were the modified successors of the 
 Roundheads, and the new name was borrowed from 
 an epithet which was in Scotland applied with some 
 disdain to rural Presbyterians. They were promin- 
 ently characterised by a defence of Presbyterianism 
 against the Episcopalians and a resolution to re- 
 strict the claims of the king. Upon their opponents 
 they retorted with the equally opprobrious name of 
 Tories, which belonged originally to the wild mar- 
 auders of Catholic Ireland. The Tories were pre- 
 sumed to favour the Catholic leanings of Charles 
 (though Danby and others hated Catholicism), and 
 they certainly supported his dream of luxurious 
 autocracy. But we have already seen that neither 
 creed, nor party, nor even personality withstood 
 the taint. The Catholic Clifford and Protestant 
 Danby were equally generous in the distribution of 
 tainted money; the Deistic Sidney and Presby- 
 terian Meres were equally ready in acceptance. In- 
 deed, men now passed with such ease from one party 
 to the other that even the microscopic eye of the 
 modern historian has some difficulty in discovering 
 their principles; while the age had the further dis- 
 tinction of producing a professedly neutral group 
 who went by the name of " trimmers." 
 
 The Whigs now obtained an accession of strength 
 which for a time enabled them to threaten a new 
 civil war, but it ended in further reaction and a 
 deeper corruption of the system. The fear of Popery 
 remained strong both in the metropolis and the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 47 
 
 country, and a series of plots, real or fictitious, 
 raised the feeling against the Tories to a white heat. 
 Shaftesbury transferred his services and his ambi- 
 tions to the popular side, and a formidable move- 
 ment was set afoot. The excesses of the Whigs, 
 however, and the horror of civil war brought a re- 
 action in favour of the Court, and the king was 
 enabled to scatter his opponents. What interests 
 us in this change, in 1682, is that Charles was 
 directed by his advisers to manipulate the constitu- 
 encies. Charters were withdrawn from towns which 
 returned Whigs, and small towns which were re- 
 garded as safe Tory seats were elevated to the un- 
 expected dignity, and not unprofitable privilege, of 
 sending members to the Commons. The constitu- 
 encies were, as we shall see, hopelessly archaic and 
 ludicrous, but these slight alterations were entirely 
 corrupt in intention. 
 
 The last eight years of the reign of Charles II. 
 were, therefore, years of open and unblushing cor- 
 ruption. Offices were created and sold with light- 
 hearted frivolity. Salaries of officers in the service 
 of the Court or in the Civil Service were raised out 
 of all proportion to their importance or the State's 
 resources. A groom of the Stole received 5000 a 
 year for the discharge of his onerous duties. A 
 group of Lords of the Bedchamber received each 
 1000 a year. Commissions in the Army and Navy 
 were issued without the least regard to competence, 
 and contracts were a recognised source of income. 
 A politician found at his disposal a machinery of 
 persuasion which few of that age could resist, and 
 he had no more scruple in using it than had the 
 most adventurous of the gay ladies who flaunted a 
 brilliant finery in, or on the fringes of, the two 
 Courts. Parliament gradually filled with officers of 
 the army, the navy or the excise; and the con- 
 sciousness that their seats or their commissions de- 
 
48 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 pended entirely on the will of the higher politicians 
 preserved them from any suspicion of Whiggery. The 
 higher politicians themselves created large fortunes 
 by the use of their corrupt power. The dour 
 Puritans were dead. The country was docile. The 
 metropolis was enchanted. 
 
 Less than two years after the head of the chival- 
 rous Sidney had fallen, the dissolute monarch quit- 
 ted the kingdom he had besmirched, and his 
 Catholic brother inherited and sustained the cor- 
 rupt system; save that the fair white hands which 
 had previously distributed pardons and offices, and 
 received commissions, were now replaced by the 
 anointed hands of priests. The practices continued. 
 A special kind of brokerage was evolved in London. 
 Parliament was gaily likened to a pump, into which 
 you introduce a little water hi order to ensure the 
 outflow of a stream. At James's first election, in 
 1685, a stout, loyal majority had been returned. 
 The reformed constituencies had been carefully can- 
 vassed. Local clergy and officers who had influence 
 had been effectively intimidated, and had secured 
 the proper conduct of the voters. The more coura- 
 geous or more independent, who feared not intimi- 
 dation, were seduced by the more amiable policy of 
 money or place. 
 
 The narrow-minded ferocity of the king soon 
 brought an end to this reign of reaction. Taking 
 a pretext from the rebellion of the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth, he fell upon the Whigs with a severity which 
 chilled the gaiety of the nation. Women of gentle 
 birth were burned alive, and the bloody Jeffreys 
 was created Chancellor for his grisly work. A reign 
 of terror opened for the successors of the Puritans; 
 while the enfeeblement of the kingdom by corrupt 
 practices went so far that even the queen and her 
 ladies dipped their hands in the muddy stream. 
 Happily for the country, James's zeal for his Church 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 49 
 
 equalled his zeal for the royal prerogative, and the 
 country, still thoroughly and sturdily Protestant, 
 took alarm. The charters of enfranchised towns, 
 even the qualifications of individual voters, were 
 scrutinised afresh, and from the palace Father Petre 
 directed an obvious campaign for preparing Parlia- 
 ment for the suppression of Protestantism. In that 
 sacred cause no form of bribery could be irregular, 
 and further improvements were made in the elect- 
 oral and parliamentary machinery which the Whigs 
 would presently inherit. 
 
 Remembering still the horrors of the Civil War, 
 the nation had tolerated the conduct of James im- 
 patiently as long as he was childless, and the crown 
 would pass to his Protestant daughter, Mary. When 
 in 1688 it was announced that a son was at length 
 born, and the Catholics openly rejoiced, men of all 
 parties except that of Father Petre turned toward 
 William of Orange. William astutely united the 
 various parties by a protest that he came only to 
 secure the life of the Protestant religion and the 
 freedom of Parliament, and the whole nation rallied 
 to him. So feeble a remnant was left to the last 
 of the Stuarts that William at once mounted the 
 steps of the throne. 
 
 Twice in less than a half-century England had 
 wrought a revolution, ostensibly in the name of its 
 Parliament. Yet that Parliament, which our child- 
 ren are taught in school to regard as an unique 
 national institution, a monument of the solid sense 
 and manly independence of our fathers, had sunk 
 deeper than ever precisely during this century of 
 Puritanism. Traditions had been inaugurated, and 
 political types had been produced which would make 
 the national machinery particularly ineffective at 
 the time of its greatest opportunity. The agricul- 
 tural and industrial revolution would soon open. 
 The national wealth would begin to rise $t a re- 
 P 
 
50 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 markable speed. But the central administration 
 would be so corrupt and inept, the mass of the 
 people so ignorant and powerless, that the distri- 
 bution of wealth would take a form which would 
 provide only bitter conflicts for a later generation. 
 
 How this degeneration began we have now seen. 
 In order to restrict the inquiry as far as possible to 
 modern times I have included no study of the origin 
 of Parliament, and have not attempted to trace the 
 comparatively mild corruption of meliaeval times. 
 It seems that at least from the fifteenth century 
 onward the system of representation lent itself to 
 improper practices. Although the office or position 
 of representative was not the lucrative affair it would 
 become after the development of the two great 
 political parties, we gather that the representatives 
 were paid, aparently by those whom they repre- 
 sented in London. In any case, as we witness to- 
 day in municipal politics, the " honour " was sought 
 and the persuasion with which it was solicited at 
 times took the form of silver or gold. As we find 
 conflicts with Parliament in every century, we may 
 assume that there were, long before the time of 
 Clifford, men who knew the value of an accommo- 
 dating attitude. Political corruption is, as we saw, 
 as old as politics. 
 
 But these relatively mild and infrequent disorders 
 need not be studied here. The taint which we de- 
 plore to-day is not merely this inevitable irregu- 
 larity of a system in which a man may owe his place 
 to anything except competence, and may lose it 
 in spite of his competence. It is the last phase of 
 a peculiar development of our national life, and 
 this alone calls for our consideration. We have seen 
 its earlier development. Under the Tudors, when 
 Parliament could with impunity be ignored or 
 coerced, the statesmen who administered the 
 country, through the reigning monarch, contracted 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF STUART CORRUPTION 51 
 
 the very general diplomatic dishonesty of their time. 
 The economic development of the country increases 
 their ambition, since it associates great wealth with 
 power and makes it no longer necessary that the 
 aspirant should have a long sword or a long list of 
 ancestors. But the same development infuses a 
 measure of self-respect into the country, and Parlia- 
 ment becomes conscious of its power once more. 
 From this and the religious development we get the 
 Civil War and its sequel, the differentiation of poli- 
 ticians into two antagonistic parties roughly, the 
 king's party and the people's party, the Tories and 
 Whigs. In the midst of these changes, which en- 
 hance the importance of domestic politics, states- 
 men learn to employ at home the secret and un- 
 scrupulous arts which they have so long used in 
 cozening the foreigner. We now reach a point 
 where the second revolution practically ends the 
 dream of a divine right of British kings, where Whig 
 and Tory lose their original antagonism and become 
 little more than rival groups of adventurous seekers 
 of wealth and power. We enter the great age of 
 political corruption. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE " GOLDEN " AGE OF POLITICS 
 
 WILLIAM III., the shrewd Dutchman who came to 
 liberate the people of England from tyranny and 
 remained to rule them with the rod of an autocrat, 
 disliked the division of parties. He affected to 
 think that the time for such a division had passed 
 with the Stuarts, and his ministers as the royal 
 counsellors may now be called were chosen from 
 both sides. Danby was President of the Council, 
 and Nottingham a Secretary of State. Both were 
 Tories. Halifax, the " trimmer," was Lord Chan- 
 cellor. The Whigs, however, had no sympathy with 
 the King's desire to conciliate the defeated Cava- 
 liers, and they pressed for the utter rout of their 
 opponents and the restriction of lucrative offices to 
 their own ranks. Within a few months the King was 
 so disgusted with our politicians that he spoke of 
 returning to Holland. Instead of doing so, he dis- 
 solved Parliament, and the almost equally disgusted 
 country returned the Tories with a small majority. 
 Danby, who was now created Marquis of Car- 
 marthen and First Minister, at once began to give 
 some stability to his insecure position by a compre- 
 hensive and unblushing corruption of Parliament. 
 He had studied in the school of Clifford, and he 
 approached the new art with a conscience entirely 
 free from the personal reluctances which Clifford 
 had experienced. He gave the office of Speaker to 
 Sir John Trevor, the Master of the Rolls and a will- 
 ing instrument, and, with the full connivance of the 
 
 52 
 
THE "GOLDEN" AGE OF POLITICS 53 
 
 King, they developed the appetite of members of 
 the House by a judicious distribution of offices and 
 money. Bishop Burnet tells us so notorious was 
 the bribery that he himself politely expostulated 
 to the King, and was informed that it was a regret- 
 table necessity. French gold was again circulating 
 in London. From his palace at St Germains the 
 exiled King conducted a secret correspondence with 
 malcontents, and William's servants were forced to 
 outbid the Stuart for the loyalty of Englishmen. 
 In both political parties there were men of the first 
 distinction who engaged in the illicit traffic; while 
 ordinary members put increasing value on their 
 support of the King's measures. 
 
 While the dividing line of Whig and Tory was thus 
 blurred in the metropolis, the " Country Party " 
 clung to its traditions and tried repeatedly to check 
 the growing corruption. In 1691 it became a matter 
 of public knowledge that Lowther had accepted 
 two thousand guineas from the King. The " grumb- 
 letonians," as the advocates of purity were called, 
 made a heavy attack upon the entire system of 
 sinecures and placemen, and succeeded in passing a 
 resolution. It enacted that no person in any civil 
 office should receive more than 500 a year. Yet 
 this meagre instalment of reform, which left thou- 
 sands of comfortable sinecures at the disposal of 
 ministers, was annulled a few weeks later. 
 
 But thirty years of this appalling corruption, since 
 the accession of Charles II., had so thoroughly en- 
 feebled the public services that alarm spread among 
 thoughtful people. It is estimated that the revenue 
 of James II. had reached two million sterling per 
 year, yet the army and navy were in so poor a con- 
 dition that the war, which began with the acces- 
 sion of William III., was attended with so little 
 success and so much scandal that the House of 
 Commons insisted on an inquiry. A judicious dis- 
 
54 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 tribution of guineas in the House saved the ministers 
 from any greater inconvenience than a few indig- 
 nant descriptions of the state of the nation they 
 administered ; and the anger of the reformers proved 
 just as impotent when they went on to discuss the 
 condition of the House itself. 
 
 This was, in 1692, the first formal debate on 
 parliamentary corruption, and we easily gather from 
 the speakers that already the system of representa- 
 tion needed drastic revision. Many boroughs had 
 so far lost the comparative importance which had in 
 the early Middle Ages entitled them to representa- 
 tives that their continuance as constituencies was 
 not merely an incentive to, but an inevitable occa- 
 sion of, corruption. The once thriving town of Dun- 
 wich dropped slowly under the waves of the North 
 Sea, but it still returned two members. East and 
 West Looe, once substantial little towns (for the 
 time) on the coast of Cornwall, were now decayed 
 fishing-villages, with only thirty-three voters ; yet 
 they had, says Oldfield, " as many members as the 
 cities of London and Westminster and the county 
 of Middlesex, which contained near a million in- 
 habitants and paid a sixth part of the revenue of 
 the country."* Old Sarum, already almost a de- 
 serted ruin and a thing of interest only to the archae- 
 ologist, returned as many members as the county of 
 Yorkshire. 
 
 These " rotten boroughs," and the equal scandal 
 of the burgage-votes, we will consider presently. 
 For the moment it is enough to note that the atti- 
 tude of the professional politicians was at once 
 moulded in a form with which we are familiar to 
 this day. There were some in both parties who 
 found the condition of the country very regettable. 
 They conciliated people by a virtuous shake of the 
 head over the rotten boroughs, and they found that 
 * The Representative History of Great Britain, III., 239. 
 
THE " GOLDEN " AGE OF POLITICS 55 
 
 after such an exhibition of righteousness they could 
 escape with a few murmurs about " practical diffi- 
 culties." A few found the state of things so sordid 
 that at least stronger language was demanded of 
 them. " It is notorious," said Earl Dorset in the 
 House of Lords, " that a great number of persons 
 have no other livelihood than by being employed in 
 bribing corporations." He referred to constituen- 
 cies, which we will consider later, where a dozen or 
 score municipal councillors monopolised the right 
 of vote and put a proportionate price on their privi- 
 lege. Tories boldly met the reformers with praise 
 of our glorious Constitution and its superiority to 
 every foreign institution. What seemed to the 
 jaundiced reformer acts of coercion or bribery on 
 the part of the local magnate were to the Tory 
 " these feelings of mutual kindness which bound 
 together our wealthy gentry and their poorer neigh- 
 bours and brought them into frequent and friendly 
 intercourse." Properly viewed, these relations were 
 " one of the main causes of the good working of 
 our ancient constitution and, still more, of its dura- 
 tion." So said a distinguished Tory writer. 
 
 The Whigs, on the other hand, had no advantage 
 to derive from reform. Indeed, they already pro- 
 fited by the system themselves, and they cynically 
 smothered the demand of the small section known 
 as " the Country Party." Since there were now 
 plenty of men of wealth among the Whigs, they had 
 equal chance with the Tories of purchasing the votes 
 of municipal corporations and burgage-holders. 
 The large towns of modern times such as Man- 
 chester and Birmingham were then still pleasant 
 villages on whom none thought of bestowing poli- 
 tical power. Reform would take the shape of dis- 
 franchising decayed boroughs (which a Whig might 
 purchase as easily as a Tory) and enlarging the 
 vote of the counties (which were overwhelmingly 
 
56 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Tory). With familiar political casuistry they argued 
 that any strengthening of the power of Toryism 
 would be so grave a national danger that it were 
 better to overlook a few little irregularities. 
 
 The " representation of the people," however, 
 had already become so gross a tragi-comedy that 
 something had to be done, and the interests of 
 the rival parties were so complicated that some- 
 thing might be attempted. The Commons passed 
 a measure for checking the number of placemen 
 in the House. Although the Lords consecrated 
 it, the Bill was still so obnoxious to the Court 
 Party that the King, declaring it an encroachment 
 on his royal prerogative, refused to sign it, and the 
 Commons yielded. The reformers in the Lords then 
 took up the work, and they passed a measure re- 
 stricting the duration of Parliament to three years. 
 The prospect of having to renew their illicit expen- 
 diture on elections every three years was naturally 
 distasteful to the members of the Lower House, and, 
 with an anxious eye on the grumbling country, they 
 opposed, and, when the King also declared against 
 it, rejected the measure. It was some years before 
 it became law. 
 
 In 1693 the Whigs returned to power, and the 
 twenty years during which these successors of the 
 Puritans retained it form the most scandalous part 
 of the record of the corruption of England's politi- 
 cal life. The original division of the two parties had 
 been almost lost in confusion. The genuine, enthusi- 
 astic Tory was now generally dis-loyal ; for he looked 
 daily to the " King over the water," and regarded 
 William as an unhallowed human creation, a usur- 
 per. At the best, the Tory party was distracted, 
 while the Whigs gathered strength. Sunderland, 
 who now formed a ministry the first group of poli- 
 ticians to go by that name in English history had 
 advised the King to lean on the Whigs, and the art 
 
THE " GOLDEN " AGE OF POLITICS 57 
 
 of persuasion by bribe was more assiduously culti- 
 vated than ever. Sunderland himself had few 
 scruples while of his colleagues Lord Wharton is 
 described by Swift as " the most universal villain 
 I ever knew," and Lord Somers as " a man possess- 
 ing every excellent qualification except virtue." 
 The national life of the country was passing through 
 two centuries of corrupt politicians from which it 
 has not yet recovered. The " game " of politics 
 was entering its golden age. 
 
 Two years later, in spite of every corrupt device 
 for censuring the docility of the House of Com- 
 mons, the abominable condition of parliamentary 
 life was starkly exposed. It was found in the course 
 of an inquiry that the Member for Heydon and Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, Mr H, Guy, had accepted a 
 bribe of two hundred guineas As he was a Tory, the 
 Whigs virtuously sent him to the Tower for such 
 an outrage on the purity of English political life. 
 The case, however, as is not unusual, drew out a 
 series of fresh charges and demands of inquiry. 
 
 There was, of course, no press in those days, or 
 even, owing to the mediaeval poorness of transport, 
 a national public opinion. London and Westminster 
 alone could be roused by their pamphleteers to 
 exert a collective pressure on the politicians; and 
 it must be admitted that the writers themselves 
 were generally as corrupt and venal as the politi- 
 cians. In any case, scandal was the precious metal 
 of their trade, an.d the cry for a bold and compre- 
 hensive inquiry became louder and louder. It is 
 said by writers of the time that a shudder of ghastly 
 apprehension passed over Westminster as if the 
 plague had broken out afresh. No man was safe, 
 and none knew if the neighbour he met bore the 
 taint. It was, in particular, stubbornly repeated that 
 the East India Company and the City of London 
 had spent large sums in corrupting members of the 
 
58 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 House of Commons. Lord Wharton was forced to 
 take up the challenge and permit a general inquiry. 
 He may have trusted to the customary art to evade 
 disclosures, but the facts were so gross and notorious 
 that they soon compelled recognition. 
 
 Within a few days it was proved that Sir John 
 Trevor, the Tory Speaker of the House whom Danby 
 had appointed for the purpose of corrupting it, had 
 taken bribes. His salary was 4000 a year, and it 
 was estimated that he had used his position to make 
 a further 10,000 a year. On the specific charge 
 that he had accepted a thousand guineas from the 
 City of London to smooth the way through Parlia- 
 ment for one of its measures he was convicted and 
 dismissed. The accounts of the East India Com- 
 pany were next examined, and the result confirmed 
 every picturesque rumour that had circulated in the 
 clubs. The Company had secured its very profit- 
 able monopoly by spending enormous sums in 
 bribing the Court and the House. For decades 
 sums of money, as well as jewellery, silks, and stones 
 of the Indies, etc., had been systematically distri- 
 buted in order to secure influence at Court or in 
 Parliament, and none was so high in either world 
 as to have refused the taint. The Commissioner of 
 the Treasury, Sir Edward Seymour, had long been 
 a butt of the wits for a rumoured deal in what they 
 called " Saltpetre's Pence." It was proved that he 
 had, through an agent, received 10,000 in connec- 
 tion with a fraudulent contract for saltpetre; yet 
 he suffered no penalty. 
 
 Danby himself, who had risen from the dignity of 
 Marquis of Carmarthen to that of Duke of Leeds, 
 and -had accumulated a large fortune, was definitely 
 proved to have received 5,500 guineas, and was 
 clearly shown to have received more. He escaped 
 under a cloud of vague assurances and genial 
 jaillery. He unblushingly, merrily, told the House 
 
THE "GOLDEN" 1 AGE OF POLITICS 59 
 
 of Lords that, when he was Treasurer under Charles 
 II., there were a number of bidders for the farming 
 of the excise. Lord Halifax had instructed him to 
 tell each of them that Halifax had secured the con- 
 tract for him, and had thus got an illicit commission 
 from each bidder ! The House of Lords felt that 
 the contemporary irregularity was small in compari- 
 son with this, and the Duke of Leeds escaped. Only 
 one man, a servant, could definitely prove his guilt, 
 and the Court connived at the flight from the country 
 of this man. A strict prosecution of the inquiry 
 would have been awkward for the Court. It was 
 said that 10,000 of East India gold could be traced 
 to the King himself. 
 
 The Grumbletonians renewed their pressure, and 
 Sunderland was compelled to bribe more freely than 
 ever in order to cheat the rising hostility of Parlia- 
 ment. A new Parliament, largely bent on reform, 
 had been returned at the end of 1698. It cut down 
 the army, in spite of the King's positive orders, and 
 passed a Bill for the forfeiture to the State of the 
 immense property the King had bestowed on his 
 Dutch friends and his notorious mistress. The 
 temper of the Commons was so stern, in spite of all 
 the known meaus of persuasion, that the King was 
 forced to assent. 
 
 The reign of Anne (1702-1714) thus opened with 
 some promise of a return to purer traditions, but 
 the action of the Queen in placing almost all the high 
 offices in the hands of Tories soon restored the party- 
 game with all its irregularities. Power passed 
 alternately to Tories and Whigs every few years, 
 and the most shameless efforts were made to de- 
 bauch the constituencies in favour of one or the 
 other ambition. Governed entirely by the Marl- 
 borough's, Anne gave the supreme position to Lord 
 Godolphin, whose son had married Marlborough's 
 eldest daughter, and two groups of antagonistic 
 
60 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 families, with little to choose between them either 
 in policy or procedure, struggled for what were now 
 literally spoils of office, while the war against France 
 and Spain dragged out its inglorious length. 
 
 The inevitable recurrence of scandal happened in 
 1712. The Duke of Marlborough was publicly 
 credited with having made half a million sterling by 
 illicit commissions during the war, and the House 
 of Commons definitely censured him for levying 
 large commissions on the pay of foreign troops in 
 the English service. His guilt is unquestionable, 
 but, like so many other gold-laced offenders before 
 and since, he escaped punishment. Marlborough 
 and his wife had between them drawn salaries to the 
 total amount of 65,000 a year, yet such was the 
 greed and indelicacy of the age that they had added 
 hundreds of thousands to this by corrupt means. 
 His secretary, Cardonnel, was, however, expelled 
 from the House of Commons, and Sir Robert Wai- 
 pole, Secretary for War and leader of the House 
 under Godolphin, was committed to the Tower for 
 receiving a thousand guineas on a contract for 
 forage. 
 
 It is, perhaps, the most striking commentary on 
 the corruption of the times that within two years 
 of his release from the Tower, Walpole was again 
 the leader of the House of Commons, and one of the 
 first statesmen of the country. Walpole, is, indeed, 
 one of the most significant and interesting figures in 
 the political life of the age. Sprung from the coun- 
 try gentry, educated at Cambridge, he entered Par- 
 liament by means of one of his own " pocket- 
 boroughs," and soon proved the most expert 
 " manager " of the House. His method of manage- 
 ment consisted largely in the development of the 
 existing system of bribery. Walpole was one of 
 those who adopted the more frivolous version of the 
 growing scepticism of the time. Blunt, shrewd, 
 
THE "GOLDEN" AGE OF POLITICS 61 
 
 and entirely devoid of moral prejudices, he applied 
 himself to the task of the hour by the easiest means, 
 whatever their ethical complexion. He sneered at 
 Church-practices, yet amiably sanctioned them. He 
 outran the scepticism of Locke, but shuddered at his 
 austerity. One must not, however, imagine that his 
 dissociation from the Church of England was the 
 prime cause of deepening the taint in English poli- 
 tics, for the Church was exceedingly corrupt. It is 
 his son, Horace Walpole, who gives us a piquant 
 illustration of the situation. Toward the close of 
 his life Sir Robert gave the Bishop of Chester a 
 living worth .700 a year to marry one of his natural 
 daughters. Sir Robert, unfortunately, died soon 
 afterwards; and the right reverend prelate retained 
 the living and declined to marry the ambiguous 
 lady. In London there were bishops of the time 
 who had their mistresses at table. 
 
 Such was the man whom one may almost call the 
 father of English modern politics ; and the majority 
 of his rivals and contemporaries were only less 
 skilful in playing the game. At the accession of 
 George I. (1714) Marlborough was re -instated in 
 office, the veteran cynic, Lord Wharton, became 
 privy seal, General Stanhope was second Secretary 
 of State, and Pulteney Secretary of War a pro- 
 mising initiation of the Hanoverian phase of 
 England's national life. Walpole was in congenial 
 company, and one of their first acts was to repeal 
 the Triennial Law and extend the life of Parliament 
 to seven years. It is amusing to read that one of 
 the reasons alleged for the change was the sordid 
 bribery practised at elections. " Perhaps it will be 
 best," Lady Mary Montagu wrote to her husband 
 in 1714, when he wished to enter Parliament, " to 
 deposit a certain sum in some friend's hands and 
 buy some little Cornish borough." It now suited 
 the leading politicians to perceive the prevalence of 
 
62 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 bribery, and the political state of England was grace- 
 fully lamented. The boroughs and voters naturally 
 resented this material restriction of the stream of 
 gold to the country. A vote was then, perhaps, 
 not worth more than a score of guineas we shall 
 see it rise presently but to a small provincial trader 
 in those days twenty guineas was a respectable sum, 
 and hundreds of petitions against the change were 
 sent up to Parliament. In the purest language of 
 political ethics these petitions deplored the weaken- 
 ing of their control of their representatives. The 
 politicians were familiar with the dialect. They so 
 contrived that only ten of these petitions were pre- 
 sented in the House. Two hundred others, which 
 " arrived too late," were burned at the Post Office 
 after the passing of the Septennial Bill ! 
 
 Once more a grave scandal fell upon this com- 
 placent and corrupt world. At the bursting of the 
 South Sea Bubble in 1720 another batch of dis- 
 tinguished politicians were dragged into the light, 
 For years the public had been encouraged in the 
 most reckless gambling, and swindlers had thriven 
 as never before. One had only to announce a scheme 
 to extract iron from coal or oil from sunflowers, or 
 even a mechanism of perpetual motion, and London 
 flocked to the tables which overflowed on to the 
 streets of the City. The books of the South Sea 
 Company were brought to the House of Commons, 
 and it was found that the most lavish corruption 
 had been employed in securing its foundation. 
 
 From the beggared tens of thousands came so 
 frantic a demand for vengeance that Parliament was 
 compelled to proceed honestly. The Earl of Sunder- 
 land had accepted 50,000 in shares. Aislabie, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, had by bribes and 
 speculation acquired a fortune of 794,000. Walpole 
 succeeded Aislabie, and he adroitly saved the Earl of 
 Sunderland from punishment. Stanhope, the Premier, 
 
THE " GOLDEN )! AGE OF POLITICS 63 
 
 was accused, and justly accused, of having received 
 10,000 ; but in the heat of his defence in the House 
 he fell in a fit of apoplexy, which at once proved 
 fatal. An appalling cloud, in whose shadow the 
 faces of politicians were livid, brooded over " the 
 mother of Parliaments." The Postmaster-General, 
 Craggs, a friend of Sunderland, was shown to have 
 received 40,000 and to have been the chief inter- 
 mediary of the corruption. He was ruined and 
 driven to death. His son, a Secretary of State and 
 the accepted lover of one of George I.'s mistresses, 
 had shared the fatal gifts. Peeresses, Members of 
 Parliament, courtiers, civil servants hundreds of 
 the beruffled and beribboned gentry of the metro- 
 polis were proved to have opened their pockets to 
 the tainted stream of half a million sterling of gold ; 
 and death for even Sunderland did not survive 
 the storm was almost the only refuge from the 
 infuriated crowds of their victims. 
 
 So inveterate, however, was the corruption of the 
 age that within a few years scandals again arose. 
 In the year 1725 Walpole, who led the House at this 
 period, persuaded the King to restore the Order of 
 the Bath, on the genial ground that it would form 
 for him " an artful bank of thirty-six ribands to 
 supply a fund of favours." In the same year Wal- 
 pole grossly bribed the Scottish members, who 
 visited London, and got their consent to the increase 
 of the tax on ale in Scotland. In the same year 
 the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Macclesfield, was 
 fined 30,000, and removed from office, for pecula- 
 tion. 
 
 George II., at his accession in 1727, retained 
 Walpole in office, and that astute politician con- 
 trived by a system of bribery, in the House and the 
 constituencies, to hold power for the next fifteen 
 years, with little interruption. He spent 5,000 a 
 year on the employment of literary men and journa- 
 
64 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 lists to defend his government. He managed the 
 House of Commons by what the conscientious Hume 
 calls " unscrupulous bribery," as well as tactical 
 ability. He doubled the Secret Service Fund, and 
 influenced elections by every means at his disposal. 
 " Every man has his price " is a saying first attri- 
 buted to Walpole; and there is no doubt that he 
 expressed that sentiment in slightly different words, 
 and proceeded on it habitually. His sons had 
 sinecures which yielded 14,000 a year. His 
 ability, his services to the country in many ways, 
 are unquestioned ; yet one realises how familiar 
 corruption was to his age when one finds Burke 
 making excuses for him, and Johnson describing 
 him as " the best minister we ever had." 
 
 There are, however, historians who maintain that 
 English political corruption reached its lowest depth, 
 not under Walpole, but under his successor in 
 power, Henry Pelham. In 1740 the Duke of New- 
 castle himself " the greatest borough-monger in 
 England " began a fierce campaign against Wal- 
 pole. In 1742 Walpole fell, over proved irregulari- 
 ties at elections, and the not unfamiliar inquiry set 
 up by his enemies ended hi the not unfamiliar 
 acquittal. Pelham became Premier, and it is 
 enough to quote the sober authority of the 
 Dictionary of National Biography an indulgent 
 martyrology of our political saints that, though not 
 personally covetous, " he chiefly maintained his in- 
 fluence in Parliament by an elaborate system of 
 corruption," or, as Hunt and Poole say in their 
 Political History of England, by a " lavish distri- 
 bution of the spoils of office." 
 
 The Duke of Newcastle, the expert borough- 
 monger, succeeded Pelham in power in 1754, and 
 Horace Walpole tells us that in that year the bribery 
 at the election surpassed all records. It may have 
 risen above the previous record, but there was now 
 
THE "GOLDEN" AGE OF POLITICS 65 
 
 at work a new influence which, while it perhaps 
 tempered the evil in the House itself, or prepared 
 the way of reform, was rapidly deepening the cor- 
 ruption in the constituencies. The election of 1761 
 was worse than the election of 1754. The election 
 of 1768 was still worse. The greed of the voters 
 themselves was growing at an alarming pace. When 
 Lord Chesterfield offered 2,500 to purchase a seat 
 for his son possibly one with only a few score 
 voters the brokers laughingly replied that the price 
 now ranged from three to five thousand pounds. 
 Selwyn sold the two seats at Ludgershall for .9,000. 
 The City of Oxford offered to renew the parliament- 
 ary tenure of its two sitting members if they would 
 pay its debts, which amounted to 5,670. Outraged 
 by the profiteering, they made a complaint to the 
 House, and ten of the leading citizens of Oxford 
 were summoned to London and lodged in Newgate; 
 and in Newgate, to the delight of London, they sold 
 the seats to two other men. The price of a single 
 vote was in places now as much as fifty guineas. 
 
 It was the work of " the Nabobs." Any person 
 who moved in parliamentary circles in the seventh 
 decade of the eighteenth century heard on all sides 
 the most violent and virtuous denunciation of the 
 corrupting influence of these Nabobs. They were, 
 of course, the nouveaux riches of the period; men, 
 generally, who had amassed wealth in the Indies or 
 the Indian trade. The East India Company had 
 unlocked the sluices, and tens of millions of gold 
 and precious things were flowing into England. A 
 seat in the House became a popular ambition of the 
 merchants, and the constituencies freshened like a 
 bed of flowers under a beneficent shower in July. 
 In places where, as we shall see, a dozen or a score 
 of men monopolised the voting, the franchise was a 
 property of enormous value; and the defrauded 
 householders now began to struggle with the cor- 
 
 E 
 
66 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 porations for their political rights and their legiti- 
 mate emoluments. Where a few sticks or stones, 
 or a few square yards of ground, represented some 
 ancient place with a right to return two members, 
 the venerable relics assumed such value as if they 
 were authentic fragments of Noah's Ark or Nero's 
 Golden House. A new blight had descended upon 
 England's glorious and unparalleled parliamentary 
 system. 
 
 It was the darkest hour. The first glimmer of 
 reform was faintly relieving the edge of the political 
 horizon. What the causes of the reform-movement 
 were, we will consider in the next chapter; but we 
 may at once put ourselves on our guard against the 
 theory that it was due to the rise of a more honest 
 generation of politicians. Fox, who now appeared, 
 was an entirely willing element in the corrupt system 
 of the time. The elder Pitt had been in Parliament 
 since 1735. He had entered it by one of the rottenest 
 of the rotten boroughs of England, Old Sarum, and 
 had during thirty years never hinted at its corrup- 
 tion. In 1754 he began to represent one of the Duke 
 of Newcastle's proprietary boroughs. Neither 
 statesman, nor any other, said a word against the 
 completely degraded political system until the here- 
 ditary cliques of politicians and their dependents 
 were threatened by a more or less independent body 
 of wealthy merchants who were able to outbid them. 
 A vote at ten or twenty guineas had been an inno- 
 cent detail of a providential system. A vote at 
 fifty guineas was a sure sign of the growth of pagan- 
 ism; it strained the resources of the London 
 organisers and exposed the lord of the manor to a 
 ruinous competition in his own preserve. 
 
 There were, however, several other circumstances 
 ] which favoured a struggle for reform in the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century, and to this 
 struggle we will devote a chapter. The language 
 
THE " GOLDEN " AGE OF POLITICS 67 
 
 with which Conservative politicians, both Whig and 
 Tory, tried to avert the reform is of enduring in- 
 terest. It is no less related to the language of our 
 day than the corruption itself is related to the 
 irregularities which still linger. The apology has, 
 like the taint, sustained a natural evolution in the 
 struggle for life. But we are chiefly concerned with 
 the taint itself, and we have now seen its full 
 development in English political life. 
 
 It had two sources. One is the inherent mis- 
 chievousness of open voting. A free and independ- 
 ent Englishman may boast that he will cast his vote 
 openly in the sight of men and angels, but such 
 heroism would not be without danger now, and was 
 quite impossible in mediaeval conditions. The 
 courageous few were soon suppressed by lords who 
 owned their houses and controlled their employ- 
 ment, and their homes and places were quickly 
 taken by the venal or the sycophantic. The con- 
 stituencies ripened to rottenness as soon as the period 
 of semi-barbarism was replaced by one of domestic 
 peace and larger national life. The decay of older 
 towns into political fictions added to the corruption. 
 Meantime, the politicians themselves were develop- 
 ing a separate taint, which we have traced, and, 
 when Parliament again became an institution of 
 real strength in the national life, they turned upon 
 it the practised methods of foreign diplomacy. The 
 Civil War which intensified the strength of Parlia- 
 ment merely added to its corruption. Frontal 
 attacks by the Court-party became impossible. The 
 work the fight against the will of such of the people 
 as remained honest was entrusted to the political 
 sappers and miners. Members were corrupted, and 
 voters were corrupted to return corrupt members. 
 We pass to the next phase, the struggle to find a 
 way out of Serbonian bog. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 
 
 IT will be convenient and instructive to insert here 
 a sketch of the political system which we have 
 hitherto considered only in the partial glimpses 
 afforded by an occasional page from the record of 
 its history. It is a truism of our tune that nothing 
 can be understood apart from its evolution. An 
 institution may draw its sustenance for the day from 
 the age in which it lives, but its form is determined 
 for the most part by extinct forces. Theoretically, 
 we moderns, with our strong sense of mastery and 
 creativeness, make our own institutions. In prac- 
 tice we do not. " Great is the power of the actual " 
 is as true to-day as when Carlyle wrote it. Modifica- 
 tion, not creation, is our practical motto. The past 
 still dominates us. 
 
 On the other hand, the impatient and sensitive 
 person who urges us to leave undisturbed in the 
 cemetery of history the past misdeeds of Church or 
 State has a mistaken idea of charity. If the mis- 
 deeds or irregularities of to-day are entirely dissoci- 
 ated from their historical past, one can only com- 
 pare them with the finer ideals of our time and the 
 more bitterly resent them. One feels that the men 
 who can do and say such things in an age when 
 honour and truthfulness are on the lips of all are 
 moral perverts. Their position becomes much more 
 intelligible when one realises that the system which 
 to-day enmeshes them with its irresistible tempta- 
 tions is only the modified form of a system which 
 
 68 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 69 
 
 owes its corruptness to a morally inferior age. In- 
 deed, it is precisely because so many refuse to believe 
 that distinguished or responsible men of the twentieth 
 century can lie or cozen or bribe that they are blind 
 to the irregularities which are daily exposed; while 
 extreme critics, equally unmindful of the past, dress 
 up our politicians in a melodramatic wickedness 
 which defeats its own purpose. We avoid both ex- 
 tremes, and approach our business with more hope, 
 if we know the evolution of English politics and 
 politicians. Less than a hundred years ago our 
 political system was corrupt, inept, false, and 
 fraudulent to a degree that is now almost un- 
 imaginable. 
 
 The time I have reached in this preliminary 
 historical sketch was a hundred and fifty years ago. 
 In the fifty succeeding years or, at least, the first 
 half of that period some important reforms were 
 carried. As late as 1830, we shall see, the parlia- 
 mentary system was a criminal sham. The parlia- 
 mentary system of to-day as described by, let us 
 say, Mr Belloc or Mr Smillie, has the chaste manners 
 of a mothers' meeting in a Baptist chapel in com- 
 parison with the system of ninety years ago. Yet 
 this was an improvement upon the political system 
 over which the elder Pitt and Fox gracefully pre- 
 sided, and which evoked the applause, and would 
 have drawn the defensive swords, of all the gentle- 
 men of England. 
 
 It may or may not be useful to tell our children 
 in school that our fathers set up, and for centuries 
 held up to the admiration and envy of the world, 
 a model political institution. Some of us are reluc- 
 tant to tell lies even to children. But the adult 
 Englishman, at least, ought to know that his parlia- 
 mentary institution had become, by the end of the 
 eighteenth century, an appalling mass of corruption. 
 Whether Walpole, or Pelham, or Pitt really ad- 
 
70 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 ministered the country well is another question. 
 They did so in spite of the system; and we shall 
 hear them claiming that it was actually the defects 
 of the system which enabled strong and able men 
 to hold power. 
 
 Our system of popular or parliamentary repre- 
 sentation in the latter part of the eighteenth century 
 consisted theoretically of to omit Scotland about 
 quarter of a million free, independent, and open- 
 eyed voters, who sent every seven years 468 repre- 
 sentatives to Westminster to keep the King in check, 
 control finance, and initiate legislation. There was, 
 it is true, a house of barons and bishops next door 
 who could veto whatever the Commons did ; and the 
 King could veto (or refuse to sign) anything on 
 which they agreed. But we shall not be tempted to 
 shed many tears over these improper impediments 
 to the will of the people if we first study how the 
 popular representatives were chosen. The qualifi- 
 cations for voting were so ancient and complicated 
 that an army of lawyers grew fat on the constant 
 quarrels. The chief qualification was the possession 
 of a house, or the paying of taxes. Since the vote 
 was open, this at once put the voter at the mercy 
 of a wealthy landlord. Some towns consisted of 
 only a few score houses, and were owned entirely 
 by one man. They formed his " pocket-borough, " 
 transferable by will like a Russian estate with a 
 thousand serfs, or liable at any time to be offered 
 to the highest bidder on the market. In many cases 
 the town was halved between two landlords, but as 
 nearly every borough in England returned two mem- 
 bers, the duality of ownership presented no diffi- 
 culty. Here are a few advertisements from London 
 newspapers on the eve of a parliamentary struggle : 
 
 " Whoever wishes for a seat in the House, by 
 honourable and constitutional means, may have 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 71 
 
 the choice of many, where their success can be 
 made certain. Address a line to M. B., No. 11, 
 Doun Street, Piccadilly." (The Telegraph, Sept- 
 ember 5th, 1795.) 
 
 " The present system of electioneering is 
 attended with great evils, among which the follow- 
 ing are not the least much trouble, heavy ex- 
 pense, and great uncertainty of success. The 
 advertiser knows how to obtain seats in the House 
 without difficulty. His plan is infallible and per- 
 fectly constitutional. None but principals can be 
 treated with. Address a line to M. B., No. 11 
 Doun Street, Piccadilly." (The Courier, Septem- 
 ber 3rd, 1795.) 
 
 " Counsellor Baldwin, Secretary to the Duke of 
 Portland, is to be elected (not nominated) for the 
 borough of Malton, in the gift of Earl Fitz- 
 william." (The Times, October, 18th, 1795.)* 
 
 A very large number of the smaller constituencies 
 were thus entirely dominated by landowners or em- 
 ployers. They used their absolute power to help 
 their parties, which helped them, or they sold it for 
 the time of the election. The above advertisements, 
 inserted by some agent of such borough-lords, are 
 plain enough; and we have already seen how Lord 
 Chesterfield found ,2,500 too small a price for one 
 seat. The smallest borough returned two members.,! 
 Ludgershall was a village of seventy houses. We! 
 saw that the owner of these got 9,000 for them ; \ 
 and as mere property they were probably not worth ; 
 a thousand pounds. 
 
 The householders were not always thus controlled, 
 especially in the larger towns. In these places one 
 found the free and independent voter; and one 
 generally found that he put a high price on his free- 
 
 * These extracts are taken from Mrs Thelwall's Life of John 
 Thducall, vol. I., p. 364. 
 
72 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 dom. There were certain places of sound public 
 spirit which rejected both bribery and coercion. 
 They were relatively few. In the course of the 
 eighteenth century such a subtle pervasive flood of 
 corruption poured over the constituencies that, 
 where intimidation was impossible, bribery was 
 general. There was so little communication that the 
 price of a vote varied. At Boston it was five guineas ; 
 at Wallingford forty. Lord Shelburne himself 
 speaks of working men who were offered <700 for 
 their vote, so that the cost of a single election was 
 known to run to 30,000.* Where there was not a 
 definite tariff, there were free meals and free drinks, 
 and the long and costly process which is still known 
 as nursing a constituency, and is still practised. 
 
 In other places the stubbornness of a group of 
 independent voters was defeated, or the expense of 
 bribing them reduced, by clerical pressure or by a 
 local abundance of Government-servants. In many 
 coast-towns the excise-men could turn an election, 
 and the party hi power or the crown unblushingly 
 controlled the votes of these civil servants every- 
 where. In other places, again, very numerous 
 places, the right to vote was by ancient charter con- 
 fined to the "corporation." This was, in theory, 
 the municipal authority, but in those roadless and 
 entirely insanitary days the corporation really did 
 nothing except vote. The members elected each 
 other, or passed the privilege from father to son. 
 One can guess the value of being a member of one of 
 these corporations in the glorious days of the Nabobs. 
 Any man would pay 4,000 for a seat, and the mem- 
 bers of the corporations varied from two or three to 
 a score. 
 
 In many places a freeman had the right to vote, 
 
 * See G. S. Veitch's Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (1913) 
 and Oldfield's History of Parliaments and History of the House 
 of Commons. 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 73 
 
 but this apparently admirable arrangement easily 
 lent itself to corruption. The corporation could con- 
 fer the freedom on any it pleased, and in an uncer- 
 tain election, or for a substantial consideration, or 
 under coercion from the local lord, it would create 
 hundreds of these voters. It is on record that when 
 Earl Lonsdale saw the Duke of Norfolk gaining on 
 him at a Carlisle election, he brought in 1,400 men 
 from his estates and collieries and " induced " the 
 corporation to make them freemen and voters on the 
 spot. In some places one acquired a vote by marry- 
 ing the daughter of a freeman, and even this ad- 
 venturous method did not deter some from seeking 
 the profitable franchise. 
 
 Most outrageous of all were the burgage-voters, the 
 owners of sticks or stones which represented a 
 vanished town, or even of certain pig-styes or bits 
 of land. At Midhurst the burgage was a heap of 118 
 stones in the middle of a field. For this field and 
 a hioderate amount of surrounding estate (197 acres 
 in all) the Earl of Egremont paid ,42,000. On 
 election days the Earl handed to three or four trusty 
 men (who would immediately return the parchments 
 after voting) title-deeds to these stones, and they 
 returned two members, nominated by him, to the 
 House. In this "constituency " there was not a 
 single house or inhabitant. Much the same was Old 
 Sarum, where the last apology for a house was de- 
 stroyed in 1792. Its one inhabitant until that date 
 sold refreshments to visitors in a dilapidated shanty. 
 By burgage-right, belonging to Lord Camelford, it 
 returned two members. The neighbouring city of 
 Salisbury had one member. At Westbury the sacred 
 totem was a wall. In other places it was a share in 
 a disused pit or a decaying cottage. In one place it 
 was a stone hi the middle of a stream. Most of these 
 things were owned by peers; and lawyers loved 
 them. 
 
74 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 The modern reader will feel that I am selecting 
 a few eccentric antiquities from what may be a 
 generally respectable list. How could Fox and Pitt 
 (except for a brief period) defend such a system ? 
 How the politicians defended such a system is pre- 
 cisely one of the points I am going to impress upon 
 the reader. It is an important part of the psycho- 
 logical equipment we will bring to the study of our 
 modern politicians. But it is material to under- 
 stand the system they defended, and I will therefore 
 take in alphabetical order, not selecting " awful ex- 
 amples," the first forty boroughs in Oldfield's 
 exhaustive list. I merely condense his long descrip- 
 tion of each : 
 
 Abingdon. Six hundred householder- voters. 
 " Very corrupt " the local representative of the 
 Treasury buys the seat but " as independent as 
 any borough can be under the present system " ! 
 
 Amersham. One hundred and twenty house- 
 holder-voters. All are tenants of one man who re- 
 turns his two sons to Parliament. 
 
 St Albans. Five hundred and sixteen house- 
 holder-voters. They are controlled by Earl Spencer 
 (who returns his brother-in-law) and Lord Grim- 
 stone (who returns his nephew). 
 
 Aldeburgh. Eighty householder-voters. The 
 borough is the private property of P. C. Crespigny, 
 Esquire. 
 
 Aldborough. A village of fifty-seven houses. 
 Each householder has a vote. Nearly all belong to 
 the Duke of Newcastle, who returns two members. 
 
 Andover. A town of two thousand houses, but 
 the vote is confined to a corporation of twenty-four 
 men, who " elect one another." 
 
 Appleby. A hundred burgage- voters, the bur- 
 gages owned and the votes controlled by the Earl of 
 Thanet and the Lonsdales. " Hog-sties which give 
 votes as burgage-holds have been purchased at a 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 75 
 
 price exceeding all belief." Sir P. Francis won the 
 seat in 1802. There was one voter. Sir P. Francis 
 facetiously thanked the electorate for its unanimity. 
 
 Arundel. One hundred and ninety householder- 
 voters. Rank bribery, and result controlled by the 
 Duke of Norfolk. 
 
 Ashburton. Two hundred householder- voters, 
 nominally. Really two voters, the owners. Lord 
 Clinton and Sir R. Palk. 
 
 Aylesbury. Five hundred householder-voters. 
 The Marquis of Buckingham always returns one of 
 the two members. 
 
 Banbury. Eighteen voters, strictly controlled by 
 the Earl of Guildford. 
 
 Barnstable. An open borough. No patron. 
 Three hundred and fifty voters. 
 
 Bath. A large town in the eighteenth century. 
 Vote confined to a corporation of eighteen voters, 
 " who elect one another," and are under the control 
 of the Marquis of Bath and Earl Camden. 
 
 Beaumaris. Twenty-four voters, controlled by 
 Lord Bulkeley. 
 
 Bedford. Fourteen hundred voters. A large 
 number under the control of the Duke of Bedford, 
 but much independence. 
 
 Great Bedwin. Eighty householder- voters. All 
 are tenants of the Earl of Aylesbury, who dictates 
 the issue of elections. 
 
 Beeralston. Seventy bur gage-voters. Each pays 
 threepence per year rent to the Earl of Beverley, 
 who appoints the member. 
 
 Berwick. Six hundred voters. Lord Delaval 
 dictates the return of one of the two members. 
 
 Beverley. One thousand voters. Two hundred 
 are tenants of Lord Yarborough, who returns one 
 member. 
 
 Bewdley. A corporation of thirteen voters, who 
 take their orders from Lord Lyttleton. 
 
76 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Bishop 9 s-Castle. Fifty householder-voters. All 
 are tenants of Lord Clive, who owns the borough. 
 
 Blechingley. Ninety householder- voters. All are 
 tenants of Sir R. Clayton. 
 
 Bodmyn. A corporation of thirty-six voters, con- 
 trolled by Sir J. Morshead. 
 
 Boroughbridge. A village with sixty-five burgage- 
 voters, the burgages all owned by the Duke of New- 
 castle. 
 
 Bassiney. A small village of twenty houses. 
 Voting confined to the corporation. In 1781 and 
 1790 there was only one living member of the cor- 
 poration, and he returned two members. In 1795 
 there were four voters, and they were under the 
 control of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and the 
 Hon. Wortley Stuart. 
 
 Boston. Three hundred and eighty householder- 
 voters. The Duke of Ancaster has much influence, 
 but there is a good deal of independence. [This 
 description shows that Oldfield is not addicted to 
 exaggeration. The price of a vote in Boston was, 
 notoriously, five guineas.] 
 
 Brackley. A corporation of thirty-two voters 
 under the Earl of Bridgewater. 
 
 Br amber. Fourteen wretched cottages give bur- 
 gage-votes. Half belong to the Duke of Rutland 
 and half to Lord Calthorpe. Each returns one 
 member to Parliament. 
 
 Brecon. One hundred voters, completely domi- 
 nated by Sir C. Morgan. 
 
 Bridgenorth. Seven hundred voters, under the 
 influence of J. Whit more. 
 
 Bridgewater. Two hundred and seventy voters. 
 Earl Poulet dictates one member. 
 
 Bridport. Two hundred and thirty voters. 
 66 One of the few independent boroughs in Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Bristol The second city of England in the 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 77 
 
 eighteenth century. There are five thousand voters 
 and two members of whom the Duke of Beaufort 
 dictates one and the Duke of Portland the other. 
 
 Buckingham. Less than two hundred houses. 
 Two members. Thirteen corporation-voters, under 
 the absolute control of the Marquis of Buckingham. 
 
 Bury St Edmunds. Six thousand inhabitants and 
 thirty-seven voters. 
 
 Camelford. Sold in 1812 by the Duke of Bedford 
 for <32,000. It has nine voters and two members. 
 
 There is no need to prolong the list. This first 
 section of it is as typical of the rest as the first yard 
 of cloth is of a bale. Even worse instances occur. 
 Castle Rising has [in 1795] only two houses, owned f 
 by Earl Cholmondely, and returns two members.! 
 Corfe Castle has fourteen resident voters and it re- 
 turns two members, who own the voters. Dunwichj 
 has scarcely a whole house, but it has twelve voters} 
 (bossed by Lord Huntingfield) and two members. 
 At Derby the tenants of the Duke of Devonshire 
 are honorary freemen. At Dorchester the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury has votes attached to various bits of 
 waste land. Ludgershall has seventy houses, owned 
 by two men, each of whom returns a member : 
 Liverpool, with three thousand voters, has only the 
 same number of members. Portsmouth has twenty 
 thousand inhabitants and a hundred voters. Scar- 
 borough has seven hundred rate-payers and twenty- 
 two voters. Rye has four members and nine voters. 
 Rochester has six hundred and thirty voters and one 
 member. London has two members. 
 
 This was the state of the electorate in 1795, after 
 a series of " reforms." A few details will be added 
 when we reach the age of the Reform Bill, and a few 
 general statements may complete this description of 
 the electorate that attracted the attention, and for 
 a brief period faintly awoke the zeal, of Mr Pitt. 
 The 421 members sent to Parliament by these re- 
 
78 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 markable boroughs represented 84,000 electors; if 
 a few large towns were omitted the proportion would 
 be appalling. County- voters, in any case, numbered 
 130,000, yet they had a right to only 92 members. 
 Cornwall alone it was full of rotten boroughs sent 
 forty-four members to Parliament. Scotland, with 
 a population of two millions and 2643 voters, re- 
 turned only forty-five members. Of the whole 468 
 " representatives of the people " at Westminster it 
 was estimated that 306 were returned by the 
 Treasury and 162 individuals (peers and gentry) ; 
 and in nearly every other place, where a member 
 was " freely " returned, the election was an orgie 
 of beer, bribery and brutality. 
 
 After this description there is little need to dwell 
 on the character of the members assembled at West- 
 minster. To speak of the England of the eighteenth 
 century as a self-governing community is ludicrous. 
 Of four million adults less than quarter of a million 
 were enfranchised ; and of this quarter of a million 
 only a few thousands deliberately sent men to repre- 
 sent their views and principles in the House. Two- 
 thirds of the members of Parliament represented a 
 handful of rich people. A large proportion were 
 dummies of the Treasury, for there were nearly 
 50,000 exciseman-voters. 
 
 Upon this system our bishops bestowed their 
 blessing not a single suggestion of reform in three 
 centuries came from the episcopal members of the 
 Lords and our most distinguished politicians ex- 
 pended their most graceful rhetoric decade after 
 decade. But about the middle of the second half 
 of the eighteenth century their complacency began to 
 be disturbed by cries of reform. Too much, perhaps, 
 has been made of individuals chiefly Pitt and 
 Wilkes in this connection, and not enough of 
 general changes. The agricultural revolution had 
 already proceeded far, and the industrial revolution 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 79 
 
 had begun. Communication was improved. But 
 far more important than these things for we really 
 do not find much improvement in the electorate 
 itself was the economic development which created 
 a new wealthy class apart from the old land-barons 
 and landed gentry. It was the Nabobs who taught 
 Whigs and Tories the elements of political morality, 
 by making political immorality more costly. 
 
 The elder Pitt, for instance, had used the 
 machinery of the rotten boroughs all his life, and 
 his often-mentioned disposition for reform was little 
 more than the kind of velleity we are accustomed to 
 find in statesmen. He held strongly that the pur- 
 pose of Parliament was to represent property, not 
 persons. Cut away the influence of the Treasury, 
 and it did that much. As to the rotten boroughs, 
 they were certainly " diseased limbs " of the Con- 
 stitution. It might, however, be dangerous to 
 amputate, and the prudent statesmen would rather 
 give an increase of good blood and new vigour to it 
 (by enfranchising new boroughs) wherewith it might 
 resist the poison. One is quite familiar with this 
 political dialect. What he really wanted was the 
 suppression of such corruption (excise-votes, etc.) 
 as served his enemies. Rotten boroughs and bur- / ( 
 gage-votes were useful to him and his party and he 
 would not touch them. But the advent of the 
 Nabobs in his old age stirred him. " Without con- 
 nections," he said in the Lords, after he had taken 
 the title of Earl of Chatham. " without any natural 
 interest in the soil, the importers of foreign gold 
 have forced their way into Parliament by such a 
 torrent of corruption as no private hereditary for- 
 tune could resist." The sting is in the tail. 
 
 Chatham gave utterance to this virtuous indigna- 
 tion in 1770, thirty-five years after the stones of Old 
 Sarum (which were a possession of his family) had 
 sent him to the House of Commons. The Nabobs 
 
80 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 were not responsible for that state of the electorate 
 which we have examined ; nor were they responsible 
 for the presence in the House of Commons in 1770 
 (according to the Annual Register) of one hundred 
 and ninety place-holders. But a separate movement 
 was beginning in London which added to the slight 
 fermentation of reform-ideas. In 1769 the famous 
 Letters of Junius had appeared, and John Wilkes 
 was returned for Middlesex. The service of "Junius" 
 was rather indirect. Like the Whigs generally, he 
 demanded little more parliamentary reform than 
 Chatham did. 
 
 John Wilkes really begins the campaign for re- 
 form, but his history does not dispose the modern 
 democrat to bow very reverently before his statue. 
 He was the son of a London distiller, educated at 
 Ley den University, where he met Baron D'Holbach 
 and learned advanced ideas about God and man. 
 Rousseau's Social Contract had, we must remember, 
 appeared in 1760. The ferment was already fairly 
 brisk in France. Wilkes was a scholar and a gentle- 
 man : also a rake and a man of no moral rlplWpy. 
 He had bought his seat in Parliament, He was, 
 however, disappointed in his ambition, and he 
 founded The North Briton (1762) and lashed the 
 Court-party. He was convicted of " libel," and, 
 although Middlesex thrice returned him in 1769, the 
 House declared him incapable of sitting. At a 
 fourth election the Court-party opposed a Colonel 
 Luttrell to him, and they were defeated by 1143 to 
 296 votes. Yet the House of Commons dprlared 
 JLuttrell elected ! London raged, and the first society 
 ior"llie rerorni of Parliament was established. 
 
 Perhaps this assisted Chatham in his age to see 
 the enormity of political corruption. We must add 
 that already in America associations of Sons and 
 Daughters of Liberty with tar and feathers for 
 those who wanted the liberty not to join were 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 81 
 
 springing up, and under the influence of American 
 and French ideas Englishmen were beginning to 
 think. The Whigs began to coquet with the move- 
 ment in a familiar way. We practical and experi- 
 enced politicians, they said to reformers, will show 
 you how to carry out your ideas. They would re- 
 form all that helped the Tories only, and find all 
 other reform impracticable. 
 
 Such dates as stand out in the calendar of the 
 time, as far as it concerns us, illustrate this develop- 
 ment. In 1770 a sober country member brought into 
 the House a Bill for disfranchising revenue-officers. 
 They numbered 50,000, as we saw, and every man's 
 vote was controlled by the Treasury and used to 
 support the party of " king's friends " in the House. 
 This early attempt to put an end to a grave scandal 
 was defeated by 263 votes to 188. 
 
 In 1773 the American colonists fired the imagina- 
 tion of Europe by scattering the cargoes of the 
 tea-ships over the waters of Boston Harbour. Every- 
 body in England and France knew what the quarrel 
 meant. There was to be no taxation without repre- 
 sentation. The modestly liberal political ideas of 
 John Locke were growing in the mind of the world. 
 When the colonists proceeded to declare their inde- 
 pendence, and the French, stimulated by this ex- 
 ample, rapidly developed the social gospel of the 
 Encyclopaedists, the vague body of Whig sentiment 
 in England began to crystallise in two definite forms. 
 The more conservative or the less sincere rallied to 
 the Tories and the King ; the more liberal and sincere 
 gathered under the new banner of Radicalism. New 
 popular leaders Home Tooke, Major Cartwright, 
 etc. took up and developed the demands of Wilkes. 
 The failure of the American War, the scandals which 
 (as usual) transpired in the course of operations, 
 weakened the Tories and courtiers, and encouraged 
 the Whigs and Radicals. London and Westminster 
 
82 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 were developing a formidable strength. Wilkes, in 
 1776, tried the temper of the House with a compre- 
 hensive reform-measure, but the time had not yet 
 come. Lord North killed it with a few pleasant and 
 graceful remarks in which Pitt's convenient theory of 
 the danger of amputations had a plausible position. 
 But a sterner man than Wilkes, Major Cartwright, 
 who had asimilated American ideas in the colonies 
 themselves, had now espoused the reform. He was 
 for adult suffrage, the ballot^an/i 
 
 ^ 
 
 This concrete and admirable program it was which 
 chiefly drew real reformers into a new party, and 
 caused the more reactionary Whigs to ruin the move- 
 ment by compromise. As Mr Veitch says, they 
 aimed at passing an economic reform, which would 
 strengthen their own position and weaken that of 
 the King's party, and shelving the real political re- 
 form, which would affect both Tory and Whig. In 
 1778 one of their number proposed to exclude con- 
 tractors from the House. The Bill passed, but it 
 was prevented by the ministry from becoming law. 
 Burke had no greater success with a partial measure 
 in the same year. 
 
 By 1780 the reform-sentiment became a reform- 
 movement. Centres of Association were formed in 
 the country, and they began to correspond with 
 each other. Petitions were sent to the House. Con- 
 ferences were held in London. It must be admitted 
 that the movement was by no means purely ideal- 
 istic. Many petitions came from would-be voters in 
 constituencies where a corporation monopolised the 
 franchise, and monopolised the guineas which a vote 
 represented. In other cases, the chief concern was 
 economy. The movement gathered strength from 
 all sources, except the orthodox Whigs and the 
 Tories, who raised their eyebrows in horror at the 
 growth of " anarchy." 
 
 Weariness with the American War broke the 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 88 
 
 power of the Tories for a time and compelled the 
 King to lean upon the Whigs. At once, in 1782, they 
 grasped their opportunity, and passed the limited 
 and (to themselves) innocuous measure of reform to 
 which they were pledged. Revenue-officers were 
 disfranchised, and seventy boroughs were thus de- 
 livered from the influence of the Court and the 
 Treasury. Contractors were expelled from the House 
 of Commons. Sinecures to the extent of <7'0,000 
 a year were abolished. In anger and sorrow the 
 clients of the old regime looked out for the end of 
 the world, while the Radicals made each measure 
 of reform the base of a larger demand. 
 
 To us who look back the sequel offers no surprise. 
 Political experience down to our own time would 
 enable any man to forecast it. The greater part of 
 the Whigs now quitted the camp of reform and 
 adopted the scare-cries of their Tory opponents. 
 To this point they had benefited by reform. The 
 further reforms which were demanded and the 
 sketch in the early part of this chapter will show 
 how large and imperative they were would gravely 
 disturb the basis of the power of the Whigs, and 
 they therefore discovered that the Constitution was 
 in danger and the wisdom of Parliament imperilled. 
 To the Radicals, at the time, it mattered little that 
 Horace Walpole and Fox endorsed the Tory idea 
 of the danger of surgical operations. With them 
 was the younger Pitt, the rising star of the House 
 of Commons, who had entered Parliament in 1781, 
 and pleaded for comprehensive reform. In 1782 he 
 moved for the appointment of a committee. It was 
 refused, and, when he repeated the demand in 1783, 
 under the Coalition-government of Fox and Shel- 
 burne, it was again refused. The Coalition was 
 broken, and in 1784 the country faced an election on 
 the reform-issue. In spite of the most impudent use 
 of the machinery of corruption; in spite of harrowing 
 
84 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 appeals to save property and the country and the 
 last elements of virtue from the devouring dragon 
 of reform, the country rejected the Coalitionists, and 
 Pitt became Premier. 
 
 The reformers prepared their clothes for the in- 
 auguration of the millenium, and in 1785 Pitt pro- 
 duced his great measure. It was not heroic. 
 Thirty-six decayed boroughs were to be politely re- 
 quested to sell their " rights " to the nation for one 
 million sterling, and the seats which they had filled 
 were to be transferred to London and the counties. 
 Less than a hundred thousand men would be en- 
 franchised, and every borough and burgage-holder 
 who chose to consider his " rights " worth more than 
 a share in a million pounds, and refused to sell, was 
 to be left undisturbed. Yet the House of Commons 
 refused to consider even this slight alleviation of an 
 intolerable scandal. Lord North launched Tory 
 thunder upon it. Fox and Burke poured Liberal 
 cold water upon it. The House, by 248 votes to 
 174, refused leave to introduce the Bill ! 
 
 And there ended the attempt of the eighteenth 
 century to put its squalid political house in order. 
 A few partial reforms were carried. The Radicals 
 pressed for more, and, at the centenary anniversary 
 lof the Revolution of 1688, stirred the country to 
 yndignation. The fervour of Pitt had evaporated, 
 and a debate on reform in the House in 1790 almost 
 extinguished the last hope. One leader of the 
 House after another defended the execrable system 
 which I have described. Burke assured the House 
 that " the people did not wisji for any reform. " 
 Wyndham protested, in accents of dignity and 
 sincerity, that " the House of Commons, constituted 
 as it was, answered all the beneficent purposes that 
 could possibly be desired." And Pitt? The great 
 protagonist of only five years ago now suavely 
 observed that, after Mr Wyndham 's eloquent speech, 
 
THE FIGHT FOR REFORM 85 
 
 he need only observe that this was no tune for 
 changes ! He moved the adjournment of the House 
 and it was carried. The political gentlemen of Eng- 
 land gave a further lease of forty years of life to 
 the sordid system we have considered. 
 
 A new phrase had been invented : " Was it wise 
 to repair one's house during a hurricane ? " Blessed 
 be the phrase-maker, for he shall possess the earth. 
 A hurricane that is to say, a most wise (up to that 
 point) and beneficent reform was proceeding at 
 Paris. Sound middle-class statesmen still controlled 
 the French Revolution, and nothing had yet been 
 done beyond the suppression of flagrant abuses and 
 political crimes. But the political instinct which, 
 guided by a cynical estimate of the general intelli- 
 gence, makes forces out of phrases had the good 
 fortune to discover the word " hurricane." It ap- 
 peared in every journal. It was on every lip. Old 
 Sarum, and the disused pits of Droitwich, and the 
 pig-styes and pigeon-cotes of Richmond, and all the 
 drunken voters and corrupt corporations and cor- 
 rupting landlords, smiled in the sun once more. 
 FQX almost alone of the politicians of England 
 scornecTThe trickery. It was useless. From George 
 III. to the fishermen of East and West Looe spread 
 a sentiment of relief. There was a hurricane blow- 
 ing. They need not repair the national house. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 LOOKING back over those years, with our historical 
 charts outspread before us, we trace two develop- 
 ments which were bound to enter into a fatal con- 
 flict and prolong the life of corruption. The first 
 was the development of Radicalism, or of a brood 
 of Jhumanitarianism in which the Radicals took the 
 most prominent part. Other strong and earnest men 
 came to the assistance of Cartwright. There were 
 the sturdy Hardy and the impassioned Thelwall. 
 Priestly and the Birmingham Unitarians worked in 
 the Midlands. Home Tooke stung the metropolis. 
 The Fox (a Liberal) section of the Whigs continued 
 for some years to profess the new principles. 
 Southey (in his first phase) lent his aid. Paine 's 
 Rights of Man obtained a circulation which threw 
 the King into transports of rage. Reformers flattered 
 themselves that, in spite of the secession of Pitt the 
 moment a shadow of a pretext was offered him, 
 they were on the eve of the millenium. There were 
 'Corresponding Societies and Societies of Friends of 
 the People in many places, and the new " citizens 
 of the universe " supported fiery toasts at their 
 dinners. Despotism was doomed. France had lit the 
 world. This corrupt Parliament would not last ten 
 years. 
 
 But the French Revolution, to which they all 
 looked, had not proceeded two years before the 
 Friends of the People began to receive very rough 
 treatment from the people. Priestley's house was 
 
 86 
 
THE "GREAT' REFORM BILL 81 
 
 wrecked in a terrible riot. London taverns were in- 
 vaded, and the " pro-French " diners were put to 
 rout. Politicians smiled, and lashed the mob against 
 the French and pro-French. The Revolution entered 
 upon its second and darker phase. Mere Liberals 
 and their poets deserted it, but the more sturdy 
 Radicals held on. We need not study history. The 
 Russian Revolution has followed the same course, 
 and there is the same desperate group of apologists 
 for criminal folly. It did more harm even than 
 verbiage about hurricanes. Parliamentary reform 
 came to be recognised as the cry of a small school 
 whom the masses would hound out of English life; 
 and whom the political leaders now found it easy 
 and even virtuous to extinguish. 
 
 On May 2nd^l793. several petitions for reforjn were 
 sullenly received at the House of Commons. Mr Grey 
 as he then was gravely urged his fellows to con- 
 sider the matter. He pointed out that it was true 
 that, as was asserted in one of the petitions, no less 
 than ninety-seven members were directly, and a fur- 
 ther seventy indirectly, appointed by peers or the 
 Treasury; and that ninety-one Commoners pro- 
 cured the election of a further 139 members of the 
 House. In a word, 306 members, or a majority of 
 the House, represented only the 160 individuals who 
 returned them. By an overwhelming majority, led 
 by Pitt, it was decided not to accept the petitions. 
 
 The last chance had gone. War upon France had 
 been declared in the previous month, and it was 
 now treachery to entertain French ideas of rights 
 of man. The cause of God was identified with rights 
 of property. Like maddened oxen the people, the 
 very victims of this chicanery, were driven upon the 
 reformers. There was a hunt for " foreign agita- 
 tors " and French gold. Special legislation against 
 " evil-disposed " persons began. The societies were 
 suppressed. Many of the stoutest reformers were 
 
88 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 sent to Botany Bay; the less stout, and their 
 printers, were intimidated by fines and imprison- 
 ment. Pitt, the reformer^ ^inaugurated a^J 6 white 
 " against English reformers; He very much 
 regretted it, he explained. We are familiar with the 
 language. There were those who recalled the 
 spectacle, which had sent a thrill of admiration 
 through London some years before, of Pitt standing 
 at the open door of the House, vomiting without 
 (from drunkenness on the previous night), and 
 listening to an attack on him by Fox, and then 
 returning to the benches to make a brilliant reply. 
 Was England hopeless ? But Pitt was a great man, 
 a splendid worker in the country's need, and from 
 Berwick to Land's End the people rallied to him. 
 Parliamentary reform, said Home Tooke in 1797, 
 was " dead and buried." 
 
 It rose again ten years later. The horrors of the 
 Revolution were growing dimmer in people's memo- 
 ries, and the French War imposed a terrible burden. 
 New men appeared. Francis Place, most priceless 
 of reformers, was secretly reorganising forces in the 
 metropolis. Robert Owen, the greatest idealist of 
 the age, was beginning work in the north. Cobbett 
 was inventing a new language plain English. 
 Sir F. Burdett spread a new Radicalism in London. 
 The principles of the great Tory jurist, Bentham, 
 were sternly humanitarian. Indeed, in 1809 Ben- 
 tham issued a Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in 
 which he advocated annual parliaments, nearly 
 adult suffrage, and equal electoral districts. His 
 friend and disciple, James Mill, was detaching these 
 sentiments from Tory politics and preparing the way 
 for philosophic Radicalism. 
 
 These were small, if pregnant, beginnings, and the 
 political leaders who sucked their oranges in the 
 House gave them no support. In the midst of the 
 war they played their party-game with a reckless- 
 
THE " GREAT" REFORM BILL 89 
 
 ness which shocked many who were far from 
 Radicalism. There was a general election in 1807. 
 
 " The great opposite factions," says even the 
 genteel Annual Register for that year, " were loud 
 in their accusations of each other. Each main- 
 tained that the other grasped at offices . . for the 
 purpose of getting possession of the public money. 
 The people appeared very well disposed to believe 
 both. Both parties, the INS and OUTS, as they 
 were familiarly called, had so uniformly embar- 
 rassed government, when it was not m their own 
 hands, and yet so uniformly taken the first oppor- 
 tunity of deserting the cause they had professed 
 to maintain, that the people at large had absolu- 
 tely lost all confidence in a majority of them." 
 
 It is instructive to learn that in that year " the 
 King withheld the subscription of 12,000 with which 
 he was accustomed to assist his ministers for the 
 time being at a general election." There was still, 
 little over a century ago, a do ut des contract be- 
 tween the King and the leading politicians. There 
 were worse things. In 1809 a Member of Parlia- 
 ment, Colonel War die, who had inherited a dis- 
 carded mistress of the Duke of York, the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, persuaded the lady to give him in- 
 formation which he brought before the House. Mrs 
 Clarke herself had done a roaring trade in illicit 
 commissions, and her princely protector had shared 
 the loot. One scandal dragged others to light, as 
 generally happened, and Perceval was compelled to 
 introduce a Bill against the brokerage of contracts 
 and commissions. 
 
 Still the cause of reform languished, and politi- 
 cians prospered. In 1810 Ernest Jones was sent to 
 jail for protesting against the exclusion from the 
 House of " strangers." The privileged Briton, with 
 his unique system of popular representation, had 
 
90 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 still no right to watch the antics of his representa- 
 tives or read a literal record of their proceedings. 
 Sir Francis Burdett arose in the House and pro- 
 tested. He was committed to the Tower. 
 
 There is no need for us to consider the period in 
 detail. Public attention was soon absorbed in the 
 final stages of the titanic conflict with Napoleon, 
 then in the Council of Vienna and the restoration of 
 feudalism in the nineteenth century. A few Whigs, 
 and all the Radicals, protested against this mon- 
 strous enthronement of the Holy Alliance on the 
 smothered aspirations of the peoples of Europe, but 
 it suited the bulk of our politicians. They had 
 smelled the mephitic vapours of the pit of revolu- 
 tion, and their comfortable system was to be pro- 
 tected by closing the outlets abroad. London settled 
 down to a new era of peace, prosperity and pecula- 
 tion. The Prince Regent set a glorious example, 
 putting part of the heavy annual price of his 
 luxury and debauch, with the connivance of politi- 
 cians, on the Civil List. Neither the Spa Fields 
 Riot (1816) nor the Cato Street Conspiracy (1819) 
 disturbed the general complacency. A great meet- 
 ing in Manchester (1819) was settled by the sabres 
 of the cavalry and yeomanry, and made the pretext 
 for stiffening the law which forbade meetings to 
 demand reform. More leaders of the people were 
 arrested, lodged in the abominable jails of the time, 
 or sent to the penal colonies in Australia. 
 
 Canning, whose liberal and humane disposition 
 was shocked by the despotism of foreign monarchs, 
 saw little ground for reform at home. A few more 
 sinecures were abolished. A few measures of no 
 great importance were passed. But the growing 
 mass of the English people, who rotted in the evil 
 underground dwellings and the filthy mills of the 
 industrial north, or were condemned to an ox-like 
 ignorance and endurance over the countryside, were 
 
THE "GREAT" REFORM BILL 91 
 
 to remain in that station to which, as peers and 
 prelates assured them, " the Almighty had ap- 
 pointed them." Few then worked less than seventy- 
 five hours a week, or earned more than ten shillings 
 a week. Children down to the age of six and seven 
 toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week, for a 
 penny a day. The moral condition corresponded, 
 naturally, to the material condition. Drunkenness, 
 sexual license, coarseness, brutality and gambling 
 were all but universal. The death-rate was appal- 
 ling, and the insecurity of life and property a dis- 
 grace to what was called civilisation. Ninety per 
 cent, of the people were totally illiterate, and even 
 the physical sunshine was excluded from their homes 
 by a window-tax. 
 
 These things concern me only indirectly, in so far 
 as they reflect the character of the politicians who 
 ought to have attended to them. What directly 
 concerns us is that the political system itself was 
 sodden with a corruption that forbade all hope of 
 social legislation. I have given many illustrations 
 of this corruption, but if we are to take the true 
 measure of the " great " Reform Bill of 1832, and 
 the character of the statesmen of the time, we must 
 again glance at the system which they were com- 
 pelled by public pressure to submit to some 
 modification.* 
 
 The forty counties of England returned only 82 
 members to Parliament, and twenty-four cities re- 
 turned only fifty members. London had only four 
 members, although it already had a population of 
 a million. In short, of the 489 members who "repre- 
 sented " England no less than 332 were returned by 
 166 boroughs which had, collectively, little more 
 than the poulation of London. Large new towns 
 like Manchester and Birmingham had no represen- 
 
 * The best account, at length, will be found in E. & A. 
 Porritt's Unre formed House of Commons (2 vols., 1903). 
 
92 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 tatives. Moreover, the right of voting was so 
 arbitrarily distributed that there were few places 
 in which the majority of the citizens had an oppor- 
 tunity of expressing their wish. At the Westminster 
 election of 1803 the brewer, butler, bell-ringer, 
 gardener, cook and organ-blower of the Abbey 
 claimed the right of vote in virtue of their office. 
 In a large number of places a small and close cor- 
 poration monopolised the right to vote. At Malmes- 
 bury in 1722 this small group of men had extorted 
 a bribe of a thousand guineas for their vote; and 
 it must be confessed that one element of the demand 
 for reform was the desire of other citizens to share 
 this lucrative right, and a large ingredient of the 
 parliamentary opposition was the prospect of having 
 to bribe a thousand voters where hitherto the candi- 
 date had needed to bribe only twenty or thirty. 
 
 There were, in addition, as we have already seen, 
 burgage-voters : men who held legal titles to certain 
 relics of property to which a vote had once been 
 attached. At Droitwich the right was associated 
 with old pits which had long ago ceased to provide 
 salt. They had returned two members to Parlia- 
 ment during a hundred and thirty years of sterility. 
 At Downton there were a hundred bur gages, of 
 which one man held ninety-nine, while the hun- 
 dredth was a stone in the middle of a stream. At 
 another place the burgage was a plot of land little 
 more than a square yard in extent. In other places 
 pig-styes or pigeon-cotes gave the right to vote. 
 Here and there they were owned by women, and 
 these were not less astute than the men in deriving 
 profit from them. Some of them were, like other 
 property which gave control of seats, bought by the 
 existing government in order to secure its power at 
 the next election. In the reign of George III. 
 ministers bought a number of seats at from two to 
 four thousand pounds each. 
 
THE "GREAT' REFORM BILL 93 
 
 Lastly there was, as we saw, a power in many 
 places of completely nullifying an election by 
 creating any number of freemen on the eve, or the 
 day, of the poll. At Bristol in 1812 the election was 
 settled by the creation of 1,720 freemen. At Maiden 
 in 1826 a thousand were created. At Gloucester in 
 1779 there was a manufacture of 513, and at Derby 
 of 426. They were not necessarily residents. At 
 Coventry, in the 1831 election, 235 out of the 426 
 freeman- voters were not residents. At Colchester, 
 in the same election, there were 900 non-resident 
 freeman- voters. Each party used this weapon with- 
 out the least scruple. But in most places the exist- 
 ing freemen refused to have the value of their votes 
 lowered by this process of multiplication. A small 
 body of voters could expect wine, not beer, on elec- 
 tion-day; and the money-gift was in proportion. 
 Lord Penrhyn spent 30,000 in a futile bid for the 
 vote of the freemen of Liverpool in 1790. At the 
 1830 election a candidate spent 80,000, bribing 
 2,060 freemen. Where there was fear of an effective 
 petition which happened once in a generation the 
 sale of the vote was indirect. Mr Hume assured 
 the House that before the 1831 election the voters 
 at Ilchester, which he knew well, contracted debts 
 to the extent of 35 each. It was the agreed price. 
 
 The only statesman of the time who was moved to 
 any sincere resentment of this state of things was 
 Lord John Russell. In 1828 he put forward a motion 
 for the disfranchisement of Penryn and East Ret- 
 ford, and the sordid nature of the system was ex- 
 posed to all. Both places had indulged in flagrant 
 corruption for decades. Penryn, a Cornish borough 
 with 2,324 inhabitants and only 140 voters, was 
 under the " patronage " of Lord de Dunstanville. 
 In 1802, when a rival to his nominee had appeared, 
 the list of voters had grown mysteriously during the 
 night before the election. These things were prime 
 
94 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 jokes in London clubs a hundred years ago. East 
 Retford had a thousand inhabitants and 140 very 
 disputed voters, under the Duke of Newcastle. For 
 sixty years before 1802 the recognised price of a vote 
 had been forty guineas. At the 1802 election the 
 price was known to rise in some cases as high as 150 
 guineas. The Cabinet could come to no unanimous 
 decision what was to be done in these cases. 
 
 For some years Parliament had escaped a general 
 interest in its peculiar corruption because the public 
 mind was absorbed in the question of Catholic 
 Emancipation. When that question was settled, in 
 
 1829, the parliamentary reformers, led by Russell, 
 pressed their great issue on the House and the coun- 
 try. The agitation had still, at the beginning of 
 
 1830, only faint and remote prospects of success. 
 Whigs supported the Tory Government in resisting 
 even moderate reforms. Suddenly a great change 
 came over the situation. George IV. died and 
 William IV. was believed (wrongly) to be more 
 favourable to progress. A second revolution 
 occurred at Paris, and once more the democratic 
 flame soared until its light penetrated all the dark 
 places of Europe. We quoted, a few pages back, 
 the admirably indignant language of the Annual 
 Register on the corruption of our statesmen. In its 
 issue for the year 1830 it uses a new language. "The 
 spirit ,of change is abroad, wild and indiscriminat- 
 ing," it affirms. " Nothing is easier," it disdain- 
 fully tells the Radicals, " than to persuade men that 
 they are entitled to that which will gratify their 
 self-pride, their vanity, and their love of fame." 
 This ludicrous language was the new political dialect. 
 But the struggle is now opening, and we shall be- 
 come familiar with the accents of the apologists for 
 corruption. 
 
 At the general election in the summer of 1830 the 
 country registered a severe verdict on " the Pig 
 
THE "GREAT' REFORM BILL 95 
 
 Tails," as Daniel O'Connell called the Tories. The 
 Whigs did not reach power, but wherever the elec- 
 tions were comparatively free, both counties and 
 boroughs went heavily against the Tories. This 
 lamentable illustration of the danger of free voting 
 merely increased their determination, and Welling- 
 ton put into the King's mouth language which for 
 months received a popular reply in riots, arson, and 
 the wrecking of mills. " I am confident," said the 
 King in his speech, " that they (the people) justly 
 appreciate that happy form of government under 
 which, through the favour of Divine Providence, this 
 country has enjoyed for a long succession of years a 
 greater share of internal peace, of commercial pros- 
 perity, of true liberty, of all that constitutes social 
 happiness, than has fallen to the lot of any other 
 country in the world." He was determined, he said, 
 to " transmit these blessings unimpaired to pos- 
 terity." It was the voice of Wellington and the 
 " old Tories," as some modern Tories eager to dis- 
 sociate themselves put it. It was, in fact, the only 
 sincere element in the whole opposition to reform. 
 When Wellington was challenged by Earl Grey in 
 the House of Lords, he said : 
 
 " The country possesses at the present moment 
 a legislature which answers all the good purposes 
 of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any 
 legislature ever has answered in any country what- 
 ever. I will go further and say that the legislature 
 and the system of representation possess the full 
 and entire confidence of the country." 
 
 This, I say, was quite sincere ; because Wellington 
 and his colleagues believed that the sole aim of 
 Parliament was to protect property, and that " the 
 country " meant the few hundred thousand who 
 possessed property, 
 
96 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 More interesting to us than this expiring type of 
 politician is the conduct of the younger and more 
 alert statesmen. Whig and Tory, who saw that the 
 time for this inflexibility was over. In London 
 pamphlets calling " To Arms " circulated freely. 
 In the provinces were seen banners with the strange 
 device, "Blood or Bread." Wellington's idea of 
 opposing his guards to this advancing flood was 
 futile. Politicians had reached the familiar second 
 stage in their code : compromise. Peel, who was 
 invited to replace Wellington as Tory Premier, was 
 secretly assured that prominent Whigs would sup- 
 port him if he cheated the popular demand by a 
 moderate measure of reform. Even Brougham, the 
 idol of the advanced Whigs, disavowed any inten- 
 tion of pressing for a "radical sweeping innovation." 
 But Peel knew that his party would not yield any 
 reform which would satisfy the people, and Earl 
 Grey took the reins. 
 
 The psychological study of statesmen is usually 
 pursued with so inveterate a prejudice that none is 
 more genuinely astonished at the result of the 
 analysis than the victim himself, if he be still this 
 side the grave. The sympathetic analyst discovers 
 virtues, the critic discloses vices, of which the states- 
 man had no honest consciousness whatever. Mr 
 Lloyd George probably smiles at some of the 
 eulogious descriptions of himself which appear, while 
 I have no doubt that he raises his eye-brows in mild, 
 naive astonishment at some of the characterisations 
 of him which are current in the warmer zones of the 
 Labour world. He forgets the melodramatic charac- 
 terisations of his opponents with which he enter- 
 tained the same people not twenty years ago. 
 
 The statesman is a casuist. He does things which 
 lend themselves to dark description, but the frame 
 of mind in which he does them is one, not of villainy, 
 but of factitious virtue. He has, as a rule, neither 
 
THE "GREAT' REFORM BILL 97 
 
 time nor disposition to analyse his own sentiments. 
 Even where he carries into public life, as he rarely 
 does, a resolute endeavour to stand well with God 
 and the angels, he quickly develops an art of auto- 
 matically investing projects with a garment of virtue 
 which is quite invisible to his opponents but quite 
 real to himself. The only humour in Lord Morley's 
 great biography of Gladstone is in the unconscious 
 revelation of this process during the first twenty 
 years of his public life. The wrestles with consci- 
 ence of that classic athlete are entertaining. Most 
 statesmen attain the same result more easily. 
 
 It is material to impress this on the reader when 
 we reach the threshold of a century of Whig activity 
 which brings tears of admiration to the eyes of some, 
 yet draws from others only charges of gross 
 hypocrisy and deliberate deception : which is repre- 
 sented, on the one hand, as a low and interested 
 pander to the crowd and, on the other, as a systema- 
 tic cheating of the people by yielding an inch where 
 justice required a mile. The Reform Bill of 1832, 
 framed and passed by the Whigs, is coupled by 
 Liberal writers with Magna Charta, or even with 
 the Sermon on the Mount. It stands in our chil- 
 dren's school-manuals as one of the most glorious 
 monuments of the struggle of light against darkness. 
 Modern historians are not so indulgent. " It was," 
 says the Honourable George Brodrick, " the crown- 
 ing merit of the Reform Act, from a Whig point of 
 view, that it stayed the rising tide of democracy, 
 and raised a barrier against household suffrage and 
 the ballot. ... It was a charter of political 
 rights for the manufacturing interest and the great 
 middle class, but it did nothing for the working 
 classes in town or country."* At the time Daniel 
 O'Connell had caustically, and quite sincerely, re- 
 
 * In Hunt and Poole's Political History of England, vol. xi., 
 p. 307. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 marked that it was intended by the Whigs to give 
 them a lease of Downing Street for many genera- 
 tions. A more patient and conscientious critic, 
 Molesworth, says in his History of England (ii., 51) : 
 
 " The Whig Government, in passing the Reform 
 Bill, had deliberately and intentionally maintained 
 to a great extent the preponderance which the 
 landed interest had always enjoyed by giving so 
 many additional members to the counties and by 
 consenting to allow so many insignificant boroughs 
 in the agricultural districts to be represented in 
 the House of Commons." 
 
 Writers and speakers whose interest it is to con- 
 sider only this aspect of the reform easily conclude 
 that Grey and Russell stand in the long line of our 
 Machiavellian statesmen. The truth is, as I said, 
 that the psychology of such men is more subtle than 
 is usually imagined. It is no more simple than is the 
 psychology of their fiery Radical opponents; just 
 as the respective minds of the Duke of Newcastle 
 and Mr Smillie are by no means so simple in their 
 vice and virtue as the average miner supposes to- 
 day. Grey and Russell were sensitive to the cor- 
 ruption of the system, and wanted reform. But 
 they were essentially and very narrowly limited by 
 the system, and they determined to keep reform 
 within such bounds that it should not weaken the 
 Whigs and assist the Radicals. They had only to 
 glance at the ninety per cent, illiteracy of the people 
 which they did next to nothing to alter to dis- 
 cover a most praiseworthy reason for their restric- 
 tion. 
 
 Grey included seven relatives of his own in the 
 strong ministry which he formed. Most of his 
 ministers were peers and large landowners. Mr 
 Brougham, the popular idol, virtuously refused to 
 be muzzled by accepting a seat in the Cabinet; but 
 
THE " GREAT' REFORM BILL 99 
 
 he was just as effectively brought into the syndicate 
 by an offer of the Lord Chancellorship, which he 
 accepted. It was noticed how during the next year 
 or two Brougham kept some great scheme of reform, 
 at which he often hinted, " locked up in his own 
 breast." Russell and a few members of the Cabinet 
 were set to devise a scheme. Grey was no demo- 
 crat. He expressly stipulated for an aristocratic 
 scheme, and the King had good confidence in him. 
 Popular agitators like Cobbett and Richard Carlile, 
 who would warn people how things were drifting, 
 were handed over to the police. Radical ideas of 
 ballot, adult suffrage, and triennial Parliaments were 
 brushed aside ; and the electorate was neatly 
 trimmed so as to get rid of such real corruption as 
 was of no advantage to the Whigs. 
 
 The scheme which Russell eventually brought into 
 the House was, in fact, more drastic than the Radi- 
 cals (on whose vote it more or less depended) had 
 expected. Sixty boroughs, returning 119 members, 
 were to be disfranchised. Forty-seven boroughs 
 were to lose one member. When one recalls that 
 197 members were returned for places that had less 
 than a hundred voters each, and that 154 patrons 
 returned 307 members, the scheme seems modest 
 enough. But the Tory gentlemen of England fell 
 upon it in tones of quivering indignation and pathetic 
 concern for the nation. Sir R. H. Inglis laid it down 
 that it was the business of Members of Parliament, 
 not to represent the views of constituents, but to 
 " consider the affairs of the country and the good 
 of the Church." As to the " rotten " boroughs, 
 they were a providential part of England's magnifi- 
 cent system. They enabled men of intellect and dis- 
 tinction to fill the House with " useful men," 
 unhindered by the mob; and some of the most 
 eminent of British statesmen had entered the House 
 by that avenue. Peel took up this apology for the 
 
100 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 rotten boroughs. Were they disfranchised, the 
 House would soon cease to be " that great arena of 
 talent and eloquence " which commanded the admi- 
 ration of the world. As to representation, it was 
 the grand character of the existing system that it 
 " enabled every class in the community to have a 
 voice in the election of members of the House." 
 Palmerston, who really cared nothing about reform, 
 quietly reminded his aristocratic friends that the 
 alternative, seeing the state of the country, was 
 revolution. But the Tories were inflexible. Sir 
 C. Wetherell said it was a proposal of " robbery and 
 pillage " : a very naive allusion to the value of the 
 vote in small boroughs and corporations. 
 
 The Bill passed the second reading by one vote 
 802 to 301. Infuriated Tories and representatives 
 of the corrupt boroughs (who swarmed about the 
 House) found that the turning vote was that of a 
 Tory-traitor, the Right Honourable John Calcraft, 
 whose conscience had driven him into the Whig 
 lobby. It is on record that he was so persecuted 
 that he committed suicide a few months afterwards. 
 But the Government was beaten on committee, and 
 went to the country. 
 
 In the ensuing struggle for " reform " every in- 
 strument of corruption and intimidation was used, 
 as never before, by both sides, and the Whigs re- 
 turned with a large majority and a weaker Bill. 
 It had a majority of 136 votes on the second reading, 
 and the House settled down to one of its historic 
 struggles on committee. Lest any should be 
 genuinely misinformed, the Government put into 
 circulation some appalling details about the 
 boroughs. Beeralston, Bossiny, and St Mawe's each 
 had only one ten-pound householder ; Dunwich, Bed- 
 win, and Castle Rising had two each; Aldobrough 
 had three, Ludgershall four, Bletchingley five, and 
 so on. Beeralston paid in taxes <3, 9s. a year, and 
 
THE " GREAT ' REFORM BILL 101 
 
 Bramber ,16 8s 9d. They returned two members 
 each. Birmingham paid 26,968 a year, and Man- 
 chester 40,094. They had no members. Taxation 
 had nothing to do with the matter, the Tories re- 
 torted; and with the help of the Irish who here 
 begin the practice of selling England's birthright 
 for the promise of a mess of Irish pottage they 
 fought every word of the Bill and canonised every 
 corrupt borough in Cornwall. For forty nights, in 
 the heat of summer, they struggled eight hours a 
 night for our " glorious constitution." In a fort- 
 night Peel spoke forty-eight, and Wetherell fifty- 
 eight times. The Bill passed by 345 to 236 votes. 
 
 " What will the Lords do ?" It was the question 
 of the hour, but none for a moment doubted the 
 answer. They rejected the Bill by 199 to 158 votes. 
 Grey had made a special appeal to the bishops to act 
 justly. In reply the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 cheered by the score of bishops behind him, 
 denounced the Bill as " mischievous in its tendency 
 and dangerous to the Constitution." Twenty-one 
 bishops voted against it. There were only two 
 schools in the House Whigs who thought it a less 
 painful alternative to revolution, and Tories and 
 prelates who cried that it " opened the floodgates " 
 and threatened Church and State. And this was a 
 Bill which touched only 86 of the rottenest of the 
 rotten boroughs, left all the other electoral corrup- 
 tion undisturbed, and enfranchised only half a 
 million respectable citizens ! 
 
 What would the people do, was the next question. 
 It was six in the morning of October 8th when the 
 Lords gave their decision. That day London shop- 
 keepers kept their shutters up, and there was a run 
 on the Bank for gold. Here and there a rotten 
 borough rejoiced. " Sudbury, famous in the annals 
 of corruption, rang its church-bells and fired 
 cannon." Over the country generally fell the dark 
 
: : : ,;THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 shadow of approaching revolution. Nottingham 
 Castle, the property of the Duke of Newcastle, was 
 burned down. Bristol witnessed days of civil war. 
 Meetings ran to crowds of 200,000 people. The 
 Radical press used language which even an editor 
 in our free age would hastily and shudderingly con- 
 demn to the waste-basket. The London Chronicle 
 flayed " that obscene renegade Phillpotts " (the 
 Bishop of Exeter), called the Queen a " nasty Ger- 
 man frow," and railed at the King's " bastards " 
 and even " their poor, drivelling begetter." " The 
 by-blows of a king ought not to be his body-guard," 
 it roundly said. The next time the King appeared in 
 London his cariage was pelted with mud. Bishops 
 were burned in effigy, and cathedrals threatened 
 with fouling. The workers grimly made pikes out 
 of iron bars, and drilled on the moors. The guards 
 sharpened their swords in the streets. 
 
 Let us not claim too much virtue for the Whigs. 
 England was very near to civil war in the autumn and 
 winter of 1831 ; much nearer than seems to be known 
 to those superficial folk who assure each other that 
 Britons, unlike Frenchmen, never think of revolu- 
 tion. All but the blind Tories, who would not mind 
 drowning ' Radicalism ' in blood, were terribly im- 
 pressed by the omens. There must be reform. Lord 
 John Russell brought in a third Bill, little altered, 
 and it passed the Commons. We need not linger 
 over the details. The plan was mooted of creating 
 a sufficient number of new peers to turn the majority 
 in the House of Lords. The Tories seem to have 
 concluded that even Whigs, who after all were 
 English gentlemen, would not stoop to so revolu- 
 tionary a manoeuvre, and six further weeks were 
 spent in obstruction and other waste of time in the 
 first quarter of 1832. Grey resigned, and the re- 
 doubtable and stiff-necked Iron Duke assumed power. 
 He had soon to confess a humiliating failure, and 
 
THE "GREAT' REFORM BILL 108 
 
 the London mob used such arguments with the King 
 that he was terrified into submission. Grey re- 
 sumed office, as the King now consented to the 
 creation of new peers. Privately, however, the King 
 advised the Tory peers to withdraw their opposition, 
 in order to prevent the sullying of their high caste, 
 and a sufficient number .of them sullenly complied. 
 The Bill passed the Lords by 106 votes to 22. 
 
 England was lit from end to end with bonfires. 
 So thankful were our grandsires for small mercies. 
 The ballot was refused. The disproportion of elect- 
 oral districts was outrageous. Hundreds of mem- 
 bers would still sit for constituencies which escaped 
 destruction only because Whig had an equal interest 
 in them with Tory. Bribery and corruption were 
 untouched. Intimidation was as free as ever. Less 
 than a million out of six million adults had a share 
 in choosing their legislators. The Lords could still 
 annul any decision of the Commons, and the King 
 could set at naught both of them. It had taken a 
 grave threat of civil war to win so much. But the 
 country rejoiced. From the slopes of Pisgah Grey 
 and Russell and Brougham announced to the people 
 the land flowing with milk and honey which was to 
 reward their centuries in the desert. Once more to 
 the polls, on the new franchise, and the golden era 
 of social legislation would open. Let us coldly and 
 judiciously survey its achievements. It means a 
 new chapter in the evolution of our politicians. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE " REFORMED " PARLIAMENT 
 
 THE general election which was held in 1832 made 
 little difference in the relative strength of parties in 
 the House of Commons. There are historians who 
 affect some surprise at this, but we have seen that 
 it was precisely the result expected, if not designed. 
 The Whigs, who were already in a majority, slightly 
 increased in number. The enlarged county- vote 
 favoured the land-owners, Whig and Tory, and in 
 the towns corruption was more rampant than ever. 
 It was so gross that the House of Commons was 
 compelled to pass sentence of disfranchisement on 
 Liverpool, Stafford, Warwick, Hertford and Carrick 
 Fergus. But the Lords helped their friends out of 
 this little difficulty. They found that there had been 
 no bribery, and the most glaring examples yet known 
 escaped punishment. In sum, a solid majority of 
 Whigs confronted an unstable minority of 150 
 " Conservatives " and 190 Radicals, Irish members, 
 and free lances. The name " Conservative " had 
 lately been introduced and found favour. 
 
 But, although the struggle over the Reform Bill 
 had sharpened afresh the antagonism of Whig and 
 Tory, the real note on both sides of the House was 
 conservatism. The Whigs had discovered a new 
 phrase. There were to be no more " organic 
 changes." The strain upon the British Constitution 
 of cutting out a few score boroughs and burgages 
 which were an utter disgrace, and enfranchising a 
 few tens of thousands of ten-pound householders 
 
 104 
 
THE " REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 105 
 
 quite substantial folk in those days was so severe 
 that the noble lords who ran the country could 
 not contemplate any further interference with the 
 system of representation. The Radicals, with pain- 
 ful memories of the evils of the last election, pressed 
 for the ballot. The Government refused to hear of 
 it, and Mr Grote, the Benthamite, brought in a Bill. 
 Lord Althorp, the Whig leader, genially represented 
 to the House (while a larger number than ever of 
 petitions for coruption and intimidation awaited in- 
 vestigation) that the Reform Act had substantially 
 put an end to these evils, and the remaining dis- 
 orders were negligible. Peel went farther than his 
 Right Honourable friend, urging that the House of 
 Commons was already too democratic. The Bill was 
 rejected by 211 votes to 106. Year after year, for 
 forty years, grave-minded men would urge this ele- 
 mentary reform of electoral procedure on the House, 
 and not a single eminent politician on either side 
 would listen to them. All of them knew Grey and 
 Russell and Palmerston, as well as Peel and Derby 
 and Disraeli that the open vote meant bribery and 
 intimidation. 
 
 The Radicals pressed for triennial, instead of 
 septennial Parliaments. Mr Tennyson brought for- 
 ward a motion, and again the Government used its 
 influence to prevent the reform. It was now un- 
 necessary, they said. One must " give a trial " to 
 the great reform they had just effected. And so on. 
 As to abolishing the property-qualification for Mem- 
 bers of Parliament, extending the vote to all house- 
 holders, reforming the House of Lords, etc^ Whig 
 and Tory scoffed at these Radical delusions. The 
 revolutionary movement on the continent had again 
 subsided, and there was no grave pressure. You 
 must not mend your house during a hurricane : you 
 need not mend it when the weather is good. The 
 Radicals, utterly disgusted with this philosophy, 
 
106 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 sick from the frustration of their great hopes of 
 1832, were in furious and helpless opposition before 
 the end of 1833. The Birmingham Union, the great 
 centre of reform in those days, prayed the King to 
 dismiss his ministers, as they were either unable or 
 unwilling to carry out the work of reform. 
 
 Seeing that the Radicals then pressed merely for 
 reforms which seem even to the modern Conserva- 
 tive obvious and elementary, this language will be 
 to many unintelligible. Is it not notorious that the 
 Reformed Parliament at once addressed itself to a 
 constructive program which changed the face of 
 England ? What about that long list of glorious 
 measures which adorns the pages of political his- 
 torians and flows admiringly from the lips of our 
 teachers ? 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that many measures of 
 great importance were passed, and it would be 
 equally ungenerous and unjust to regard such states- 
 men as Russell, Grey and Brougham as insensible 
 to the grave injustices of the time until a forest of 
 pikes appeared on the political horizon. They 
 abolished colonial slavery, made considerable im- 
 provements in the administration of justice, regu- 
 lated the labour of children, reformed municipal 
 government, greatly reduced the infliction of capital 
 punishment, reduced the tax on papers and did 
 something for education. But these things must be 
 considered relatively to the times, and one then per- 
 ceives that the measures were a totally inadequate 
 and partly a reluctant alleviation of a state of things 
 that ought to have inspired any statesman with a 
 " sacred madness " for reform. 
 
 Take the position of the children of England. It 
 is well known how, at the introduction of the 
 factory-system, every child in the manufacturing 
 districts, down to the age of five or six, was drafted 
 into it and driven like a slave. When these did not 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 107 
 
 suffice to build up the fortunes of cotton-spinners, 
 the workhouses of the kingdom were emptied and 
 tumbrils rolled northward from all parts with their 
 loads of orphans and illegitimates. No one cared 
 what became of them. There were no restrictions 
 on hours of labour or forms of punishment, no sani- 
 tary regulations, no responsibility for accidents, no 
 inspectors. The whole country knew that colonial 
 slavery was hardly worse than the condition of the 
 children of England. In 1831 the House appointed 
 a Select Committee to investigate the matter, and 
 its report was circulated in 1832. It is one of the 
 most horrible documents, one of the most ghastly 
 indictments, that it is possible to read. Yet the 
 Government proposed to do nothing. The manu- 
 facturers were its friends; and therefore interfer- 
 ence with the free play of economic laws on the 
 labour-market, or with private rights of property, 
 was a very undesirable thing. When humanitarians 
 pressed, Lord Althorp at first refused them Govern- 
 ment assistance. The evils were, however, too 
 ironical in face of the zeal to abolish slavery abroad, 
 and a measure was passed. What did it do ? It 
 reduced the hours of children between the ages of 
 nine and thirteen to forty-eight hours a week, and 
 of youths and maidens below the age of eighteen to 
 sixty-nine hours a week ! 
 
 Reformers pressed for the education of children, 
 and this was the obvious remedy for the prevailing 
 coarseness as well as we now know a means of 
 enriching the country. Considerably more than half 
 the children (not the population) of England still 
 received no education at all, and the education of 
 the majority of the other half was a comedy. The 
 State paid not one penny for the work. " There is," 
 said one of the rare liberal prelates of the time, 
 " no record of any people on earth so highly civil- 
 ised, so abounding in arts and comforts, and so 
 
108 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 grossly and generally ignorant, as the English." 
 There was no contemporary nation so rich and able 
 to grant it as England. The Government, partly to 
 oblige capitalists who wanted every hour of the 
 children's time and partly in obedience to the 
 jealousy of the clergy, refused to interfere. When 
 at length they were shamed into doing something, 
 they awarded an annual grant three-fourths of 
 which went to the Church of 20,000 a year! 
 Prussia, with a far smaller population and infinitely 
 less wealth, was then spending 600,000 a year on 
 its schools. 
 
 It was the same with the administration of justice. 
 The jails were squalid and filthy beyond description. 
 The penal law was barbaric, and the courts were 
 often atrocious. In 1833 a well-known humanitarian 
 witness was driven with scorn out of court (and 
 an innocent man condemned for lack of witnesses) 
 by a London magistrate because the hostile bar- 
 rister chose to describe him as an unbeliever. All 
 over the country squire-magistrates imposed the 
 most savage sentences for trifling thefts, and 
 treated the people as dogs, or less respectfully than 
 they treated their dogs. Reformers had pointed 
 out the barbarism and stupidity of the system for 
 forty years. Only its most glaring faults were 
 modified by the Reformed Parliament. 
 
 The Parliament lasted only two years, when the 
 game of Ins and Outs was vigorously resumed. It 
 was believed that there was a Tory reaction in the 
 country, and the King gladly received the resignation 
 of the Whigs. The country was, indeed, disgusted, 
 and, in spite of the customary Whig circus-parade 
 of " the great measures they had put on the statute- 
 book," their strength was reduced at the 1835 
 election. The election itself was an eloquent com- 
 mentary on their plea that no further " organic 
 changes " were needed. Bribery passed all previous 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 109 
 
 records. The Maidstone Gazette (August 1st, 1837) 
 tells us that Wyndham Lewis spent 6000 in secur- 
 ing 529 votes at Maidstone. At Stafford 852 out of 
 1049 electors were bribed. Corruption was general 
 and notorious. No less than sixty-seven election- 
 petitions were returned to the House. But the 
 balance of parties was so nearly equal that neither 
 side would lose a seat, and the customary machinery 
 for absolving delinquents was used. Such petitions 
 were then tried by committees chosen from the 
 House, and the committees were chosen with care. 
 One knew the verdict as soon as the list of names 
 was published. Daniel O'Connell, who now worked 
 with the Radicals, bluntly accused the absolving 
 members of admitting " foul perjury." The Radi- 
 cals tried to get the power of adjudging petitions 
 transferred to the law-courts, but the leading states- 
 men found the proposal a reflection on the integrity 
 of members of the House of Commons. 
 
 The stately procession of reform-measures con- 
 tinued under Melbourne, the new Premier, and the 
 Tories made melodramatic forecasts of ruin and 
 revolution. The education-grant was raised, after 
 a furious struggle, to .30,000 a year. The death- 
 sentence for sheep-stealing and coining and similar 
 crimes was abolished. The penny-post was estab- 
 lished. Although, when Radicals moved for a 
 further extension of the franchise, Whigs united with 
 Tories and crushed them with a weight of 509 votes 
 to 20, the Tories used such language against the 
 Government that there arose a situation almost 
 unique in English history. It was darkly rumoured 
 that the Tories were conspiring against the throne, 
 and O'Connell chivalrously offered the young Queen, 
 who had just acceded to the throne, an army of 
 500,000 Irishmen to defend her. How little they 
 knew Queen Victoria ! " The industrial and the 
 social evolution," says so little Radical an historian 
 
110 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 as Mr Sidney Low, " went on almost unnoticed by 
 statesmen and politicians absorbed in the party- 
 controversies." * 
 
 The condition of England was growing serious. 
 Seven years of glorious Whig legislation, under the 
 banner of Reform, were ending in " the Hungry 
 Forties." The rich, through the growth of machinery 
 and the capitalisation of industry, became richer 
 every decade. The poor became poorer. Consump- 
 tion sank, and the disordered and clumsy finances 
 showed a deficit of several millions every year. Un- 
 easy at the mood of the country, the Whigs tried 
 an ." organic change "; one that would be for their 
 own advantage at the approaching election. They 
 would alter the franchise so as to secure a larger 
 Irish support. They were compelled to withdraw 
 this, and they then sought to alleviate distress, and 
 conciliate Radicals, by a fixed duty on corn. 
 
 The election was one of the liveliest and most 
 inebriating on record. Liberals as they now called 
 themselves made a banner of the Big Loaf and the 
 Little Loaf, and eloquently recited the long list of 
 their measures. Conservatives they now positively 
 disclaimed the odious name of Tories called upon 
 the land-owners to wreck this new threat to agri- 
 culture, on the manufacturers to smite for all time 
 these meddlers with their business, on the country 
 generally to save itself from revolution. Corn-Law 
 Abolitionists were now added to the din. Without 
 taking a single penny out of the pockets of the 
 wealthy it was possible to relieve the distress of the 
 poor by abolishing protection. Chartists swarmed 
 in the towns and flourished the famous six points 
 (the ballot, manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, 
 equal electoral districts, the payment of members 
 and the abolition of the property-qualification) 
 
 * Hunt and Poole's Political History of England, vol. xii., 
 p. 24. 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 111 
 
 which were to destroy corruption for ever and really 
 inaugurate the millenium. 
 
 One gets tired of repeating, although it is histori- 
 cally true, that bribery and corruption were worse 
 than ever. The authoritative record is : " The 
 recent election had been attended by more corrup- 
 tion than ever. . . . New forms of bribery and cor- 
 ruption had been introduced." It is an historic fact 
 that electoral corruption increased after 1832, yet 
 legislators refused for decades to interfere with it. 
 Roebuck pointed out in the House that many peti- 
 tions had been corruptly compromised : a familiar 
 method of " pairing." A Parliamentary Committee 
 had to report that he was right, and named six 
 boroughs for disfranchisement. " But," says Moles- 
 worth, " the persons interested in preventing further 
 proceedings were so numerous " that nothing was 
 done, except the chastisement of one very flagrant 
 borough and a mild and innocuous measure against 
 certain forms of corruption. 
 
 Lord Morley's biography of Gladstone is not a 
 critical exposure of the dark ways of politicians, but 
 here, as in many other places, it corrects those who 
 imagine that corruption was confined to a few per- 
 sons and places. It was at the election of 1832 that 
 Gladstone descended into the political arena. He 
 was, in mood and temperament, a High-Church 
 curate whom an ambitious father had diverted from 
 the narrow path of virtue into the broad road of 
 politics. Under the patronage of the Duke of New- 
 castle, who only three years before had evicted 
 forty families " for the outrage of voting against his 
 nominee," he stood for " the rather rotten borough " 
 of Newark. Lord Morley does his best for his friend 
 and hero ; and indeed it is the peculiar value of this 
 illustration that it relates to the highest-minded 
 statesman who ever governed England. We are 
 assured that Gladstone did not know at the time 
 
112 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 how his eloquence was supplemented by " darker 
 agencies." Some things he knew and resented. He 
 poured out righteous indignation when he heard 
 that special constables were not to be had because 
 every man in the town was drunk, and that " a cer- 
 tain proportion of the voters could not be got to 
 the poll without a breakfast," including intoxica- 
 tion. He did not know apparently, that the band- 
 men, mostly Reds (Tories), were paid fifteen shillings 
 a day (an artizan's wage for a week) for several days. 
 He knew it all when his expenses, which he had 
 strictly limited to a thousand pounds, were returned 
 at more than two thousand. And the point of the 
 matter is that " the fierce battle [against his agents] 
 lasted over many of the thirteen years of his con- 
 nection." That is to say, corruption was used in 
 his cause at later elections. It is worse to reflect 
 that it was more than half a century before he used 
 his great power to pass a measure against the cor- 
 ruption he knew so well (1883).* 
 
 I am tempted to glance at another page of Lord 
 Morley's work which concerns this year, 1841, 
 which we have reached, and reflects a correspondingly 
 low standard in the House itself (in which Glad- 
 stone already held a high position). The Govern- 
 ment was holding on in the face of defeat for the 
 sheer purpose of completing its meretricious appeal 
 to the constituencies. Peel and the Tories fought 
 just as vigorously to get them out before that appeal 
 was completed. It came to a division of a sensa- 
 tional character in which, it was at first rumoured, 
 the votes were equal. The Liberals then brought in, 
 in a chair, a member who was " reported to be in 
 a state of total idiocy," " and was evidently in total 
 unconsciousness of what was proceeding " (says Mr 
 Gladstone himself). This man, " less human even 
 than an automaton," was borne through the crowd 
 
 * Life of Gladstone, i., pp. 91-97 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 113 
 
 of members and added to the Liberal vote. Glad- 
 stone's only comment is : " Upon looking back I 
 am sorry to think how much I partook in the excite- 
 ment that prevailed ; but how could it be otherwise 
 in so extraordinary a case ? " There are other 
 peculiar consciences besides the Nonconformist. A 
 little less Thomas a Kempis, and a little more 
 Benthamism, would have been better for Eng- 
 land. 
 
 I am not writing a political history of England, 
 and will confine myself to two points in the Tory 
 rule of the next five years. The women and children 
 of England now had a passionate and singular 
 champion in Lord Shaftesbury, a man whose reform- 
 ing fervour along one line was accompanied by 
 extraordinary prejudices along others. He painted 
 for Parliament so harrowing, yet indisputable, a 
 picture of the horrors of woman and child life in the 
 mines that even the most hardened politician shud- 
 deringly consented to reform. At least, Lord 
 Londonderry alone, a large mine-owner, had the 
 effrontery to mumble the customary phrases about 
 rights of property. The philanthropic Earl was less 
 fortunate in pressing for the education of children. 
 His description of child-depravity, his revelation 
 that there were still in England 1,014,193 children 
 receiving no education whatever, moved the Cabinet 
 to frame a measure to provide some schooling of 
 factory-children, but it was lost in the acrimonious 
 struggle of Church and Chapel for the " souls " of 
 the youngsters. 
 
 He then, in 1844, pressed a Bill for reducing the 
 work-hours of women and children in factories to 
 ten per day (six days a week). Sir J. Graham, the 
 Government spokesman, suavely regretted that he 
 must insist on " ten " being changed into " twelve " 
 (for children down to the age of thirteen and mar- 
 ried women). He " felt much pain," but, after all, 
 H 
 
114 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 it was " a question of degree rather than of prin- 
 ciple." (It was really a question of the employers 
 of factory-labour being immensely more numerous 
 and important to the Whigs than the employers of 
 children in mines.) Shaftesbury had been taunted 
 with the fact that, while he laboured so zealously 
 for industrial workers, the labourers on his father's 
 estates in Dorsetshire were little better than serfs, 
 and he had fallen back upon their healthier condi- 
 tions. Sir J. Graham, Gladstone's colleague, " would 
 not examine into the question of comparative salub- 
 rity as between agricultural and manufacturing in- 
 dustry." The hours must be twelve per day. John 
 Bright, now a power in the House, more gravely 
 supported the Tory sentence on the women and 
 children of England. He reminded members of 
 " the high wages, and general prosperity and com- 
 fort, of the manufacturing population." I have 
 spoken with Lancashire women who were girls in 
 the mill in those days. From cellar-homes in the 
 dingy suburbs of Manchester they were driven at 
 five in the morning to the distant mill. On winter 
 mornings the cold was so piercing that they at times 
 ate their scanty dinner on the way to the mill. 
 They struggled wearily through the day without 
 food, and toiled home too tired to do more than eat 
 a little bread and fat and fling themselves, as they 
 were, on what they called beds until five in the 
 morning. They shall have twelve hours a day of it, 
 said the House, Whig and Tory. Cotton-spinners 
 were formidable folk to interfere with. 
 
 The new school of politicians, the Manchester 
 school, was, as is well known, strongly opposed to 
 these vital reforms. I have said that the mind of 
 the politician is peculiarly subtle and casuistic. 
 When we find Lord Morley, in a more than sym- 
 pathetic study of the most genuinely Puritan of 
 them all, continually asking us to use a large charity 
 
THE REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 115 
 
 in surveying the careers of politicians, this state- 
 ment will not seem excessive. Indeed, the lawyer 
 or the man of business may justly plead that the 
 politician is no more entitled to leniency than he, 
 but may not implausibly be subjected to an even 
 more rigorous judgment on account of the further- 
 reaching consequences of his conduct. In the particu- 
 lar matter that concerns us here such a plea is especi- 
 ally forcible. Industrial England was foul beyond 
 words right up to, if not far beyond, the middle of 
 the nineteenth century. The hours and conditions of 
 labour, the squalor and ignorance and burdens of 
 the workers, the disparity of wage and rent on 
 capital, were outrageous. We are taking a broad 
 human and entirely just view when we insist that 
 these early Victorian statesmen must be judged by 
 the England over which they presided. Their omis- 
 sions, nay, then* active hindrance of reform, are 
 then seen to be enormously larger than their achieve- 
 ments ; and the moral temper which we find at the 
 root of their omissions and obstructions reflects the 
 enduring taint of our political world. 
 
 Bright and Cobden at least hated the party- 
 system, which was responsible for so much of the 
 evil. When Peel began to break with the inveterate 
 protectionist tradition of the Conservative party, in 
 abolishing the Corn Law, Cobden passionately urged 
 him to wreck the party-system. " Let us have an 
 end of this juggle of parties, this mere representa- 
 tion of tradition," he said. Without cynicism, we 
 may reflect that the party-system had thwarted Cob- 
 den's aim for ten years. But in founding a "school," 
 instead of a party (if there is any difference), 
 Cobden and Bright rendered a similar disservice. 
 Whether or no the Liberal tradition which they 
 established of excessive economy in defence has not 
 cost us in the long run a hundred millions for every 
 million it saved, on the industrial side the policy of 
 
116 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 laissez-faire prolonged the horrors of the workers 
 for two generations, planted the seeds of a terrible 
 conflict, and is shown by the logic of events to have 
 been from the first an academic superstition. It 
 has the even worse aspect that it filled the pockets 
 of the rich and kept empty the pockets of the poor. 
 It kept the sunshine in comparatively small areas 
 of the national life. 
 
 This, however, was no deliberate aim, however 
 much it may have been a subconscious or semi-con- 
 scious impulse, in Cobden and Bright. For them 
 the abolition of the Corn Law was the -first expedient 
 in a struggle that has become familiar : how to put 
 a little more in the pockets of the workers without 
 taking any from the pockets of the masters. The 
 fascination of the plan began to dawn on Peel and 
 Gladstone. Then came the terrible potato-blight 
 and famine, sending the scale down with a bang. 
 " This memorable session of 1846," says Lord Mor- 
 ley, referring to the Tory adoption of free trade in 
 corn, " was not a session of argument, but of lobby 
 computations." Parliament was interested (while 
 the country starved) in " the play of forces, the 
 working of high motives and low, the balance of 
 parties, the secret ambitions and antagonism of 
 persons." Peel plunged, and wrecked the Tory 
 party; though the unfailing providence that pre- 
 sides over politics had already supplied an astute 
 and entirely unscrupulous leader, one Benjamin 
 Disraeli, who would salvage the wreck. 
 
 Peel fell, and the Whigs came in. At once, in 
 1846, a new Bill for the reform of the industrial 
 world was introduced. Cobden opposed it, and the 
 House gladly adopted his plea to wait and see if 
 the beneficent abolition of the Corn Law would 
 not do all that was needed. In 1847 Mr Fielden, 
 a humane Oldham manufacturer, brought the House 
 back to the question of the women and children. He 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 117 
 
 poured bald statistical facts upon his colleagues. 
 Manchester, with a population of 163,856, had nearly 
 6000 deaths a year, and of these one fourth were 
 deaths of children of less than five years of age. 
 Liverpool was as bad. Their homes were abomin- 
 able. Their sufferings from disease and death were 
 terrible. Their vices alone flourished. He asked 
 a modest improvement : twelve hours a day, includ- 
 ing two for meals, on five days, and eight on Satur- 
 days, for children between the ages of thirteen and 
 eighteen. In short, a ten hours day, or fifty-eight 
 hours a week, of actual work for children ! If our 
 politicians were not so blinded by their party-game, 
 they would see that our purblind Education Depart- 
 ment, instead of cramming into children's heads 
 long lists of Saxon princes and wars and other rub- 
 bish, taught them how different England was even 
 seventy years ago. There would be much less 
 " bite " in Bolshevist oratory. 
 
 The House was " appalled," we are told, by the 
 figures, which were read from official publications, 
 and passed the second reading. In plain English, 
 only 87 members had the courage to vote against 
 it, but only 195 had the courage to vote for it I 
 The committee stage was instructive. Hume and 
 Bright sternly opposed the Bill in the sacred name 
 of political economy. Sir Robert Peel, for his party, 
 opposed it in the not less august name of property. 
 " You are," he said, in a passage of singular can- 
 dour, " giving these classes intellectual improve- 
 ment; and unless you can remove every law incon- 
 sistent with that intelligence, the institutions of the 
 country will be in danger." Being a gentleman, he 
 was, of course, anxious to improve the lot of the 
 people; but not this way. He did not suggest a 
 way. In the end, he boldly posed as a champion 
 of the workers. He knew of hundreds of working 
 men who had, with the aid of their children's wages, 
 
118 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 made small fortunes. In the name of justice he 
 demanded that this right be not taken from them. 
 The Whig case was stated, neatly, by Sir George 
 Grey. On the maxim, which Gladstone formulated 
 years afterwards, that Liberal wisdom is "to blunt 
 the edge of a grievance," he urged that "ten hours" 
 be changed to " eleven hours." In the Lords, 
 Brougham, the reformer, surpassed his oratorical 
 record in denouncing the Bill. He was in such 
 deadly earnest, the country was in such positive 
 danger of " ruin " from the Bill, that he opened 
 with an invocation of " divine assistance " in pul- 
 verising it. But the workers of England were now 
 alive and alert. Chartism and Owenism grew 
 amazingly. The Bill passed. 
 
 On the strength of this great legislation the 
 Liberals came back from the polls with an increased 
 majority in 1847. For a time it looked as if they 
 were going to do great things. The change was, of 
 course, in their environment. The flames of revolu- 
 tion shot up once more at Paris. The Chartists 
 made the blood of London run cold. But the fires 
 died down quickly and harmlessly, and the party- 
 game proceeded comfortably. Russell settled down 
 to doing next to nothing, and Disraeli settled down 
 to an attitude of vigilance in case he imprudently 
 ventured to attempt something. Radicals brought 
 in their almost annual motions or Bills for parlia- 
 mentary reform the ballot, the abolition of the 
 window-tax, etc., and the government suavely 
 murdered the infants. Cobden pressed the cause of 
 naval economy and of arbitration. Others advo- 
 cated marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and 
 others a reduction of the scandalous salaries of ser- 
 vants of the Crown. They were all conducted to the 
 lethal chamber. The country was again in great 
 distress. The golden age had churlishly refused to 
 come at the command of the Manchester magicians. 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 119 
 
 Russell wearily handed over the reins, and there 
 was a Coalition. 
 
 Few periods in the history of the party-system 
 are more lamentable than that immediately before 
 and during the Crimean War; into which, indeed, 
 we notoriously drifted through lack of firm and wise 
 statesmanship. Yet there was far more ability in 
 Westminster than there is to-day, and there was 
 never less real party-antagonism. For a time 
 Disraeli had kept together the main body of the 
 Conservatives, apart from the Peelites, on a pro- 
 tectionist platform. That failed, and it is ludicrous 
 to read how the rival politicians strove to create 
 rival programs. The situation was a miserable 
 struggle of statesmen for office, complicated by a 
 dread of the practical measures which the state of 
 the country would demand. The reader must glance 
 at the biography of any statesman of the time- 
 Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, Palmerston, Graham, 
 Gladstone, Landsdowne, Newcastle or Disraeli. The 
 time is a maze of ambitions, hostilities and intrigues. 
 Mutual charges of trimming, scheming, deceiving 
 and even lying flew about. 
 
 There is, of course, no more harm in a statesman 
 seeking office than in a mechanic seeking to become 
 a foreman. The cant of a certain type of orator or 
 writer (generally " on the make " himself, as we 
 all are) on this point is hardly less repugnant than 
 the effeminacy of the mediaeval person who thinks 
 ambition a sort of sin. The mischief comes in when 
 the politician flatters himself that he seeks office, 
 or seeks to expel others from office, for the good of 
 the country. Your politician is, it is true, always 
 convinced that his conduct of affairs will be benefi- 
 cent, but his casuistic imagination makes this so im- 
 portant that the end begins to justify the means. 
 Hence the " scramble," as Morley calls it, of 1853 
 (and 1855). He likens it to the antics of carp 
 
120 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 " struggling for bread in the fish-ponds of Fontain- 
 bleau." Disraeli, excluded from the scramble by 
 his blunders, cynically observed : " The cake is too 
 small." Sir James Graham confided to his diary: 
 "It is melancholy to see how little fitness for office 
 is regarded on all sides, and how much the public 
 employments are treated as booty to be divided 
 among successful combatants." 
 
 Out of the struggle emerged Palmerston : a 
 vigorous, generous, cheerful man, a healthy hater 
 of the corrupt European despots, a man not in- 
 sensitive to social maladies at home, but a born 
 politician. " My lord," said one to him, " I shall 
 be pleased to support you when you are right." 
 " I don't want your support when I am right," said 
 Palmerston, " but when I am wrong," The country 
 liked him; but the country wanted more parlia- 
 mentary reform, and neither he nor Landsdowne 
 wanted to see it, and hardly any statesman desired 
 it as a matter of justice. The Crimean War with 
 the usual crop of blunders, born of the seed of 
 political corruption, saved him from the painful 
 need of reforming England. When it was over he 
 recommended the incompetent Duke of Cambridge 
 as Commander-in-Chief of the army. 
 
 Peace came at length, and then dissolution; and 
 Bright urged the country to turn down the " set 
 of liars and scoundrels " who formed Her Majesty's 
 Government. Instead, the country scattered the 
 Manchester School and returned Palmerston to 
 power. The election was as corrupt as ever. A 
 recent writer tells from his own recollections how, 
 at that time, the boatmen of Sandwich would vote 
 for a Liberal for three pounds, but, being Liberals, 
 would not vote for a Tory for less than five pounds. 
 The Whigs contrived to get through a very moderate 
 Divorce measure (which still left England behind 
 nearly every other civilisation in that matter). They 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 121 
 
 were beaten in the following year, and the Tories 
 had a turn. Their opponents the majority were 
 divided into four bitterly hostile parties, but the 
 quarrels were so largely personal that they could 
 hardly find " planks " for election-platforms. 
 
 The one thing the country clearly did want was 
 an extension of the franchise, and each party now 
 saw that it must give a performance on that slack 
 wire if it would attain power. Disraeli unblushingly 
 volunteered. " If," says the historian of the time, 
 " we regard politics merely in the light of a game, 
 in which office is the prize of the most adroit or 
 lucky player, we cannot but bestow unmixed praise 
 on this move on the political chess-board, as being 
 the one that was best calculated to checkmate the 
 opponents of the Government." The Bill, natur- 
 ally, embodied an astute attempt to enlarge the 
 franchise yet strengthen the Tories; and Palmers- 
 tonians, Russellites, Cobdenites and other minorities 
 united to slay it and the Government. The country 
 was dazed and weary. It wanted reform, but it 
 saw the matter " treated entirely as a question be- 
 tween the Ins and Outs," says Mr Herbert Paul. 
 For a change it returned a majority of Liberals, who 
 promised real reform, and they made short work of 
 the tricks by which Disraeli tried to cling to power. 
 
 Palmerston was compelled to let Lord Russell 
 introduce a reform Bill. " In 1855," Gladstone had 
 said in the House, " my noble friend escaped all 
 responsibility for reform on account of the war : in 
 1856 he escaped all responsibility for reform on 
 account of the peace : in 1857 he escaped that in- 
 convenient responsibility by the dissolution of 
 Parliament : in 1858 he escaped again by the dis- 
 solution of his Government." Gladstone who him- 
 self showed not a spark of concern for reform did 
 not love Palmerston, who detested all creeds and 
 Churches. But Palmerston knew that he was not 
 
122 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 yet cornered. The majority of the members wanted 
 to escape reform if they decently could. Russell's 
 Bill was received coldly, debated languidly, and 
 withdrawn. " There can be no doubt," says Moles- 
 worth, " that many a member sent to the House of 
 Commons because he was believed to be a strong 
 and honest reformer was secretly doing his utmost 
 to defeat the small modicum of reform which the 
 Government was willing to concede, because they 
 knew that the adoption of a Reform Bill would be 
 followed by a dissolution."* Bright used stronger 
 language about this cynical violation of " solemn 
 pledges." As an historian, who is not a Radical, 
 says : " Members who had had to pay somewhat 
 dearly for their seats felt no desire to support a 
 measure which might send them back to their con- 
 stituencies almost before they had become familiar 
 with their duties." It was the burning question in 
 the country, yet on some nights of the debate the 
 House was counted out. 
 
 Palmerston marked time, as far as social legisla- 
 tion is concerned, for five years. A reform Bill was 
 brought in almost annually. It was' as good a joke 
 as Women Suffrage would be to a later generation 
 of politicians, though there was still hardly a work- 
 man in England who had a vote. In 1865 the 
 Government dissolved, but Disraeli and his Tories 
 were obviously just as fraudulent as the Liberals, 
 and Palmerston returned to power. I will give later 
 the authentic evidence of no less ecclesiastically- 
 minded a person than Sir John (Lord) Acton stoop- 
 ing to buy the votes of shopkeepers in this election, 
 in the Liberal interest. The country resounded with 
 the cry of reform and wallowed in corruption. 
 
 But Palmerston died in the same year, and the 
 bells which tolled for him " sounded the knell of the 
 ten-pound-householder, the real ruler of the nation." 
 
 * History of England, iii., 164. 
 
THE "REFORMED" PARLIAMENT 123 
 
 Gladstone, now Liberal, led the Commons, and he 
 and Lord Russell decided that it was their duty to 
 introduce a Bill at once. Their followers cursed 
 their conscientiousness, and it had the expected 
 reward. Robert Lowe and a company of seceding 
 Liberals attacked it fiercely, and Disraeli took ad- 
 vantage of the situation. 
 
 The Tory ministry was formed in July 1866, and 
 it needed all the political cunning and effrontery 
 that Disraeli could command. The country was 
 aflame for reform, but Lowe and the Adullamites 
 would regard it as dishonourable trickery if the 
 Tories brought in any Bill resembling that which 
 had occasioned their temporary alliance. One of 
 the great chapters in the history of the political 
 game opened when in February 1867, Disraeli pro- 
 duced his proposal. They would proceed, he said, 
 by resolution, not introduce a Bill, and the House 
 would, of course, see that a rejection of the resolu- 
 tions would not involve the fall of the Government. 
 The House laughed at the impudence of his sugges- 
 tion, and he produced the Bill which he had in 
 reserve. 
 
 Nominally, it enfranchised all ratepayers; but a 
 series of " fancy franchises " gave additional votes 
 to clergymen, lawyers and educated people gener- 
 ally, so as to reduce its democratic perils. The 
 Liberals were baffled and annoyed. Disraeli had 
 stolen their electoral wares. They pressed amend- 
 ments, and Disraeli gracefully yielded. When the 
 amendments were Radical, the Liberals themselves 
 (fearing a dissolution) would not support them. Old 
 Tories tearfully predicted the crack of doom. Adul- 
 lamites gnashed their teeth at the cynical betrayal. 
 Lowe bitterly observed that " the Right Honourable 
 gentlemen opposite " had " given no indication of 
 the extreme facility of changing their opinions and 
 lending themselves to the arts of treachery." Dis- 
 
124 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 raeli heatedly advised the Right Honourable gentle- 
 man not to be so free with the word " infamy," for 
 he (Lowe) had done the same thing in 1859. Lord 
 Cranbourne (Salisbury) said the Bill was " a poli- 
 tical betrayal which has no parallel hi our annals." 
 Gladstone (who suffered plural voting until the day 
 of his death) denounced the dual vote as " a gigantic 
 instrument of fraud." 
 
 " When thieves fall out "Demos gets a little of 
 his own. The Bill became law. Parliament was 
 again reformed. The measure stands in Conserva- 
 tive electioneering literature as one of the glorious 
 monuments of the party. Lord Derby merely 
 claimed at the time that he had " dished the 
 Whigs." Disraeli probably trusted his peculiar 
 eloquence to keep on the straight path the working 
 men he had been forced to enfranchise. After all, 
 he may have reflected, they were less critical than 
 ten-pound householders. " Few great changes," 
 says Mr Sydney Low, " have come about with less 
 evidence of principle and conviction on the part of 
 those mainly concerned in it." Disraeli, who was 
 not haunted by such reflections, enjoyed a delicious 
 six months' performance on the parliamentary slack- 
 wire. Lord Derby resigned, or handed him the 
 Premiership. If the Liberal majority turned him 
 out, they would have to appeal to the country on 
 the old franchise, and therefore have to appeal again 
 as soon as the new franchise was good. It was the 
 game at its most piquant. Disraeli danced until the 
 autumn. Then the general election bade him dis- 
 appear ungrateful country ! and the great period 
 of Gladstonian Liberalism opened. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 
 
 AT this point in our consideration of the evolution 
 of political corruption it is necessary to pass from 
 the Old to the New World. We are going to see a 
 new form, which will provide a more modern and 
 subtle element of demoralisation, introduced into 
 British political life. Birmingham, at this point, 
 begins to use " the Caucus"; and, although the 
 theory must not be pressed too far, there is a general 
 agreement that the idea of the new " machine " was 
 borrowed from the United States. It is, at all events, 
 clear that the systematic organisation of political 
 life in the United States, and its usefulness for party- 
 purposes, began to react upon England. Until 1868 
 there was little organisation in this country. There 
 were recognised dynasties of leaders of the great 
 parties, generally peers, and through other peers and 
 landowners they secured that a certain number of 
 constituencies should be either " Whig " or " Tory." 
 The result was obtained by a lavish use of money 
 and of the dominant local influence. The new 
 party, Radicalism, having little money or influence 
 and large professions of political virtue, would now 
 seek a counterpoise in the der>^cratic organisation 
 of votes ; and this would in a few years be perverted 
 by the oligarchy and subdued by the prevailing 
 taint. 
 
 During the period immediately preceding the 
 Revolution in the American Colony there was a 
 division akin to that of Whigs and Tories in England. 
 
 125 
 
126 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Some of the colonists were for the peaceful induce- 
 ment of England to redress their grievances : some 
 were for violent procedure and independence. They, 
 in fact, called each other Whigs and Tories, and no 
 doubt the contrast of political temper was of long 
 standing. Boston, the great centre of disaffection, 
 was one of the most intense foci of political life, 
 and its clubs and societies quickly reflected the fire 
 of the time. It is recorded by American historians 
 that thirty years before the Revolution groups of 
 the more prominent citizens of Boston used to meet 
 at times and " make a Caucus " ; that is to say, to 
 settle between themselves the nominees for what- 
 ever elective offices there were. The absence of a 
 great political centre, a native Parliament, compelled 
 the ambitious to look the more eagerly to local 
 offices, and, as usual, a spirited few took advantage 
 of the supineness of the majority. A secret con- 
 fabulation, over a glass of spirits and a pipe, 
 appointed the candidates, and the conspirators then 
 worked for their appointment. One such society 
 became known as " the Caucus Club." The origin 
 of the word is lost, and a number of ingenious 
 theories fill the gap in our knowledge ; but, although 
 it is not the most accepted theory, one inclines to 
 the view that it comes from an Indian term for such 
 conversations. Such societies, and the " Sons of 
 Liberty " and " Daughters of Liberty " which arose 
 on every side, soon extinguished the last traces of 
 Tory, or pro-English, feeling, and America, luckily 
 for the world, began its separate evolution. 
 
 Some years later the outbreak of the French 
 Revolution, which had been in no small part inspired 
 by the American Revolution, led to the creation of 
 a number of " Democratic Societies," on which the 
 wealthier and the governing elements frowned. As 
 the French Republicans went from excess to excess, 
 and ended in imperialism, these societies fell into 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 127 
 
 discredit, but from them is derived the name of the 
 second of the great political parties of America, the 
 Democrats. 
 
 It was, however, another and more immediate 
 issue which rent the new State into two factions, 
 In framing the Constitution statesmen had at once 
 encountered the very delicate problem of finding a 
 just balance of power between the central national 
 authority and the constituent States of the Union. 
 Some such difficulty was encountered later, in 
 Australia, and will always be experienced. By 
 difference of temperament men divided into those 
 who laid the greater stress on central authority and 
 those who were more jealous of liberty. To some 
 extent this was accentuated by a difference of en- 
 vironment. The townsman favoured centralisation, 
 the patricians of the agricultural provinces preferred 
 decentralisation ; and the French fervour, which was 
 greatest in the towns, was all on the side of central 
 national authority. Men like Madison and Hamil- 
 ton led a Federalist (or Nationalist and Democratic) 
 movement against the Anti-Federalist forces under 
 Jefferson. 
 
 The Constitution was inevitably a compromise, but 
 the struggle continued for a generation as a conflict 
 of rival tendencies in the interpretation of the Con- 
 stitution. Two very sharply opposed parties were 
 developed, and the multiplication of political offices, 
 in the State-legislatures and at Washington, opened 
 out a large field for ambition, intrigue, and conflict. 
 The choice of Washington as first President was, of 
 course, spontaneous and national; and Adams in 
 spite of the opposition of Hamilton succeeded him 
 without a material use of party-machinery. Both 
 these were Nationalists or Democrats (a word then 
 little used), and the Anti-Federalists remained on the 
 opposition until they contrived to get Jefferson 
 elected in 1800. It was now their turn to reduce 
 
128 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the Democrats to powerlessness, and by 1820 the 
 antagonism of the parties was lost, apparently, in 
 an "Era of Good Will." We shall see how and 
 why it revived. 
 
 But what mainly concerns us is to see how the 
 flavour of (supposed) ancient Roman virtue of re- 
 volutionary days developed into the extraordinary 
 corruption of American politics. The " caucus," we 
 remember, was a meeting of a small group of force- 
 ful citizens in some domestic or convivial environ- 
 ment who agreed to promote the election of certain 
 men (largely themselves) to the elective offices. In 
 this there is no corruption, unless we choose to re- 
 gard as such the exploiting for the triumph of their 
 own ideas of the general apathy by a spirited few. 
 There were now far more, and more important, 
 offices to be filled, and caucusism had a proportion- 
 ate development. One must recall the conditions 
 of the time in America. As late as 1800 there were 
 only 4,500,000 people scattered over the existing 
 States, and in immense regions communication was 
 difficult, and an election a vastly different matter 
 from what we know it to-day. Once therefore the 
 (presumably) best men, or politically best-educated 
 men, of a State were concentrated in the capital 
 of that State, their recommendation of candidates 
 would naturally have great weight. The division of 
 parties increased the disposition of electors to rely 
 on such recommendations, as the leaders of the party 
 were better judges of what was regarded as a vital 
 need. 
 
 There thus sprang up a party-caucus of each type 
 at every centre of State-legislature, and from it a 
 " ticket " was issued recommending candidates for 
 the Governorship or for minor offices. The caucus 
 soon extended its operation to the nomination of 
 Electors (the men elected to elect the President). 
 The local caucus attended to municipal offices. The 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 129 
 
 national caucus at Washington, in fine, was soon 
 discovered to have, not merely higher ability to 
 direct, but the advantage of a central position, and 
 it began to spread the net of its influence over the 
 whole land. 
 
 Hamilton and Madison may be said to have 
 initiated the work by their efforts to exclude Adams 
 from the Presidency. There was nothing corrupt in 
 the measures they took, and the motive was defen- 
 sible; but such interference was against the spirit, 
 if not the letter, of the Constitution, and it set up 
 a precedent. The Anti-Federalists, who had ex- 
 pressed warm American indignation at the conduct 
 of Hamilton, set up a secret caucus of their own at 
 the next election and secured the return of Jeffer- 
 son. In 1804 their caucus and its operations were 
 quite open, and from that date the Congressional 
 caucus was a recognised institution. There were 
 protests in the various States, which could do no 
 more than suggest names to the central caucus at 
 Washington, but the Congressmen held their ground 
 firmly. Their opponents, the Democrats, were for 
 twenty years reduced to a negligible force. In the 
 country the Democrats were accused of favouring 
 the English idea of a central despotism, and were 
 even suspected of monarchist plots. 
 
 Another step in the direction of corruption was 
 taken by Jefferson and his friends, though assuredly 
 Jefferson had no idea of acting unworthily. 
 Washington and Adams had, in assigning offices, 
 looked only to the fitness of applicants. They 
 might strain the qualifications here and there in 
 favour of some meritorious survivor of the War of 
 Independence, but they did not use their power to 
 exclude political opponents. Jefferson, with the 
 familiar casuistry of a politician, concluded that it 
 was important to the country that office-holders 
 should have " sound views." He removed 124 
 
130 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 officials from the administration, and took some care 
 that Republicans a name which now came into use 
 filled the vacant places. No one then foresaw the 
 future scrambles for " the spoils of office," and all 
 the insufferable abuses to which this apparently 
 patriotic principle would lead. 
 
 In the States themselves another germ of corrup- 
 tion was developing. The American Constitution, 
 which one must not call primitive, but which one 
 may describe as the outcome of the best wisdom of 
 a small population in the eighteenth century, laid it 
 down that each State must appoint a small number 
 of Electors who would then choose the President of 
 the Republic. The State was left to settle its own 
 method of nominating the Electors, and the political 
 eagerness of a few, which so easily passes into cor- 
 ruption, found an opening here. It was usual at 
 first to divide a State into districts, each of which 
 should have one Elector. The practice soon set in 
 of altering the districts so as to include a majority 
 of voters of a particular party, and a new word was 
 added to the vocabulary of political corruption. 
 " Looks like a salamander," said one man, looking 
 at a ' revised ' map of a district issued by Governor 
 Gerry. " You mean a Gerrymander," said another; 
 and " gerrymandering " entered the dictionary of 
 politicians. . 
 
 The normal method of obtaining the electors was 
 to issue a list of candidates for the whole State 
 and let people vote on them. Here the caucus at the 
 capital of the State found an opportunity, and it 
 issued the " ticket." Local caucuses were consulted 
 in drawing it up, but the whole business was domi- 
 nated by party-interests and personal greed. With 
 the " Revolution of 1800," or the triumph of the 
 Jeffersonians, the struggle became more acrimonious, 
 and the corruption deepened. Champions of the 
 oppressed minorities began in Congress to make 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 131 
 
 eloquent complaints about the decay of the primitive 
 purity of American politics. The caucus was fiercely 
 denounced as tyrannical, and the orator, Randolph, 
 admitted that the appointment of Electors had be- 
 come, in forty years, " a mockery a shadow of a 
 shade." The Senate passed a measure for the 
 restoration of the district-system, but the House of 
 Representatives protected the caucus and its ticket. 
 Differently from in the Senate, where large and 
 small States were equally represented, the more 
 populous States had a majority in the House of 
 Representatives, and they had an interest in the 
 existing system. 
 
 New York was, meantime, rising to a position of 
 importance, and in the third decade of the nine- 
 teenth century it contributed a fatal element to the 
 political development of the United States. So far 
 we have seen manoeuvres which only a purist would 
 designate as corrupt, and we can well imagine the 
 politicians of America pouring virtuous scorn on 
 that political condition of monarchist England which 
 we have considered. They probably made no allow- 
 ance for the extreme difficulty of uprooting abuses 
 in a country where the traditions are centuries old 
 and the development is continuous. We have now 
 to see how, in spite of their scorn of England a 
 disdain still instilled into the young in American 
 schools by the teachers dwelling on the state of 
 things we abolished in 1832 in spite of the political 
 virgin soil they had for creating reformed institu- 
 tions, they engender a political corruption which is 
 almost without parallel in the civilised world. 
 Politics has a peculiar attraction for the ambitious, 
 because here the successful man has an immeasur- 
 ably larger share of public notice and flattery than 
 the successful merchant or lawyer. When large 
 material gain is added to this soothing of one's 
 vanity the struggle for office becomes more intense 
 
182 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 and less scrupulous, and the character of the 
 aspirants sinks lower and lower. 
 
 Amongst the patriotic societies founded on the 
 eve of the War of Independence there had been 
 started at New York a " Society of St. Tammany." 
 The name is not known in the Martyrology of the 
 Church, but true Americans must have an American 
 patron, and a dead Indian chief was jovially decora- 
 ted with the aureole of sanctity. In 1789 this society 
 was revived as a democratic organisation with the 
 kind of Indian rites and ceremonies which American 
 lodges still often adopt. Its aim was to check the 
 wealthy and sustain the principles of the French 
 Revolution. In time it adopted the Jeffersonian 
 or Anti-Federalist side in national politics, and 
 toward the close of the century it found an able 
 organiser in Aaron Burr and became an effective and 
 unscrupulous machine for controlling votes. This 
 machine was used on Jefferson's behalf in the 1800 
 election, and the Tammany men claimed that they 
 won the Presidentship for him. Jefferson did not 
 allow the claim, but he richly rewarded the New 
 Yorkers with offices, and the scent of Tammany for 
 spoil grew keener. How it then organised completely 
 for the control of the city, how in a few years its 
 leaders defrauded the city of a quarter of a million 
 dollars, will be told later. Let us first follow the 
 development of national politics. 
 
 By the third decade of the nineteenth century 
 New York and other corrupt cities were contributing 
 low and greedy types of politicians to the central 
 body, and the early tendencies were accentuated. 
 The old division of parties was hi decay, though 
 there was still a general antagonism on such issues 
 as the National Bank and other Federal proposals, 
 and personal ambition was more pronounced. A 
 group of covetous men would choose someone with a 
 plausible qualification and trust to enrich them- 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 133 
 
 selves by his patronage if they made him President. 
 Senator Van Buren, of New York, the successor of 
 Aaron Burr, adopted General Jackson, a poor states- 
 man but very popular soldier, and the Tammany 
 machine was set to work all over the country. 
 Adventurers of the lowest type were enlisted in the 
 campaign, and America generally had its first great 
 lesson in corruption. Jackson was elected (1828), and 
 the election was followed by the first open and sordid 
 scramble for " the spoils of office." Jackson was 
 an upright man, but he had employed corrupt men 
 and their clamours drowned his scruples. His pre- 
 decessors had discharged, collectively, only seventy- 
 four public officials. Jackson displaced two thou- 
 sand in the first year of his Presidentship, and let 
 his greedy followers into key-positions of the ad- 
 ministrative system. As he was re-elected in 1832 
 the new men taking good care of their own re- 
 election, for they would certainly fall with their 
 President the machine had eight years in which to 
 fasten itself on the country. 
 
 America was now definitely handed over to the 
 mercies of professional politicians; and English 
 politicians, even of that remote date, were virtuous 
 in comparison. The " caucus " had been generally 
 superseded by " Conventions," in which delegates 
 of the voters met to decide on the adoption of can- 
 didates. The new politicians captured the Conven- 
 tions by the now general method of direct or indirect 
 bribery, and controlled the nominations from the 
 ward up to the highest office. Where a sufficient 
 number of voters remained unattainable by corrup- 
 tion, violence was ruthlessly organised and the 
 grossest fraud was used in manipulating the returns. 
 Every official, even police-official, belonged to, or 
 was paid by the party. Each of the great parties, 
 which began about 1835 to style themselves formally 
 Republican and Democrat, had such an organisa- 
 
134 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 tion. The weary and bewildered voter registered 
 as he was directed, or as he had contracted, or else 
 remained aloof from the sordid traffic of political 
 life. 
 
 The economic crisis of 1837 and the repeated ex- 
 posures of the " graft " that was now unblushingly 
 levied more or less awakened the country. America 
 was never without statesmen of the nobler type, 
 and a high proportion of the citizens regarded with 
 shame the appalling lapse from the idealism of the 
 days of Washington and Adams. Unhappily, many 
 of the best citizens were, as in all countries, un- 
 willing to have anything to do with the squalid 
 game of politics, even to the extent of casting a 
 vote, and the remainder could not put together an 
 effective organisation without imitating some of the 
 irregular methods of their opponents. You need 
 some courage to face the poll when you know that 
 the polling-station will be guarded by the " ward- 
 heeler " and his gang of bullies (with bribed police 
 looking on), that your vote may have already been 
 cast by someone who has impersonated you or 
 neutralised by two men with no right to vote, and 
 that the returns may be falsified to any extent. 
 High-minded leaders like Clay would not consent 
 to adopt any of these methods after denouncing 
 them for years in Congress. General Harrison, a 
 straight but dull-minded man, was chosen as candi- 
 date by the Whigs (the reformers), and, to the 
 slogan of " Away with the Spoilers," they swept 
 him onward to the supreme office. 
 
 It made little difference to America except that 
 a new and piquant feature was added to political 
 life. Probably no spectacle in America is to-day so 
 bewildering to the Englishman as the carnival or 
 pandemonium which accompanies the adoption of a 
 candidate for the Presidentship at the Convention 
 of one or other of the great parties. Much allow- 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 135 
 
 ance must be made for difference in social traditions. 
 I say traditions, not temperament, as the popular 
 sort of psychology in America which diagnoses the 
 differences between the English and the American 
 character is absurd. " The American wears his heart 
 on his sleeve," I heard an American orator say, to 
 resounding applause, " and the Englishman wears 
 it where God put it." It is, of course, supposed 
 to be a virtue to wear it on your sleeve. Everyone 
 who knows America knows how superficial this is. 
 The American social tradition, still saturated with 
 colonial qualities, is more expansive and boisterous 
 than the English. On a summer's day, in an outer 
 suburb of New York itself, you may meet a com- 
 pany of middle-aged patresfamilias dressed as 
 Indians and acting the part, following a custom of 
 their " lodge." Prick the skin of one of them, and 
 you may find that he was a sober Englishman twenty 
 years earlier. His heart is still in the same place; 
 but he is in a new social world. 
 
 At the 1840 election, however, there was a definite 
 and deliberate beginning of the wilder features of a 
 Presidential campaign. Harrison was a mediocrity 
 who had not even the military ability which was 
 supposed to have qualified General Jackson for the 
 position of supreme statesman. He would not fire 
 the imagination of the country; so the party must 
 fire the imagination of the country with a poetical 
 picture of him. Mammoth-parades, torch-light pro- 
 cessions, prodigious banquets, massive flag-waving, 
 etc., were introduced in order to simulate (and thus 
 eventually create) the enthusiasm which was lacking. 
 A London crowd will enthuse over anything if you 
 give it the chance. An American crowd will enthuse 
 over nothing, because the enthusiasm itself is worth 
 while. 
 
 Harrison was, as I said, carried into office to the 
 tune of " Away with the Spoilers." As soon as he 
 
136 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 was installed the lusty chanters crowded round him, 
 clamouring for " the spoils of office," and he had to 
 yield. The spoil was now richer than ever. Rail- 
 ways had begun, and securing a concession for these 
 and other public works meant enormous illicit 
 wealth. You got a monopoly against a city or a 
 State and worked accordingly. People slept in the 
 corridors of the White House to besiege the Presi- 
 dent in the early morning. Harrison succumbed in 
 a few weeks, and the Vice-President, Tyler, suc- 
 ceeded him. He was less fit for the office than 
 Harrison, but the sacred Constitution put the coun- 
 try in his power. To secure his position at the next 
 election he discharged public officers (even Harrison's 
 men) right and left, and created a Tyler-bureaucracy. 
 The administration became fearfully corrupt. Even 
 judges were appointed for a few years, and justice 
 was bought and sold. A period of seventy years' 
 immunity for certain types of grave crime began in 
 many parts of the United States. Corruption in the 
 State-legislatures and the cities throve proportion- 
 ately. Politics became one of the most lucrative 
 and least exacting professions in America. 
 
 The struggle over slavery and the Civil War in- 
 fused some sincerity into this shocking world. Both 
 parties were rent by the abolition-question, and 
 Lincoln was at length elected on a principle. Even 
 at this juncture, however, the old practices were 
 employed. Without Lincoln's knowledge his sup- 
 porters bargained with the delegates of Indiana and 
 Pennsylvania, promising that two notoriously un- 
 worthy nominees of theirs should enter Lincoln's 
 cabinet in return for their votes. Lincoln was forced 
 to keep the compact. He (and most of the leading 
 Republicans) wished to purify the system, and to 
 distribute offices equally amongst the two parties. 
 But the Democrats generally sided with the South, 
 and there was the usual hecatomb of partisans of 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 137 
 
 the fallen power. Over and over again the party- 
 organisers compelled Lincoln to make unworthy 
 appointments. " Jones (the party-boss) is Presi- 
 dent," said Lincoln sadly. 
 
 The momentary triumph of the Republicans led, 
 at the death of Lincoln, to the complete demoralisa- 
 tion of the party. The Democrats being discredited 
 for office, the Republicans invaded the conquered 
 South, enfranchised the negroes, and organised the 
 vote. Some of them, it is true, were idealists of the 
 Abolitionist-school, but the majority were " carpet- 
 baggers " the name is here added to the American 
 political vocabulary of the familiar type. They 
 captured or sold the public offices, appointed their 
 own judges, levied commissions on contracts, and 
 ruthlessly plundered States and cities. Republican 
 leaders directed the campaign from Washington. 
 The dispossessed whites of the South sullenly re- 
 organised as a Democratic party, and a struggle of 
 great virulence and unscrupulousness ended in a 
 " solid South " for the Democrats. 
 
 The party-organisation of one side or the other 
 now completely overshadowed the Executive, which 
 was rarely strong. A Congressional Campaign Com- 
 mittee at Washington arranged and controlled the 
 elections of members of Congress throughout the 
 country, directed the President in the exercise of 
 patronage, and drew up a regular tariff for aspirants 
 to office. One paid a specified sum to the party- 
 funds, and one then proceeded to extort as much as 
 possible from the position or the contract which one 
 obtained. We shall see this in more detail pre- 
 sently, when we consider local politics. But the 
 very centre of the corruption was the capital of the 
 State or of the Republic which ought to have sternly 
 crushed it. It was a time of great industrial expan- 
 sion, and " boodle " and " graft " attained the 
 monstrous growth of Mesozoic reptiles. " A net- 
 
138 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 work of rings surrounds Congress," said a writer in 
 the North American Review as early as 1869. An 
 attempt was made, in the interest of the people, to 
 check the disastrous grants of railway-monopolies, 
 but the companies defeated the authorities by means 
 of their bribed representatives in Congress or in the 
 State-legislature and did what they liked in the 
 country. Hardly an enterprise could be started 
 without the payment of " boodle " (bribes), and the 
 corrupt speculators could then rely on the police 
 and the judiciary to overlook their exploitation of 
 the public. 
 
 General Grant was promoted to the White House, 
 and the political world was, if anything, still further 
 corrupted. After the customary instalment of his 
 partisans in office a system of espionage and secret 
 denunciations was evolved, and the terror was worse 
 than ever. The pretext was that the South was still 
 dangerous, and it was essential for the preservation 
 of the Republic to " strengthen the party." Every- 
 body knew that the real loyalty taken into considera- 
 tion was the loyal payment of the " voluntary " 
 contributions to the party-funds which had been 
 promised when office was secured, and that hundreds 
 of sordid adventurers were at hand seeking to dis- 
 place the fortunate man. The idealists who had 
 entered the party in the fight against slavery were 
 now elbowed out of it, and the lower type of 
 politician, largely of Irish extraction, made of it an 
 environment in which he alone could prosper. 
 
 Such was the evolution of the political corruption 
 which grew up in the virgin soil of the new Republic : 
 a corruption which is even now very far from 
 destroyed in America. President Hayes (1876-80) 
 tried to scotch it, but failed. Under Garfield it met 
 little check; and the restraint which President 
 Cleveland put on it almost died away under his 
 successors, Harrison and M'Kinley. As the South 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 139 
 
 was plainly seen to be loyal after 1870, there was no 
 clear principle on which the parties contrasted. On 
 the tariff and currency questions each party was 
 itself divided. They were bent only on preserving 
 the corrupt system and its spoils. In 1883 a rising 
 anger in the country led to the passing of a measure 
 which opened public offices to competitive examina- 
 tions and forbade " contributions " by members of 
 legislative-bodies or office-holders. But within a 
 few years the muddy stream had found under- 
 ground channels. One could still buy a judgeship 
 for $15,000, or a seat in Congress for $4,000; and 
 the position was worth far more on account of its 
 opportunities for boodle and graft. Politics re- 
 mained, and remains, a " game " of a kind hardly 
 intelligible to the Englishman. 
 
 In order to understand both the value of this 
 power for which men struggled arid the reason why 
 the corruption flourished right into the twentieth 
 century, we must glance at local politics. Tammany 
 had, as we saw, inaugurated the corruption at New 
 York, but Mr G. Myers, the impartial historian of 
 Tammany, assures us that " the Whigs sought in 
 every possible way to outdo Tammany in election- 
 frauds . . . and in fiscal frauds they left a re- 
 cord well-nigh equalling that of Tammany, The 
 Native Americans imitated both Whigs and Tam- 
 many men, and the Republicans have given instances 
 at Albany of a wholesale venality unapproached in 
 the history of legislative bodies."* For more than 
 a hundred years the greatest city of the New World 
 was exploited by rival broods of politicians to an 
 extent that seems incredible to denizens of the 
 " effete and despotic " Old World. One corrupt 
 gang, the Tweed gang, cost the city of New York 
 at least $160,000,000, on the lowest computation, 
 during a short spell of power. 
 
 * The History of Tammany Hall, p. x. (1901). 
 
140 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Right at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 the Tammany Society captured the city of New 
 York, thinly veiling its operations with a program 
 of charity and benevolence. It organised the votes 
 in every ward, and bribed or terrorised the voters. 
 As early as 1806 its leaders began to be convicted 
 of fraud, and from that date until 1900 there was 
 hardly one of its prominent men who was not in- 
 volved in theft or swindling. In a few years, in the 
 first decade of the century, the city showed a deficit 
 of quarter of a million dollars. In 1811 Tammany 
 Hall was built out of these illicit gains, and the 
 Tammany Society (which secretly controls the Hall 
 and its work) has found it convenient at times to 
 insist on the nominal distinction of the two. By 
 1816 the Tammany men controlled both the city and 
 the State, issued tickets for all offices, and regulated 
 every election. They were, in theory, still the 
 democratic representatives of the people against the 
 Pro-English plutocrats. The people met in their 
 wards to choose delegates for the Tammany Council. 
 But the leaders, the professional politicians, were 
 rapidly accumulating wealth and binding to them- 
 selves, by golden chains, a sufficient body of ad- 
 herents to ensure the realisation of their corrupt 
 policy. They put creatures of theirs in the police 
 and the courts, and they allotted to each other, or 
 sold to outsiders, blocks of land which are now in- 
 valuable. The stream of gold, or silver, trickled 
 down as far as the wards, and the entire system was 
 cemented by mutual interest. 
 
 The result became apparent in 1826 and 1827, 
 when the grossest frauds were discovered. Several 
 leaders were convicted of embezzling millions of 
 dollars. They escaped punishment, as a rule, but 
 America was astounded at the disclosure of electoral 
 corruption. Loads of men, generally vote-less aliens, 
 were openly driven from poll to poll on election days 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 141 
 
 and permitted to vote at each. Voters of the 
 opposing side were robbed of their votes, or the 
 votes were registered for Tammany. Bribery was 
 common. The system was used on behalf of General 
 Jackson at the Presidential campaign, when thou- 
 sands of fictitious votes were cast for him in New 
 York. The bosses were proportionately rewarded, 
 and the benefits percolated to the lower strata of 
 the system. 
 
 Robert Dale Owen and his " Working Men's 
 Party " boldly assailed the monster hi 1829. But 
 Tammany successfully raised the cry that the tenets 
 of the Owenites, the most idealist party of the first 
 half of the nineteenth century, were " subversive of 
 morality," and continued its career of plunder and 
 violence. Common voters were paid five dollars a 
 vote. Members of the city Council and the State- 
 legislature were bribed to grant franchises (monopo- 
 lies), charters, etc., to the men who paid Tammany. 
 It is estimated that the " machine " was now worth 
 about half a million dollars a year. An Equal 
 Rights Movement next (1834-7) organised against 
 Tammany, and helped the Whigs to power; but 
 between incompetence and corruption which was 
 tearfully exposed by Tammany when it returned to 
 power the Whigs lost favour and the old system 
 returned. The police and judiciary were now com- 
 pletely corrupted. New York was dominated by a 
 sympathetic league of politicians, magistrates, 
 police, gamblers, criminals, and prostitutes. 
 
 In the forties violence was organised. Men 
 brought " gangs " to enforce their nomination at 
 the Council or secure their election in the wards. 
 Nominations were put up to the highest bidder, and 
 dummy nominees were created to raise the bids. 
 Regiments of " repeaters " (men who voted over 
 and over again, whether they had a vote or not) were 
 organised and conducted about under the smiling 
 
142 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 eyes of the Irish policemen. " Ward-heelers " 
 (bosses of gangs which dominated wards) were paid 
 to use violence, or refrain from violence, as the case 
 might be. Whig wards sold their collective vote to 
 Tammany, and Tammany wards sold their vote to 
 the Whigs. Bloody fights kept away sober folk from 
 the polls. Their votes were registered for Tammany, 
 and thousands of voteless men were hired to vote. 
 In the 1844 mayoral election 55,086 votes were cast 
 in New York. The total number of legitimate pos- 
 sible voters was 45,000. An English election of the 
 same period was a picture of innocence by compari- 
 son; and the corruption of the politicians them- 
 selves was just as far beyond that of English 
 politicians. A series of disclosures in 1853 sobered 
 America for a time, in spite of its excessively in- 
 dulgent disposition. New York was sodden with 
 corruption, yet in three years the saloons were as 
 busy as ever organising sham-voters, paying bullies 
 to intimidate respectable voters or smash doubtful 
 ballot-boxes, providing repeaters, and handing out 
 twenty-five dollars each to genuine voters. Appar- 
 ently, the disclosures of 1853 had whetted appetites. 
 At the 1856 election the chief of the police had given 
 a holiday (to help in his own election) to nearly all 
 his men, and the city is described as resembling a 
 battlefield. Two rival gangs fought on the streets 
 with guns and barricades, and ten were killed and 
 eighty wounded. In 1864 the Republicans had to 
 bring 6,000 troops to New York to preserve the peace 
 during the election. 
 
 The service of the city (which is, over large areas, 
 bad enough to-day) was intolerable. All officers 
 were appointed for party-reasons or for money. A 
 sanitary inspector, whose qualifications were tested 
 by asking him the meaning of " hygienic," thought 
 it meant " the odour arising from stagnant water." 
 He knew, at least, what ought to be dealt with in 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 143 
 
 New York. Candidates for the police were, if they 
 could pay the tariff, tested by being asked to read 
 the large-type title of a newspaper. State-police 
 and city-police fought on the streets, and had to be 
 separated by soldiers. The State-legislature was, 
 in both branches, just as bad as the city Council. 
 Democrats and Republicans sold everything that was 
 saleable. Five bills in 1860 cost the promoters 
 quarter of a million dollars. One group of thirty 
 legislators, organised for hire or purchase under a 
 boss, were known as " The Black Horse Cavalry." 
 
 Yet New York had not yet touched its lowest 
 level. The " boss system " replaced the clique 
 system in the sixties, and the extortion was unpara- 
 lleled. Boss Tweed spent $100,000 on the stables 
 attached to his country-house, and his associates 
 were only a little less rich. All the judges worked 
 with him, and even murder was rarely punished. 
 About 30,000 thieves, 3,000 saloons, 2,000 gambling 
 dens, and an incalculable number of prostitutes paid 
 weekly tribute. The newspapers were nearly all 
 subsidised the Sun proposed the erection of a 
 statue to Tweed but in 1871 the Times began to 
 expose the gang, and, after a long and thrilling fight, 
 Tammany was defeated at the election. Tweed went 
 to jail, and his gang was dispersed. In three years 
 it had corruptly accumulated at least a hundred and 
 sixty million dollars. Yet Tammany was in power 
 again in 1874, and Boss Kelly (1874-84) emulated the 
 career of Tweed, and Boss Croker (1886-97) followed 
 and discreetly emulated Kelly. 
 
 It is needless to tell the more recent record of New 
 York. There was a " reform " in 1890, and Tam- 
 many was back in 1892. There was another reform 
 later, and Tammany was back in 1904. There has 
 been a prolonged and most devoted struggle for 
 reform in the last twenty years, but the whole world 
 knows how deep the corruption was until at least a 
 
144 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 few years ago. In 1910 a high-minded merchant, 
 fighting the Poultry Trust, was shot dead in broad 
 daylight on the open market, before the eyes of 
 scores of men, and no prosecution followed, for no 
 witness dare speak. In 1912 a gambler, Rosenthal, 
 " squeaked " about police-extortion, and Police- 
 Lieutenant Becker, who had been his partner, hired 
 four men to murder him on Broadway. The world 
 gasped when it read the records of the trial. East- 
 side bankers told me that the " gunmen " were 
 clients of theirs "quite a nice, smart young fellow," 
 a banker described one of these professional mur- 
 derers to me and their profession was well known. 
 New York lawyers blandly explained to me the cor- 
 ruption in regard to prostitutes which still prevailed 
 in 1913. Since then Tammany has returned to 
 power, and perhaps the reform of New York's 
 politics is completed. 
 
 When one turns to Lincoln Steftens's Shame of the 
 Cities one is at first amazed to find him describing 
 New York, in 1904, as " the best example of good 
 government that I had seen!" Chicago, which has 
 to-day more murders to its account in a year than 
 Great Britain has, and of which its own highest 
 authority has recently said that, owing to police- 
 corruption, " the crime conditions are appalling," is 
 described by Steffens as " a triumph of reform!" 
 And these things are said in a work which raised a 
 howl of indignation in America at the author's in- 
 justice to local politicians ! But Mr Steffens is a 
 conscientious journalist, and the state of things he 
 describes in the cities of Philadelphia, St. Louis, 
 Minneapolis, and Pittsburg goes far to explain his 
 words. I cannot even summarise his indictment 
 here. " You can't put all the known incidents of 
 the corruption of an American city into a book," he 
 says. A friend of his is writing a record of the 
 corruption employed in one specific undertaking 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 145 
 
 the building of the Philadelphia City Hall and he 
 doubts if three volumes will suffice. Here a few 
 words must suffice to send to the American work, 
 and to Mr Myers's History of Tammany Hall, the 
 reader who has so far failed to appreciate the taint 
 of the political atmosphere. 
 
 St. Louis is, or was until recently, the special 
 shrine of " boodle," or the making of money by the 
 corrupt grant or securing of " franchises " (conces- 
 sions or monopolies) and contracts. It is a recent 
 development, dating mainly from about 1890. 
 Decent men were driven out of local politics, and 
 other men organised with all the brutality of the 
 game. A regular tariff so much for a wharf, a 
 siding, a street-improvement, even for an awning or 
 a pedlar's license was drawn up. Public property 
 was plundered, and the pay-rolls were loaded with 
 false names. Foreign corporations flocked to the 
 golden meadows, and outbid the St. Louis men for 
 trading concessions. Then the St. Louis men rose 
 in wrath and had a " reform " : that is to say, one 
 brave and honest Attorney General, Folk, now 
 found people enough to support him, and he made a 
 magnificent fight. One railway had deposited 
 $144,000 in bribes for municipal councillors to pass 
 a certain Bill. These councillors had tried to sell the 
 waterworks, which was worth $40,000,000, for 
 $15,000,000, and a million for themselves. It was 
 so flagrant that millionaires and politicians had to 
 be sentenced to several years of prison; but the 
 Supreme Court of Missouri obligingly quashed the 
 sentences. In the middle of the fight there was an 
 election, and the people took so little interest that 
 the boodlers secured power again. St. Louis is said 
 to have improved in recent years. 
 
 Minneapolis began the game, on a large scale, as 
 late as 1901. Mayor Ames all names and details 
 are given in this terrible book appointed gamblers 
 K 
 
146 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 and criminals as his chief police-officers, dismissed 
 107 honest policemen out of a total force of 225, 
 and proceeded to make merry. Here the specialty 
 was " graft," or commissions on crime and vice. 
 Prostitutes paid a hundred dollars a month, and 
 occasional presents. Mayor Ames benevolently re- 
 duced their debt to the city to $100 in two months ; 
 and he collected the intervening month for himself. 
 " Blind pigs," opium joints, gambling dens, and 
 thieves had a proportionate tariff. Thieves and 
 gamblers were invited to come from other cities and 
 work under the protection of their old associates. 
 They paid $500 or $1,000 down, and $200 a week. 
 The police dipped into the profession on their own 
 account at times. But Minneapolis found the stench 
 of this corruption too pronounced, and the whole 
 system was expounded in court in 1902 and 
 abolished. 
 
 Pittsburg cultivated boodle and graft impartially. 
 It is the city which someone described as " Hell with 
 the lid off." "Politically," says Steffens, "it is 
 hell with the lid on." In the eighties it had a 
 " boss," one Chris Magee, who went to New York 
 and Philadelphia to study the trade. He organised 
 the wards and controlled the Council. Vice and 
 drink paid graft. Monopolies and contracts oozed 
 boodle. But Chris was not as gross as a New York 
 boss, and he gave a good deal of value to the city. 
 The system was exposed and broken, but the 
 memory of the genial Chris is cherished in Pitts- 
 burg, as you will find if you revile it there. 
 
 Philadelphia is an easy first, if you credit Mr 
 Steffens; though I doubt if he knows Tammany as 
 well as that city. It was already " corrupt and con- 
 tented " in the sixties. In the seventies its famous 
 Gas Ring certainly ran Tammany close. They 
 turned all their employees into ward-politicians, 
 silenced money-making citizens by maintaining pro- 
 
AMERICA INVENTS THE CAUCUS 147 
 
 tection, put respectable figure-heads into office, and 
 took a prodigious toll of the coffers of the city. 
 They were defeated in 1883, but the corruption con- 
 tinued, and two " bosses," Martin and Porter, cap- 
 tured the " machine." Repeaters (illegal plural 
 voters) were so numerous that a ballot-box in a 
 district of one hundred voters would contain 200 
 votes. The judges (part of the system) declared 
 that the ballot-box was sacred and there could be no 
 scrutiny. Some of the names attached to voting 
 papers were the names of children : others of dead 
 dogs. The police helped the party to find " re- 
 peaters," and genially protected the elections. 
 Elections were held in a disorderly house belonging 
 to a district-assessor. Teachers, reformers, churches, 
 and charitable institutions were bought up by 
 grants. There were several exposures, but no pro- 
 secutions, and the graft and boodle grew steadily 
 worse. In 1901 the city lost $2,500,000 on one 
 contract. We are not told how far Philadelphia has 
 reformed; but I may add that during the last ten 
 years there has been a strenuous campaign for re- 
 form in America. 
 
 Chicago is described as " reformed in spots." 
 Boodle was abolished after a thriving career in the 
 nineties. In 1902 a New York firm offered a bribe 
 of a million dollars for a certain concession, and it 
 was refused. Hence Chicago's reputation for virtue ; 
 though one ought to add that the bankers of Chicago 
 were infuriated at this " refusal of business.." I 
 ought to add also that when I was there in 1913 
 there was a hold-up, with revolvers, on the crowded 
 main street (corresponding to Oxford Street) in the 
 middle of the afternoon; and the papers described 
 it as the eightieth hold-up on the streets of Chicago 
 in a few months, and ascribed it to police-corruption. 
 I have already quoted the President of the Chicago 
 Crime Commission saying, in November, 1919, that 
 
148 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 " the crime conditions are appalling," and that the 
 police and courts could reduce the crime by 50 per 
 cent, in thirty days if they would! 
 
 San Francisco, Washington, Cincinatti, New 
 Orleans in a word, nearly all the large towns of the 
 United States, have much the same record. These 
 are the centres in which elections occur, the 
 nurseries of the higher politicians; and no one who 
 is familiar with them will question that, while the 
 grosser features have gone, the taint of the political 
 atmosphere remains. I was in America only a few 
 years ago when Congress was bringing its session to 
 a close. It was bewildering to see the geniality with 
 which nearly every American journal bantered 
 Congressmen on the crowd of " pork " Bills with 
 which they, as usual, concluded the session. They 
 were about to face their constituents, and the 
 " pork " Bill which each produces on such occasions 
 is the grant of a road, a bridge, a railway, or some 
 other fat morsel, at public expense, for those whose 
 votes he is about to solicit. There is only one 
 thing more repugnant the unctuous and patriotic 
 language in which the votes are solicited. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 
 
 WE return to England, and must now see how far 
 the American system was introduced and what were 
 the consequences. The general election of 1868 had, 
 we saw, thrown out Disraeli, the emancipator of the 
 working class, and given Gladstone a majority of 
 120. Disraeli had been right in one respect. The 
 enfranchised workers showed not the least disposi- 
 tion to anarchy or revolution. Every working-man 
 candidate was rejected, and it is estimated that the 
 new House of Commons was " the wealthiest that 
 had ever assembled." Even Radicals like Roe- 
 buck, and eminent friends of the people like John 
 Stuart Mill, lost their seats. But the country had 
 not been deceived by the Electoral Reform Act. 
 Either party would have been forced to pass it, and 
 neither party really liked it. The issue of the elec- 
 tion was Gladstone or Disraeli, pacification or coer- 
 cion in Ireland. Few trusted the glittering verbiage 
 of Disraeli, and Gladstone hastened grimly to West- 
 minster to open the Liberal millenium. 
 
 It was in this election of the year 1868 that the 
 caucus made its first humble and innocent appear- 
 ance in England. There had hitherto, we saw, been 
 comparatively little organisation of political life. 
 Since the eighteenth century the leaders of the great 
 parties had had " whippers-in " (whips) to secure 
 the attendance of the supporters whom they had 
 corruptly placed in Parliament, and in the towns, 
 to some extent even in the counties, there had been 
 
 149 
 
150 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 political societies, independent of Westminster, for 
 propaganda purposes. In 1831 the Tories had 
 created a political centre in the Carlton Club. Five 
 years later the Whigs had established the Reform 
 Club. Since 1832, moreover, there had been a 
 growth in the country of " Registration Societies." 
 The Reform Bill had left the register of electors 
 almost as open to dispute as ever, and agents of 
 the candidates, aided by specialist lawyers, had con- 
 tinual and expensive conflicts over the rights of the 
 long-suffering voters. Registration Societies, Whig 
 and Tory, joined the fray. In 1861 central Regis- 
 tration Societies had been established at London. 
 
 We must not exaggerate our indebtedness to the 
 United States, yet there was in 1868 a new develop- 
 ment which is generally described as the introduc- 
 tion of the American caucus. On December 21st, 
 1867, the secretary of the Birmingham Liberal 
 Association, one of the most spirited provincial 
 centres of the time, put forward a plan for the 
 close local organisation of political life. The con- 
 stituency was to be mapped and groups of burgesses 
 were in each district (corresponding to the Ameri- 
 can ward) to elect representatives who would meet 
 in council and choose candidates. The procedure 
 was strictly democratic, and it expressly excluded 
 dictation from Westminster. The idea was taken 
 up. The Ward Committees appointed a Central 
 Committee, which nominated three Liberal candi- 
 dates for the coming election. Birmingham was 
 systematically canvassed. The new voters were in- 
 structed, and the waste of votes by overlapping 
 was ingeniously prevented. One elector was to vote 
 for A and B, a second for B and C, and a third 
 for A and C. The Radical Central Committee would 
 have been horrified to hear itself described as a 
 caucus. Had not the voters elected them? But 
 the gist of the matter was : " Vote as you are direc- 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 151 
 
 ted " if you want the party and its magnificent 
 ideals to prevail. 
 
 As the three candidates were returned, the enter- 
 prise obtained the seal of success. It was applied, 
 with the same issue, to municipal politics. It under- 
 took propaganda, and the plan was adopted by 
 Liberals in other towns. It developed aspirations, 
 and in a few years Birmingham became the centre 
 of a National Liberal Federation, chastely isolated 
 from the taint of Westminster. There were now 
 two men of great and varied ability behind the 
 machine : Joseph Chamberlain and that astutest of 
 workers in obscurity, Schnadhorst. The caucus was 
 an accomplished fact. The Conservatives heavily 
 reviled its despotism and corruption, then copied it. 
 It was Disraeli who stripped it of its air of Bir- 
 mingham originality and called it the " caucus." 
 He adopted it soon afterwards. 
 
 Years would elapse before the new machine fell 
 under the power of the Parliamentary leaders, and 
 we may meantime glance once more at Westminster, 
 where Gladstone led his legion to the great Liberal 
 campaign against injustice. His majority was not 
 quite a pure expression of the determination of the 
 British public. " At the general election of 1868," 
 says Ostrogorski, " corrupt practices prevailed to 
 a greater extent than at all the elections of the 
 preceding half-century." There it was, however, 
 and the country expected it to repeat the Whig 
 record of the Reformed Parliament of 1832. 
 
 Gladstone had appealed for a mandate to pacify 
 Ireland by disestablishing the Church and passing 
 a Land Bill, and, as is known, he drove both 
 measures through the House before the end of 1870. 
 The first measure affords a good illustration of 
 parliamentary methods. Though " both sides of the 
 House of Commons, having threshed out the subject 
 on the hustings, were beyond the reach of logic," 
 
152 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 as Mr Herbert Paul says; the debates raged and 
 blazed for three solid months. Then the pious 
 Lords sprang to the breach. The Queen, hostile to 
 the Bill but assured that it was inevitable, con- 
 veyed a hint to the Archbishop of Canterbury to let 
 it pass (after exacting as much money for the Church 
 as possible), but the Lords sustained the struggle 
 until October. Some were in tears. Some declared 
 themselves ready to kneel at the block rather than 
 see this anomaly removed from Ireland The Land 
 Bill occupied the following year, and the Liberals 
 then turned to consider if anything could be done 
 for England. 
 
 It had been obvious for seventy years to the 
 meanest social student that, whatever the American 
 slaves or the oppressed Greeks or the Irish peasants 
 needed, the mass of the people of Great Britain 
 urgently needed education. Until 1868 extensions of 
 the franchise had been devoid of the least risk. They 
 had substituted alert members of the middle class 
 for the drunken and corrupt voters of the earlier 
 period. Now that political power found a still 
 broader base, and the demand for manhood suff- 
 rage became louder, the appallingly backward state 
 of the people was a clear menace No less than two 
 million children were still without any sort of edu- 
 cation, and a further million attended schools of the 
 poorest character, which were never inspected. 
 Nearly three-fourths of even the new generation 
 were growing up to civic life in total ignorance, or 
 a literacy which was not far removed from it. We 
 pay dearly to-day for the interested refusal of poli- 
 ticians during half a century to educate England, 
 and the jealousy of Church and Chapel which 
 furnished them with a pretext. 
 
 It is characteristic of Mr Gladstone's Whig type 
 of mind that he took far less interest in such 
 subjects than in the grievances of Greeks, Italians 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 153 
 
 or Irish. " In the new scheme of national educa- 
 tion established in 1870," says Lord Morley, 
 " the head of the Government rather acquiesced 
 than led . . . his private interest in public education 
 did not amount to zeal, and it was at bottom the 
 interest of a churchman. . . . What Mi Gladstone 
 cared for was the integrity of religious instruction."* 
 Of the Whig peers with whom he liked to fill his 
 cabinet not one cared sincerely for the education 
 of the people. But the country and its Radical 
 representatives forced the subject, and Forster 
 introduced a measure. 
 
 The struggle over education began the disruption 
 of the Liberal party and prepared the way for later 
 developments. The Radicals were for free, com- 
 pulsory and secular education : for a unified school- 
 system which should end the long scandal of clerical 
 obstruction and leave religious education to reli- 
 gious institutions. Here Gladstone, as Whig and 
 Churchman, opposed the popular demand, and 
 availed himself of every pretext for compromise. 
 He would have education neither free, nor com- 
 pulsory (universal), nor liberated from religious 
 complications; and he was stoutly supported by 
 his colleagues. They proposed to leave the religious 
 question to local authorities. Mr Vernon Harcourt 
 pleasantly described the consequences. " Close 
 upon four o'clock on the polling day," he said, 
 " men will accept as many articles of faith as you 
 may supply them with pints of beer, and the least 
 sober will be the most orthodox." The struggle 
 ended in Cowper-Templeism, and Radicals and Non- 
 conformists began to doubt the democracy, and 
 deplore the prejudices, of the Liberal leader. 
 
 So far England owed little to the groups of 
 statesmen, mostly hereditary legislators, who con- 
 trolled the House of Commons and administered a 
 
 * Life of Gladstone, vol. ii., pp. 298 and 299. 
 
154 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 country whose material prosperity was out of all 
 proportion to its social condition. Some good 
 measures abolishing University Tests and the pur- 
 chase of army-commissions, legalising Trade Unions, 
 reorganising the army, and introducing the ballot 
 were passed in 1871 and 1872. But compromise 
 lingered in the cabinet, and the country began to 
 grow weary. Ireland, instead of being pacified, was 
 more unruly than ever. Appointments of a party 
 character were made. Licensing Bills shrank before 
 the bluster of " the Trade." It was at the end of 
 1872 that Disraeli made the famous speech in which 
 he likened the occupants of the Front Bench on the 
 Government side to " a range of exhausted vol- 
 canoes." " Not a flame flickers upon a single 
 pallid crest," he said, in a masterly example of the 
 sparkling rhetoric with which he concealed the Tory 
 lack of constructive proposals. The year 1873 was 
 spent, wearily, once more upon Ireland, and Glad- 
 stone was defeated. Disraeli played the game. He 
 insisted that Gladstone should have a few more 
 months to complete the demoralisation of his party, 
 and then, in 1874, he summoned the Trade and the 
 Church and the country to put an end to this 
 " career of plundering and blundering." 
 
 The Conservatives returned to power with a 
 majority of eighty-three. Gladstone complained 
 that he was swept away in " a torrent of gin and 
 beer." His less pious Radical followers called it 
 an alliance of Beer and Bible; and Conservative 
 writers admit that they assiduously cultivated the 
 penetrating influence of both publican and parson. 
 They do not admit, though it is past dispute, that 
 bribery was as rife as ever. The elector, long 
 educated in corruption, had now the added advan- 
 tage of the ballot, and might take money or liquor 
 from either side without prejudice to the sanctity 
 of his vote. Still, neither political party had any 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 155 
 
 intention of striking at these corrupt practices. The 
 Parliamentary game controlled the entire procedure. 
 Disraeli had posed as champion of Church and 
 Trade the two chief nerves of the electorate and 
 had thrown out vague promises with liberal hand 
 to all parties. When their representatives promptly 
 appeared at Westminster to claim the fulfilment of 
 the promises, he explained that his Government was 
 not bound to honour every unofficial promise that 
 had been made at the hustings by Tory candidates. 
 Gladstone had tried to outbid him by a vague 
 promise to abolish the income-tax : which Chamber- 
 lain, somewhat too strongly, described as " the 
 meanest public document which has ever, in like 
 circumstances, proceeded from a statesman of the 
 first rank." The bait was disregarded, and Achilles 
 sulked in his tent for some time, leaving the lead 
 of his diminished forces to Hartington. 
 
 We will not linger over the inglorious record of 
 the next few years. Parliamentary time must be 
 occupied, and a number of unexciting measures, of 
 secondary importance, passed into law. One of the 
 most important was the Merchant Shipping Bill. 
 Appalling facts were laid before the House by 
 Plimsoll, yet Disraeli, with the connivance of the 
 Whigs, attempted to prevent it from becoming law, 
 until Plimsoll, losing his self-control, poured scald- 
 ing invectives on this proposal of political jobbery. 
 The Russo-Turkish War broke out, and the usual 
 advantage was taken of that blessed pretext for 
 doing nothing. 
 
 It is remembered by most people to-day only 
 that we " put our money on the wrong horse," but 
 a close examination of the period will reveal more 
 than a diplomatic miscalculation. Sir Stafford 
 Northcote, on behalf of the Government, made an 
 entirely false statement to the House. Nothing had 
 occurred, he said, as the House was adjourning, to 
 
156 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 mar the good prospect of peace in Europe. It was 
 reported by the London papers the next day that 
 the Government had, while it made this announce- 
 ment, ordered 7000 Indian troops to Malta. They 
 had, Northcote flippantly said, on being challenged, 
 " merely moved troops from one part of the Queen's 
 dominions to another." The weakness of the 
 Liberals hi face of this misconduct was such that 
 Disraeli taunted them with their inability to move 
 a vote of censure. He was at the height of his 
 popularity, the summit of the Queen's favour. It 
 was then that he described his great Liberal 
 opponent as " intoxicated with the exuberance of 
 his own verbosity." 
 
 Gladstone waited with the patience of a political 
 spider. The Russian imbroglio was followed by the 
 Afghan War : the Afghan War by the Zulu War. 
 The time had come. The first Midlothian campaign 
 echoed in the wilds of Scotland and brought comfort 
 to the drooping hearts of Liberals. A shining moral 
 idealism was opposed to the tinselled profligacy of 
 the Conservative administration. The country 
 stirred, and Disraeli hastily dissolved; and with 
 a loud cry of the triumph of principle over " gin 
 and beer " the Liberals returned to the House with 
 a majority of one hundred and six over then- 
 opponents. 
 
 In point of sober historic fact, the election of 1880 
 was one of the most corrupt since 1832. " By this 
 token know ye the power of the Caucus," Mr Cham- 
 berlain cried to the Conservatives; and it was the 
 first election in which the Birmingham system was 
 generally applied. But the caucus had blended 
 easily with, not only the Midlothian idealism, but 
 the oldest traditions of persuading voters. A shower 
 of petitions followed the election, and the inquiries 
 revealed a disgusting amount of corruption. The 
 official returns put the cost of the election at 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 157 
 
 1,737,000; though it was believed to be nearer 
 3,000,000. Liberal candidates had spent, on the 
 average, 1604 each in persuading the voters of the 
 wickedness of their Tory rivals. Conservative can- 
 didates had spent 1974 each in proving that they 
 were the genuine guardians of probity and property. 
 There were fiery mutual charges of open or masked 
 corruption all over England, and any person who 
 cares to run over the Blue Books of 1881 (vols. 
 xxvi, xxvii., xxix. and xxxi.) will exonerate the 
 honourable members from malice in making the 
 charges. Direct bribes were still given, but the 
 new system had generally camouflaged its opera- 
 tions by the creation of regiments of canvassers, 
 messengers, printers, entertainers, etc. 
 
 Gladstone was triumphant, but his air of triumph 
 faded somewhat when he surveyed his new world. 
 The echoes of the Midlothian campaign rolled omin- 
 ously over the world. " The Irish Brass Band " 
 was just begining its irrepressible music under 
 Parnell; and Gladstone had thought much more 
 about Bulgarians than the Irish. The Boers were 
 reminding him that he had described the Conserva- 
 tive interference with them as " the invasion of a 
 free people "; and he had now to admit to himself 
 that this was election-rhetoric, not statesmanship. 
 " Young England " was meeting in a corner of the 
 Carlton Club, under Randolph Churchill, and plot- 
 ting to steal the thunder of his democratic oratory, 
 or pronouncing such oratory " sounding brass and 
 tinkling cymbals to the Whigs, for they have always 
 existed by corrupting and deceiving the people." 
 Radicalism was compelling him to recognise, by 
 forcing him to take the utterly unwelcome Chamber- 
 lain into his cabinet, that England had grievances 
 to redress as well as Greece and Bulgaria. While 
 he hesitated, bewildered, the Boers rebelled, and 
 his Budget was loaded with a war-bill; and the 
 
158 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Irish rebelled, and his fair program had to include 
 a Coercion Bill; and Egypt flamed up on the 
 southern horizon. He had only one consolation. 
 Disraeli died. 
 
 For our purpose we need consider only such 
 measures as were designed for the improvement of 
 the political atmosphere in Great Britain. The cor- 
 ruption at the 1880 election had been so flagrant 
 that the sober elements of the country sternly de- 
 manded a measure of reform. The reader will have 
 noticed, from the figures I have just given, that the 
 advantage of corruption had been on the side of the 
 Conservatives. Four hundred and eighty Conserva- 
 tive candidates had spent to speak only of the 
 declared expenses 951,000. Four hundred and 
 eighty-eight Liberal candidates had spent only 
 771,540. It was plainly safe for a Liberal states- 
 man to give effect to his righteous indignation, and 
 a Corrupt Practices Bill was introduced in 1881. 
 
 The House of Commons is always amusing on such 
 occasions. It is healthily united in reprobating the 
 evils which have inspired the measure : it is more 
 than willing to pass a measure for its own purifica- 
 tion : but on reflection it discovers that this par- 
 ticular measure is ill-advised. " The reception of 
 the Bill," says the Annual Register, " was favour- 
 able, but by degrees the enthusiasm which its ap- 
 pearance had kindled began to slacken even amongst 
 ardent reformers." The penalties were too severe. 
 The evil would merely be driven underground. And 
 so on. In brief, the Bill was withdrawn. Mean- 
 time, the results of election-inquiries were pub- 
 lished, and public opinion demanded action. The 
 Bill was reintroduced in 1882, and got as far as 
 second reading, which it passed without division. 
 Three months later Mr Gladstone abandoned it. 
 " The opposition," says our authority, " was of that 
 veiled and insidious nature which is more frequently 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 159 
 
 fatal to a proposed reform than open hostility." 
 The Government then proposed a Bill for the dis- 
 franchisement of the towns which had been con- 
 victed of gross corruption. This also was withdrawn. 
 
 "It is difficult for any one," Mr Gladstone wrote 
 about this time, " except those who pass their lives 
 within the walls of Parliament, to understand how 
 vital and urgent a truth it is, that there is no more 
 urgent demand, there is no aim or purpose more 
 absolutely essential to the future victories and the 
 future efficiency of the House of Commons, than that 
 it should effect, with the support of the nation 
 for it can be effected in no other way some great 
 reform in the matter of its procedure." 
 
 The young enthusiasts to whom on the apostolic 
 principle of being all things to all men the veteran 
 statesman wrote this may have wondered why he 
 had regarded this vital need so complacently during 
 thirty years of power. Parliamentary life was not 
 more in need of reform than it had been for half 
 a century, yet Mr Gladstone, the moralist in politics, 
 had not hitherto shown any tendency to iconoclasm. 
 The need was not more urgent in 1883 except in 
 the sense that the wicked features of Parliament 
 now prevented Mr Gladstone from passing measures, 
 instead of preventing Mr Disraeli. However that 
 might be, he was now bent on reform, not so much 
 with the support of the country, as because the 
 country, shocked by the electoral disclosures, forced 
 him to do something; and the Corrupt Practices 
 Bill was re-introduced. It forbade the creation of 
 fictitious employment for voters (with which Mr 
 Gladstone had been familiar since the payment of 
 bandmen at his own first election) and reduced the 
 limit of expenditure by candidates. In future the 
 candidate must not spend more than 350 to ,920 
 (according to the number of electors) in boroughs, 
 or more than 650 to 1790 in counties, 
 
160 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 The uproar began at once. Tories denounced the 
 proposals as " grossly unjust and enormously 
 severe." Radicals like Cowen and Tory Demo- 
 crats like Churchill easily and scornfully showed 
 that the Bill was little more than a mockery. A 
 candidate could not be punished for myriads of 
 things done by means of agents or bogus clubs, as 
 the measure was not explicit and severe enough, 
 The Birmingham caucus and its progeny were elo- 
 quently denounced in this connection. But the 
 Birmingham prophet was in the ministry, and the 
 independent critics represented only small fractions 
 and might be ignored. There was a friendly meet- 
 ing in the wings of Parliament of the great pro- 
 tagonists of either side who would soon cross swords 
 on the stage, a friendly understanding that some of 
 the harshness of the measure might be mitigated in 
 committee, and the Bill passed the second reading 
 without a division. It then fell under the customary 
 long and cruel mutilation. Night after night was spent 
 in discussing what was bribery, undue influence, or 
 treating, until the press broke in with an angry 
 reminder that there was no serious doubt in the mind 
 of the country. Radicals pressed for amendments to 
 strengthen the measure. Mr Labouchere asked that 
 it be made illegal to obtain a title by helping the 
 election of another person. No such thing was ever 
 done, ministers retorted. Lord Randolph Churchill 
 promptly quoted the cases of Sir R. Green-Price 
 and Sir H. Johnstone, who had been thus decorated 
 for resigning seats to ministers. Gladstone indig- 
 nantly denied that there had been any " trans- 
 action " : a very satisfying word. 
 
 In brief, the Corrupt Practices Act was added to 
 the list of Liberal triumphs. We shall see what it 
 did. The flagrant purchase of votes, which was 
 already in decay, was abolished, but other forms of 
 corruption arose. Judges soon found, they said, 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 161 
 
 that the law contemplated only the period immedi- 
 ately before an election, and a candidate might do 
 a good deal with impunity before he was officially 
 and explicitly recognised as candidate. Moreover, 
 it still cost about 5000 to run an election-petition ; 
 and, as long as both sides lived in glass houses, it 
 was indiscreet to throw stones. 
 
 One thing Mr Gladstone did do in the reform of 
 Parliamentary procedure, but it is usually omitted 
 from the high chronicle of Gladstonian achievements. 
 He introduced the closure. The debates on the 
 Irish Bills in 1881 threatened to pass all records, 
 and Speaker Brand astonished the House (or a large 
 part of it) by arbitrarily cutting off the stream of 
 heated and frivolous rhetoric. Liberal historians are 
 eager to make it clear that Brand did this entirely 
 of his own initiative. We could hardly be charged 
 with undue suspicion if we assumed that the occu- 
 pants of the Front Bench were rather less surprised 
 by this coup d'Etat (as the Conservatives called it) 
 than others were, but the time would come when the 
 closure would be turned against the Liberals, and 
 their torrent of indignation would have flowed less 
 easily if it could be shown that they themselves 
 constructed the "guillotine." It was, in fact, one 
 of the most material of their achievements. The 
 waste of time in speeches which never influence a 
 single vote in the House is scandalous enough to-day. 
 In the nineteenth century it was appalling. It may 
 be put to the credit of Mr Gladstone and his col- 
 leagues that they at least did not rebuke the friendly 
 Speaker for his disinterested innovation. 
 
 Another point of legislative reform arose in 1884. 
 Gladstone passed a third extension of the franchise, 
 and the Lords rejected his Bill. They would not 
 claim, one of the leading speakers in the Lords said, 
 that the state of representation (by which only three 
 million adults had the vote) was " absolutely per- 
 L 
 
162 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 feet," but they would say that " under the present 
 franchise-system labour was amply and fairly repre- 
 sented." The country quite understood the situa- 
 tion. All the resonant verbiage about the Constitu- 
 tion and political wisdom was intended to conceal 
 a party-struggle. Such rhetoric never does deceive 
 anybody, but Parliamentary tradition demands it. 
 Mr Gladstone was to complete the extension of the 
 franchise by a Redistribution Bill, and the Con- 
 servatives wished to compel him to introduce the 
 two Bills together so that they might know the 
 worst. He was just as eager to get his party- 
 advantages in two instalments. 
 
 To the growing Radical element in the country 
 the situation was welcome. The power of the Lords 
 was, as all now recognise, a mediaeval anomaly in 
 our Constitution, a machine for the enforcing of the 
 Conservative sentiment; and the cry gladly spread 
 from city to city: "End them or Mend them." 
 To the end of his political life Mr Gladstone shrank 
 from that cry. The Whig flesh quivered beneath 
 his Liberal skin whenever Radical supporters pointed 
 out this " vital need." There was no need for the 
 Queen to impress on him, as she did, that he must 
 come to terms with his opponents rather than listen 
 to counsels of that " organic change." He was 
 never a thorough democrat. Once more he met 
 Lord Salisbury in the wings of the Parliamentary 
 theatre and arranged the forthcoming combat. He 
 produced his redistribution-plans, and the astute 
 Conservative statesman made his terms. A Bill was 
 framed which would " satisfy all parties," as the 
 Times said : in other words, the disfranchisement 
 of boroughs was nicely arranged so that the Con- 
 servatives should not lose more than the Liberals. 
 The Bills passed, and the House of Lords kept its 
 flag flying over the citadel of popular representation. 
 
 These " reforms " were followed by one of the 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 163 
 
 most singular and most tortuous developments of 
 parliamentary life since the eighteenth century. 
 The one weakness of the admirable party-machine 
 which had now been evolved on both sides was the 
 need of a " platform " composed of so many impres- 
 sive " planks." The proverbial visitor from Mars 
 might imagine that a statesman's task was simple. 
 He had merely to scan the face of the country for 
 grievances and abuses, and set to work to remove 
 them. Better-informed people know that this ideal 
 simplicity is the simplicity of children. Each party 
 has vested interests or vested prejudices, repre- 
 sented on its pay-roll, and to select a grievance for 
 remedy without considering these would be the 
 height of political unwisdom. Indeed, it was be- 
 coming increasingly difficult for both parties to make 
 a constructive program for England. Not that 
 dragons were now scarce after all the glorious politi- 
 cal St Georges of the last hundred years. The next 
 forty years of legislation would prove how much 
 there was still to be done. Social legislation had, 
 in fact, barely commenced. But the popular de- 
 mand was rapidly assuming a form and an accent 
 which must intimidate any statesman who chooses 
 half his colleagues from the peerage and his most 
 necessary supporters from among the wealthy. For- 
 tunately, the evergreen problem of Ireland furnished 
 a legitimate and laudable distraction. 
 
 German trouble in Africa, Russian trouble in 
 Asia, Mahdi trouble in the Sudan, and at last the 
 death of Gordon, brought the ministry of righteous- 
 ness to a close, and statesmen began to deck their 
 windows for an election. Salisbury carried on for 
 a time with " a Government of Caretakers," but 
 an election in December (1885) was certain. For 
 this the Radicals prepared a formidable program at 
 which Mr Gladstone shuddered. He began rather 
 to educate himself in Irish politics. There followed 
 
164 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 one of those obscure passages in English politics 
 which no independent historian can illumine, and 
 the expert has no desire to illumine. A few years 
 later Gladstone, angry at the way in which Lord 
 Salisbury had defeated his hopeful plan of returning 
 to power on an Irish cry, sternly denounced the Con- 
 servatives for making a secret promise of Home 
 Rule to Parnell on the eve of the election, and thus 
 obtaining power under false pretences. 
 
 The facts will illustrate the ingenious transforma- 
 tions of parliamentary corruption under pressure of 
 an improved environment. Parnell himself stated, 
 and it is not disputed, that on the eve of the election 
 in 1885 the Conservative Lord-Lieutenant, Lord 
 Carnarvon, consulted him on the Irish question and 
 gave him the impression that something like Home 
 Rule might be expected of the Conservatives. He 
 regarded this as an electoral bargain with the Con- 
 servatives, and the Irish vote in England went 
 against the Liberals. Lord Salisbury himself pub- 
 licly used language which was fairly construed as a 
 promise to grant a legislative body in Ireland. 
 Gladstone, on the other hand, was silent. Lord 
 Hartington and Mr Chamberlain had at once vio- 
 lently denounced the project, and the unity of the 
 party was threatened if Gladstone made a bid for 
 the Irish vote. In plain English, both the leaders 
 were playing with the Irish question for election 
 purposes. If either could get a secure majority 
 independently of the Irish, he would do nothing. 
 
 The Irish had helped the Conservatives to unseat 
 Gladstone. They caused him to lose a score of seats 
 at the election. At the close of the election it was 
 found that the Liberals (335) were just equal to the 
 Conservatives (249) and Nationalists (86), and deep 
 was the disgust of all parties. Parnell angrily re- 
 called the bargain with Lord Carnarvon, and Glad- 
 stone denounced it with fervid oratory. Lord Salis- 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 165 
 
 bury repudiated the charge with equal fervour. 
 Lord Carnarvon had had no instructions whatever. 
 He had acted merely as an individual. Lord Car- 
 narvon confirmed this, but he added that he had 
 afterwards told Lord Salisbury of the " conversa- 
 tions," and this and the ambiguity of Lord Salis- 
 bury's own language will suffice for most people. 
 They may or may not agree with Mr Chamberlain 
 that " a strategic movement of that kind, executed 
 in opposition to the notorious convictions of the men 
 who effected it, carried out for party purposes and 
 party purposes alone, is the most flagrant instance 
 of political dishonesty this country has ever known." 
 They may think Lord Hartington equally ignorant 
 of precedent when he protested that the Tories had 
 deeply impaired " political morality." But there 
 will be little difference of opinion if it is proposed 
 to apply to the whole situation the motto given on 
 the title-page of this book. 
 
 Whatever allowance we may be disposed to make 
 for Mr Gladstone's difficulties, he was heavily puni- 
 shed. On December 17th he sat down to write to 
 Lord Hartington one of those vague and politic 
 statements of his position which were designed to 
 satisfy an anti-Home-Ruler, yet leave the way open 
 for considering Home Rule. He had just forwarded 
 this disavowal of any " intentions " in the matter 
 when the Standard reached him from London with 
 a plain statement of the plans he was so anxious to 
 conceal. By an extraordinary indiscretion, which 
 must have strained the veteran statesman's Chris- 
 tian endurance to its limit, Herbert Gladstone had 
 given away his father's secret. It was an awful 
 hour for so august a moralist. His diplomatic re- 
 sources were quite unequal to the task of disavow- 
 ing the plan without disavowing it, and the crisis 
 came quickly. He boldly shattered the Liberal 
 party, replaced the lost wings by an alliance with 
 
166 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the Irish, and assumed power as a resolute and con- 
 vinced Home-Ruler. I need merely recall how his 
 first Irish Government Bill was rejected on the 
 second reading, how Gladstone dissolved and made 
 a leonine fight, and how the Conservatives triumphed 
 over the dispirited and divided Liberals:* Chamber- 
 lain and Hartington had at least the decency to wait 
 a few years before joining the party which they had 
 so recently accused of a flagrant violation of the 
 elements of political morality. 
 
 It is unnecessary to follow the intrigues, schemes 
 and combinations of the next six years of Conserva- 
 tive power. With a majority of one hundred and 
 eighteen over the combined Home-Rulers, the 
 Unionists had a secure term of office, and they could 
 afford to laugh when Gladstone indignantly disputed 
 their right to use the closure. Another political 
 development had meantime appeared which is more 
 material to our subject. 
 
 The Birmingham Caucus, which had " gingered " 
 the Liberal party for ten years, found itself in a 
 peculiar situation when its high priest repudiated 
 the leadership of Gladstone. For years the chief 
 engineer in charge of the machine, Mr Schnadhorst, 
 had laid it down that members of Parliament must 
 " sacrifice their personal convictions " whenever 
 loyalty to the party demanded this. They had 
 driven the independent Cowen out of political life 
 at Newcastle. They had forced a terrible struggle 
 on Forster at Bradford. They had showered ad- 
 monitory telegrams on any constituency whose re- 
 presentative swerved a hair's breadth from party- 
 loyalty. This, we must remember, was not the 
 dictation of the party-officials at Westminster, but 
 the spontaneous action of free provincial Liberals. 
 
 The men of Birmingham were now hoist with 
 their own petard. Schnadhorst almost alone passed 
 to the Gladstonians, and the caucus he left behind 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 167 
 
 him was excommunicated by its daughters through- 
 out the kingdom. There were still many who wanted 
 a provincial centre of Liberalism apart from West- 
 minster, and a northern city was suggested, but 
 the heads of the party now got it transferred to 
 London. Schnadhorst became secretary both of the 
 National Liberal Federation and the Central Liberal 
 Association. Candidates would now be selected, 
 programs arranged, inconvenient matters adjusted 
 under the eye of the oligarchs. There were, it is 
 true, spurts of rebellion. Labouchere and a few 
 strong friends spoke with scorn of the "Caucusians." 
 The Reynolds Newspaper Radicals pelted " the 
 Schnadhorst machine." The workers began to 
 choose candidates of their own. Gladstone surveyed 
 his kingdom with some disgust, and he had little 
 or no share in the " Newcastle Program " which was 
 designed to cement the cracking structure. To the 
 last he was a Whig, and Whig methods of ensuring 
 loyalty were as a study of the honour-lists of the 
 next Government will show preferable to Radical 
 concessions. I will tell later how Cecil Rhodes was 
 permitted, even under Gladstone, to weight the 
 Liberal scales. For the moment it suffices to point 
 out that the new machine, erected at Birmingham, 
 now passed under the full power of whips and 
 leaders, and the quite modern phase of political life 
 began. 
 
 The pendulum swung back in 1892, and Home 
 Rule returned with a meagre majority of fifty-five. 
 It meant that Gladstone must press into service 
 representatives of every minority, and he confronted 
 his last task with a fair show of courage. Radicals 
 who scorned " Liberal fossils " were yoked with 
 Imperialists like Rosebery. Through the intermin- 
 able, stormy debates of 1893 the old man drove his 
 unsteady team. For the first time in his life he saw 
 blows exchanged in the House of Commons. For 
 
168 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the tenth time he saw the Lords calmly reject what 
 the representatives of the people had devised after 
 seven months of unparalleled struggle. For a 
 moment the thunder rumbled in the bowels of the 
 slowing volcano. Would he crown his Liberal career 
 by attacking the greatest anomaly of English politi- 
 cal life ? The Lords, defiantly, mutilated and forced 
 him to abandon his Employers Liability Bill ; muti- 
 lated his Local Government Bill. They should see, 
 he muttered. But Gladstone was eighty-four years 
 old. Wearily he took off the helmet and cuirass, 
 and laid the lance by the wall; and, after the 
 shabbiest dismissal from the Queen that a great 
 statesman ever experienced, he passed from the 
 great stage. 
 
 While it is not my purpose to write a political 
 chronicle, I have felt it material to follow in some 
 detail the course of events since the day when Glad- 
 stone took the lead of one of the great political 
 parties. His career is a curiously sensitive mirror 
 of the modern political world. He had entered it 
 with, not merely the ideals, but the sentiments of 
 a zealous clergyman; and at the outset he found 
 his way smoothed by electoral corruption, yet for 
 forty years mooted no plan of attacking that cor- 
 ruption. Throughout his long life he acknowledged 
 the corruption of British politics and politicians. 
 In expressing his estimate of Disraeli he affected no 
 reserve at all, but even in making general state- 
 ments about his fellow-actors he used language 
 which in his mouth must be regarded as very damna- 
 tory. Lord Morley, in his discreet biography, allows 
 his sentiment to appear repeatedly. " ' Man,' he 
 often used to say, ' is the least comprehensible of 
 creatures, and of men the most incomprehensible 
 are the politicians.' ' He repeats this to Lord 
 Acton, apropos of Chamberlain, in 1887 : " It is one 
 of my common sayings that to me characters of the 
 
THE ORGANISATION OF CORRUPTION 169 
 
 political class are the most mysterious of all I 
 meet."* 
 
 In such phrases one recognises a desperate attempt 
 to cultivate Christian charity. Politicians are not 
 66 incomprehensible." They are amongst the most 
 easily read characters. What Mr Gladstone obvi- 
 ously means is that they are either corrupt or in- 
 comprehensible, and both his creed and his profes- 
 sion and esprit de corps dissuade him from saying 
 the former. In his last years he was more candid. 
 In his summaries of conversations with the retired 
 statesman, Lord Morley says : " He has not been 
 in public life all these years without rubbing 
 shoulders with plenty of baseness on every scale, 
 and plenty of pettiness of every hue, but he has 
 always kept his eyes well above it." Certainly no 
 one will accuse him of baseness, but we have seen 
 him over and over again wrestling with his stubborn 
 conscience and doing things which, had he remained 
 out of politics, he would never have done. Perhaps 
 much of this was in his mind when he said, in 1891 : 
 " I have never advised any individual, as to whom 
 I have been consulted, to enter the House of Com- 
 mons." It was not by his advice that Herbert 
 Gladstone entered politics. Quite clearly it was, in 
 Gladstone's view, a tainted world. There is no more 
 convincing illustration of this than the casuistry 
 which the stalwart Puritan himself develops, time 
 after time, in face of a moral issue. Lord Morley 's 
 work is a noble study of a noble man. It is also, 
 coming from a politician, a terrible indictment of 
 politics. 
 
 * Life of Gladstone, iii., p. 88 and p. 3->5. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OUR POLITICIANS AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS 
 
 WE have now reached our own generation and our 
 existing political system, and it would be superflu- 
 ous to follow the chronicle year by year. We have 
 seen the slow transformations of a political scheme 
 which was designed to meet conditions of an entirely 
 different character, yet has hi every decade of the 
 last hundred and fifty years resisted adaptation to 
 a new world and a higher public sentiment. We 
 have seen every reform trimmed by the politicians 
 themselves to the smallest dimensions which public 
 opinion would suffer, and usually followed by the 
 transformation of the old abuse into a new type of 
 corruption. We have, I trust, gathered the essential 
 differences between the national business and a 
 private concern, between the political and any other 
 profession. The national business may deteriorate 
 while the national managers prosper. The national 
 business may be entrusted to men for their oratorical 
 qualifications or their dexterity in intrigue, while 
 private business scorns such gifts. The national 
 business is beset by the peculiar difficulty that two 
 rival firms have a monopoly of its prestige and 
 emoluments; that the primary attention of each is 
 devoted to outwitting its opponent; and that each 
 commands a vast organisation for dazing and duping 
 and befooling the ultimate controllers of the nation's 
 destiny. 
 
 We have now to study the system as we find it in 
 action in our own generation, and inquire how far 
 
 170 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 171 
 
 the widespread scorn of political life is justified. I 
 propose to test this first by the behaviour of our 
 politicians during the strain of the great war. Until 
 only a few years ago it was customary to pronounce 
 the party-system superior to any that could be 
 devised for the conduct of our national life. We 
 were then surprised to find that, the moment an 
 unusual effort was required of our statesmanship, 
 men on both sides suavely assured us that the party- 
 system must be entirely suspended. We are not 
 clear about the situation to-day. Large numbers of 
 our journalists and political writers declare, or ex- 
 press a hope, that this party-system has gone for 
 ever. A minority of our politicians would have it 
 restored at once. The majority seem, as far as one 
 can understand, to intimate that they think it may 
 be restored with safety when the strain on our 
 national machinery is somewhat relaxed; which to 
 the simple-minded citizen looks uncommonly like a 
 confession that party-government is an inferior 
 device. Since, however, most of us regard a 
 national business with a turnover of 2,000,000,000 
 a year, with the most delicate and far-reaching of 
 problems, as, even in time of peace, a thing to be 
 entrusted only to the highest ability we can com- 
 mand, we will patiently examine the lessons of the 
 last few years. 
 
 As we read history to-day, the outstanding issue 
 for our national economy in the few years before 
 1914 was that of defence. The outstanding fact is 
 that nothing received less attention, and the educa- 
 tion of the public was left almost entirely to peace- 
 enthusiasts who were so resolute that, if Germany 
 had cared to say that her new ships were merely for 
 export to Patagonia, they would have believed it. 
 It is true that in Mr Asquith's cabinet the situation 
 was more seriously discussed. Sir Edward Grey and 
 Mr Churchill contended earnestly for an adequate 
 
172 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 defence against German possibilities. Other, and 
 more numerous, members of the cabinet repeated 
 the shallow stuff that was being talked all over 
 England. The Kaiser (who had already baulked 
 the two Hague Conferences) was the Prince of 
 Peace : poor Germany was merely intimidated by 
 English Jingoists : and so on. Mr Asquith, most 
 accomplished of politicians, knew that his first duty 
 was to "hold the party together." He held it 
 together, by doing nothing. 
 
 In 1912 the situation became very grave. In 
 February of that year Lord Haldane made his 
 famous visit to Berlin. Let us take Mr Asquith at 
 his word. He told us in October, 1914, that, when 
 Haldane reported that the Germans would agree to 
 some relaxation of the naval race on condition that 
 we agreed to be neutral in case of war, he at once 
 saw the depravity of Germany. His impression 
 must have been put beyond reasonable doubt during 
 the next few months. In the spring the French 
 ambassador at Berlin, M. Cambon, sent home to 
 Paris a minute and documented and most grave re- 
 port on the state of Germany. He proved that the 
 overwhelming majority of the Germans wanted war. 
 One may assume that this document was forwarded 
 to Sir E. Grey and Mr Asquith. A few months later, 
 again, Mr Roosevelt, who was by no means anti- 
 German at that time, visited Berlin. On his return 
 to London he had lunch with Mr Asquith, Sir E. 
 Grey, and Lord Haldane. He very earnestly im- 
 pressed on them his conviction that Germany was 
 preparing for war with France and England. 
 
 Still the Liberal supporters of the Government 
 flooded England with assurances of German fra- 
 ternity, and Mr Asquith sat dumb. In October Sir 
 John Brunner, the President of the National Liberal 
 Federation, sent a circular letter to the chairmen of 
 all the local Liberal Associations in England ancj 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 173 
 
 Scotland and Wales. He reminded them that the 
 sacred Liberal principle was " peace, retrenchment, 
 and reform," and insisted that this was the time to 
 enforce it (on the Government). He opined that the 
 " false and shameful panic of 1909 " (when the 
 nation had been partially awakened to the truth) 
 had unhinged the brains of many, and the calm 
 sanity of the retrenchment-Liberals must speak. He 
 argued that our " entanglement " with France en- 
 dangered our precious good relations with Germany. 
 He did not expressly urge us to tear up our entente 
 with France, though this was obviously suggested, 
 but he did press the Liberal Party to demand that 
 the Government should meet Germany by relinquish- 
 ing the right of capture at sea during war ! 
 
 In the following month there was a public con- 
 ference on Anglo-German relations at the Caxton 
 Hall, when these things were repeated. What did 
 the Government do ? It reported to Parliament that 
 there was an improvement in our relations with Ger- 
 many. It lulled nearly the whole country at a time 
 when Mr Asquith says that even he had at length 
 perceived the wicked designs of Germany. It en- 
 couraged the disdainful and insulting reception of 
 Lord Roberts and his warnings. It complacently 
 regarded the saturation of its own party with a silly 
 and disarming optimism by manufacturers who were 
 grossly ignorant of the facts and fanatics who were 
 supremely indifferent to facts. Why? It would be 
 interesting to ascertain the amounts given to the 
 funds of the Liberal party by the wealthy manufac- 
 turers and enthusiasts who from 1909 to 1914 kept 
 the bandage on the eyes of England. In any case, 
 Mr Asquith's business was to hold the party 
 together. 
 
 It would be a mistake to blame the Liberals only. 
 They have the more blame because they were in 
 power, and had information which could have been 
 
174 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 used without any overt provocation to Germany. 
 The statesman who asks us to believe that the only 
 alternative to the wicked policy of 1909-1914 was to 
 shout from the housetops that Germany was pre- 
 paring for war, has a queer idea of statesmanship. 
 We might have done infinitely less than the Ger- 
 mans, who almost shouted their preparations from 
 the housetops, did, yet have made such preparation 
 that the war would never have taken place. What 
 inflamed our pacifists was our naval preparation, 
 which was done quite openly. Even our naval 
 arrangement with France was plainly announced to 
 the world by the transfer of the Mediterranean fleet. 
 Had we been equally prudent it is not a question 
 of boldness in educating the country, purifying the 
 diplomatic service, and seeing that our military 
 status corresponded, not to Lord Haldane's theories, 
 but to the known weakness of France and Russia, 
 there would have been no war. Neither party 
 sought these things. It was left to a few men out- 
 side both, or all, parties to warn their fellows ; and 
 politicians spoiled their work by repeating month 
 after month that our relations with Germany were 
 good, and they were the people who knew. 
 
 There was a scene in the House in November, 
 1912, which recalls St. Augustine's famous picture 
 of the factions contending in the Circus at Carthage 
 while the Vandals hammered at the gate of the city. 
 A group of Conservatives achieved that thrilling 
 triumph of the system, a defeat of the Government 
 by a snap- vote. Sir F. Banbury rose and moved an 
 amendment of which he had given no notice. The 
 subject was, of course, Irish, not English. The 
 situation was plotted. The debate was rapidly 
 wound up, before the Government Whips could fill 
 up the thin House, and the Conservatives won by 
 228 votes to 206. The adjournment was moved, 
 and, as ministers left the House, Conservative 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 175 
 
 members jumped on the seats, waved their arms 
 like schoolboys on the last day of the term, and 
 shouted: " Good-bye, take your pensions." Mr 
 Asquith, whose majority rose next day to 119, pro- 
 perly refused to resign. Mr Bonar Law denounced 
 his right honourable friend's procedure as " tyranni- 
 cal and revolutionary." To his own followers he 
 commended the advice which Redmond had given 
 the Irish in 1905, which was to " make the continued 
 life of the Government in this Parliament im- 
 possible." 
 
 They did their best. These Liberals were, on the 
 best traditions of the game, cheating them of the 
 emoluments of office. The most sober reporters 
 assure us that many of the Conservative members 
 became " hysterical." Sir W. Bull was expelled 
 from the House for calling Mr Asquith a traitor (not 
 for his behaviour in regard to national defence). 
 Government speakers were refused a hearing. Even 
 curses were heard amid the din and the roar of 
 " Adjourn." The adjournment was forced. As 
 Mr Churchill left the House, some of the Tory gentle- 
 men shouted at him, " Rats." He made the mild 
 retort of waving his handkerchief, and Mr Ronald 
 M'Neill threw a heavy book at him, hitting him in 
 the face. The floor was strewn with papers which 
 the representatives of the British people threw at 
 each other across the House. From the House the 
 mad passion spread to the country, and our people, 
 who ought to have been gravely considering the im- 
 pending disaster to Europe, were vehemently urged 
 by one set of orators to see that Mr Asquith had 
 trampled on the sacred traditions of Parliament, 
 and by another set to appreciate that he was merely 
 keeping a group of greedy adventurers out of office. 
 
 That scene and it was nearly repeated in 1913 
 will live when the last chapter of British history is 
 written. Possibly Mr Bonar Law is not to-day 
 
176 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 proud of the prominent part he took in it. There 
 is no excuse for any of them except the precious 
 exigencies of the party-system. If Mr Bonar Law 
 had not expended so much fiery rhetoric, the cry of 
 the clubs and Press would have been changed from 
 "B.M.G." to "B.L.M.G." As for national in- 
 terests . . . We would muddle through. 
 
 In the early part of 1913 the German Government 
 was forced to make its preparations so openly that 
 military authorities actually predicted a crisis in the 
 summer of 1914. It added 200,000 men to its peace- 
 army, raised the war-chest from six to eighteen 
 millions sterling, and voted an immediate expendi- 
 ture on the army of 50,000,000. The widening and 
 deepening of the Kiel Canal approached its com- 
 pletion. War-literature in Germany rose to several 
 hundred volumes per year. The Navy League and 
 Pan-German League enlisted millions of members 
 and drenched every village with bellicose oratory. 
 It was known that the Kaiser, threatened with dis- 
 placement by his son, solemnly rebuked by the Reich- 
 stag for professing friendship with England, was in 
 open alliance with the war-party. Even the Socialists 
 voted the extraordinary military grants. 
 
 What were our politicians doing ? They were 
 busy with Ireland. They were attending to the 
 Welsh Church. They were facetiously discussing 
 women-suffrage. They were, above all, playing the 
 party-game. A new Franchise Bill was in the House, 
 and, as usual, it tended (or was supposed) to in- 
 crease the Liberal, and diminish the Conservative, 
 strength in the country. There was war to the 
 knife at all events, almost to the fist. When the 
 closure was used to check a stream of oratory on 
 women-suffrage (which the House was determined 
 not to grant) Mr F. E. Smith denounced the Govern- 
 ment for its " brutal exercise of superior strength." 
 Mr Bonar Law declared that the Government was 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 17? 
 
 "in the gutter," and could not degrade Parliament 
 any further. But whenever the question of our 
 national defence or the prospect in Europe arose, 
 there was a beautifully harmonious optimism. 
 
 So, amid belated echoes of Marconi scandals and 
 Indian silver scandals and violent mutual accusa- 
 tions of greed and dishonour, we lumbered into the 
 war-zone. The fatal year opened with an attempt 
 by Mr Lloyd George to secure naval reductions. 
 Germany was quite friendly, and not in the least 
 likely to challenge us, he said. The speech re- 
 sounded throughout the country, and great meet- 
 ings clamoured for our grasping the outstretched 
 hand of the Kaiser. In the previous year the French 
 Government had stolen (though its agents) a confi- 
 dential military memorandum at Berlin, in which 
 it was said : " We must accustom our people to 
 think that an offensive war on our part is a neces- 
 sity. . . We must so manage affairs that an out- 
 break will be considered a relief, because after it 
 would come decades of peace and prosperity, as after 
 1870." One may confidently assume that this was 
 communicated to the British Cabinet. One may 
 suppose that the leaders of the Opposition were 
 not left in total ignorance. But Mr Bonar Law, 
 outside Parliament, scouted the danger of war 
 almost as disdainfully as Mr Lloyd George did. 
 
 In February there were futile debates on the 
 purity of political life and the sale of honours, to 
 which I will return later. The system was declared 
 spotless, and reform was refused. Then the House 
 settled down, for the thousandth time, to a lengthy 
 and glorious debate on Ireland. The members inter- 
 rupted their labours at the end of June to notice 
 the murders at Serajevo, and send the most amazing 
 messages to " the aged Emperor of Austria." That 
 hardened old sinner (and his accomplice at Berlin) 
 must have smiled to hear himself complimented by 
 II 
 
178 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 England on his efforts to " preserve the peace of 
 Europe." The House continued until July 31st to 
 discuss Ireland. Outside, men were now talking 
 about the vital interests of England. Socialists and 
 professors and bishops, the Manchester Guardian 
 and the Daily News, were clinging frantically to the 
 old creed. We must be neutral, if war did occur. 
 No sane and sagacious lead was given to the country 
 by any politician. Germany had been talking of 
 66 the event of war " for ten years, but we must not 
 even mention possibilities. Our politicians were still 
 discussing Ireland when Germany began her first 
 secret mobilisation. A few days later the thunder 
 roared from the firmament; and ministers actually 
 went about boasting (since it proved our innocence) 
 that we were " the least prepared nation in 
 Europe!" 
 
 Viscount Haldane has stated in his vindication 
 (Mr H. Begbie's Vindication of Great Britain) that 
 we (or our statesmen) were quite alive to the im- 
 pending disaster and thoroughly prepared to meet 
 it. The state of the ministry on August 1st, 1914, 
 the state of the army, the state of the country, and 
 the state of the diplomatic service sufficiently answer 
 the second part of this apology. As to the first 
 part, it is probably true in relation to Viscount 
 Haldane, Sir E. Grey, Mr Churchill, and Mr 
 Asquith. Churchill and his associates were alive. 
 Sir E. Grey is known to have long insisted on better 
 defence ; but one may gravely retort that he would 
 have done his duty more faithfully if he had sternly 
 cleansed our embassies, especially in the near East, 
 of the idlers and incompetents who filled them and 
 let Germany do almost as she willed. Viscount 
 Haldane appreciated the danger at times, but we 
 may leave his elusive psychology to some posthu- 
 mous biographer. That he was watching develop- 
 ments in the summer of 1914 may be proved by a 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 179 
 
 fact which it was unwise, or impossible, to disclose 
 earlier : at the end of June, 1914, secret instructions 
 were sent out to our reservists to be ready at a 
 moment's notice, on receipt of a code-telegram. 
 
 Mr Asquith may or may not have appreciated the 
 danger. It seems impossible that any Premier who 
 was in supreme control of our Foreign Office, War 
 Office, and Admiralty during the few years before 
 the war should be insensible of the danger. But he 
 made the disastrous and unpardonable blunder of 
 consulting party-interests before national interests. 
 His cabinet was divided. With Mr Burns, who very 
 unduly flattered himself that he knew Germany, he 
 would willingly have parted. He had already tried 
 to dispense with him, when he found that adopting 
 him into the cabinet did not induce the Labour Party 
 to incorporate itself in the Liberal Party, but Mr 
 Burns had declined to see that that was the sole 
 reason why he was raised to cabinet rank. Lord 
 Morley and Mr Lloyd George were a graver matter. 
 To shed them, on an armament question, meant to 
 disrupt the party. The opinion on the matter of 
 Mr M'Kenna, Mr Birrell, Mr Runciman, and others, 
 would not have much weight. A powerful minority, 
 with decisive documents, would have won them. 
 But both in the cabinet and out of it were resolute 
 adherents of the older Liberal creed, the short- 
 sighted policy of purchasing retrenchment by 
 optimism ; and beyond them were masses of wealthy 
 contributors to the party-funds and workers in the 
 movement who would have represented all prepara- 
 tion as provocation. The Liberal Party was saved; 
 and a debt of 6,000,000,000 was laid on England. 
 I take it that Mr Asquith knew that France, whose 
 politicians were as culpable as ours, had not the 
 equipment for a million men, and that Russia's 
 great armament was mostly paper. It was his 
 business to know it. 
 
180 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Thus we met the great onset, with an army 
 designed only to co-operate with continental forces 
 which were miserably below the theoretical plan, 
 with no schemes ready for the rapid mobilisation 
 of our further resources, with a Premier keenly in- 
 tent on party-interests, with a cabinet largely con- 
 sisting of men unfit to meet a crisis that had 
 threatened for years, with a Battenberg as First Sea 
 Lord, with a crowd of under-secret aries chosen for 
 their services to the party, with our more critical 
 embassies manned by young men who could play 
 tennis and had been to Oxford. There is no sign 
 of the bracing of our system to meet the shock which 
 Mr Asquith and Viscount Haldane say they foresaw 
 from February, 1912. Our Government remained a 
 nondescript collection of professional politicians, 
 undistinguished peers, wealthy men, sons of wealthy 
 men, good talkers, toadies to politicians, lawyers, 
 and careerists. With this equipment we took the 
 field against a national system in which every 
 element was despotically ruled by a man who 
 despised party and had only one idea to win. 
 
 We need not survey in detail the terrible years 
 that followed. The slovenliness with which the 
 nation's work was conducted has made an almost 
 ineffaceable mark on our economy. Almost from 
 the start individuals were encouraged to use the war 
 as a grand means of enriching themselves, and the 
 national economy entered upon the disastrous per- 
 version from which we suffer to-day, and will suffer 
 for decades. Our politicians were dismally incom- 
 petent to manage the various branches of State 
 entrusted to them. As early as February, 1915, the 
 price of flour and bread was rising from fifty to one 
 hundred per cent, above the pre-war level, and any 
 economist could foresee a general rise, with a general 
 disturbance of Labour. The issue was raised in the 
 House. The profiteering of shipowners was exposed 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 181 
 
 daily in the Press. But Mr Asquith unctuously ex- 
 plained the laws of supply and demand to the igno- 
 rant Labour members who raised the question, and 
 thought the situation, in the circumstances, quite 
 satisfactory. Mr Bonar Law agreed with his right 
 honourable friend. Mr Runciman thickly implored 
 them to think twice before they " departed from 
 principles which had been tested over and over 
 again." Mr Austen Chamberlain agreed that it 
 was an " unsuitable time " for making Socialistic 
 experiments in the control of private enterprise. 
 . . . At the end of that year one Liverpool ship- 
 ping firm, a private firm, divided a million in profits. 
 
 In every branch of the national life the same "laws 
 of supply and demand " arid " principles that had 
 been tested over and over again " were given a free 
 run. The funds of each party depended on the suc- 
 cess of private enterprise. The heads of the various 
 departments at that time were incapable of any other 
 kind of enterprise. Timber was wanted, and private 
 enterprise was told to go ahead. The enterprising 
 Mr Meyer, it was soon announced in the House, was 
 making profit at the rate of 60,000 a year ! As 
 usual, the Government resolutely defended their 
 nominee until public clamour compelled them to 
 dock his imperial profits. Horses were wanted. 
 We sent abroad for them men whom we had prose- 
 cuted after the South African War, and they levied 
 commissions in the old style. 
 
 As to guns and munitions, the story is too sordid 
 and stupid for words. The Munitions Committee, 
 which was set up in April, continued to send out 
 contracts with no price on them. A concrete ex- 
 ample, which is within my personal knowledge, will 
 serve better than a hundred stories. A certain new 
 type of gun was invented, and orders for shells were 
 sent out to the chairmen of the various districts. 
 No price was named, though the Committee could 
 
182 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 have ascertained easily what the price ought to be. 
 The manufacturers generally agreed upon a price, 
 and obtained it. This price was nearly double the 
 price at which they were eventually willing to pro- 
 duce the shell. One honest engineer, who had the 
 good sense to be a citizen as well as a manufacturer, 
 sent his contract back to London for a price, and 
 obtained one. He set his own draughtsmen to work, 
 and found that the price named from London was 
 thirty per cent, above a fair and reasonable price. 
 He sent the contract back again, and offered to 
 deliver the goods at the lower price, if it were made 
 uniform for all engineering firms. The Committee 
 consented; but I afterwards found that the shell 
 was being made in the north, and presumably every- 
 where else, at the higher price. Perhaps an apologist 
 would plead the need of haste. Certainly there was 
 need to hurry, for these " goods " were of great 
 importance for the winter of 1915-1916. But in one 
 instance, at least, the supply was held up for four 
 months by a trifling dispute between the London 
 Committee and a Local Committee which one 
 vigorous man could have settled (and eventually did 
 settle) in six hours. 
 
 That is how we fought Germany, and prepared the 
 ruin of our national economy, in 1915. Every one 
 who was able to follow the German press at the 
 time knew that the collapse of the initial plan left 
 the Germans dispirited and enfeebled in the spring 
 of 1915. Had our statesmen shown a proper ap- 
 preciation of the facts from 1910 to 1913 the war 
 would have never have occurred. Had they either 
 resigned or sought the ample assistance of business- 
 men when the war broke out, it would have been 
 finished in 1915. What happened was that for 
 months Germany produced 250,000 shells a day, 
 while we produced only 2,500 high-explosive and 
 13,000 shrapnel shells. So much was allowed to be 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 183 
 
 published long afterwards ; but it was not added 
 that a year after the outbreak of war, when we had 
 had ample time to organise our resources, Germany 
 still produced five times as many shells per day as 
 England. At that time there were large engineer- 
 ing firms in the north who had not been asked to 
 make a shell. 
 
 Mr Asquith now lays the blame on Lord Kitchener, 
 who is dead. On April 20th, 1915, it will be re- 
 membered, Mr Asquith went to Newcastle, where 
 a great " Deliver the Goods " meeting had been con- 
 vened. This was the early period of the German 
 underground works and barbed wire entanglements. 
 High-explosive shells were vital, and any word of the 
 Premier's would go through the workshops of 
 England. He is usually reported as saying that our 
 operations were not at all crippled, as some main- 
 tained, by a scarcity of shells. What he really did 
 say was so confusing that the effect was much the 
 same. After defending himself and his party by 
 rebutting this libel that the army was short of shells, 
 he went on to explain that " the urgency was due 
 to the unprecedented scale of the use of munitions 
 and the enlistment of so many skilled workers." 
 There was a shortage and " urgency," and there 
 was not a shortage. The party-interest again spoiled 
 the national interest. 
 
 As to Lord Kitchener, it seems to be forgotten 
 that he spoke on the subject in the House of Lords 
 on May 18th. He then stated that there had been 
 a " considerable delay " in the production of high- 
 explosive shells; that the demand was enormous, 
 but the supply was inadequate on account of the 
 lack of experience of manufacturers in producing 
 them. Viscount Haldane embroidered this text at 
 the National Liberal Club on July 5th. An ample 
 supply had been ordered in October, he said, but 
 the production was delayed by differences between 
 
184 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 capital and labour. A third theory was discussed in 
 the House. It was said that incompetent officials 
 at the War Office had misled Lord Kitchener, and 
 their heads were demanded; and refused by the 
 Government. All three theories were true. A large 
 supply had been ordered, but not nearly large 
 enough for the new conditions of the war, and certain 
 military authorities ought to have been promptly 
 discharged. There had been "differences between 
 capital and labour." Here is an experience of 1915, 
 told me by a workman involved in it. An employer 
 let his workers know that he would cut down their 
 rates, as the wages they were making were very 
 high. They sent a deputation to tell him, genially, 
 that if he did this, they would send a report on his 
 profits to London; and employer and employees 
 continued to add to our National Debt. In the 
 third place, the recognised manufacturers, the pro- 
 minent Liberals and Conservatives, were for a long 
 time allowed to monopolise the manufacture and the 
 profits. 
 
 It was a sordid scramble for wealth on the one 
 hand and higher wages on the other, impotently 
 surveyed by the nerveless folk who presided over 
 the national machine. The only sign of life given 
 by the patriotic Opposition was a criticism of the 
 Budget. The revenue for the coming year was esti- 
 mated at ,270,000,000 ; the expenditure was esti- 
 mated at 1,332,000,000. But the leaders of the 
 Opposition fell upon the estimates with little less 
 than the usual virulence, and the Irish Party went 
 into convulsions at the prospect of a higher tax on 
 beer and whiskey. 
 
 Before the end of May the complacency with which 
 the country had been beguiled was rudely shocked. 
 The Russian " steam-roller " rolled backward at 
 headlong speed. It was whispered under breath 
 that the Russian infantry were fighting with sticks. 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 185 
 
 New dissensions broke out in the Government. The 
 Conservatives, Mr Bonar Law afterwards said, could 
 have brought out facts far more serious than those 
 which had led to the famous " Cordite vote " years 
 before, and swept the Government out of power. 
 He was honest enough to add that the Conserva- 
 tives could not very easily have held power after 
 them. In the Conservative rank and file there was 
 a sullen resentment that he had not done so, and for 
 a year or two they regarded the compromise as 
 cheating them out of a large share of the sweets of 
 office. Luckily, they had wiser leaders, and we got 
 the Coalition. 
 
 But even this change, effected at a moment when 
 the Germans had recovered their nerve and were 
 displaying appalling vigour, was marred and en- 
 feebled by our abominable party-considerations. 
 Theoretically a coalition unites the best men of both 
 parties, the best men of the nation, for harmonious 
 and energetic national action. It is so sound a 
 theory, and is so frequently invoked in a national 
 emergency, that the layman is puzzled by the 
 familiar praise of our party-system. Indeed, the 
 very emphasis with which our politicians tell of the 
 personal sacrifices they make on entering into a 
 coalition make one wonder if the normal duality of 
 our political world is not due to those personal 
 interests which they patriotically disregard at a time 
 of crisis. If the party-system merits all the praise 
 it receives from those who are prominent in it, how 
 does it so constantly fail in a period of special stress ? 
 And why is the abolition of party-distinctions so 
 very effective when our effort must be most tense, 
 and so hazardous or ineffective when Government 
 has to bear only the comparatively light burden of 
 ordinary administration ? 
 
 These are secrets of the sacred enclosure. What 
 concerns us for the moment is that, at a time when 
 
186 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 party-interests were supposed to be sacrificed on the 
 national altar, they very plainly enfeebled the new 
 combination. When Mr Pease, the only one of the 
 retiring ministerialists to make a word of complaint, 
 contended in the House that the interest of the 
 nation and its soldiers ought alone to be consulted 
 one gathers that he meant that at such a time party- 
 interests ought not to be consulted Mr Asquith 
 eloquently protested that no other thought had 
 influenced them. He said : 
 
 " What is the personality of this man or that ? 
 A supreme cause is at stake. We have each and 
 all of us I do not care who we are or what we 
 are to respond with whatever we have, with 
 whatever we can give, with whatever we can 
 sacrifice, to the dominating and inexorable call." 
 
 Again a most admirable sentiment ; which Mr Asquith 
 no doubt recalled when he quitted office in 1916, 
 and which he doubtless holds constantly before 
 his eyes since the country passed its verdict on him 
 in 1918. But when one examines the personnel of 
 the great exchange in 1915, one wonders if the senti- 
 ment was judiciously realised. The vigour of Mr 
 Balfour replaced Mr Churchill's debility at the Ad- 
 miralty. Mr McKenna was transferred from the 
 comparatively otiose dignity of the Home Office 
 and took command of our weird and wonderful war- 
 finance. Mr Henderson startled the world by under- 
 taking to run our Education Department. Mr 
 Walter Long energetically attacked the thorny prob- 
 lems of our Local Government Board. Mr Birrell 
 continued his Platonic rule in Ireland. Mr Runci- 
 man still watched our shipping and the other mas- 
 sive problems of our Board of Trade. And, in order 
 to make quite complete the infusion of new blood 
 into our languishing departments, half a dozen 
 Liberal under-secretaries were removed, and half a 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 187 
 
 dozen adherents of Mr Bonar Law and Mr Balfour 
 took their places. Mr J. M. Robertson, an able 
 economist and one of the most vigorous of the 
 under-secret aries, was discharged, with all his 
 experience, and replaced by Mr Pretyman. And 
 so on. 
 
 It was a party-deal. In point after point the 
 national interest was postponed to party-interest or 
 personal interest. Some complained that it deprived 
 the Government of an effective opposition. They 
 would do better to read the record of the Conservative 
 Opposition until July 1915. There was far more 
 fruitful opposition after the establishment of the 
 Coalition. The most deadly charge is the record of 
 the new Government. 
 
 There were advances. Mr Lloyd George, faced 
 with a gigantic problem in his Munitions Depart- 
 ment, inaugurated the change which was to save the 
 nation. He invited men who were not professional 
 politicians to lend a hand in the national business. 
 Labour, now at least partly aware of the facts, bent 
 its back to the work. But the Government and the 
 House had so little to do with these things that at 
 the end of the month they dispersed for a six weeks' 
 holiday ! A few live men, like Sir H. Dalziel and 
 Sir A. Markham, protested. Mr Asquith thought 
 that, on the whole, the situation was satisfactory, 
 and the House joyously agreed. At that point our 
 Russian hopes were shattered. Our campaign in the 
 Dardanelles was a failure. It was clear that Bulgaria 
 was preparing to join Germany. Ireland, India and 
 Egypt were being roused against us. America was 
 seething with anti-British sentiment. Labour was 
 giving trouble every week. 
 
 The new session bore no evidence of new vigour. 
 A revised Budget put the revised estimate of deficit 
 at 1,285,000; and the members made it the occa- 
 sion of a spirited debate on Free Trade and Protec- 
 
188 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 tion. Mr J. H. Thomas issued (in the House) the 
 first of his prophecies of " revolution " which he 
 would greatly deplore, of course if compulsory 
 service were adopted. There was in this talk about 
 compulsion, he said, a plot to displace Mr Asquith; 
 and he intimated that the workers of England would 
 rise en masse in his defence. Dark rumours began 
 to circulate about Gallipoli. There were, in fact, 
 more than rumours. Lord Northcliffe had, in manu- 
 script, an authentic account which even he dare not 
 publish. It was unnecessary for ministers to ap- 
 proach him privately, as they did, and implore him 
 to say less. That manuscript has not yet seen the 
 light. 
 
 At length some of our statesmen, sobered out of 
 all party considerations by the darkening prospect, 
 took patriotic action. Sir E. Carson left the Cabinet 
 and publicly laid the amazing charge that the 
 Government had no " clearly-defined, well thought- 
 out, and decisive policy " in the East. Bulgaria had 
 entered the war. The veil of secrecy over Gallipoli 
 was unendurable : especially to those of us who 
 knew the facts. We were told by Sir E. Carson that 
 the military staff which advised the Cabinet was 
 " a scratch lot." We were told by Lord St Davids 
 that the Headquarters Staff and Divisional Staffs in 
 France were full of incompetents who owed their 
 places to rank, money or social influence. The 
 need for a more gigantic effort than ever was ap- 
 parent, but Mr Runciman, Mr McKenna and Sir 
 J. Simon blocked the way to compulsory service. 
 Mr Asquith held on. His health was quite good, 
 he said, and he would not resign. The Globe was 
 suppressed. The one set of papers which was inde- 
 pendent of both parties, and therefore doing splendid 
 critical work, was luridly denounced in the House. 
 
 The story of those terrible early years of the war 
 must be shortened. We settled down to a " war of 
 
POLITICIANS AND NATIONAL CRISIS 189 
 
 attrition," and columns of figures of " man-re- 
 sources " took the place of the old diagrams of 
 steam-rollers. Mr Belloc, giving plain hints that 
 his figures came from the French and British War 
 Offices, " proved to demonstration " that the Ger- 
 man resources would shrink after the beginning of 
 1917. Mr Masterman, whom the country had de- 
 cisively rejected but the Government retained, lent 
 them a more authoritative air. We at last extorted 
 a measure of compulsory service " a monument of 
 political ineptitude," Mr Duke called Mr Asquith's 
 first Bill, which the House indignantly rejected. 
 The House wrangled to protect Ireland, which con- 
 tinued its plotting under the fatherly eye of Mr 
 Birrell, and conscientious objectors. The battle of 
 the tank was fought, in official circles, and the edge 
 of this most valuable weapon blunted before it was 
 used. We still had no Air Ministry. Rumania came 
 in just when the Russian offensive had spent itself, 
 and was smashed within a month. The debt rose 
 to 2,500,000,000. The Irish rebelled. Unsavoury 
 rumours about Mesopotamia spread, and, when Mr 
 Asquith's mellow assurance that all was now " quite 
 satisfactory " had been brushed aside and an in- 
 quiry obtained, another ghastly scandal sickened 
 the weary land. Rumania disappeared. Food ran 
 short. Teetotallers were allowed to play their tricks 
 on the sullen workers. 
 
 The terrible year ended with the splendid revolt 
 of Mr Lloyd George. Was he ambitious ? Does it 
 matter two pins whether he was or not? He had 
 the two qualities we needed : energy and an appre- 
 ciation of the value of men of business and science. 
 He gave the food to Rhondda, the shipping to 
 Pirrie, the schools to Fisher, and so on. The system, 
 unhappily, still counted. He had to keep certain 
 weaklings. He had to send Mr Henderson, who 
 could not tell a Russian P from an English N, to 
 
190 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 deal with the Russian revolution. But we no longer 
 muddled through. We marched on, heads erect and 
 eyes on the goal. The party-system was reduced to 
 a minimum. We held up our heads amongst the 
 nations. We got there ; but as a legacy of the first 
 three years of sluggishness and incompetence we have 
 a debt of 6,000,000,000, a nation unhinged by the 
 complete perversion of its economic standards, an 
 industrial order so demoralised that we almost 
 despair of its return to sanity. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 AT this point the reader is asked to turn back and 
 glance again at the first chapter. In 1918 we reached 
 our goal, and, knowing that a colossal task still lay 
 before us, we not unwisely entrusted it to the men 
 who had found the men to achieve victory. I have 
 described what followed. Never was there a more 
 bitter disillusion; and it is more bitter because we 
 are conscious that if we had to choose again to-day 
 we should make the same choice. The old paralysis 
 pf 1914-1916 seemed to return to the political or- 
 ganism. It is not the least use for us to remind 
 ourselves that mighty things were done in what I 
 am calling a period of paralysis. We know them 
 well : a synthesis of military, naval, industrial, dis- 
 tributive, and financial efforts such as no other 
 nation has ever equalled. The point is that mightier 
 things could have been done with our resources, and 
 ought to have been done. We have seen that the 
 reasons why they were not done are political. 
 
 So it is with the situation since 1918. Consider- 
 ing, on the one hand, the magnitude of the necessary 
 reconstruction and, on the other, the perverted 
 views and temper of our people, the task was truly 
 gigantic. The effort put into it is very far from 
 commensurate to the task. The outcome so far is 
 astonishingly poor. And the reasons are political. 
 The appalling orgie of diplomacy and intrigue at 
 Paris was the first cardinal blunder. It was such 
 work as politicians love. The initial dilatoriness 
 
 191 
 
192 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 was fatal, and the proceedings and staffs were ridi- 
 culously over-elaborate. The whole world suffers 
 and languishes because the qualities of ordinary 
 business methods were not studied. Observation 
 sometimes tempts one to say that, if one woman 
 can do a thing in five minutes, two will take ten 
 minutes, and three fifteen minutes to do it. So of 
 politicians. If one Government will take a month 
 to do a thing (which a commercial board will do in 
 a fortnight), six governments will take six months. 
 
 For it is hardly necessary to say that there is no- 
 thing distinctive about our British politicians. The 
 qualities of politicians differ in degree only in different 
 lands. The political development in France during 
 the war was just as paralysing and pernicious as 
 here until Clemenceau infused his vigour into the 
 machine. There were the same gold-laced incom- 
 petents, the same mediocrities installed for party- 
 reasons, the same disastrous favouritism, the same 
 " patriotic " suppression of inconvenient facts to 
 protect individuals, the same illusion that good 
 talkers are good doers, the same floods of oratory 
 in accord with parliamentary traditions, the same 
 postponement of national interests to those of 
 cliques. It was the same in Italy. It was the same 
 in Greece and Bulgaria, only more squalid. It was 
 the same in America, as far as autocracy permitted. 
 It is just the same beyond the war-theatre. From 
 Spain, where politics mean jobbery almost of the 
 worst American type, to Argentina the national 
 business is conducted on lines that would wreck a 
 private business in six months. 
 
 It is therefore not surprising that twenty groups 
 of politicians took six months to settle what every- 
 body thought had been settled when each power 
 entered the war, and to create a League of Nations 
 which is hardly worth the parchment its articles 
 are written on which leaves us just where the 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 193 
 
 Hague Conferences did. But for us in England the 
 graver circumstance was that our work of domestic 
 reconstruction was almost suspended until the Paris 
 Conference was over. For this we are paying 
 dearly. We lost at least 500,000,000 in production 
 and wasted at least 500,000,000 in avoidable ex- 
 penditure through the delay in England. That is 
 a very moderate estimate. The work waiting to be 
 done was such that production ought to have been 
 doubled or trebled. 
 
 The patient social physician, the wise shareholder 
 in the national business, will try to select the real 
 causes from the excuses and mutual charges that 
 flew about. War-weariness is pleaded. It is rub- 
 bish. Our politicians were jaded, perhaps, but the 
 country was not. Wherever there was wise guid- 
 ance, the energy was as great as in the best war- 
 days. There were three real causes. First was the 
 obvious need that the same central power which had 
 converted our industries into war-industries should 
 re-convert them as rapidly as possible into peace- 
 industries; but, although this central power had 
 four million men under its control, it eagerly listened 
 to the selfish plea of " private enterprise," that 
 manufacturers be allowed to do the work them- 
 selves (and reap unlimited profit). The second 
 cause was that owing to the utter perversion of the 
 popular economic standard it was necessary to re- 
 strict currency and restore its original value as 
 speedily as possible; and this vital work, which 
 only the central power could effect, was scandal- 
 ously neglected, and England fell into hysterical 
 dissipation with its wads of paper-money. The 
 third cause was that, as our authorities ought to 
 have known well, there was a deadly difference of 
 opinion between labour (or the minority that directs 
 labour) and capital as to the distribution of the 
 profit of re-equipping the world, and so there was 
 
 N 
 
194 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 a demand for a perfectly clear and reasonable 
 scheme; but our central authority dare offend 
 neither side by proposing something different from 
 the extreme demands of each. 
 
 It would take a volume to make these things 
 entirely plain and give the necessary illustrations. 
 I can only ask the reader to take any single strand 
 of disorder in our time and see if it does not lead 
 to the discovery of remissness or cowardice in the 
 political authorities. The remedy, one will say, is 
 " increased production," and the Government has 
 shouted it until it is hoarse. Yes, but there will be 
 no increased production if the manufacturing and 
 distributing middle-class is to take the extraordinary 
 profits out of it which those men have been making 
 for the last five years. The present system of ad- 
 vancing wages and advancing commodities is mere 
 preliminary fencing. The workers demand " real " 
 advances. In 1915 and 1916 Socialist economists 
 privately it was never printed assured the workers 
 of South Wales and the Clyde and East London 
 that the war would make an end of the middle-class 
 banking and capitalist system. They are dis- 
 appointed; but they are not going to return to the 
 old system. It is a problem beyond the capacity, 
 and too delicate for the party-interests, of Mr Bonar 
 Law and Mr Austen Chamberlain. 
 
 Another says that the remedy is the restriction 
 of the currency. One would like to see the Govern- 
 ment attempt it. Another says that .the great need is 
 to restrict importations. The Government finds that 
 a tax on motor-cars and motor-cycles does not make 
 the smallest difference to the invading flood of 
 American goods, and it dare do no more. Another 
 says that the national organisation of power and 
 transport and agriculture will pay the higher bill 
 for wages. The Government have shown that they 
 dare not do it. Another says that, since the Govern- 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 195 
 
 ment do not believe that our National Debt will 
 be paid by Germany, they ought to tell the country 
 the stark economic facts in the boldest language. 
 They dare not do it. They are muttering common- 
 places, temporising, putting off the day of reckoning 
 or of dissolution as long as they can. 
 
 Our national business, in a word, is in a very bad 
 way indeed, and the brains which control it are dis- 
 traught and vacillating. Its vital elements are con- 
 flicting and chaotic, and it is loaded with a debt 
 of 6,000,000,000. If we do not find a national 
 income of more than 800,000,000 a year, or four 
 times what we found in 1913, we shoulder the debt 
 for ever, or until the Bolshevist Revolution. Eng- 
 land needs, as never before, a straight, clear, bold, 
 incisive lead. Such a lead could only come from 
 statesmen, and our statesmen are politicians. They 
 do not like straight, clear, bold pronouncements, if 
 these make anybody wince except their political 
 opponents. 
 
 There's the rub. The party-system injures us 
 to-day, as it has injured England during the whole 
 of the long period I have surveyed. The Coalition 
 has not abolished the party-system. It means that 
 whereas a Liberal statesman ten years ago needed 
 to study the interests of the Liberal party, he now 
 has to study the interests of the Conservative party 
 also. It does not mean that the best brains of 
 both parties are now available for the nation's busi- 
 ness, for half of the Liberal party stands out in 
 sullen opposition, and at the moment it looks as if 
 a large part of the Conservative party were about 
 to secede. The Labour party cries plague on all 
 their houses. The ideal plan of the moment is to 
 form a new Whig party, with four other parties 
 playing the ancient game of combinations and 
 defeats. 
 
 After all our talk about the modern purification 
 
196 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 of politics, history is repeating itself very crudely. 
 In an earlier chapter I showed how the mind of the 
 country was reflected in the impartial Anual Register 
 during the Napoleonic War. People complained 
 that, in spite of coalition, each of the parties " main- 
 tained that the other grasped at offices for the pur- 
 pose of getting possession of the public money." 
 They spoke contemptuously of " Ins and Outs." 
 They noticed how each embarrassed the other when 
 out of office, and fell lamentably short of its promises 
 when it was entrusted with office. In short, " the 
 people at large had absolutely lost all confidence in 
 a majority of them." 
 
 Then in 1S32 political life was " reformed." The 
 strain of another great war, the Crimean War, was 
 laid on England in 1855. How did the new 
 machinery, the Coalition of that time, work? The 
 Blue Books of the Sevastopol Committee, like our 
 Blue Books of the Mesopotamia Commission, were 
 terrible reading. Men had to complain of a War- 
 Cabinet and House of Commons that took a twp 
 months' holiday in the gravest period of the struggle. 
 Sir A. H. Layard, Samuel Morley, Charles Dickens 
 and other non-politicians held scorching meetings in 
 the city. The administration was, they agreed, 
 filled with incompetent men. Sir Austen Layard 
 moved in the House a resolution which is worth 
 reproducing : 
 
 " That this House views with deep and increas- 
 ing concern the state of the nation, and is of 
 opinion that the manner in which merit and 
 efficiency have been sacrificed in the public ap- 
 pointments to party and family influence and to 
 a blind adherence to routine, has given rise to 
 grave misfortunes, and threatens to bring dis- 
 credit upon the national character, and to involve 
 the country in great disaster." 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 197 
 
 If the Conservatives had cared to unite with these 
 independent Liberals, they could have thrown out 
 the Government. But there are times appointed in 
 the party-manual when it is unpatriotic to do so : 
 times, that is to say, when clearing up the mess 
 would entail more loss than prestige. So the Govern- 
 ment got Sir E. Bulwer Lytton to move an amend- 
 ment which also is worth reproducing : 
 
 " That the House recommends to the earliest 
 attention of Her Majesty's Ministers the necessity 
 of a careful revision of our various official estab- 
 lishments, with a view to simplifying and facilita- 
 ting the transaction of public business, and, by 
 instituting judicious tests of merit, as well as by 
 removing obstructions to fair promotion and legi- 
 timate rewards, to secure to the service of the 
 State the largest available proportion of intelli- 
 gence for which the people of this country are 
 distinguished." 
 
 This was stately, elegant, soothing to conscience 
 without any harsh effectiveness. The House passed 
 the amendment by a large majority. Palmerston 
 remained in power, and laughed at the " Drury 
 Lane theatricals " of the reformers. He made the 
 Duke of Cambridge Commander-in-Chief. And in 
 the following year nearly the whole of the critics 
 were swept out of Parliament. 
 
 We were just as wise when it came to the Boer 
 War, and we got just as little wisdom out of it. 
 We reached the Great European War with a system 
 as in 1804, in which " merit and efficiency had been 
 sacrificed in the public appointments to party and 
 family influence." At the close of the war the de- 
 fects of the system are little altered. In view of 
 present tendencies there is some danger that the 
 temporary modifications we adopted will be aban- 
 
198 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 doned, and the old system will return with all its 
 archaic and mischievous features. 
 
 Now there is little or no reality to-day in what 
 were once deep and earnest principles dividing 
 thoughtful men into two camps. We no longer take 
 different sides on the royal prerogative, for there is 
 no royal prerogative. We no longer divide into 
 furiously hostile parties over the Church, for the 
 Church of England includes considerably less than 
 half the nation, and it is to-day not without its 
 Liberals. There is no longer 'a sharp antagonism 
 over foreign affairs, for the Conservative leader who 
 would venture to revive the attitude of his party 
 fifty years ago would not have the least chance of 
 power. We are not even cleanly divided over Tariff 
 Reform, and how we stand in regard to Ireland we 
 hardly know ourselves. At the most there is a Con- 
 servative spirit which tends to protect from change 
 the Throne, the Constitution, property and the 
 Church, though large numbers of Liberals would 
 heatedly affirm that there is no Tory monopoly of 
 this spirit; and there is a Liberal spirit which anti- 
 cipates " reasonable and gradual " change, though 
 most modern Conservatives dare not admit that this 
 is distinctively Liberal. The present proposals of 
 new parties and new combinations show how hollow 
 and politic the whole division is. Men are discussing 
 the re-arrangement of groups, not on any principles 
 which may spontaneously draw them together, but 
 on the ground of possible success at the polls. 
 
 Such plans have often been mooted before, and 
 the third and fourth parties have perished with the 
 ambitions of the men who led them. The plain 
 truth is that England is controlled by two organisa- 
 tions, not two sets of principles. They were once 
 bodies of men cemented togther by the force of 
 strong convictions. Leaders naturally arose, and 
 loyalty to leaders followed as a matter of course. 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 199 
 
 As the fire of conviction dimmed, the heirs of the 
 power and glamour of these leaders sought other 
 means of cohesion. Money was obviously the first : 
 intimidation the second. You followed the leader, 
 or his representative, because you were rewarded 
 for doing it, and punished for not doing it. Both 
 agencies were easily used until the middle of the 
 nineteenth century. Intimidation had then to be 
 abandoned. Money remained the great political 
 agglutinant. 
 
 Here the party-leaders and zealous adherents 
 violently dissent. Do you, they ask, quarrel with 
 a body of men because they choose to make modest 
 annual contributions for the triumph of principles 
 which they regard as precious to the nation's wel- 
 fare ? Do you regard Mr Birrell as one of these un- 
 scrupulous party-hacks, or as a man of sincere and 
 informed convictions, if of unpractical character? 
 Well, Mr Birrell emphatically said that the greatest 
 of questions was whether England in the twentieth 
 century was to be Liberal or Conservative. Glad- 
 stone would undoubtedly have supported him. You 
 must, the resentful Liberal may say, be cherishing 
 the illusion of the sale of honours and the adaptation 
 of policy to contributions, which has been raised and 
 refuted in every decade. 
 
 Let us see. It is quite true that the charge has 
 been raised and refuted in every decade. It was 
 familiar a century ago, and the then leaders of the 
 House resented it as indignantly as Mr Bonar Law 
 does to-day. We have, however, seen so many 
 things resented in the House, which were notoriously 
 true, that we investigate further. In the House, 
 even a hundred years ago, it was quite customary 
 to deny that there was corruption at elections. Let 
 us take a concrete case. In 1815 Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence was knighted. What could be more inno- 
 cent or natural ? If we cannot confer the dignity 
 
200 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 on artists of his rank, what is the meaning of 
 knighthood? In point of fact, the Dictionary of 
 National Biography, our most scrupulous informant, 
 tells us that the Prince Regent, in knighting him, 
 assured him that he was " proud to confer the 
 honour on one who had raised British art in the 
 esteem of all Europe." If we question the sincerity 
 of this honouring, we shall certainly look askance 
 at some of the grounds alleged for conferring titles 
 in our modern lists. Yet any person who cares to 
 consult Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag (p. 97) 
 will find this letter which was written to him at the 
 time by Mr Mash : 
 
 " If you will have honours conferred upon you, 
 you must pay for them. . . . Send me a Draft 
 before eleven o'clock to-morrow morning for 
 ,108, 2s. 8d., upon the receipt of which directions 
 will be given for your knighthood to be announced 
 in the Gazette to-morrow evening." 
 
 One can imagine the irony with which a politician 
 of the day would have demolished the idea that the 
 honour was sold to Sir Thomas Lawrence, the great 
 artist. Two generations, later, however, this letter 
 sees the light. Will anyone question that it is a 
 surviving fragment of a system, a regular business ? 
 The tone and terms of the letter are clear enough. 
 
 I have already given a later illustration of the 
 improper bestowal of honours. It was not for 
 money, but it fitly illustrates the value of the 
 denials of politicians. In 1883 Mr Labouchere, who 
 knew most things that were to be known about the 
 seamy side of politics, asked for a rider to the Cor- 
 rupt Practices Bill, making it illegal to obtain a title 
 by promoting any person's election. The insinua- 
 tion was heatedly challenged. At once Lord Ran- 
 dolph Churchill suplied two notorious instances. 
 Sir R. Green-Price was made a baronet in 1869 by 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 201 
 
 the Liberals for vacating the Radnorshire Boroughs 
 to provide a safe seat for Lord Hartington. Sir H. 
 Johnstone got a peerage in 1880 for resigning Scar- 
 borough in favour of Mr Dodson. Mr Gladstone 
 warmly assured the House that there had been no 
 " transaction " in either case. Any person who cares 
 to run over the records will find a remarkable num- 
 ber of these instances of post hoc, sed non propter 
 hoc. 
 
 It was about this time that Mr J. Passmore 
 Edwards entered Parliament. Few men deserved 
 honours more than Edwards, but he died a plain 
 man. He was a strong Liberal, and probably con- 
 tributed generously to the funds. On two occa- 
 sions he refused knighthood. I am aware that the 
 second offer came from Mr Balfour, but Edwards 
 had already refused to be knighted. He had seen 
 too much during his parliamentary career. Those 
 who never heard his caustic observations may read 
 what he says in his Few Footprints (p. 42) : 
 
 " The House of Commons is a rich hunting- 
 ground for title-hunters. If the curtain could be 
 lifted so that light might be thrown on the motives 
 and the means used by many to get titles, both 
 the wearers and the things worn would command 
 only insignificant respect." 
 
 Unhappily, the man who would let light into this 
 particular gloom has a peculiar difficulty. To select 
 any name from the Honours List, and say that the 
 recipient had done nothing to deserve the honour, 
 might indeed win the assent of ninety-nine men out 
 of a hundred, but lawyers and judges are not made 
 like other men. Mr Passmore Edwards gives a 
 quaint illustration in the book I have just men- 
 tioned. After his first election he was sued for cor- 
 rupt practices. There was not a ghost of substance 
 in the charge, but the case dragged slowly through 
 
202 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the Court. Even when Mr Justice Hawkins pointedly 
 remarked that " this case is costing more than a 
 guinea a minute," counsel blandly pursued his 
 futile argument. It cost Mr Passmore Edwards 
 .500 to meet an utterly baseless charge. On the 
 other hand, one might as well seek to prove the 
 identity of Junius or the Man in the Iron Mask as 
 prove any man's contribution to party-funds. The 
 subscription-book is the most sacred document of 
 the cult. 
 
 Now and again some candid biographer fails to 
 burn a letter, and the contributions of Cecil Rhodes 
 to the Irish and Liberal funds will be found very 
 significant evidence. Rhodes made his contributions, 
 not for a trumpery title, but to influence policy. 
 Now, that policy is ever modified or even in the 
 faintest degree influenced by donations to the party 
 is even more eagerly denied than the sale of hon- 
 ours. But the facts here are incontrovertible, and 
 they suggest strange lights on strange acts. 
 
 Readers of Viscount Morley's Life of Gladstone 
 will remember how both Mr Gladstone and Parnell 
 long vacillated on the question whether, after the 
 grant of Home Rule, the Irish members were to 
 remain at Westminster. Neither of them wished it, 
 but there were reasons for retention. In Gladstone's 
 biography the mind of the great statesman is judici- 
 ously guided to its ultimate attitude, the decision 
 to retain the Irish, and there is no mention of Cecil 
 Rhodes or the Liberal Secretary. But Howard 
 Hensman had published in his biography of Rhodes 
 a few years earlier a lengthy and detailed and con- 
 vincing account of the matter that might have been 
 considered.* 
 
 Rhodes had in 1888 given Mr Parnell ,10,000 and 
 ,1000 from another South African, for the funds of 
 the Irish party, on condition that thirty-four Irish 
 * Cecil Rhodes (1901), pp. 316-357. 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 203 
 
 members remained at Westminster after a Parlia- 
 ment had been set up at Dublin. Parnell had at 
 first refused to consent to this proposal. He cared 
 nothing about Rhodes 's scheme of Imperial Federa- 
 tion, or about anything except Home Rule. The 
 offer of 11,000, however, assisted him to see that 
 it was desirable that Ireland should be represented 
 at Westminster. He arranged that Rhodes should 
 write a letter explaining his wishes. As Rhodes 
 indiscreetly, or bluntly, mentioned the money in 
 the letter, Parnell had this passage deleted which 
 throws some light on the value of political docu- 
 ments accepted the money, and won his colleagues 
 to the plan. It remained to overcome the reluct- 
 ant mind of Gladstone, for Chamberlain had par- 
 ticularly resented this proposal. Two years later 
 Parnell wrote to Cecil Rhodes the letter is repro- 
 duced to say that he had just visited Hawarden, 
 and had seen that the retention of the Irish 
 members was in the draft of the Bill. 
 
 Mr Schnadhorst, the Liberal whip, then ap- 
 proached Rhodes. An election approached, and the 
 treasury was not full enough. Rhodes promised 
 ,5000 to the Liberal funds if the Irish members re- 
 mained at Westminster and if (especially) Mr Glad- 
 stone would firmly refuse to withdraw from Egypt. 
 Schnadhorst certainly gave Rhodes the impression 
 that he had consulted Mr Gladstone, and got the 
 necessary assurances, for on February 23rd, 1891, 
 Rhodes wrote to him : 
 
 " I enclose you a cheque for 5000, and I hope 
 you will, with the extreme caution that is neces- 
 sary, help in guiding your party to consider 
 politics other than England." 
 
 It was the time, it will be remembered, when 
 Gladstone was warily steering between the Scylla 
 of Radicalism (which demanded the evacuation of 
 
204 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Egypt) and the Charybdis of a new Liberal Im- 
 perialism. Indeed, Rhodes added an angry post- 
 script in which he tells that he has just seen Morley's 
 language about Egypt, and he says to Schnadhorst : 
 " If you think your party hopeless, keep the money, 
 but give it to some charity you approve of." The 
 whole transaction was to be kept secret. 
 
 A few months later Gladstone attacked the Con- 
 servative Government over Egypt, and demanded 
 evacuation. Rhodes now told Mr Schnadhorst that, 
 if Gladstone persisted in this attitude, the money 
 must be given to a charity. The writhing and wrig- 
 gling of the Whip under this painful demand make 
 amusing reading. The money was already virtually 
 spent; he had not regarded Egypt as an essential 
 condition; and, in short, Mr Rhodes might rest as- 
 sured that Mr Gladstone had only registered a 
 ' pious opinion ' which would not be carried out. 
 It was not carried out, as the world knows. The 
 demand for the evacuation of Egypt disappeared 
 from the Liberal program, after adorning it for 
 twenty years. 
 
 The reader may make what he likes of the official 
 denials. Mr Gladstone denied that he knew of the 
 " transaction." The fact remains that Rhodes paid 
 15,000 to party funds (for which he otherwise did 
 not care a rap), secretly, for the explicit purpose of 
 altering the prevailing Liberal policy in his own 
 Imperialistic sense. The money was retained. The 
 aims of Mr Rhodes were realised. One wonders how 
 many other contributions to British party-funds 
 came from South Africa. 
 
 In fine, I may put on record, though they will still 
 be remembered, certain statements made in a recent 
 debate on honours and party-funds. Mr Belloc, 
 when he was in Parliament, brought in a motion for 
 the auditing of the party-funds. It will be recol- 
 lected how the parliamentary strategists easily de- 
 
'THE PARTY-SYSTEM 205 
 
 feated the proposal by an amendment which dissi- 
 pated attention in futile wrangles. Later, there was 
 a debate in the Lords, with the usual strong state- 
 ments and bland denials. On May 28th, 1919, 
 Brigadier-General Croft obtained a day in the House 
 of Commons, moved a resolution which called upon 
 the Government " to make the publication of the 
 particulars of such funds compulsory " and to en- 
 sure that " recommendations for the bestowal of 
 honours in recognition of subscriptions to such funds 
 should be discontinued." 
 
 The name politician had, he reminded the House, 
 become " one of opprobrium," and the leader of 
 the House had himself attributed its decay to the 
 extinction of the individual member by the party- 
 system. He urged the House to " strike at the root 
 of corruption " : to have party-funds audited by a 
 chartered accountant, a list of the chief subscrip- 
 tions published, and a body formed for examining 
 any names recommended for honours. Of the 
 hundred and fifty-five who had received here- 
 ditary honours in the last two years a large pro- 
 portion were members of Parliament or journalistic 
 supporters of the Prune Minister. Perhaps Brig- 
 adier-General Croft strains our credulity a little 
 when he says that Mr Lloyd George had recently 
 said, in answer to one who censured his honours 
 lists : " I am no worse than Walpole." It would 
 be strange if the twentieth century produced a 
 statesman equal to Walpole in the corrupt manage- 
 ment of the House. 
 
 But later speakers were more explicit. Mr Bot- 
 tomley gave direct personal experience. " A once 
 famous leader of society " had offered him an hon- 
 our, " on certain formalities on his part," for 
 services he was " supposed to have rendered." 
 Lieutenant-Commander Astbury, Unionist Member 
 for Salford, told how another member had been 
 
206 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 approached by "an emissary of the Government," 
 who asked how much he would give to the party- 
 funds for a baronetcy. (Some sapient supporter of 
 the leaders interrupted this statement with the re- 
 mark that there was " no record " of it !) Sir D. 
 Maclean, Sir R. Cooper, and other men of sober 
 judgment supported. Lord Hugh Cecil, who 
 assuredly ought to know, admitted the grave dis- 
 repute of Parliament, though he did not believe there 
 was " anything they could properly call corrup- 
 tion." But he significantly supported the motion. 
 The granting of honours must be reserved for an 
 independent committee of the Privy Council. The 
 intense secrecy of the party-funds was " open to 
 much criticism." In short, almost forgetting that 
 he had refused to admit " anything they could pro- 
 perly call corruption," he urged the House to de- 
 clare that " the present system had come to an end." 
 In the political world truth is not what " each 
 man troweth," but what his temperament permits 
 or compels him to say. The truth was known to 
 everybody in the House. The precise donations of 
 certain knights and baronets on the last list passed 
 from mouth to mouth. The reasons alleged in many 
 cases were the laughter of the smoking-room. But 
 Lord Hugh Cecil was a Cecil as well as a Puritan, 
 and the truth breaks laboriously through his halting 
 words. Mr Bonar Law looked round the House. 
 Three-fourths of its members were away. The 
 Whips had detained only enough faithful souls to 
 crush the stalwart few. So Mr Bonar Law dis- 
 pensed the customary opiates. The Whips assured 
 him that no money was ever asked for honours, and 
 no man was ever honoured for subscriptions ! 
 " Accept the resolution, then," someone cried. He 
 would, he said, if it were put in the (entirely barren) 
 form that honours must not be given for donations 
 to party-funds. Not that party-funds were an evil. 
 
THE PARTY-SYSTEM 207 
 
 Quite the reverse, he said; if they did not exist, 
 constituencies would be more likely to run after rich 
 men who could pay their own expenses. As to 
 auditing, it would be useless, as there would be 
 evasion. As to entrusting the lists to the Privy 
 Council, he was sure no self-respecting Prime 
 Minister would thus surrender his responsibility. 
 And, after retailing this traditional syrup for half an 
 hour, Mr Bonar Law concluded that they " could 
 not cure an evil of this kind by attempts like this; i 
 they could only cure it by public opinion " ! / 
 
 So it was in the days of Palmerston, or even in 
 the days of Pitt. The charge of evil was a wicked 
 slander; but the Government would take wise 
 measures to deal with the evil which the House and 
 country so strongly resented. The party-funds must 
 be protected. So sensitive are the party-leaders to 
 the suggestion of impropriety, that they will corl- 
 tinue decade after decade to hear the whole world 
 about them say cynical things rather than seem to 
 yield to slander by publishing their subscription- 
 lists. We do not need their lists. The honours' 
 lists suffice. Half of them are unmerited. The effort 
 to dress up trifling services as titles to the nation's 
 gratitude are often ludicrous. There is no longer 
 a frank sale of honours as there was in the days of 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence. That enables political leaders 
 to say, with some sort of conscience, that they never 
 sell honours or bend their policy at the dictation of 
 the rich. But the whole world knows what does 
 happen. Give a fat cheque, in four or five figures, 
 to the funds of your party, and the Whip will see 
 that your merits are studied with a microscope, or 
 your son shall get a foot on the golden stairs. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 
 
 IT is more than two thousand years since political 
 theorists began to dispute about the ideal type of 
 governmental machine, yet the philosophers of the 
 nineteenth century have left the problem where the 
 Athenians had left it long ago. The issue lies be- 
 tween democracy and aristocracy. No reputable 
 and impartial thinker praises either autocracy or 
 oligarchy. It is ever a question of weighing the 
 cultural demerits of Demos against the moral de- 
 merits of Ploutos : the imperfectly-grasped and 
 erratic ideas of self-interest of the Many, and the 
 very clear ideas of self-interest of the Few. An 
 historical indictment of both forms of polity is quite 
 easy. No democracy has had the long average life 
 of monarchies ; but no aristocracy ever used its gifts 
 exclusively on behalf of the entire body or avoided 
 corruption. The modern world, it is true, pays little 
 attention to the political theorist ; yet it is not with- 
 out interest to note that none have a good word for 
 oligarchy. 
 
 We in England, however, are ruled, not by an 
 aristocracy or plutocracy, but an oligarchy. We 
 soothe our vanity with the phrase that we are a self- 
 governing nation; as if that were not a flagrant 
 contradiction in terms, since government hi its 
 essence implies coercive power over us. In hours of 
 ceremony we gracefully grant tEat we are a mon- 
 archy; though it would be interesting to see what 
 would happen to-day if our King refused his signa- 
 
 208 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 209 
 
 ture to one of our measures, or attempted to enforce 
 in Parliament a measure which the majority of us 
 disliked. When we are in a serious mood, we imagine 
 that we are no longer " governed " ; that the coun- 
 try is administered, and new laws are framed, by 
 men elected for those purposes by us and revocable 
 at our will. 
 
 There is no need to run again over the political 
 calendar in order to disprove this. There are, or 
 have been, certain great issues which the country 
 forced on its statesmen. Such were Catholic 
 Emancipation, the Reform Bill of 1832, and the 
 abolition of the Corn Laws. Lord Morley would 
 add the Reform Bill of 1867, and he is disposed to 
 picture a reluctant Government driven into action 
 periodically by us, the people. There are un- 
 doubtedly times when this occurs, though one would 
 rather say that the Reform Bill of 1867, which 
 neither Palmerston nor Disraeli really wanted, was 
 due to an equal mixture of political chicanery and 
 popular pressure. The country forced upon the 
 House the creation of a more or less national and 
 rational scheme of education, and it forced the con- 
 flict with the Lords. Even here, however, it is in- 
 structive to study the behaviour of the King's (not 
 our) Ministers. 
 
 In 1901, under the Conservatives, an auditor dis- 
 allowed the expenditure of the London County 
 Council for advanced instruction in science and art 
 in secondary and continuation schools. It would be 
 interesting to have a quite full and detailed account 
 of this procedure, but probably we shall never have 
 it. At all events, it cut a most important element 
 out of our school system, and, though there were no 
 doubt many in high places who would like to cut out 
 permanently this stimulating diet of the children of 
 the workers, the Government dare not leave matters 
 where the Cockerton judgment put them, 
 o 
 
210 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Sir John Gorst introduced a measure. County or 
 Borough Councils were to control secular education 
 in secondary schools through committees; and the 
 Councillors might co-opt anybody whom they 
 pleased to regard as an " expert " to these com- 
 mittees. The drift of the measure was at once plain. 
 The representatives of squire and parson rubbed 
 their hands. The Liberals objected, but with 
 dignity. The Radicals and the representatives of 
 the teachers roundly denounced the Bill, and so 
 plainly depicted its sectarian motives that Mr Bal- 
 four was obliged to withdraw it because of the pro- 
 spect of " a long and bitter resistance." The 
 oligarchs were defeated, but only partially They 
 introduced a modified measure, which was almost 
 equally repugnant to the mass of the people, and 
 used their technical power to put it through. It 
 was quite out of accord with their election-promises, 
 but they knew their House. Honourable members 
 were so little interested in this Bill, in spite of its 
 serious possibilities, that only 342 figured in the last 
 division. Mr Joseph Chamberlain, who had once 
 written (to G. J. Holyoake) that he wished " to 
 wrest education out of the hands of priests of all 
 shades," voted for it. The oligarchy, in other words, 
 had a good deal of its way, in spite of the very plain 
 mood of the country. 
 
 The conflict with the Lords is an even worse in- 
 stance of the thwarting of the will of the people by 
 the oligarchy of leading politicians of both sides as 
 long as they could. It would, perhaps, not be in- 
 accurate to say that the country has been eager ever 
 since 1830 to break the medieval power of the Lords. 
 The legislative record of the Lords in the nineteenth 
 century is one long procedure of slaying or mutilat- 
 ing Bills which the representatives of the people 
 passed ; and the more fiercely the people demanded 
 these measures, or the more progressive they were, 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 211 
 
 the more surely the Lords destroyed or eviscerated 
 them. Yet it took the leaders of the Commons 
 seventy years to nerve themselves for the obviously 
 popular task of making us, in truth, a " self- 
 governing " people. 
 
 We left Mr Gladstone in his later years muttering 
 that something would have to be done with the 
 Lords, but no one had any illusion about the pros- 
 pect of his doing anything, and his letters and diaries 
 make it plain that, even if he had been younger, 
 the people would have found it impossible to impose 
 upon him their will in connection with the Lords. 
 Chamberlain's letters in the later seventies express 
 the deep annoyance of the Radicals at Gladstone's 
 personal suppression or restriction of progressive 
 legislation. It is unnecessary to add that when 
 Chamberlain himself entered into full power as an 
 oligarch, he had no more mind than Gladstone or 
 Salisbury to carry out the will of the people in this 
 respect. 
 
 In 1909 a more dangerous Radical than Chamber- 
 lain forced his way into the charmed circle, and it 
 was fortunate that his own will coincided entirely 
 with the will of the people. Mr Lloyd George's 
 " Socialistic " Budget of 1909 which Socialists re- 
 garded as a bourgeois trick provoked one of the 
 historic fights of the House of Commons. There 
 was no ambiguity whatever about the mind of the 
 nation, but the Opposition frankly represented the 
 minority of property-holders, and they fought with 
 every weapon in the parliamentary arsenal. New 
 phrases were added to the political vocabulary, and 
 Mr Balfour's ingenious " frigid and calculated in- 
 exactitude " brought less elegant rejoinders. It was 
 November before the spring Finance Bill passed the 
 Commons, where an overwhelming majority of the 
 members supported it from the start. The Lords 
 then rejected it by 350 votes to 75. This Bill, they 
 
212 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 said, in the hope of forcing a modification of some 
 of the new burdens on property, must be specially 
 submitted to the people before they could find it in 
 their consciences to let it pass. 
 
 There is no doubt that, as Mr Asquith said at the 
 time in the Commons, this was a piece of " the 
 hollowest political cant." But within a few months 
 there were many who wondered if Mr Asquith's own 
 words were entirely free from that taint. At the 
 moment he struck an heroic attitude. He welcomed 
 the challenge, and would ask the country to decide 
 whether the Lords or the Liberal Government were 
 in power. The House, he said, in that grand 
 language which once made his reputation as a states- 
 man, " would be unworthy of its past and of those 
 traditions of which it is the custodian and trustee " 
 if it did not at once hurl back this " usurpation " 
 of its rights. Radicals, weakened in their allegiance 
 by the Government's conduct in Egypt, rallied to 
 the cry and closed the ranks. Mr Lloyd George 
 declared that he " would not remain a member of a 
 Liberal cabinet for an hour unless full powers were 
 accorded it enabling it to pass into law a measure 
 securing that the Commons could carry Bills in a 
 single Parliament either with or without the sanction 
 of the House of Lords." Even Sir Edward Grey, far 
 from Radical, a conscientious Whig, called upon the 
 nation to assert for ever the rights of the Commons 
 to be uncontrolled as to finance. In fine, on the eve 
 of the election, Mr Asquith vowed at a monster- 
 meeting in the Albert Hall that " Liberal ministers 
 would not again assume or hold office unless they 
 could secure the safeguards shown to be necessary 
 for the legislative utility and honour of the party of 
 progress." On that understanding, which seemed 
 clear, Liberals and Radicals scattered over the 
 country for the great fight. 
 
 As usual, the issue was complicated, the mind of 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 218 
 
 the people dazed and inebriated, in every possible 
 way. Conservatives generally made it an appeal on 
 Tariff Reform. Every refined trick left possible by 
 the Corrupt Practices Act was practised. Money 
 was poured out abundantly in defence of money. 
 Peers whom no intimate friend had suspected of the 
 energy of making speeches stumped the country. 
 The Church only four bishops had voted for the 
 Bill was enlisted in the crusade. The women, 
 angry at Mr Asquith's personal thwarting of their 
 suffrage-measure, withdrew every vote they could 
 from the Government. In spite of it all, Mr Asquith 
 was returned with a working majority of one hun- 
 dred and ten over the Unionists. 
 
 The Liberals were 274 : the Unionists 272. They 
 looked at each other in embarrassment and annoy- 
 ance. The forty-one Labour members and seventy- 
 one Nationalists wanted an immediate attack on the 
 Lords' Veto. It held up Home Rule, and it blocked 
 the way to progressive legislation. But Mr Asquith 
 was discovered to be unhappy. There was talk of a 
 Coalition, a meeting in a wayside inn, anything but 
 a straight fight. No compromise was possible, how- 
 ever, and Mr Asquith kissed hands. He asked no 
 guarantees or assurances whatever, and he and his 
 colleagues placidly faced the House as if the Albert 
 Hall meeting had never taken place.'" Not only 
 Radicals, but Mr Balfour himself, banteringly asked 
 if Mr Asquith had got his " safeguards." In a tone 
 of naive surprise the Premier protested that he must 
 have been misunderstood. How could an experi- 
 enced statesman be supposed to ask " guarantees for 
 a contingent exercise of the Royal prerogative." 
 The less experienced statesmen at the back of him 
 muttered angrily that this was trickery and verbiage. 
 Liberals like Sir H. Dalziel and Sir H. Spicer bluntly 
 said that they had been " misled." Nationalists and 
 Labour members put it less politely. It is known 
 
214 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 that the Unionists privately made an offer to help 
 the Government to carry on, in defiance of the Irish 
 and the Labour men. What precisely took place, or 
 would have taken place, we do not know, but pre- 
 sumably Mr Asquith learned that the Lords would 
 now pass the Budget. Instead of at once attacking 
 the Veto, as the country had expected, he put the 
 Budget through once more, and the Lords meekly 
 submitted to " the will of the people." The provi- 
 dential death of King Edward saved him for a time 
 from further measures, and it was not until 1911 
 that he proceeded against the Lords. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on Chinese Labour and other 
 matters on which the will of the country was plainly 
 expressed. It would be superfluous to dwell on the 
 election-promises of 1918 and the dismal failure, or 
 positive refusal, to fulfil them. We are in the hands 
 of an oligarchy that trims our ends, rough hew them 
 how we will. It is rare for the will of the people to 
 prevail, and the victory is never complete. 
 
 Many would suggest that the first condition of the 
 survival of this oligarchy, which the Civil War of 
 the seventeenth century substituted for a despotic 
 monarchy, is the lingering of the medieval practice 
 of the King choosing the First Minister. Fortu- 
 nately, this apparently autocratic act is limited by 
 the political possibilities. The King must choose a 
 man who can rally a majority of the House, and 
 therefore presumably represents the will of the 
 majority of the people. Buckingham Palace there- 
 fore finds itself painfully compelled at times to sum- 
 mon men whose personalities or sentiments are not 
 congenial. Queen Victoria's feeling toward Glad- 
 stone, the first great Commoner, is well known, in 
 spite of his religious zeal, his Puritanism, and his 
 real Conservatism. At his retirement she pointedly 
 ignored his suggestion of a successor, and chose a 
 peer who was even less Liberal than he. But the 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 215 
 
 practical situation is inexorable, as she discovered. 
 This remnant of the royal prerogative is almost use- 
 less, as the chosen Premier has to be approved by the 
 support of the House. 
 
 The real mischief is in the next step. If some 
 industrious historian will one day write, as far as it 
 is possible to do so, the chronicle of the formation of 
 ministries, it will prove as amusing as Petruccelli 
 della Gattina's history of the Papal Conclaves. 
 Forty-eight hours of weird intrigue and calculation 
 folW the choice of the First Minister. The last 
 consideration is the competency of the particular 
 candidate to control a great department of State. 
 Westminster gasped with astonishment when Mr 
 Lloyd George had the audacity to look beyond the 
 crowd of office-seekers, who lingered within tele- 
 phone-call, and choose "non-politicians" of a cabinet 
 rank. It was war-time, certainly, but even the vital 
 need of the nation must have some respect for politi- 
 cal traditions. The law is plain. There are some 
 twenty or thirty men on each side who have a right 
 to be included in the ministry, and the task of the 
 First Minister is to do as little harm as possible 
 within the Party by his necessary omissions for the 
 cake is never large enough, in Disraeli's phrase and 
 find, in that narrow sphere, the nearest approach 
 he can to square men for square holes. 
 
 At one time it was necessary, whatever the 
 standard of ability of the peerage at the time, to 
 select first a large number of peers as the substantial 
 part of the cabinet. The Whig had to dissipate the 
 slightest suspicion of revolutionary intentions. The 
 mood has outlived Whiggery. There were four peers 
 in the cabinet which set out to fight Germany in 
 1914, and it is safe to say that not one person in 
 100,000 could recall the names of three of them 
 to-day. 
 
 Next to these come hereditary legislators, or scions 
 
216 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 of political families. Since Mr Herbert Gladstone 
 decided, in spite of his father's consciousness of the 
 wickedness of the political world, to choose that 
 career, the cabinet was open to him. Qualification 
 was a secondary matter. Any member of the Cecil 
 family, one supposes, can march straight from the 
 cradle to the cabinet. The Marquis of Crewe had a 
 right by birth and marriage. Mr Har court and Mr 
 Churchill had only to produce their pedigrees. The 
 Montagus, Mr Austin Chamberlain, Mr Hobhouse, 
 Sir John Pease, Mr Masterman, Mr Tennant, and 
 others fall in the same class. They were born to the 
 purple, or they married it. It would be hazardous 
 to quarrel with their families or connections. They 
 are normal and legitimate aspirants to membership 
 of the oligarchy. 
 
 The other groups are fairly well defined. There 
 are the sons of rich members of one or other party. 
 For a few years they can afford to work as unpaid 
 secretaries, or apprentices, and learn the trade. 
 Presently they appear in the ministry, or on the 
 fringe of it, and the Press has laboriously to discover 
 who they are. " A slight ballast of mediocrity 
 steadies the ship and makes for unity," says a dis- 
 tinguished politician. One would not care to sug- 
 gest that they are useful for outvoting members of 
 the ministry with pronounced personality. It is pro- 
 bably the kind of sophistication with which men like 
 Mr Gladstone reconcile themselves to entrusting 
 national tasks of great importance to mediocrities, for 
 reasons which need not be looked in the face. What 
 becomes of the Post Office or the Home Office or the 
 Board of Trade under their scrupulous attention is 
 another matter. The journalistic view, as Mr Stead 
 genially put it in his examination of the 1906 cabinet 
 of Mr Campbell-Bannerman, is that " a Premier is 
 entitled to perpetrate one job " in making his 
 cabinet. Mr Campbell-Bannerman had made his 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 217 
 
 private secretary, who had married Lord Aberdeen's 
 daughter, Secretary for Scotland. Happy the nation 
 that gets only one job perpetrated in the choice of 
 its administrators. " In all cabinets," says a par- 
 liamentary writer, " there are members of whom it 
 may be said, ' one wonders how the devil they got 
 there.' " 
 
 The private secretaryship is a widely recognised 
 approach for talent which has no political pedigree 
 and no aristocratic marriage-connections. Young 
 lawyers, to whose aspirations the hours of the House 
 are nicely and deliberately adjusted, are familiar 
 with the route. In the 1906 cabinet eight out of 
 nineteen ministers were lawyers. In the 1914 
 cabinet nine were lawyers, and the extra-cabinet 
 workers were largely lawyers. The ideal politician 
 is, it seems, a man who has been through Oxford 
 and the courts. He is accomplished in the art of 
 preventing anything from being done, the confusion 
 of issues, and the prolongation of debate. None but 
 a lawyer could think out Mr Asquith's magnificent 
 phrases and subtleties of speech. But this approach 
 is not reserved for lawyers. Any young man who 
 will for some years zealously and loyally serve the 
 Party, in and out of the House, for a number of years 
 may cherish hope to-day. Let him write a book on 
 the glorious deeds of Gladstonian Liberalism (or 
 Disraelian Conservatism, as the case may be), devote 
 his leisure to the cause, show himself expert at block- 
 ing motions or nettling questions (if on the Opposi- 
 tion), and he may presently find himself Under- 
 secretary for some branch of the national economy 
 about which he knows as much as he does about the 
 finances of Liberia. 
 
 Lastly, there is the unpleasant need of sharing the 
 spoils with representatives of minorities whose sup- 
 port is essential, or whose opposition must be dis- 
 armed. It grows more painful every decade. 
 
218 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Gladstone, needing the Radicals, was forced to make 
 an offer to Sir C. Dilke a gentleman, it is true, but 
 a pronounced Republican and suspected of infidelity. 
 Dilke compelled Gladstone to accept also Chamber- 
 lain, then a strong anti-clerical and Republican. 
 Downing Street was changing. Lord Salisbury was 
 compelled to include Lord Randolph Churchill, 
 whom he regarded as a traitor, and ultimately Mr 
 Chamberlain. A deeper depth was opened when a 
 Labour Party appeared. Mr Burns had to be 
 taken into the cabinet. Extreme Labour men at 
 once disowned Mr Burns, and Mr Asquith tried to 
 induce Mr Hyndman to join ! A few years later Mr 
 Henderson was put in control of the third largest 
 educational system in the world, and was he says 
 sent to Petrograd (where people translated to him 
 what they thought fit) with discretionary power 
 to turn out a titled ambassador and take his 
 place. 
 
 These, however, are the minority of the cabinet, 
 and can be outvoted at any time. The oligarchs 
 the representatives of the great political families and 
 the men of exceptional ability who have forced their 
 way in and will found new families settle down to 
 the consolidation of their power. The machinery 
 they find at hand, elaborated by a long line of 
 oligarchs, is almost perfect. The Opposition is the 
 Opposition, and has its recognised laws, the first of 
 which is not to remain in opposition one day longer 
 than it can help. It must be vigilant for snap-votes 
 and intrigues with disaffected minorities. It must 
 use no language in less than the superlative degree 
 whenever the Government does something that the 
 country may presumably resent, or fails to do some- 
 thing which the country empowered and instructed 
 it to do. All things are lawful to it, and most things 
 are expedient. It can throw out a Government over 
 a Franchise Bill, and then pass an even more demo- 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 219 
 
 cratic measure itself. It can cast down a ministry 
 for the horrors of Chinese labour, and then contem- 
 plate them with philosophic resignation. It can ask 
 whether the Government has the guarantees it pro- 
 mised to exact, and then give it a gentlemanly 
 assurance that they will not be necessary. This is 
 all in the game. 
 
 But the rival group, the oligarchs of the quin- 
 quennium, are quite familiar with these manoeuvres, 
 and, if they start their reign with a majority of at 
 least sixty or seventy, are not disturbed. Their 
 main task is to hold their majority. The greater 
 part of their supporters are safe. The indignation 
 which was vented when Mr Lloyd George and Mr 
 Bonar Law issued " coupons " before the last elec- 
 tion was part of the theatrical unreality that seems 
 inseparable from politics. In effect they are always 
 issued, as we shall see in the next chapter. A par- 
 liamentary candidate faces the electorate almost in- 
 variably as a " supporter " of one or other group 
 of oligarchs. They control the machine and the 
 party-funds, and it is of little use for any man to 
 seek election in defiance of the machine. Probably 
 he is to some extent financially dependent on it. At 
 least he must rely on its organisation, for the so- 
 called Independent is almost invariably crushed be- 
 tween the stones of the Liberal-Conservative mill. 
 Even most of the few members who are financially 
 independent soon find the limits of their power. In 
 the hands of the leaders is the dread weapon of dis- 
 solution, with the prospect of finding another thou- 
 sand or two thousand pounds for an election. During 
 the course of the year 1919 we have realised the 
 force of this. We find its influence every few years 
 in the political chronicle of the nineteenth century. 
 We have a flagrant example in the earlier part of 
 the war, when many members clung to Mr Asquith, 
 because their salaries were secure against reduction 
 
220 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 as long as he remained Premier, but were plainly 
 threatened in the event of a change. 
 
 The leaders have then to deal with " followers " 
 who show a tendency to mutiny. They are quite 
 aware that this is hi some cases a recognised form 
 of ambition, and the remedy is prescribed by long 
 
 experience. " Tell we'll do nothing for him 
 
 until he drops that grievance of his," a cabinet 
 minister said to a friend of the member whose name 
 I suppress. No doubt for entirely different reasons 
 he dropped it; and he appeared in an enviable 
 position soon afterwards. The record of the last 
 twenty years has many such coincidences. The 
 sugar-plums at the disposal of the cabinet are 
 numerous, quite apart from ministerial positions. 
 There are political pensions for the deserving and the 
 docile. Some one once asked Mr Gladstone for a 
 political pension for either a Conservative or a Radi- 
 cal ; Lord Morley does not say which, but I suspect 
 a certain well-known Radical. " You are probably 
 aware," the great Puritan replied, refusing, " that 
 during the fifty years which have passed since the 
 system of political civil pensions was essentially re- 
 modelled, no political pension has been granted by 
 any minister except to one of those with whom he 
 stood on terms of general confidence and co-opera- 
 tion." Lord Morley adds that in his later years Mr 
 Gladstone wanted to abolish these " remodelled " 
 aids to oligarchy, but was dissuaded by his younger 
 colleagues on the genial ground that, in view of the 
 approaching term of his political career, such an act 
 would be an act of dictation to the consciences of 
 others. They still ooze from the Exchequer, and the 
 list of recipients is interesting. 
 
 There are lectureships in connection with the 
 party-organisations that are ever willing to listen to 
 the recommendation of a minister. Journalistic 
 openings are possible in a certain section of the press. 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 221 
 
 There are knighthoods and privy councillorships and 
 other decorations which at once put a man in a posi- 
 tion to double his fees for lectures or articles. There 
 are commissions and committees and other prizes. 
 Mr Passmore Edwards told me that half the Irish 
 members, when the Liberal Party was sustained by 
 them, lived on the work of the House long before 
 members began to receive salaries. 
 
 For the thoroughly refractory, who are generally 
 men of means as well as political morals, with safe 
 seats, the oligarchy has other measures. Their re- 
 cord in the House, especially since the caucus was 
 adopted, is not encouraging to any. The awful ex- 
 ample of Co wen still haunts the smoking-room. Mr 
 Gibson Bowles later attempted the free lance, and his 
 experience did not make the caraer more attractive. 
 In 1901 he accused the Government of putting pres- 
 sure on an independent committee in connection with 
 reconstruction-work at Gibraltar. It issued its re- 
 port, he said, and then, under pressure from the 
 oligarchs, withdrew it and issued a different report. 
 His experience may be gathered from the letter 
 which he wrote to the Times (October 18th) : 
 
 " The right of free speech, or of any speech at 
 all, on any subject at all, is so fenced about by 
 rules, mostly new and made by the clerks at the 
 table to shut up loopholes, that it can only be 
 exercised at the will of the Minister. Each session 
 witnesses new additions to the closely-woven net 
 wherein the feet of the private member are en- 
 tangled should he dare to raise any matter what- 
 ever in any form whatever." 
 
 The country has since shown some tendency to 
 return a few men of independent character, if party- 
 connection, and the net has been draw closer over 
 the House. Up to 1904 it was said that only three 
 really independent members had sat in the House 
 
222 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 of Commons, but there were symptoms of a decay 
 of docility. Nothing would be so fatal to the party- 
 system, and the Conservative Government became 
 stringent. " No man," said an expert on the House, 
 speaking of Mr Balfour, " has done so much to de- 
 stroy the power of the House over the Government of 
 the day. He has practically converted Parliament into 
 a registering body to ratify the decrees of the execu- 
 tive after such amount of grumbling as the Prime 
 Minister sees fit to permit." About the same date 
 a private member wrote to the Times (April 24th, 
 1904) : 
 
 "In a few years' time the non-professional 
 politician, the man of independent thought and 
 speech, will cease to exist hi the House of Com- 
 mons, and his place will be taken by the voting 
 machine who will be a joy to the Whips, but who 
 will contribute nothing to the thought or to the 
 judgment of the assembly." 
 
 As is known, the private member has already 
 almost lost the power of speaking in debate, except 
 on the " private members' days," when some 
 measure is being academically discussed which no 
 one regards as serious. The speakers are arranged 
 in advance. In 1911 Mr Ginnell made a violent pro- 
 test against the choice of Mr Lowther as Speaker. 
 He denied that Mr Lowther was impartial in calling 
 upon members to address the House, and, of the 
 many Radical members who agreed with Mr Ginnell, 
 one, Mr Wedgwood, wrote him to say so. We re- 
 member still the severe rebuke which the oligarchs 
 inflicted. Mr Wedgwood bowed to the ground. 
 Even Mr Ginnell greatly modified his charge, though 
 he was suspended for a week, by 811 votes to 84. 
 But, incidentally, the public learned to its surprise 
 that, whenever there was a serious or " full dress " 
 debate, the Whips supplied the Speaker with a list 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 228 
 
 of the names of the men who were to be permitted 
 to speak ! 
 
 Apart from these serious debates, when the ordi- 
 nary member has now merely to listen (if he cares) 
 and vote, there is the possibility of bringing forward 
 motions or asking questions. The motion is easily 
 defeated. You get a loyal supporter to anticipate 
 with a motion, and the hostile motion cannot be put 
 until this is disposed of; and the member who has 
 blocked the way is not compelled to proceed with his 
 motion at all. The critic may, in his indignation, 
 move the adjournment of the House, but he will be 
 fortunate if he knows of forty independent men 
 to support him. Most members know that it is a 
 waste of time. They rely on questions for the pur- 
 pose of criticism, and during the war and the last 
 twelve months some very effective work was done in 
 this way by judicious critics. Unhappily, useful 
 questions were apt to be lost in the flood of meticu- 
 lous questions such as whether German prisoners 
 were really provided with felt socks in their boots 
 which the Pacifists outpoured day by day. It was, 
 in any case, exasperating to have a pert Under- 
 secretary making a reply which combined the mini- 
 mum of information with the maximum of impud- 
 ence. The man who asks searching questions is 
 treated as a pariah. Compare Lady Astor's lan- 
 guage during the election and after a month in 
 Parliament. 
 
 So the oligarchs keep their " team " together until 
 at least the milestone which means a pension is 
 passed. As they get stale, a vernal freshness lights 
 up the opposite benches. The crucial month ap- 
 proaches. The parliamentary situation takes on 
 some resemblance to billiards. If you lose your 
 shot, you trust to leave a bad table for your op- 
 ponent. The penumbra of dissolution steals on, and 
 the work outside Parliament is more heroic than 
 
224 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 inside. The war-chest must be counted, and further 
 contributions be discreetly elicited. The new cir- 
 cular of the firm, the list of election-promises, must 
 be composed. Catch-phrases must be invented, lurid 
 posters devised (they still linger in rural constitu- 
 encies), words put to jingles of the hour. Orators, 
 organisers, journalists, pamphleteers grateful for 
 favours to come must be flung upon the public. 
 It is a quaint way of conducting the business of a 
 mighty nation, but the leaders have one good reply : 
 the public seems to like it. 
 
 It remains only to consider an aspect of the 
 question which provokes extraordinarily opposite 
 opinions. Whether the maintenance of the system 
 I have described is corruption or no I leave to the 
 reader. There are certainly worse political systems. 
 We have seen the American. The French and Italian 
 political worlds have during the last forty years 
 produced scandal after scandal. All the heroism of 
 1816 to 1870, all the blood of martyrs to the Holy 
 Alliance and its successors, ended in the French and 
 Italian oligarchies of the last forty years. The 
 Spanish is even worse. A Catholic Spanish writer 
 says, in a work which he addresses to the king, that 
 the Spanish political system is characterised by 
 "profound immorality and congenital debility." 
 Senor Maura himself, the ex-Premier, said in the 
 Cortes in 1901 that all the struggles and sacrifices 
 of the nineteenth century had only established " an 
 immense imposture " in Spain. It is the closest 
 European counterpart of Tammany. Portugal, in 
 our own days, has evicted a corrupt king to instal 
 a set of very questionable politicians. 
 
 The taint of our own system is more subtle, and 
 it is in that sense that we have to examine our 
 " scandals." I happened to be in one of our 
 colonies just after the " Marconi scandal." When 
 I, speaking to a group of distinguished colonial 
 
THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS 225 
 
 politicians in their House of Assembly, deplored 
 these things, they looked at each other and smiled. 
 " You call those things scandals in England, do 
 you ? " said one of them. Yet at the time they were, 
 whatever they are to-day, under the impression that 
 some of our statesmen had used Government in- 
 fluence or information to enrich themselves. 
 
 What is clear about what is called the " Marconi 
 scandal " is that ministers have a large power of 
 preventing the disclosure of undesirable facts in 
 Parliament. The libel-court ruled, we remember, that 
 no English politician had dealt hi English Marconi 
 shares, which went up nearly four-fold in eight 
 months on account of a Government contract. One 
 may admit that in more than one continental 
 country deals of this kind by politicians would be 
 a matter of course. We are assured that no such 
 deal occured here. Yet the facts, which are now 
 acknowledged, were kept from the House and the 
 public as long as possible. They were dragged from 
 reluctant witnesses. The Attorney-General was a 
 brother of Marconi's managing director, and it is 
 not unnatural that Godfrey Isaacs should recom- 
 mend American Marconis as a good investment. It 
 turned out that the Government contract did not 
 help the American Company. Did the Master of 
 Elibank, when he purchased 3000 American shares 
 for the Liberal party, think that there might be an 
 indirect influence on the Americans ? We are re- 
 duced to conjecture; but it is notorious that great 
 pressure was required to elicit these innocent facts. 
 
 To the delight I mean the secret delight, but 
 public indignation of the Conservatives, the " Mar- 
 coni scandal " was followed speedily by what was 
 called " the Indian silver scandal." Inarticulate 
 members dropped on the luxurious couches at the 
 Carlton, and in Conservative houses. This was what 
 the House of Commons was coming to in our Radical 
 p 
 
226 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 age ! Mr Lloyd George threw at them some rude 
 insinuations about their misdeeds when they were in 
 power, and hastened, in view of the approaching 
 election, to set the Liberal house in order. The 
 Government, he said, had defeated a ring in en- 
 trusting the purchase of silver to Messrs S. Mon- 
 tagu Co. But the firm had made .7513 broker- 
 age ; and the head of the firm was Lord Swathling, 
 his brother was Under Secretary for India, a member 
 of the firm was Liberal M.P. for Whitechapel, 
 and a relative of Lord Swathling was Postmaster- 
 General. 
 
 In such circumstances as these the representatives 
 of the people need the fullest power of inquiry. 
 But, as we saw week after week during the war, 
 their power of inquiry is very limited. The instinct 
 of the official is to deny and conceal. There is a 
 ludicrous supposition that even under-secretaries 
 and their underlings never err. It is the system which 
 prompts this ridiculous attitude. The Opposition 
 would pounce upon any admission of error and make 
 a national catastrophe of it. The Government plays 
 the game by suppressing or glossing facts. As most 
 of the press is divided like the members between 
 the two parties, it is a safe game. One set of papers 
 will harmlessly fume : their rivals will accept any 
 explanation. The advantage of a Coalition is that 
 three-fourths of the press is " good." The oligarchs 
 virtually control three-fourths of the manufacturers 
 of public opinion. They have laboratories of pep- 
 tonised food in Downing Street. And there are 
 knightly spurs, if not something better, on the 
 horizon for sensible editors. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE REPRESENTED AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 THE obvious reply to the theme of the last chapter 
 is that we freely choose our parliamentary repre- 
 sentatives, and that I have admitted that these have 
 the power to break an inacceptable ministry at any 
 time. How, then, can one speak of oligarchy? I 
 selected, let us say, at the last election, a candidate 
 who was pledged to support Mr Lloyd George and 
 Mr Bonar Law. He believed, as I believed, that 
 they were the fittest men to administer the country 
 in a period of difficulty, and that the program of 
 action they put before us was sound. To put it in 
 general terms, nine out of fifteen million electors 
 deliberately entrusted power once more to a Govern- 
 ment with which they were familiar, and instructed 
 their representatives to support that Government. 
 Is this oligarchy or democracy ? Is it good logic or 
 bad temper ? 
 
 One might retort at once that if this ingenuous 
 plea were admitted one could not easily understand 
 the unpleasant odour that attaches to the name 
 " politician." One wonders by what strange hallu- 
 cination Mr Gladstone was brought to disparage 
 politics and politicians, why Lord Hugh Cecil so 
 haltingly says that his world contains " nothing 
 that can properly be called corruption," why Mr 
 J. R. Macdonald thinks that it is very difficult to 
 be honest in Westminster. One is astonished that 
 lawyers thrive so well in this simple, democratic 
 atmosphere, and that the House resists down to our 
 
 227 
 
228 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 own day the country's praiseworthy curiosity to 
 read the lists of subscribers to the party-funds. 
 But we may take the alternative course of examin- 
 ing this liberty of ours to choose our representatives 
 and this supposed power of theirs to control 
 ministers. 
 
 Let me revert to the London constituency in 
 which, at the last election, three men " solicited 
 the honour " of representing the people in Parlia- 
 ment. The second and third were turned down so 
 ruthlessly that each forfeited his 150 deposit, and 
 probably twice that sum in expenses. They will, 
 of course, not appear again, and their fate will not 
 encourage others. That is the first limitation of 
 our liberty. The oligarchs have laid it down that 
 any candidate for Parliament must deposit ,150. 
 Their own candidates have not the least risk of 
 losing it, but outside candidates have a very serious 
 risk. They have further laid it down that a candi- 
 date may spend from one to two thousand pounds 
 in announcing to the electors that he will support 
 Mr Bonar Law or Mr Lloyd George, or both. Their 
 candidates will get the money. There are rich 
 party-chests, recruited by effective means at the 
 disposal of the oligarchs, for' the financing of poor, 
 but loyal, men and the assisting of others. The 
 outside candidate must find at least 500 out of his 
 own pocket, and even with this he has little chance 
 against a man with 1500. Further, an election, in 
 an advanced civilisation like ours, has a very ex- 
 tensive business-side which demands great skill and 
 experience; and they command the skilled and 
 experienced men. 
 
 We do not seem to be as free as we imagined. 
 Suppose, however, that we had a few hundred well- 
 to-do and virtuous and leisured men and women, 
 quite indifferent to titles, offices and other political 
 rewards, ready to contest every constituency in 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 229 
 
 Britain. There is, of course, as long as the present 
 system lasts, not the remotest hope of returning a 
 majority, or even a very large minority, of such men. 
 Suppose we wished to respond to their benevolent 
 aspirations. What would be the result if we returned 
 one of these, after listening to an address from him 
 his expenses could easily be kept within a hundred 
 pounds but for the rival circus-display and ques- 
 tioning him ? What would be the result ? We should 
 indeed have a representative in Parliament, and he 
 or she might be virtuous and cultivated, but he 
 would have the disadvantage of being dumb. Fifty 
 such members a hundred such members would 
 have no organisation, no common links, and would 
 count for little. The King would send for a recog- 
 nised party-leader, and the customary oligarchy 
 would be installed. If the Independents were numer- 
 ous enough to form a dangerous minority, there 
 would be a Coalition and a strategic arrangement of 
 legislation. Under the present system, in other 
 words, we have to choose between futility and one 
 of the two Parties. The oligarchs have seen to that. 
 At the last election the plain issue was Coalition or 
 something far worse. 
 
 This, moreover, is on the theory that an election 
 is a pure democratic institution in which the free 
 and independent citizen, no longer terrorised by 
 employer or landlord at an open poll, registers his 
 simple-souled conviction on national issues. For the 
 great majority it is, of course, nothing of the kind. 
 The amplest advantage is taken of ignorance, greed, 
 and frivolity. The party-machinery encourages, 
 not the new tendencies to honest political life, but 
 every lingering tendency to sacrifice one's democratic 
 duty to other considerations. 
 
 A veteran political worker published a volume of 
 reminiscences some years ago.* He recalls, almost 
 
 * Reminiscences of a Country Politician, by J. A. Bridges, 1906. 
 
230 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 with affection, the elections of fifty years ago, and 
 there is one page that may be reproduced since it 
 quaintly illustrates how men of strict honour in the 
 other relations of life are guilty of strange aberra- 
 tions when they enter politics. It refers to an elec- 
 tion at Bridgnorth in (I calculate) 1865. It had 
 been a Tory pocket-borough, the small number of 
 freeman-voters being regularly bribed and intoxi- 
 cated by the sitting member. In 1865 Sir John 
 Acton (later Baron Acton), the well-known Catholic 
 scholar and intimate friend of Gladstone, chose to 
 contest this corrupt seat in the Liberal interest. 
 Everyone is acquainted with Acton's ideals and pro- 
 fessions, but it seems that he met the conditions 
 much more easily than Gladstone had done. Bridges 
 interviewed a tile-maker and farmer who had 
 hitherto voted Tory, because the Tory member was 
 his landlord and the Tory agent rented his shooting. 
 He was now independent and doubtful. He calmly 
 opened his business-books and looked which of the 
 three candidiates had dealt most heavily with him. 
 Even Sir J. Acton had bought tiles to " a consider- 
 able amount," but the Tory candidate had bid 
 higher and got the vote. 
 
 Worse follows. At this election in which an 
 idealist entered the running* " votes reached a value 
 that the oldest freeman had never dared to hope 
 for and that they were never to reach again." and 
 Sir J. Acton personally engaged in the traffic. On 
 the day of the election three small traders were still 
 " neutral." Sir John was seen to enter the shop 
 of one and the Tory agent hurried after him, to see 
 what he was purchasing. He found the shop empty, 
 and waited in vain. Sir J. Acton had departed by the 
 back door. The Liberal candidate entered the shop 
 of the second trader, and the Tory agent learned 
 and went after him. Again the business was done 
 in an inner room, and Sir J. Acton went out by the 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 231 
 
 back door. The third trader was induced in the 
 same way to part with his neutrality. Both sides 
 had imported gangs of roughs, and there were 
 bloody fights. Acton's men seized a half-drunken 
 butcher whom the Tory agent was piloting to the 
 poll, and carried him off to vote Liberal. They did 
 the same with two men who were waiting for the 
 bribe promised them by the Tories. Sir J. Acton 
 won the seat by one vote. 
 
 These things happened sixty years ago. The 
 point of interest is in connection with the assurance, 
 still blandly forced on us, that " gentlemen " do not 
 do things which the law forbids; for bribery was 
 strictly forbidden even in 1865. Sir J. Acton was 
 merely our " Nabob " over again. He made the 
 corruption worse. In fact, candidates generally 
 left these things to their agents. Bridges asked his 
 chairman of committee, a clergyman, what price he 
 might rise to in the case of a particularly exacting 
 voter. " For goodness sake don't tell me anything 
 about it," said the clergyman. " Do what you 
 think best." 
 
 In the course of the long period surveyed by this 
 reminiscent country politician we see a considerable 
 change come over local politics. The fighting 
 rather to his regret disappears. The crude bribery 
 is replaced by subtler forms. The Tories, he says, 
 still deliberately cultivate the parson and the pub- 
 lican; though he would like his Party to desert the 
 clergy as "it would perforce make men of the 
 cringing toadies whose cry, like that of the daughters 
 of the horse-leech, is ' give, give.' ' The publican is 
 too precious an ally. The more purchasable, or less 
 serious, voters meet in his rooms. Smoking-concerts 
 with free drinks are arranged with him. Temporary 
 clubs are housed in his premises. There is generally 
 a " room upstairs " which is very useful. ^ 
 
 If any person doubts whether there is still inS. 
 
232 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 England any large amount of this new form of cor- 
 ruption at elections I would urge him to study 
 Electioneering Up to Date, by Mr C. R. Buxton. It 
 deals with the elections so recent as 1895, 1900 and 
 1906, and there has been no material change since 
 then. It chiefly puts together the reports of 260 
 candidates at the 1906 election and details revealed 
 at election-inquiries. No doubt they were largely 
 disappointed candidates, and one must set aside as 
 " non-proven " much that they say. But there re- 
 mains a mass of proved corruption, in every part of 
 Britain, which goes far to explain how those of us 
 who would like to take political life seriously are 
 thwarted. 
 
 He gives first concrete instances of " ground- 
 baiting," or the distribution of coals, .food, drink, 
 etc., in view of an approaching election. The Bir- 
 mingham Daily Post (7th January 1895) recom- 
 mended Colonel Long for the Evesham division on 
 the ground (amongst others) that he sent meat 
 several times a week to a rheumatic patient, and 
 eventually sent him to Droitwich baths. Must not 
 a man be philanthropic because he is going to put 
 up for Parliament? Somehow it recalls the old 
 pictures of Lord Wharton, of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury : the London dandy who knew every worker's 
 child in his constituency and swore he must " have 
 a glass of ale with Tom " when he called at a cot- 
 tage. In the Haggerston petition it was proved that 
 the Unionist candidate made food-tickets (sixpence 
 each) of his private cards and distributed fifty a day 
 to " deserving applicants." At Hull a speaker, 
 mentioning that Lord George Hamilton had secured 
 900,000 worth of business while member for Hull, 
 was reported as saying : " Am I not right when 
 I say I am a strong advocate for a very good dose 
 of bread and butter politics" The Manchester 
 Guardian quoted this item from the election-poster 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 233 
 
 of a candidate at Camborne : " Eighthly, he sub- 
 scribed large sums to deserving local institutions 
 and charities, and, ninthly, he contributed 100 a 
 year to the Miners' Accident Fund." In a bye- 
 election in the Cricklade division (1898) some of 
 Lord Emlyn's tenants issued a letter recommending 
 his candidature on the ground (amongst other phil- 
 anthropies) that " if anyone goes to the Golden 
 Grove [his house] on errands or business, they 
 have a pint of good ale, bread and cheese, and a 
 shilling." 
 
 In the Yarmouth petition-case it was proved that 
 the candidate had held many meetings, at which free 
 drinks were given, in public-houses. At Droitwich 
 a publican who was charged with permitting drunk- 
 enness on his premises pleaded that it was at a 
 private " political smoking-concert," and it was 
 elicited that the local agent of the Conservative 
 Association paid for the room and seven bottles of 
 whisky, cigars, and beer for ninety people. In the 
 Worcester petition-case, which was abandoned, there 
 was evidence for production that a National Con- 
 servative League had eleven lodges in Worcester and 
 held smoking-concerts weekly in public-houses, at 
 which the chairman stood drinks. The same thing 
 was done in practically all the villages of Shropshire 
 and Worcestershire. In the Rochester case evidence 
 was given of tickets which entitled a man to a meal 
 of sandwiches, ale and claret, being sold at three- 
 pence. In the Bodmin petition the Cornwall Liberal 
 Social Council was found to have invited all electors 
 to an " At Home " at Lord Clif den's seat, with free 
 supper. In another west-country town a candidate 
 paid an agent 300 a year to extol his generosity 
 in the local press. In the Times of February llth, 
 1895, it was said that the Liberal candidate for Col- 
 chester had given " a magnificent donation for a 
 free library " and had got large business for the 
 
234 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 town; and next day the agent of the Conservative 
 candidate hotly retorted that his man had spent 
 enormous sums in Colchester and paid f or " a whole- 
 sale distribution of coals." The Oswestry Adver- 
 tiser published a letter from a " Tory Squiress," 
 in which she rejoiced that the happy result of the 
 Oswestry election would save her a hundred pounds 
 a year in entertainments, contributions, etc., since 
 she could now leave these to the new member. 
 
 This is a selection of Mr Buxton's concrete cases 
 of " ground-baiting." These are not rumours, or 
 confined to backward localities. They reach from 
 Haggerston to Bodmin, and illustrate a national 
 system. Probably few are ignorant that this system 
 thrives to-day. Our judges have ruled that a parlia- 
 mentary candidate has a right to spend money in 
 order to secure " popularity," but not to secure 
 votes. Of course, all they aim at is popularity. 
 To the votes which follow they are indifferent. As 
 that classic politician, Lord Wharton, said, when 
 the labourer's wife assured him that her husband's 
 vote was safe : "I don't care about that I want 
 to have a glass of ale with Tom." Within the last 
 year or two I had occasion to stay a few days 
 with a well-known family in a county town. They 
 described in detail how the sitting member was 
 drenching the poorer districts with small benefac- 
 tions week by week, and these districts would vote 
 almost solid for him. But " nursing " constituencies 
 is no secret. Yet it is a thoroughly tainted and 
 most important part of our present system. 
 
 This sort of thing is legal. Our statesmen have 
 seen to it that the Corrupt Practices Act leaves ample 
 room for the peculiar advantages of the party- 
 organisation against the honest Independent. Cor- 
 ruption at, or just before, elections is not now legal, 
 but it is rife all over England. Again I will venture 
 to borrow a few instances, mostly of the 1906 elec- 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 235 
 
 tion, from Mr Buxton's book and from an article 
 by Mr J. Fisher in the Independent Review, April 
 1906. 
 
 Philanthropy, of course, takes on a Christmas 
 glow when an election is believed to approach. 
 Dr hiking-clubs rise like mushrooms, and like mush- 
 rooms will wither away when the election is over, 
 and free drinks no longer add to their attractive- 
 ness. Small parcels of coals and groceries fall in 
 showers. Kindly ladies visit the homes of poor 
 mothers and see that mother and babe have good 
 milk in abundance. Dainty dames press sweets on 
 dirty urchins at street corners. Suppers and smok- 
 ing-concerts multiply, and grow cheaper as they 
 multiply. Strangers arrive in the town with full 
 pockets, and believe so strongly in their impartial 
 opinion of Mr , the Liberal or Conservative can- 
 didate, that they are willing to stand drinks all 
 round to any who will listen. Local politicians or 
 municipal officers whose names will surely be re- 
 ported to the headquarters of the caucus ooze 
 whiskey and drop cigars. 
 
 There is a mass of evidence of these things in 
 1906, and anybody who cares to take the trouble 
 could collect the evidence for 1918. At one place 
 the mayor of the city accompanied the candidate 
 round the public-houses and scattered whiskies and 
 sodas and cigars. At another place several unknown 
 men, who disappeared again after the election, 
 backed a certain candidate's merits with the same 
 liberality. In many towns sums were deposited 
 with publicans before polling day, and free drinks 
 were supplied to men introduced by the agents; or 
 beer fell amazingly in price, and the publican re- 
 covered his loss somewhere afterwards. In one town 
 a titled lady canvasser told a poor woman, whose 
 house she visited, to send her dairy-bill to the Hall. 
 In another a district-visitor, who was canvassing, 
 
236 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 distributed sugar and syrup, with a graceful refer- 
 ence to the Conservative candidate, a few days be- 
 fore the election, and declined to distribute it where 
 the sentiment was known to be Radical. In other 
 places beef was generously distributed. In a Shrop- 
 shire village ten hundredweight of coal was delivered 
 to each worker with the message (by the carter) : 
 " This is from a Tory : what have the Liberals done 
 for you ? " Elsewhere, in many places, local charit- 
 able bequests were made to serve political objects. 
 In a London constituency 1070 Christmas parcels, 
 worth three shillings and sixpence each, were given 
 away three weeks before the election. 
 
 Treating is quite general in England at election- 
 time. The Act of 1854 had only forbidden the can- 
 didate to treat. The Corrupt Practices Act of 1883 
 made what seemed elaborate regulations to prevent 
 any person from treating for him, and punished the 
 receiver as well. But Mr Fisher gives plenty ^of 
 positive evidence that treating is common, though 
 it would be difficult to prove it legally. In the 
 course of his inquiries a single publican told him 
 that he controlled ninety votes. In very many places 
 the price of beer was lowered, or abolished, and 
 drinking clubs were temporarily formed. Mr Bux- 
 ton shows that in the week ending July 15th, 1895, 
 the revenue from beer was 337,000 more than in 
 the corresponding week for 1894. One million 
 barrels of beer above the ordinary flow were con- 
 sumed in Britain that week. The general election 
 had taken place on the 13th. 
 
 Another trick is for wealthy people to hold up 
 their subscriptions to local causes, if there is a 
 Liberal candidate in the field, until the result of 
 the election is known. Shopkeepers and workers 
 who openly state their sentiments, or do not em- 
 phatically declare for a particular side, lose their 
 customers after the election. Mr Buxton quotes a 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 237 
 
 passage from the Parish Magazine of the Rev. A. P. 
 Upcher, vicar of Halesworth and Chediston : " We 
 must see that we support and patronise in trade 
 only those who are loyal to the Church " (p. 37). 
 He reproduces letters written to Liberal tradesmen 
 on the eve of an election, saying that they may send 
 in their Bills if they support the Liberal candidate. 
 The Primrose League of Leamington (Hants) issued 
 a list marking the local traders who were to be 
 dealt with or avoided. A Liberal grocer, after a 
 bye-election, lost 80 of his turnover in six months. 
 Specific cases are quoted of threats of loss of em- 
 ployment, or promises of employment, according as 
 a man voted. 
 
 Employers of one or other party make use of their 
 power in the interest of their candidate. Most 
 people will remember a notorious case not many 
 years ago, in which a Liverpool ship-repairer kept 
 a body of hostile workers in the middle of the Mer- 
 sey until the poll was closed. Mr Buxton adds 
 many instances. One candidate is taken over the 
 works, and given every advantage, while his rival 
 is excluded. Workers who are known to be on the 
 same side as the employer get special facilities for 
 voting and workmen who are known to be on the 
 other side and the opinions of the great majority 
 are well known in every shop get the reverse. 
 Employers canvass the works for their candidate. 
 No doubt many men will sign, and vote otherwise, 
 but in one works in 1906, situated in a constituency 
 of only 6000 voters, a thousand written promises to 
 vote for a particular candidate were secured. 
 Amongst the agricultural workers the belief is 
 fostered that the ballot is not really secret. It was 
 reported in the Sussex Daily News (7th November 
 1904) that a candidate was asked at a meeting if 
 the ballot was secret. It is said that he refused to 
 answer, but that his chairman, Sir H. Harben, 
 
238 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 observed that he " did not believe it was." There 
 are places in which the villagers are told that there 
 are mirrors in the voting stand by which votes can 
 be read. Farmers and house-owners in rural dis- 
 tricts are especially bad. We talk of the incubus of 
 the reactionary agricultural voter, but few realise 
 how widely the system of intimidation and tempta- 
 tion still prevails. 
 
 We now see the value of the pretty theory that 
 fifteen million free and indepndent electors, the 
 overwhelming majority of the adults of the country, 
 deliberately choose to return men who will, as they 
 well know, accept the leaders whom I have called 
 oligarchs. A vast proportion of the voters are 
 bribed, intimidated, seduced, or mentally fuddled. 
 Leaving out those who are intimidated and we may 
 admit that their number decreases at every election 
 it may be pleaded that one cannot blame politicians 
 if men choose to let their convictions be influenced 
 by the paltry bribe of a few free drinks. The evidence 
 I have quoted shows that this is a quite inadequate 
 and sophistical way of putting the matter. To 
 millions of our people it is a material thing to have 
 in their district an " open-handed gentleman " of 
 great wealth. For millions of others what our judges 
 call " popularity " turns the human scale. I was 
 in South Wales on the eve of the last election, and 
 listened to two fairly educated women discussing 
 
 the prospect. The elder would vote ior Dr , 
 
 a sincere, grave, rather Radical worker. The other 
 was to vote for his opponent because he was " a nice 
 man." What do such people know about the pos- 
 sible issue to their country of choosing between 
 A and B? I will go so far as to admit that at 
 several general elections I, a trained student of 
 politics, refused to vote for either the Liberal or the 
 Conservative candidate because it was impossible to 
 say which was the less harmful. In millions of less 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 239 
 
 educated minds a glow of popularity, or " a good 
 dose of bread-and-butter politics," easily weights 
 dice. 
 
 It is a pernicious system, a corrupt system. 
 Every single trick which I have described ought to 
 be rigorously forbidden and punished. In every 
 single case the object was, transparently, to influ- 
 ence votes by corrupt means. Every means is cor- 
 rupt which is not a purely immaterial appeal to the 
 intelligence of the elector. Treating, in particular, 
 is one of the most repulsive ways of influencing 
 electors that could be imagined. The people who 
 give and take such bribes ought to be punished by 
 the total prohibition of treating from the time the 
 election is announced until it is over. Free drinks 
 and cheap beer are easily detected and punished. 
 But both our great political parties know that these 
 things are done for them, and they will not move. 
 They know that for every petition one of them 
 brings, the other side will bring a petition; so they 
 " pair." They know that the Independent who 
 wants to bring a petition in the nation's interest- 
 must have a few thousand pounds to sacrifice; and 
 they have no mind to alter that. 
 
 In fact, the difficulty of proving corruption in the 
 legal sense, though you may bring evidence enough 
 in the human sense, is almost prohibitive. Of 
 forty-two petitions brought between 1886 and 1906, 
 after the passing of an elaborate Corrupt Practices 
 Act, twenty-six were rejected by the judges. I have 
 already quoted Mr Justice Grantham's ruling that 
 a candidate may spend, some time before the elec- 
 tion, to secure popularity. Baron Fitzgerald would 
 not rule that it was corrupt for landowners to gather 
 at the door of the polling-station, though he said : 
 " I entertain grave doubts whether it is either pru- 
 dent or proper." Mr Justice Bruce, who presided 
 over the Haggerston inquiry in 1895, exonerated 
 
240 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the candidate who, four or five months before the 
 election, distributed five hundred of his visiting 
 cards entitling the recipient to food. This is the 
 official interpretation of the Act of 1883. It evid- 
 ences the popular political interpretation of it for 
 the last sixteen years. But our statesmen say that 
 the law is adequate. 
 
 This by no means exhausts the grossness of our 
 electoral system. Ostrogorski quotes a well-known 
 Conservative organiser, Mr J. H. Bottomley, saying 
 in 1889 : 
 
 " The franchise has been made a mockery, and 
 we must clear away the endless scandals of the 
 Revision Courts. The law on the subject is a 
 sealed book except to a few, and those who are 
 neither Tories nor Radicals the neutrals politi- 
 cal outcasts suffer most. . . . The register, when 
 complete, is a trophy of party trickery and 
 manipulation." 
 
 That is still true. The law, framed by politicians, 
 reads as if it were written expressly for the purposes 
 of the local party-organisers. One would like to 
 know what proportion of voters could say, if they 
 have not been instructed by a party-agent, and have 
 not lived many years in a house, what are the precise 
 conditions of their right to vote : or how many 
 lodgers know whether they are true citizens or no. 
 The local organisers and their lawyers settle the 
 whole business, and the fight is marked by chivalry 
 of a peculiar kind. I once, being rather disgusted 
 at the conduct of a Nonconformist of particularly 
 unctuous piety, told the Tory organisers that, to 
 my absolute knowledge, his son, who exercised a 
 lodger-vote, was not a lodger. Nothing came of it. 
 They "paired." Such cases are numerous. The 
 admirer of bluff British common sense and honesty 
 ought to attend the Revision Courts in September 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 241 
 
 and October. This whole department of electoral 
 life is in scandalous need of reform. 
 
 In all these and other ways the tendency, if not 
 the aim, of the machine is to discourage the amateur 
 (the Independent) from meddling with a skilled and 
 costly game. The conditions are kept such that only 
 a powerful and wealthy organisation can attend 
 adequately to this important section of the game. 
 The oligarchs lay it down that a sum five or ten 
 times what is really needed to put one's views before 
 the electorate may be spent by each candiate. His 
 friends more or less crudely spend more for him, and 
 provide vehicles to give him an advantage over a 
 poorer candidate. The return of his expenses is not 
 subjected to any very elaborate check. There is, 
 perhaps, fifty or a hundred pounds for an astute 
 election-agent. Most people who belong to that 
 world know that this is often only an instalment. 
 Especially if the candidate succeeds, the agent may 
 expect a handsome " present " some time after- 
 wards. Other workers are "honorary." Some of 
 them will appear presently on the Borough or Dis- 
 trict Council, helped by the machinery to which 
 they lent their aid in the general election. Some 
 are tradesmen, contractors, employers, etc. ; and 
 one good turn deserves another. An encyclopaedic 
 work on our electoral machinery would surprise 
 many people who think that political life is very 
 simple. 
 
 The orgie of promises and counter-promises, in 
 fine, must be borne in mind, though we have already 
 considered this. The pyrotechnic display in an 
 election-month does certainly grow more sober. 
 One can remember occasions within the last twenty 
 years when the hoarding of London or Manchester 
 bore ghastly loads of crude colouring. The prime 
 joke was for each party to represent the other as 
 a compound of Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger 
 
242 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 picking the pockets of a particularly stupid-looking 
 citizen. Myriads of broadsides, of the humour 
 (without the art) of the eighteenth century, were 
 plastered over the country. One voted for the 
 broadest joke. These things linger in the rural 
 constituencies. Politics never attempt to lift up. 
 
 In the cities we now rely on strong print. Phrases 
 are priceless, especially if they are alliterative. 
 Qualifications of the weirdest description appear. 
 Personal records are polished until they shine; and 
 in a few days after you have read them, a canvasser 
 of the opposite side comes to whisper insinuations 
 about them at your door. Men who were playing 
 billiards when you were reading Sidgwick or Dun- 
 ning or Ostrogorski insist on pushing into your 
 dining-room and giving you elementary lessons. If 
 the candidate has a pretty wife, he sends her as a 
 sample of his political convictions. 
 
 So we muddle through an election in England in 
 the second decade of the twentieth century. As far 
 as one can gather, we are not far advanced beyond 
 the Athens of 2300 years ago. The mischief is that 
 our politicians are not eager to see us advance. 
 Every extension of the franchise and refinement of 
 the system has been forced on them. The system suits 
 them. We are controlled by a country- wide machine, 
 and it is controlled by a few oligarchs or oligarchable 
 persons. The machine leaves us I will consider the 
 Labour Party later only two alternatives. We 
 shall vote either Liberal or Conservative; or throw 
 away our vote. Twenty men sit in one chamber in 
 Westminster and construct a program. Twenty 
 rivals meet in another chamber and construct a 
 different program. Neither set of program-makers 
 has consulted us, beyond a certain prudential regard 
 for " the feeling of the country." What they chiefly 
 want is election, or re-election. It matters very 
 little what the local candidiate says in his program. 
 
REPRESENTED AND REPRESENTATIVES 243 
 
 He will agree to almost anything we want, and after- 
 wards justly plead that we also accepted him as a 
 supporter of the Conservative or the Liberal party, 
 and he was bound by its decisions. We, the self- 
 governing people, are almost helpless. Every few 
 years some of our journals announce that the party- 
 system is " breaking up." It is not. It is as strong 
 as ever. And we are as much enslaved by it as 
 ever. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 
 
 THE very recent case of Lady Astor will have splut- 
 tered angrily on the lips of many as they read the 
 last chapter. Just as I write of closed systems and 
 oligarchs, it will be said, an independent lady routs 
 her official opponent and makes her way to the 
 House. On what precise grounds Lady Astor won 
 her election, or what was the psychology of the con- 
 stituency in returning her, would entail a lengthier 
 analysis than we can make here. Broadly, she was 
 going to introduce common sense, economy and the 
 superior wisdom of woman's intuition into Parlia- 
 ment. But within three weeks the London Press 
 reported her as using language which seemed to in- 
 timate a profound and speedy disillusion. Lady 
 Astor has not the savoir faire of Labouchere, or the 
 resolute practical sense of Sir A. Markham or Sir H. 
 Dalziel. It may be that the very qualities which 
 carried her through the election will detract from 
 her usefulness in that best of all clubs, and most 
 backward of all assemblies, the House of Commons. 
 Probably a new member thinks he will snatch an 
 hour or two sometime in the fortnight of congratula- 
 tions for the purpose of studying the procedure of 
 the grave body to which he is promoted. He may 
 be recommended to go at once to the most accurate 
 and painstaking and sympathetic of all guides to 
 the House, Sir T. Erskine May's Law, Privileges, 
 Proceedings and Usages of Parliament. It runs to 
 906 large pages of condensed matter. One would 
 
 244 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 245 
 
 require three years' assiduous study to master it; 
 and then there would remain the extraordinary 
 mass of unwritten law (in the empirical sense of the 
 word) and procedure which to the aspiring politician 
 is even more important. The new member gener- 
 ally prefers to rely on Providence and a few other 
 friends of some experience, and walk warily and 
 silently for the first few months. The path is strewn 
 with pitfalls and obstacles. 
 
 A glance at the staff of the House would warn 
 any cautious man at once that this is no simple 
 world of expressing opinions into which he has wan- 
 dered. The central figure is the Speaker, originally 
 a robust gentleman chosen from the body of the 
 members to " speak " for them to the king when- 
 ever a painful occasion arose for them to do so. 
 He is now the Chairman of the House, though 
 old hands would probably be in danger of apoplexy 
 if some blunt innovator proposed that he should be 
 called by that name. But he is a Chairman of a 
 peculiar kind. His extraordinary knowledge and 
 onerous duties are recognised by the House granting 
 him 5000 a year (the salary of five distinguished 
 professors), a mansion of a very expensive type, a 
 legal assistant with 1800 a year, and a secretary 
 with 500 a year. This is a measure of the com- 
 plexity of the rules and procedure he has to see 
 carried out. 
 
 But this does not exhaust the impressiveness of 
 the staff. At times the House must call itself a 
 committee, and for these occasions another learned 
 gentleman, the Chairman of Committees, has to be 
 detained at a salary of 2500 a year, and behind 
 him is a Deputy-Chairman with 1000 a year. Then 
 there is a Clerk with 2000 a year and a Chaplain 
 with 400 a year. At times, again, the House is 
 under the necessity of communicating with the 
 House of " Barons, Earls, Archbishops and 
 
246 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 Bishops," and this is a costly and elaborate busi- 
 ness. A Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod has to 
 have 1000 a year to wear a picturesque costume 
 and carry a glorified stick, and say a few stage- 
 words (" My Lord, the carriage waits "), on these 
 occasions. Being a real gentleman and a thoroughly 
 mediaeval creation, he has to have a " Yeoman Usher 
 of the Black Rod " associated with him, at a salary 
 of 400 a year, or as much as the harassed master 
 of a large secondary school gets. And the Lords, 
 who now discharge no function, since we have been 
 compelled to take away from them their one function 
 of seeing that the country is not improved too 
 rapidly, have to have a separate palace, and a 
 separate Speaker and Deputy-Speaker, at a cost of 
 6500 a year. I omit the inevitable swarm of lesser 
 officials. 
 
 These people have to earn their living, and the 
 new member, who has just sworn to a few thousand 
 innocent folk that he is off to London to make their 
 voice heard in the cause of efficiency, economy and 
 common sense, is reduced to silence at once by their 
 stately and elaborate ways. It is the opening of 
 Parliament, let us say, and the Lords and Commons 
 have assembled, when the day is half over (the 
 lawyers might not be able to get there earlier), in 
 their respective chambers. Gentleman Usher of the 
 Black Rod makes an impressive entry, save for a few 
 smiles on the Labour benches, and summons the 
 Commoners to the higher sphere. There they are 
 told the tone is that of Dombey talking to Mrs 
 Richards to elect a Speaker and bring him on the 
 morrow for approval. There being as yet no 
 Speaker, the Clerk (who must on no account speak) 
 acts the part of a dumb chairman, to let them get 
 through the business. Then the day's work is over, 
 and they disperse to dinner. 
 
 Not being expected to arise early after so labori- 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 247 
 
 ous a day, they assemble at two on the following 
 day, and the fancy-dress ball is continued. Black 
 Rod respectfully intimates to the Lords that " His 
 Majesty's Faithful Commons " (several score of whom 
 are Republicans) have done as they were told, and 
 their Speaker " submits himself with all humility to 
 His Majesty's gracious approbation"; which he 
 gets. Then they spend a few days in taking oaths 
 and examining papers and so forth. Then there is 
 another humble procession to the Lords to hear the 
 King's Speech, or the oligarch's immediate program, 
 and two of the worst speakers in the House are 
 chosen (on peculiar principles) to talk platitudes 
 about it, and the Commons read a dummy Bill, 
 which is supposed to be a defiant commemoration 
 of some spirit of independence which they had in 
 ancient times. 
 
 " Without the historic sense," says Sir T. Erskine 
 May, all this is " a bewildering jungle "; and very 
 few of the seven hundred members to-day have 
 sufficient historic sense to write two hundred words 
 on the strange evolution of Parliament after the 
 Civil War. Very few of them complain, however. 
 The atmosphere is that of a highly ritualistic church, 
 providing its own narcotic. Even robust Radicals 
 succumb in time. Probably Mr Lloyd George would 
 resent a suggestion of change as much as Mr Cham- 
 berlain would have done in his later years. The 
 business of the House is not going to be conducted 
 on twentieth-century lines, and the neophyte might 
 as well realise it at once. What does it matter ? 
 The " organs of public opinion " describe the show 
 annually in terms of respect, if not of exaltation, so 
 we need not bother. 
 
 The House then proceeds to business, in its own 
 way. There are not seats for everybody a defect 
 which any Borough Council would remedy in three 
 months so there is a scramble for seats, and, at 
 
248 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the risk of being counted a Vandal, you have to 
 learn an ingenious set of rules in the use of hats, 
 cards, etc., and the geographical distribution of the 
 House into party-areas and important and unim- 
 portant benches. As you are now only a voting 
 automaton, it matters little. You leave to heroic 
 or ambitious or abnormal souls the privilege of occu- 
 pying the benches and linger within call. Five 
 hours listening to ordinary debates in the peculiar 
 atmosphere of the House of Commons (in spite of 
 its famous physical machinery for comfort) is poorly 
 paid at 400 a year, you conclude. You cannot 
 catch the Speaker's eye in connection with any sub- 
 ject of importance. I have known one of the ablest 
 private members, and an authority on the subject, 
 fail to do so in a three nights' debate. You are 
 food for divisions, cannon-fodder in the great party- 
 struggle. For this a long experience of municipal 
 councils, in which you could say what you thought, 
 is supposed to have prepared you. 
 
 The hours of work of the House of Commons 
 symbolise and sustain its determination to be unlike 
 any other place of business in the world. In this 
 respect the House is not guided by that reverence 
 for the antique and archaic which accounts for a 
 good deal of its extraordinary proceedings. The 
 lateness of the hour of opening is a comparatively 
 modern development. Before the Civil War, when 
 men were sent to Westminster only to do certain 
 national business, as far as the king would permit 
 them, the House met at six in the morning. Under 
 Cromwell it was wisely decided that prayers should 
 be fixed at eight in the morning, and any member 
 who did not appear at eight, or soon afterwards, 
 was fined. On the other hand, it was prescribed that 
 the deliberations should generally cease at noon. 
 Night sittings were forbidden on the excellent maxim 
 that " a grave and sober council ought not to do 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 249 
 
 things in the dark." This Puritan feeling was so 
 strong that the sight of candles in the House, when 
 some serious debate was prolonged, aroused great 
 hostility. Several resolutions of the House were an- 
 nulled because they had been passed by candlelight. 
 Dinner was early in those days, and substantial. 
 It was not deemed advisable to give after-dinner 
 hours to the nation's business when no prudent 
 merchant would think them fit for his private 
 business. 
 
 After the Restoration of the Stuarts there was a 
 good deal of laxity. Fines for not appearing at 
 eight were discontinued, and the hour crept slowly 
 backward over the day. At the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century the House rarely met before 
 noon, and it discharged most of its business by 
 candlelight. There were many reasons for this be- 
 sides laziness. One, undoubtedly, was the spread of 
 drunkenness in all classes. There were few members 
 of the House who did not get drunk at night, as 
 every gentleman of liberal habits was supposed to 
 do, and they were little disposed for business on the 
 following morning. The proportion of business-men 
 in the House was small. They were mostly landed 
 gentry, the parasites of the rich, and, later, retired 
 merchants. The evening, when the drinker enjoys 
 his most lucid hours, was chosen; and the debates 
 often ran until cock-crow hi the morning. Another 
 reason was that the proceedings changed somewhat 
 in character. The party-fight was in full blast, and 
 Parliament was a " career " for young men of wealth 
 and leisure who had left Oxford or Cambridge and 
 done the grand tour of Europe. The House became, 
 as Pitt boasted, the most famous arena of eloquence 
 and wit in Europe. The evening was the natural 
 time for this. Parliament had ceased to be a place 
 of business, and need not observe business-hours. 
 It was a " talking-shop." Every orator knows that 
 
250 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 the best time for orating is after six in the evening. 
 
 In the reform-period, 1832, a rule was passed that 
 the House should close at midnight. The spectacle 
 of legislators strolling home to bed, often in a state 
 of exaltation which might be misconstrued, when 
 plain men were going to work, was not edifying. 
 It is also true that much wine was consumed during 
 all-night sittings. The House itself was startled one 
 night by an honourable member calling thickly upon 
 the Speaker to oblige with a song. 
 
 But already a new development had set in, which 
 checked any tendency to revert to daylight-hours. 
 Business-men and lawyers were entering the House 
 in increasing numbers, and they wanted the morning 
 for their private affairs. The lawyer-member gener- 
 ally aspires to become a professional politician, or 
 at least to have the way smoothed to a judgeship 
 or other legal dignity, but in the earlier years he 
 must keep himself by legal practice. Our national 
 habits might have been created for his convenience. 
 We close judicial business at the early hour of four, 
 and we commence national business, substantially, 
 about the same time. We give five hours work in 
 the law-courts, so that a healthy and ambitious 
 man may still be able to do four hours' political 
 work in the evening. The London business-man is 
 similarly consulted. In effect he has until four 
 o'clock to see to his private affairs. That the over- 
 whelming majority of the members belong to the 
 provinces, and must leave their businesses behind 
 them, does not seem to matter. 
 
 For all, however, there is the crowning privilege 
 of longer holidays than any man engaged in private 
 business would dare to take or grant. On the aver- 
 age our politicians, who have the most colossal busi- 
 ness in the world on their shoulders, work five or 
 six hours a day for 170 days out of the 365. There 
 is no other class of workers in the community that 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 251 
 
 has such holidays, and none but teachers (whose 
 hours are determined by the needs of the children) 
 who work only five days a week. The theory is still, 
 apparently, that the member of Parliament is a 
 gentleman, or a person who is not supposed to 
 work at all, but generously gives a portion of his 
 legitimate play-hours that the country may benefit 
 by his wisdom. The consequence is that, as in the 
 law-courts, business is nearly always in arrears. As 
 I write, in the winter of 1919, our politicians are 
 taking the usual prolonged holiday, yet leaving be- 
 hind them a mass of untouched or unfinished work 
 which was supposed to have been done in the last 
 session. Of the work which was displayed as a pro- 
 gram before the eyes of the country a year ago very 
 little has been done. 
 
 One must recognise, of course, that a few of the 
 leading statesmen have very heavy work. Few men 
 in private business have anything like their hours of 
 employment or the intensity of the task while it 
 lasts. It is unfortunate that in their case the burden 
 of the nation's work should be complicated by the 
 thousand and one tasks and anxieties which they 
 have simutaneously to face as party-leaders, but in 
 any event no man who knows anything of the daily 
 round of a conscientious Prime Minister or leading 
 cabinet-minister will grudge them their holidays or 
 their salaries. One is almost tempted to suggest 
 that it would be wiser to abolish the sinecures and 
 decorative offices which still burden the Civil List, 
 and make the leading positions in the national ad- 
 ministration attractive to the finest talent that the 
 nation produces. To do so at present, when a score 
 of other considerations than competency account for 
 the rise of stars on the political horizon, would be 
 useless ; but meantime we may recognise that those 
 who occupy the highest positions in the House of 
 Commons lead strenuous and unenviable lives. 
 
252 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 This applies to few. Quite apart from special 
 committees, which need not be taken into considera- 
 tion, the life of a member of Parliament is one of 
 such abundant leisure that he is able to add materi- 
 ally to his income. The House has not the slightest 
 intention of re-adjusting its ways to the important 
 new departure of voting itself salaries. But in this 
 respect English custom generally is so crude and 
 primitive that there is little hope of reform. The 
 idea is still general that public work is best per- 
 formed when it is least paid. One may be quite 
 conscious of the danger which the contrary tendency 
 involves, yet decline to assent to this curious maxim. 
 
 To return, however, to our main point. The 
 northern worker, let us say, who has, in a frenzy of 
 enthusiasm, been sent by his fellow- workers to help 
 to reform the ways of Westminster, soon finds that he 
 is quite powerless. He learns a lot of minute rules 
 about when to sit and when to stand, when to wear 
 a hat and when not to wear a hat, and so on, but 
 as a rule he finds no occasion even for these. His 
 duty is to appear for a division and enter the 
 lobby which his party-allegiance prescribes. If his 
 conscience impels him at any time to dissent from 
 the decisions of his leaders, he has to face a grave 
 anxiety about his seat. The caucus gets to work. 
 Telegrams pass from the party-headquarters in 
 Westminster to the local party-representatives in his 
 constituency, and back to him, in slightly modified 
 form, at the House. Is he a Liberal (or Conserva- 
 tive) or is he not? The general triumph of the 
 party is so much more important to the country 
 than some erratic opinion of his on a particular 
 point. If he succeeds in finding quite a large group 
 of his colleagues who agree, he still has little power. 
 A very large group of Conservatives wished at one 
 time to put Mr Balfour on the shelf for his philo- 
 sophic doubts about Protection. They did not sue- 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 253 
 
 ceed. A large group of Liberals tried in 1919 to 
 influence Mr Lloyd George. They failed. A dis- 
 solution would be a graver matter to them than to 
 their leaders. 
 
 Still more pathetic is the situation of the man who 
 decides that he will risk rejection, or not put up 
 again, at the next election. In one respect the 
 machinery of the House is here as lax as it is 
 stringent in most other matters. A man may con- 
 tinue to sit in Parliament, and harass the Govern- 
 ment and its business in a hundred ways, when he 
 no longer represents more than a few hundred voters 
 in his constituency. By an ancient rule he cannot 
 resign. The House, as if it were bent on doing 
 nothing as ordinary mortals do, insists that he must 
 go through the form of applying for the Chiltern 
 Hundreds. This, however, he scarcely ever desires 
 to do. The whole atmosphere is so insincere that 
 he takes advantage of his technical position. He 
 has been elected for five years. He conveniently 
 overlooks the fact that he was really elected to 
 represent ten thousand voters for five years. The 
 time may come when he will have abundant evidence 
 that he no longer represents more than a tenth of 
 these, but is uttering sentiments daily which the 
 other nine-tenths regard as gravely detrimental to 
 the country's interests. The House cares nothing 
 for constituencies between elections. It will pro- 
 vide no machinery by which a constituency may 
 afford proof that a man no longer represents it, and 
 may cancel his mandate. So the fortunate rebel 
 may continue for years to harass public depart- 
 ments for fantastic figures, and waste the time of 
 the House, on the strength of his personal, and 
 perhaps eccentric, convictions. 
 
 But even the man who has the sympathy of his 
 constituents in his rebellion can do little. A few 
 men of long experience of the House, considerable 
 
254 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 wealth, public repute and journalistic support, may 
 carry on a very effective pin-pricking campaign. 
 The answers to their questions may seem to the 
 public satisfactory, but the expert knows that the 
 shot has told and a change will quietly be effected. 
 Such men are the salt of the House. As a rule, the 
 man who goes to the House for the purpose of 
 ruffling its complacency, or presently feels impelled 
 to ruffle its complacency and abandon the hope of 
 re-election, runs an obstacle-race which soon wears 
 out his patience. He may disappear, like Victor 
 Grayson or George Lansbury, in a storm that does 
 little more than disturb his neighbours for an even- 
 ing. He may remain a futile centre of irritability, 
 like Mr Belloc or Mr Ginnell, for a few years. He 
 may develop a curious sense of humour and expend 
 his zeal in facetious interruptions and things which 
 he regards as bons mots; which is silly. He makes 
 no substantial impression on the traditions of the 
 House or the deliberately traced program of its 
 leaders. He feels at times that it would be more 
 economical for the country once in five years, or 
 less, to invite the rival groups of oligarchs to lay 
 their respective programs of legislation before it and 
 simply endorse one or the other. It would save a 
 good million a year. An extensive biography of 
 any leading British statesman will show how very 
 rarely the Cabinet policy was deflected by pressure 
 from amongst its own supporters. 
 
 The average member wearily succumbs to this 
 regime and becomes a good subject of the oligarchs. 
 He no longer indulges at table in insurgent remarks 
 which will be reported to the Whip. He finds him- 
 self provided with a club refined and luxurious be- 
 yond the dreams of Muddleton or Dudbridge, in 
 which his life had hitherto been cast. He has, at 
 relatively small cost, a second luxurious club and 
 genial society at the National Liberal Club or its 
 
IN THE PARLIAMENTARY LABYRINTH 255 
 
 rivals. If he have a mind for study it is not un- 
 known a superb library is open to him. The party 
 provides other pleasant functions for the faithful; 
 and he may even, on occasion, walk the lawn at 
 Buckingham Palace and hobnob, or very nearly, 
 with all the talent and splendour of England. If 
 he needs more money, there are new ways of making 
 it. The magic letters after his name will secure five 
 guineas for an article in a journal which would other- 
 wise not trouble to read his copy, and from three 
 to ten guineas for a lecture or, if he is willing to 
 profess at least a rudimentary religion, an address. 
 The Labour member who to-day complains bitterly 
 that <400 a year is not a living wage for 170 days' 
 work a year need not expect serious sympathy 
 outside those Labour circles in which the accent of 
 grievances is more considered than the substance. 
 Any observant person will conclude that the income 
 of several of them, apart from office-holders, is 
 nearer 1000 a year. 
 
 By the time when dissolution is at length actually 
 decreed, the average member is a wiser but not a sad- 
 der man. He very strongly desires re-election. The 
 early days, in which he declared that it was almost 
 impossible to be honest at Westminster, or in which 
 he disrespectfully translated the word Parliament, 
 " talking-shop," are forgotten. He has developed 
 " the historic sense," though he may have learned 
 little history. He will tolerate the next opening of 
 Parliament with equanimity. The tediousness of its 
 debates he now knows how to beguile or avoid. He 
 may, in fact, claim that the modern substitution 
 of four or five humdrum speeches of three-quarters 
 of an hour each, by the leading representatives of 
 four or five parties or sections, is an advance upon 
 the two finished orations, sparkling with fine lines 
 from the classics, which once filled up an evening 
 of the House's time. He enjoys the puns, person- 
 
256 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 alities and puerilities which a new generation sub- 
 stitutes for the sonorous verse of Homer or the 
 pregnant sentiments of JSschylus. 
 
 He will serve for another five years. As far as 
 his means permit, he plays for " popularity," with 
 a Stoic indifference to votes, in his constituency. He 
 rescues dying football-clubs, addresses the P.S.A. 
 or Brotherhood or whatever a layman may address 
 with fine impartiality, and shows a laudable concern 
 for every comfortable citizen's duty of benevolence. 
 He takes care to stand well with the local section 
 of the national machine, and produces a record of 
 fidelity and industry in the division-lobby. West- 
 minster approves of him, and the ambitious indi- 
 vidual who thought of supplanting him may retire 
 into his obscurity. He reflects what a mighty 
 difference it makes to a man to stand well, or stand 
 ill, with the party-machine. Individualism, he com- 
 fortably concludes, is an heroic policy, but after 
 all it is futile. England is going to be ruled by a 
 party. Only a party can do things in England. 
 Practical wisdom is to see that it be the right party 
 his party. So he reports his financial needs, and 
 returns to Westminster under the most peculiarly 
 sacred of all obligations to the party. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE OUTLOOK 
 
 FEW thoughtful persons will dissent from the sug- 
 gestion that the outlook for Britain is discouraging 
 if the system I have described is to continue. A 
 high proportion of our voters are influenced by more 
 or less mercenary considerations which candidates 
 for Parliament are still allowed to dangle before 
 them. A still higher proportion are quite incapable 
 of a judicious decision unless the issues are put be- 
 fore them in the simplest and clearest terms; and 
 we still permit our day of decision, once in five years, 
 to be preceded by a national orgie of sentimentality, 
 mendacity, vulgarity and personalities which must 
 leave any but the strongest and best-educated minds 
 in a state bordering on inebriation. A further pro- 
 portion would choose men and women, after grave 
 and quiet examination of their opinions, whom they 
 regard as useful persons to deliberate on our great 
 national issues; but they find that, in effect, they 
 must choose one of the two individuals imposed on 
 them by the rival parties, or the candidates of the 
 three rival parties, who will not be permitted to 
 exercise any individuality at all. 
 
 It means, in short, that the country must choose 
 between one of two rival groups of oligarchs. Now 
 these generally include one or two men of conspicu- 
 ous ability, and the great mass of the electors see a 
 simple way out of the maze in recognising this fact 
 and voting for a particular man who is sure to assume 
 power if his followers are in the majority. This 
 n 257 
 
258 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 is, in fact, the best that can be said for our present 
 system. Our Premier is not very far removed from 
 an autocrat. If colleagues in the Cabinet dissent, 
 in spite of the utmost prudence hi selecting them, 
 he can generally overrule or, hi an extremity, dis- 
 pense with them. I say " not very far removed from 
 an autocrat," because our political history records 
 many instances to the contrary. There have been 
 extreme cases in which the Premier could not with- 
 out absurdity be described as an autocrat. Take 
 Lord Rosebery or, at one time, Mr Balfour. Or 
 consider the humour of describing a good-natured 
 mediocrity like Mr Campbell-Bannerman as an auto- 
 crat. Yet, as a rule, a Premier chooses men who 
 will co-operate in his plans and contrives to make 
 them see that his plans are just. In quite recent 
 years we have seen cabinet-ministers, who were well 
 known in informed political circles to oppose a cer- 
 tain measure violently, remain in the Cabinet when 
 it was passed. So we simplify the complexity forced 
 on us by choosing something hi the nature of an 
 autocrat to administer the country for five years. 
 We are a democracy because we choose him. We 
 genially overlook the machinery he used, we flatter 
 ourselves that we, the British people, calmly selected 
 him to direct our administration. 
 
 But here the limits of his autocracy, and of our 
 choice, begin. If there are any persons who imagine 
 that our autocrat calmly surveys the talent of the 
 country, when the king has recognised our will and 
 called him to Buckingham Palace, and selects the 
 most skilful and experienced men to take charge of 
 the public departments, it is only one more proof 
 of the scandalously low state of political culture in 
 the country. In point of fact, there are millions of 
 voters who either think this or never think about 
 the matter at all, though it is a point of vital in- 
 terest to all of us. We have seen what really hap- 
 
THE OUTLOOK 259 
 
 pens. Instead of surveying the national talent, he 
 confines his scrutiny to a small group of thirty or 
 forty professional politicians of his own party; and 
 even here he has to look to a good many things 
 besides ability. There are families so distinguished 
 or so benevolent that even if the son who has entered 
 politics has no more than the intelligence of the 
 manager of a suburban bank, " something must be 
 done for him." He may even become Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, at a time when it needs a finan- 
 cial genius to keep it solvent. There are old men, 
 who ought to have retired years before, but who 
 have either not the means to retire on or not the 
 lucidity to see that their period of use is over. The 
 mysteries of cabinet-making are notorious : mys- 
 teries, that is to say, in the literary or journalistic 
 sense things that you could elucidate, but would 
 rather not. 
 
 The secondary offices are filled in turn on very 
 complex grounds of selection. If ministers must 
 have unpaid secretaries, and unpaid secretaries must 
 be men distinguished rather by the ability (or for- 
 tune) of their fathers than their own, there has to 
 be a day of reward. Politicians rarely trouble their 
 heads about science, but the Eugenic theory of our 
 time charmed them. Genius runs in families, so 
 it is in accord with the highest scientific culture to 
 visit the virtues of the fathers on their children. In 
 point of fact, a careful perusal of any good bio- 
 graphical dictionary will show that genius does not 
 run in families. Any person who cares to write a 
 list of the thirty ablest men of the last generation 
 or thirty names of very high talent may be written 
 down from memory and then write the names of 
 their sons in a corresponding column, will not need 
 to read the speculations about heredity of a certain 
 school of scientific men. Genius runs in families 
 only in the political world; that is to say, in all 
 
260 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 other spheres of life the son finds his natural level, 
 but in the political world he finds it comparatively 
 easy to attain the positions which his father at- 
 tained, whether he has the same ability or only one- 
 fourth of it. In one respect, indeed, the politician 
 outdoes Sir Francis Galton. He thinks political 
 genius is communicated by marriage into one of the 
 great political families. 
 
 We thus find that we have chosen, not an autocrat 
 who will use his judgment loyally to secure the finest 
 talent and the highest energy, but a set of political 
 adventurers who will put their hands eagerly to jobs 
 which are fit only for supermen. The directive 
 council of our national and imperial business costs 
 us more than a million a year; if we include the 
 royal family, more than two million a year. But 
 an American syndicate would not tolerate it for 
 three months. 
 
 The situation looks worse when we consider how 
 the taint spreads downwards through the depart- 
 ments of national life which are controlled by the 
 Government. It is so notorious that the loudest 
 charge against " State-socialism " for fifty years has 
 been the incompetence of the State, with its two- 
 million-a-year directive council, to do anything as 
 well as a company would with a Board of Directors 
 costing from .5000 to 10,000 a year. For the last 
 two hundred years politicians have weakened the 
 army by jobbery, and it is well known that the 
 jobbery went on even during the last, and most 
 terrible, war. The War Office became the paymaster 
 of politicians whom the country no longer wished to 
 see in the limelight of the House, and of stuffy 
 veterans and mediocre officers who could exert 
 social pressure on politicians. The abuse became 
 worse after the Coalition, because there were now 
 two sets of politicians, and political families, and 
 political supporters, to be consulted. It enfeebled 
 
THE OUTLOOK 261 
 
 the army in the field as well as the army in London. 
 Every fresh extension meant an extension of 
 favouritism. 
 
 This pernicious abuse, which is plainly an exten- 
 sion of the political system, enfeebled every depart- 
 ment. I asked an outside expert why a certain 
 scientific body set up on .Government funds worked 
 so slowly and unsuccessfully. He answered that the 
 last qualification sought in the scientific workers ap- 
 pointed was, apparently, scientific distinction. Com- 
 mittee after committee was appointed including 
 one or two names which caused informed persons 
 to raise their eyebrows. Men skipped from one de- 
 partment to another as lightly as if no task were 
 too intricate to be mastered in a month. Local 
 publicans, of military age, became, under local 
 political influence, inspectors of guns and shells. 
 I have seen them at work. It was the same right 
 through our gigantic national machine. Even in 
 normal times the same thing goes on. Our Civil 
 Servants are the most pampered and most leisurely 
 and extravagant of all employees. Parliament, 
 next door, believes in short hours and long holidays. 
 So do they. They are not " in business," thank 
 you. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this situation grows 
 more serious every decade. For a hundred years 
 England had almost a commercial monopoly, and 
 we could afford to let politicians direct and tamper 
 with the great departments of State. Our workers 
 and manufacturers saw to it that the State pros- 
 pered, in spite of all parasitism. America was then 
 a remote and comparatively small agricultural 
 polity. Japan lingered in the Middle Ages. Ger- 
 many did not seriously develop industrialism before 
 1871. In the period between 1871 and 1914 we 
 still prospered, because the world-markets were 
 enormously enlarged and there was trade for all. 
 
262 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 That enlargement will not continue, and the com- 
 mercial rivalry will be intense when the world re- 
 turns to its normal life. The peoples to whom we 
 catered take India or South America begin to 
 manufacture for themselves. The caterers grow 
 more numerous. Japan is a new force. The United 
 States is quietly closing America against the rest 
 of the world. India will gradually, as it is indus- 
 trialised, take a larger interest in Africa and the 
 near East. 
 
 Politics has had to expand in harmony with world- 
 development. In the days when Fox and Pitt re- 
 garded Parliament as a stage for the display of wit 
 and oratory and culture, there was practically only 
 one task of government the defence of the country. 
 Foreign politics and finance were subsidiary to this. 
 Parliament was not burdened with work except 
 during a war. The House was the club and debat- 
 ing society of the parties, which had once repre- 
 sented opposed principles and now represented rival 
 syndicates. The members were nearly all men who 
 despised " trade," and thought the qualifications 
 of a business-man odious. How could one quote 
 Catullus or Aristophanes to such people ? What use 
 could be made of a brilliant career at Oxford in 
 an assembly of tradesmen ? 
 
 In the course of the nineteenth century the whole 
 art and ideal of government has changed. There is 
 hardly an aspect of the life of the citizens which it 
 must not regard. It must handle and judiciously 
 distribute 200,000,000 a year, or manage an estate 
 worth ,4,000,000,000. Nay, since it has to nurse 
 the prosperity of the entire kingdom, beyond 
 the tenth which it appropriates in taxes, it must 
 take thought for a national business worth 
 10,000,000,000; six years ago one would have said 
 twice that sum, but debt and sterile expenditure 
 and inflated currency have reduced us so low. It 
 
THE OUTLOOK 263 
 
 has, moreover, to expend this national revenue in 
 ways that lay beyond the dreams of Pitt and Al- 
 thorp. It has to superintend the education of all 
 the children of the country : supervise all the fac- 
 tories and workshops in the country : pension all 
 the aged workers in the country : manage the entire 
 postal, telegraphic and telephonic service of the 
 country : deal with all the crime, poverty and lunacy 
 and some other forms of disease in the country. 
 It has, above all, to see that the wheels of the in- 
 dustrial machine run smoothly, and that our com- 
 merce is fully instructed and scientifically directed. 
 It has to do this in face of rival national firms 
 which go even beyond this paternal method : 
 nations of which the government condescends to 
 subsidise particular industries and gathers informa- 
 tion all over the world for commerce. 
 
 The task is now stupendous, intricate and most 
 momentous in its consequences. We make it vaster 
 and more costly every year. With a light hand we 
 throw out ten or twenty millions for house-builders, 
 or railway-workers, or farmers, or purveyors of 
 food; and we scarcely notice that ten mouths will 
 soon gape at the surface of the pond for every one 
 we satiate, or else that we are extending our political 
 economy in new directions. Politics is now a busi- 
 ness, not in the old political sense, but hi the gravest 
 economic sense. It will be a source of still graver 
 anxiety presently. Commercial competition abroad 
 and industrial exactions at home will lower our 
 financial vitality, and, in proportion as it is lowered, 
 there will be louder and louder calls upon the public 
 Exchequer. 
 
 Yet in the face of all this new development our 
 politicians cling to archaic methods and stoutly 
 support our wasteful party-game. They must meet 
 at an hour when most of us are beginning to look 
 at the clock. They must pay a man 4400 a year 
 
264 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 to read, less than two hundred times a year, a prayer 
 to which no one but Lord Hugh Cecil attaches the 
 slightest importance. They must maintain a pro- 
 cedure so complex and mysterious and irrational 
 that they must pay men 20,000 a year to see that 
 it is carried out properly. They must suffer a similar 
 House next door, which they declare to be useless, 
 to be put on the estimates, and pay a series of 
 ornamental gentlemen to do the work of an occa- 
 sional messenger-girl between them. They must 
 find excuses for a party-system which they them- 
 selves declare to be so detrimental to public busi- 
 ness that it would be unsafe to lean on it in a critical 
 period. They must retain a method of discharging 
 their functions, by formal debates which make plain 
 what everybody knew, and suppress the men who 
 might contribute something new, which no other 
 executive council in the land would imitate. They 
 must keep up the fiction that the House is a place 
 of oratory, though the art of oratory is dead, and 
 the occasion of oratory is gone for ever. And they 
 do this because it is in the interest of the party- 
 game, since every speech is really addressed to the 
 prospective voters and never influences the hard- 
 cased audience in the House. 
 
 This sort of thing will not sustain Britain in the 
 coming contest. There are those who shudder, and 
 make wry faces, when you talk of coming contests. 
 Have we not had enough of them ? It does not 
 matter whether we have or not. We are entering 
 upon two new contests as grave as any we ever 
 engaged in before : the industrial contest at home 
 and the commercial contest abroad, the struggle for 
 production at home and the struggle for distribution 
 abroad, the fight, not merely for life, but for a 
 greater life. There is no mistaking the signs of the 
 times. The millions who were once content to wait 
 for their luxuries in the next world are determined, 
 
THE OUTLOOK 265 
 
 for greater security, to have them in this. Our 
 economy is going to be either transformed or ruined. 
 Statesmanship can transform it. Politicians are 
 merely putting back the hour of reckoning Iw 
 clipping the coinage. What is likely to happen? y^ 
 
 The Labour Party is the hope of many. We will * 
 not at once be prejudiced because it calls itself a 
 " party," and it is the party-system which threatens 
 England with ruin. Like every other party, of 
 course, it seeks its own interests. There is, how- 
 ever, this difference : its interests mean the interests 
 of nine-tenths of the community. Pitt and Well- 
 ington said candidly that Parliament existed to 
 protect property ; which at that time meant far less 
 than a tenth of the community. Six years ago pro- 
 perty-holders down to the lowest section of the 
 middle class were about a ninth of the community. 
 To-day, if we regard the latest figures of income- 
 tax, they number about an eighth. It is difficult 
 to calculate, for many a worker to-day earns as 
 much as an author or a university professor, and 
 whole classes of workers get as much as school- 
 masters. But let us say that Labour, in the nar- 
 rower sense, represents seven-eighths of the nation, 
 and would theoretically promote the interests of the 
 seven-eighths. 
 
 What we want to know, however, is whether a 
 Labour Party is likely to purify the administration 
 of its hampering defects or to maintain the worse 
 features of the party-system. We need not theorise 
 about political development. It is taking place all 
 over the earth, and, as it has in some countries out- 
 run the stage in which we linger, we have only to 
 turn to them for enlightenment. Try Australia and 
 New Zealand. There one sees the next phase. 
 Liberals and Conservatives have fallen upon each 
 others' necks and formed " national " parties of 
 opposition. Labour is in power. Socialism slowly 
 
266 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 advances, and, as every one who knows Australia 
 has found, it pronounces Labour a misbirth from the 
 womb of time, a sham and a snare for the workers. 
 The party-system thrives as luxuriantly and mis- 
 chievously as here. Australian Socialists leave it 
 to English Socialists (except when they are ex- 
 pressly called to help) to bless the so-called " Soci- 
 alistic " triumphs of the Labour Governments of 
 Australia. They talk of " the official Labour 
 Party " much as our Socialists speak of the bour- 
 geoisie (which must be kept in French, or else it 
 loses its blood-curdling quality and sounds quite 
 harmless). 
 
 Now, are we tending to the same consummation ? 
 Certainly. Labour was routed at the last election 
 because the country decidedly preferred Mr Lloyd 
 George to Mr Henderson and Mr Macdonald. But 
 no other election will be fought in the same cir- 
 cumstances, and the Labour-tide will steadily rise, 
 It rises at every bye-election. If the general elec- 
 tion could be deferred for another two years, one 
 would not be surprised to see a hundred and fifty or 
 more Labour members ; and the rise of the tide will 
 continue. Does it promise a solution? 
 
 Let us examine the political organisation of 
 Labour. Its inevitable aristocracy, or group of 
 leaders, differs materially from the higher groups of 
 the other parties. There are (as yet) no hereditary 
 leaders. There are no men included because their 
 fathers contributed brain or money to the party. 
 Already, however, we begin to ask questions. Are 
 one or two individuals, who are plainly not horny- 
 handed sons of toil, so prominent in Labour counsels 
 because they are really credited with superior poli- 
 tical wisdom, or are there, even here, secret sub- 
 scription-lists ? For the last twenty years some 
 needy sections of the Labour-world have been not 
 unfamiliar with secret funds. Here are two pas- 
 
THE OUTLOOK 267 
 
 sages from the work of a political veteran, Howard 
 Evans, whose word commands respect : 
 
 "At a certain general election two obscure Social- 
 ist candidates made their appearance and went to 
 the poll. I had information that their election- 
 expenses were paid by Tory money, and published 
 the fact. One of these candidates called on me, 
 declaring that he had no knowledge of the matter 
 till afterwards, but he admitted that my statement 
 was true. . . . 
 
 " There was another man who had been closely 
 connected with Karl Marx and the International. 
 He started a Labour paper, which was filled from 
 end to end with the most scurrilous abuse of tried 
 and trusted leaders of Trade Unions. How the 
 thing lived was a mystery I could not fathom, 
 but I had little doubt when its editor was ap- 
 pointed to an important post in the Tory electoral 
 organisation."* 
 
 The first of these instances, and several like it, 
 are now well known. The second is a very excep- 
 tional case, except in so far as it speaks of journals 
 whose survival is " a mystery I could not fathom/' 
 The Labour Party, especially in its left wing, is 
 very eloquent about secret funds and secret dip- 
 lomacy. It is not conspicuous for the virtues which 
 are opposed to these unhappy vices. 
 
 It is, however, much more important to study 
 the main organisation of the political Labour Party. 
 It has its caucus, its central committee, its local 
 committees, its war-chest, its discipline in the House 
 and organization in the country, its rewards of loyalty 
 and service, its punishments of dissent. It is, in 
 other words, built, with certain differences, on the 
 model of the older parties. It imitates their machine. 
 This, it says, is inevitable and harmless ; and certain 
 * Radical Fights of Forty Years (1913), p. 100. 
 
268 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 important differences must be conceded. Its slender 
 war-chest has certainly no connection with the 
 honours' lists. It has no moneyed and leisured young 
 men who can 6 devil ' to the elders for a few years and 
 look for a reward. Its clubs and centres of cohesion 
 are quite genuine drinking clubs for people of like 
 politics, not bogus-affairs financed by political 
 patrons. Five million men have, surely, the right 
 to create an organisation for the more effective 
 representation of their policy in Parliament. 
 
 In , some respects, however, the Labour Party 
 shares the defects of its predecessors. It was 
 heavily chastised at the last election for, amongst 
 other things, the unfitness of a large proportion of 
 its candidates to inspire confidence. Had the 
 Labour Party issued a plain and detailed program, 
 and said to the nation : " These men are merely 
 required at Westminster to vote this program in the 
 division-lobbies," it would have diverted attention 
 from the candidates and their (often foolish) local 
 syllabuses ; though it would have left one annoying 
 side of parliamentary life where it is. The Labour 
 Party was not in a position to do that. One sus- 
 pected that it had either not the statesmanship to 
 frame a program or sufficient domestic harmony to 
 avow it. The electors therefore patiently listened 
 to, or read, the candidates who appeared, and their 
 confidence was not secured. A man who had, per- 
 haps, spent several hours of his leisure every week 
 for some years in attending, without pay, to the 
 small affairs of the local branch of his Trade Union, 
 was rewarded with a candidature by the Labour 
 headquarters. One may admire the sentiment of 
 gratitude, but gravely doubt whether experience of 
 the somewhat different and very much smaller 
 affairs of a branch of a Trade Union fits a man to 
 decide national and imperial issues. Another can- 
 didate, one found, was judged worthy to take his 
 
THE OUTLOOK 269 
 
 place in our legislature because he had proved him- 
 self remarkably energetic in exciting or conducting 
 strikes. Another was a born legislator because his 
 language about the enemies of Labour could be 
 heard , quarter of a mile away. Another had to be 
 adopted because his particular section of the Labour 
 Party say, the Independent Labour Party was en- 
 titled to so many seats, and chose its own candidates. 
 
 Into these categories most of the candidates fell. 
 Middle-class men of Labour sympathies were tried 
 here and there, and they were generally so mangled 
 that their proportion is not likely to increase. Most 
 members of the party do not like them the cake 
 is not large enough; so they are carpet-baggers, or 
 intruders of doubtful loyalty. The choice must be 
 confined as far as possible to genuine wage- workers. 
 This clearly means a lowering, instead of an uplift- 
 ing, of parliamentary ability. It is, of course, quite 
 a mistake to suppose that in each generation that is 
 born the middle-class represents talent and the 
 workers lack of it. There has been far too much 
 nonsense talked about heredity. The middle-class 
 is the class which inherits, not talent, but oppor- 
 tunity. The successful father is able to give a finer 
 edge to the moderate talent of his son. There is a 
 vast amount of stupidity born in the middle-class 
 every decade, and a vast amount of ability born in 
 the working-class every year. But the tremendous 
 conceit of their class which many workers have is 
 ridiculous. Most of the cleverer sons of workers, 
 especially in our age of scholarships and greater 
 opportunities, leave their fathers' class before they 
 are thirty; and the Labour candidates chosen from 
 the branches are rarely under thirty. This means that 
 they are chosen as men well equipped to conduct 
 the gigantic business of the nation when their very 
 position implies that they have not business-ability. 
 
 In a word, like the older Parties the Labour Party 
 
270 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 has to consult its own interests as an organiscation. 
 It has to choose men for administrative purposes 
 who have merely shown a certain talent for talking 
 or for the totally different business of organising 
 strikes. It is just where the Athenian democracy 
 was in the fourth century B.C. It is rushing toward 
 the pitfalls which political theorists have always 
 predicted for it. Its leaders, as a body, to-day do 
 not inspire confidence. There are a few men amongst 
 them who have proved their ability and have fine 
 character. There are more whom one cannot with- 
 out a shudder of apprehension imagine in control 
 of the national machinery. Mediocre as our actual 
 ministry is, though combining the talent of one and 
 a half parties, who would care to see it replaced by 
 thirty of the most prominent men of. our actual 
 Labour-world ? Which would be Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister of 
 Education, or Minister of Agriculture? 
 
 One has the same anxiety about their ideas. Any 
 man who closely and sympathetically studies the 
 most prominent men of our Labour movement, in 
 the belief that it may yet come to power, will be 
 apt to get a curious impression that they look and 
 talk as if they were haunted: Some one is after 
 them. Some one, that is to say, is after their place 
 in the esteem of Demos; and, unhappily, the 
 economic culture of Demos is so low that he has a 
 prodigious belief in possibilities. Promise him four 
 or five hours' work a day " in a properly ordered 
 state of society," of course and he believes we 
 could all live like retired colonels on that. Promise 
 him a fortnight's holiday with pay eveiy year, and 
 he will not dream of doing the very simple sum in 
 arithmetic which is required to show that this would 
 cost ,150,000,000 a year. Tell him that all educa- 
 tion ought to be free, all workers liberally pensioned 
 at sixty, all houses provided at moderate rent for 
 
THE OUTLOOK 271 
 
 Workers by a heavy subsidy, all medical treatment 
 for the workers unpaid, and so on. He never works 
 out the cost. He has a vague idea that abolishing 
 the idle rich, making productive-workers of luxury- 
 workers, and cutting down the army and navy, will 
 provide funds about a hundred times greater than 
 such changes actually involve. Hardly a single 
 Labour leader or orator dare tell the simple economic 
 facts. They have to bid, rhetorically, higher and 
 higher. There is another man ready to outbid 
 them, hi rhetoric. The most monstrous exaggera- 
 tions circulate. Even the middle-class supporters 
 of Labour shrink from correcting its grave errors. 
 
 This sort of thing is no more promising at present 
 than the actual system. And even less promising 
 is the feminist panacea for our political maladies. 
 Any discerning person could have foreseen ten years 
 or more ago that the long and foolish resistance of 
 politicians to the demand for the suffrage would 
 have grave consequences. Women orators soon ex- 
 hausted the plain reasons why they should have the 
 suffrage. These became platitudes, and, as meet- 
 ings were mainly filled and paid for by women who 
 had heard these things ever since they had put their 
 hair up, something stronger had to be said. Feminist 
 orators had to vie with each other, if they were to 
 remain popular, much as Labour-orators do, or Mr 
 Asquith and Mr Lloyd George do. It was suggested 
 that woman's peculiar gifts would be a distinct and 
 complementary addition to man's political efforts. 
 It was found that these gifts were, if you studied 
 them properly, far superior to man's. Great scorn 
 was poured on " the smoke-dried male brain " (just 
 when women were beginning in large numbers to 
 smoke), and the despotism of the male, and the 
 male pretension to legislate for women and bhildren, 
 and the coarser nature of the male which led to 
 wars and dare not check drink and prostitution and 
 
272 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 syphilis, and so on. Figures of venereal taint were 
 put in circulation which showed, when you worked 
 them out, that fifty per cent, of our legislators must 
 be diseased. 
 
 Apart from these exaggerations, these natural 
 reactions on the obstinacy of the male, there was, 
 and is, a very widespread idea that woman's dis- 
 tinctive gifts would tend enormously to purify 
 politics when she reached the House of Commons. 
 Science and philosophy were enlisted by young 
 ladies from Girton. Bergson had showu that sym- 
 pathy or intuition woman's great quality, of course 
 was the real source of all superior knowledge. 
 Science had discovered that during the golden age 
 there was a matriarchate. Anyhow, the advent of 
 woman into politics was, and is, very widely re- 
 garded as the beginning of the end of political 
 corruption. 
 
 It is hardly worth while discussing this at any 
 length. The question of woman's supposed power 
 of intuition (which only exists in fiction) is more 
 fitted for a debate at Newnham. The only gift she 
 brings is a certain charm and freshness due to her 
 long abstention from politics. It has faded a little 
 in the last ten years. Most of us will readily admit 
 that she could that a large number of women 
 could discharge the not very oppressive functions 
 of our actual member of Parliament as well as the 
 bulk of the males who do so, and thai she has as 
 much right as man to aspire to it. But there it 
 ends. She must enter Parliament as a citizen, not 
 as a woman. There is very rarely a question before 
 the House in which her special experience counts 
 for anything, and, when such a question arises, 
 women-experts are quite easily consulted. Much 
 has been made of the famous " orange-boxes " which 
 male legislators are supposed to have ordered for 
 babies. Probably a House of women would have 
 
THE OUTLOOK 273 
 
 ordered something that poor women could not afford, 
 and then put it airily on the estimates. Let us not 
 carry the sex- war into politics. It is going to be 
 bad enough in the home. 
 
 With all respect for the distinguished and earnest 
 men who recommend it, I do not see that propor- 
 tional representation would help. We should have 
 strenuous minority-campaigns and some very curi- 
 ous combinations; like the combination of Irish 
 and Radicals which seemed so revolting to John 
 Bright, or the combination of Socialists and Catho- 
 lics which at present -runs Germany. We should 
 have an election, even in a grave and complex 
 period like this, turning on a single and fantastic 
 issue like the prevention of other people from con- 
 suming drinks which you yourself do not like. Five 
 million American dollars would supply a batch of 
 candidates and a Columbian electoral machinery 
 which would secure a sufficiently large group of 
 members of Parliament to make a deal with some 
 party in the House. Such fanatics of one idea, real 
 monomaniacs, will sell the remaining and greater 
 interests of the country at any time to purchase the 
 triumph of their idea. The Irish Brass Band has 
 been bad enough. Twenty brass bands would en- 
 liven the House under proportional representation. 
 The more advanced women would return a score of 
 fanatics of their school, who would adopt a tactical 
 moderation in the election. The two million Roman 
 Catholics would return twenty or thirty members 
 who would make any deal to secure an exchange of 
 diplomatic representatives with the Vatican. There 
 would be an Anti-Vivisectionist group, an Anti- 
 Gambling group, and so on. The substantial in- 
 terests of the country what these people disdain- 
 fully call its " material " interests would be lost 
 in a battle of sentimentalities. The liberty of the 
 individual citizen would be restricted by a crowd 
 
274, THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 of semi-monastic rules, with an army of women- 
 police to enforce them. 
 
 Some reformer once suggested that we ought to 
 set up a cultural standard for members of Parlia- 
 ment and make every candidate pass an examina- 
 tion in history and economics. It is certainly desir- 
 able to have a higher cultural standard. This does 
 not mean a restriction of Labour-members, many 
 of whom know far more about history the social 
 history that really matters and economics than 
 most of their Liberal or Conservative colleagues do. 
 But the idea has little chance of acceptance, and it 
 would not carry us far enough. The party-organisa- 
 tion would quite easily provide a number of 
 " crammers " who would speedily put its candi- 
 dates through the necessary preparation. It would 
 not affect the party-system. 
 
 " Measures, not men," is another reform con- 
 densed into a phrase. Probably most of our electors 
 would retort that it is precisely the policy they 
 adopt. It is the measures suggested on the candi- 
 date's prospectus that interest them. His person- 
 ality is, as a rule, unknown It is the measures 
 which divide Liberal from Tory, hi the popular view. 
 The phrase is too vague. One might put some 
 vitality into it by suggesting that the measures 
 placed before the House ought to be severely de- 
 tached from personalities or parties. One could not 
 prevent the author of a measure from enjoying his 
 small vanky, or a party which proposed a measure 
 from parading its merit before the electors; but if 
 it could be secured that measures be discussed with- 
 out involving the fall of the ministry, a great deal 
 of the more sinister element of the life of Parliament 
 would be cut at the root. It would half ruin the 
 party-game. Shorter Parliaments would counteract 
 the tendency to make party-capital out of such an 
 arrangement, and there would always remain the 
 
THE OUTLOOK 275 
 
 power of the House to pass a direct vote of censure 
 on a ministry. 
 
 This, and the re-arrangement of the debates and 
 re-adjustment of hours, would make an immense 
 difference without any heroic or revolutionary 
 measures. When Parliament works at least seven 
 hours of the day (not day and night) and three on 
 Saturdays, for at least two hundred and fifty days 
 a year; when ministers can be induced to be con- 
 tent with short speeches they could almost always 
 convey in half the tune what they have to say 
 and any member who has positive information or 
 suggestions on the subject is perfectly free to rise 
 and briefly make his point; when facetious and 
 platitudinous and sectarian speeches are deemed to 
 be a waste of the country's time; when half the 
 silly rules and archaic customs are recognised as 
 mediaeval ash clogging the fire of parliamentary 
 life; we shall have made a long step toward im- 
 provement. As things are, we have not only the 
 danger of insufficient attention to our most pressing 
 national needs, but we have a minority taking ex- 
 cuse from the obstinacy of Parliament for what it 
 calls "direct political action" This minority was 
 bitterly disappointed at the last election. It was 
 deliberately turned down by the nation. It fears 
 it will have little better fortune at the next election. 
 So, taking a pretext from the taint of the actual 
 Parliament, it would use its industrial position to 
 coerce the majority. The weapon is as crude as the 
 policy for which it is generally used, and the country 
 is in danger of seeing its economy ruined for decades 
 unless it insists on the purification of political life. 
 
 I am not so much concerned with the method of 
 purification as the establishment of the disease. 
 Unhappily, a very high proportion of our people 
 do not in the least realise how morbid and stupid 
 and mischievous the political system is. The edu- 
 
276 THE TAINT IN POLITICS 
 
 cation we give them is almost as crude and perverse 
 as the political life itself. Teachers begin history 
 at the time of the Romans in Britain, drag the poor 
 children through the appalling morasses of Welsh 
 wars and Danish wars and Norman wars, and so 
 on, and are just on the threshold of the section of 
 history which would enable them to give children 
 some sense of citizenship when the call to the work- 
 shop interrupts then* " training." Social feeling 
 they communicate to the children by the medium 
 of childish and untrue legends about the uncivilised 
 Hebrews of 2500 years ago, or the parables in which 
 Christ conveyed instruction to people living in social 
 conditions as remote from ours as can be imagined. 
 Then, under a vague and undiscriminating idea of 
 " preparing children for industrial and commercial 
 life," they spend long hours over the geography of 
 Arabia and Kurdistan, or the varying navigability 
 of the rivers of Spain. These things occupy two- 
 thirds of the school-hours, and the boy or girl is 
 turned loose at fifteen or sixteen, to sow his or her 
 intellectual wild oats, with as much civic sentiment 
 as a young Hindu. Patriotism and religion, our 
 politicians rule, must be the guiding ideals, It is 
 the principle imposed upon the educationists of 
 Germany by the ex-Emperor in 1890. 
 
 The fundamental need is education. Our people 
 must cease to smile at the eccentricities of the House, 
 the blatancies of elections: and the unblushing 
 effrontery of election-promises. They must learn to 
 attach more importance to deeds than words. They 
 must learn to demand a little, simple, ideally lucid 
 economic annual, which at the beginning of each 
 year will tell them what wealth we really have, what 
 wealth we could have, how our production compares 
 with that of other nations, what leaks there are in 
 our distribution, and so on. Every citizen ought to 
 know these things about the corporate life on which 
 
THE OUTLOOK 277 
 
 the individual life vitally depends. As it is, one 
 finds oneself regarded as quite a learned person for 
 being able to tell these things from memory, From 
 a knowledge of these elementary economic facts 
 people will turn critically upon the House of Com- 
 mons. Is it finding the remedy of our present griev- 
 ous economic maladies? Is it flinging out vague 
 promises which the economic situation does not 
 justify? Is it leading us away from the financial 
 precipice it announced to us so gravely six months 
 ago? Are the cheery optimists talking on the 
 strength of a serious study of the facts, or are they, 
 under the traditional political impression that the 
 public is an ass, playing the old game of dangling 
 carrots before us? Are they merely seeking a 
 transfer of power and prestige and salaries to them- 
 selves ? If we prefer to jazz, and play bridge and 
 golf and football, all the hours, instead of occasion- 
 ally asking ourselves these things, we shall merely 
 get a reshuffle of the political cards and a continu- 
 ance of the game. The system is far too deeply 
 rooted in our life to be shaken by flinging a few 
 pamphlets at it. 
 
 We have all heard of Nietzsche and his scorn of 
 democracy. Perhaps when we look at ourselves in 
 this mirror we wonder if he was really as mad as 
 we are told. He summoned us to be individuals, 
 not herds : human personalities, not sheep. There 
 are worse forms of insanity. When you come to 
 think of it, it was mainly politicians who told us 
 what to feel about him. He made many mistakes. 
 He was a poet and rhapsodist and pyrotechnist, 
 not a political teacher or social thinker. But this 
 part of his teaching it will pay us to reflect upon. 
 We have too long been driven like sheep to the 
 Liberal or the Conservative poll. We are sick of 
 election-promises and parliamentary performances. 
 The beginning of wisdom is the recognition of folly. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACTON, Baron, 230, 231. 
 Aislabie, Mr, 62. 
 Alexander VI., 80. 
 Althorp, Lord, 105, 107. 
 Ambition of politicians, 
 
 119. 
 
 Ames, Mayor, 145. 
 American Revolution, the, 
 
 81, 126. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon politics, 33. 
 Anne, Queen, corruption 
 
 under, 60. 
 
 Aristocracy, and demo- 
 cracy, 208. 
 Arlington, 44. 
 Asquith, Mr, 12, 17, 18, 
 
 171, 172, 175, 179, 183, 
 
 186-9, 212-4. 
 Astbury, Lt. -Commander, 
 
 205. 
 
 Astor, Lady, 244 
 Australia, politics in, 265-6. 
 Autocracy of Premier, 
 
 257-8. 
 Aylesbury, Earl of, 75. 
 
 B 
 
 BALFOUR, Mr, 186, 218, 
 
 222. 
 Banbury, Sir F., 174. 
 
 Bassiney, 76. 
 
 Belloc, Mr, 189, 204. 
 
 Becker, Lieutenant, 144. 
 
 " Beer and Bible," 154. 
 
 Bentham, J., 88. 
 
 Big Loaf and Little Loaf, 
 
 110. 
 Birmingham adopts the 
 
 caucus, 150 ; Union, the, 
 
 106. 
 
 Birrell, Mr, 179, 186, 199. 
 Bishops, the, and the Re- 
 form Bill, 101. 
 Black Horse Cavalry, the, 
 
 143. 
 
 Black Rod, 246. 
 Boodle, 137, 138. 
 Borgia, Alfonso, 29. 
 Boston, corruption at, 72. 
 Bottomley, Mr H., 205; 
 
 Mr J. H., 240. 
 Bowles, Mr Gibson, 221. 
 Brand, Speaker, 161. 
 Bribery at elections, 72, 92, 
 
 93, 109, 111, 157, 158, 
 
 213, 230-41. 
 Bright, John, 113, 117. 
 Brodrick, the Hon. George, 
 
 97. 
 Brougham, Lord, 96, 99, 
 
 118. 
 
 Bruce, Mr Justice, 289. 
 Brunner, Sir John, 172. 
 Bull, Sir W., 175. 
 281 
 
282 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Burdett, Sir F., 88, 89. 
 Burgage- voters, 73, 92. 
 Burke, 84. 
 Burnet, Bishop, 58. 
 Burns, Mr J., 179, 218. 
 Burr, Aaron, 132. 
 Buxton, Mr C. R., 232. 
 
 CABAL, the, 44. 
 
 Cabinets, the formation of, 
 214-8, 259. 
 
 Calcraft, the Rt. Hon. J., 
 100. 
 
 Camelford, 77; Lord, 73. 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Mr, 
 216, 258. 
 
 Carlile, Richard, 99. 
 
 Carlton Club, the, 150. 
 
 Carmarthen, the Marquis 
 of, 58. 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 164, 165. 
 
 Carson, Sir E., 188. 
 
 Cartwright, Major, 81, 82. 
 
 Castle Rising, 77. 
 
 Casuistry of statesmen, 96. 
 
 Caucus, the, 125-6, 128. 
 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, 206. 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr A., 21, 
 181; Mr J., 151, 155, 
 164, 165, 210. 
 
 Charles I., corruption un- 
 der, 41. 
 
 Charles II., corruption un- 
 der, 44-7. 
 
 Chartists, the, 110, 118. 
 
 Chatham, the Earl of, 79. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 65. 
 
 Chicago, corruption in, 144, 
 147. 
 
 Child-labour a century ago, 
 
 90-1, 106. 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 
 
 160, 201; Mr W., 12, 
 
 171, 175, 178,216. 
 City of London corruption, 
 
 58. 
 
 Civil War, the, 42. 
 Clarendon, Earl, 44. 
 Clifford, Sir T., 44, 45. 
 Closure, introduction of 
 
 the, 161. 
 Coalition, the, 11, 17, 18, 
 
 20, 185-6; of 1853, 119, 
 
 196. 
 
 Cobbett, 88. 
 Cobden, R., 115, 118. 
 Cockerton Judgment, the, 
 
 209. 
 
 Coercion Bill, the first, 158. 
 Coke, Sir E., 41. 
 Colonial politics, 225. 
 Conservatives, the, 18, 19, 
 
 20, 110, 120, 154, 174, 
 
 185, 198, 209. 
 
 Constituencies in the eigh- 
 teenth century, 74-6. 
 Contractors expelled from 
 
 Parliament, 83. 
 Conventions in America, 
 
 133. 
 
 Corfe Castle, 77. 
 Corn laws, abolition of 
 
 the, 110, 115. 
 Cornwall, number of seats 
 
 in, 78. 
 Corporations, monopoly of, 
 
 72. 
 Corresponding Societies, 
 
 86. 
 Corrupt Practices Bill, the, 
 
 158-60. 
 
INDEX 
 
 283 
 
 Country gentry, the, 87, 
 
 44, 58. 
 
 Co wen, Mr J., 166. 
 Craggs, Mr, 63. 
 Cranmer, 35. 
 Crespigny, P. C., 74. 
 Crimean War, the, 120, 
 
 196. 
 
 Croft, Brig.-General, 205. 
 Cromwell, 42. 
 
 DALZIEL, Sir H., 187, 213. 
 Danby, Earl, 45, 52. 
 Daughters of Liberty, 126. 
 Debates, uselessness of, 
 
 223. 
 Democrats, the American, 
 
 127. 
 
 Dilke, Sir C., 218. 
 Disraeli, 116, 119, 121, 124, 
 
 154, 156, 158. 
 Dorset, Earl, 55. 
 Droitwich, burgages at, 92. 
 Dunraven, Lord, 11, 14. 
 
 E 
 
 EAST India corruption, 
 
 57-8. 
 Education, the need of, 
 
 276; the struggle for, 
 
 107, 153, 210. 
 Edwards, J. Passmore, 
 
 201, 221. 
 
 Egremont, Earl of, 73. 
 Elibank, Master of, 225. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 38. 
 
 Era of Good Will, the, 128. 
 Eugenics and politics, 259. 
 Evans, Mr Howard, 267. 
 
 FACTORY-LIFE in the nine- 
 teenth century, 106-7, 
 113. 
 
 Federalist Party, the, 127. 
 
 Feminism, weakness of, 
 271. 
 
 Fielden, Mr, 116. 
 
 Finance, the national, 15, 
 16. 
 
 Fitzgerald, Baron, 239. 
 
 Folk, Mr, 145. 
 
 Forster, Mr, 166. 
 
 Fox, C. J., 84. 
 
 Franchise, extension of the, 
 121, 123. 
 
 Francis, Sir P., 75. 
 
 Freeman- voters, 73, 93. 
 
 French Revolution, the, 
 86. 
 
 Friends of the People, 86. 
 
 G 
 
 GEORGE I., corruption un- 
 der, 61-3. 
 
 George II., corruption un- 
 der, 63. 
 
 George, Mr Lloyd, 9, 12, 
 13, 16, 17, 18, 96, 177, 
 189, 205, 212. 
 
 Germany, 15, 21. 
 
 Gerrymandering, origin of, 
 130. 
 
 Gibraltar Case, the, 221. 
 
284 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ginnell, Mr, 222. 
 Gladstone, Mr, 19, 111, 
 
 112, 121, 123, 149, 151-2, 
 
 156, 159, 162-9, 202-4, 
 
 214; Viscount, 23, 165, 
 
 216. 
 Godolphin, Lord, 59, 60, 
 
 61. 
 
 Gordon, death of, 163. 
 Gorst, Sir John, 210. 
 Graham, Sir J., 113, 120. 
 Grantham, Mr Justice, 289. 
 Green-Price, Sir R., 160, 
 
 201. 
 Grey, Earl, 87, 95, 98, 102 ; 
 
 Sir E., 171, 172, 212; 
 
 Sir George, 118. 
 Grimstone, Lord, 74. 
 Grote, Mr, 105. 
 Guy, Mr H., 57. 
 
 H 
 
 HAGGERSTON Petition, the, 
 
 232, 239. 
 Haldane, Lord, 172, 178, 
 
 183. 
 
 Halifax, Lord, 59. 
 Hamilton, 127, 129. 
 Hardy, Thomas, 86. 
 Harrison, President, 134, 
 
 135. 
 Hartington, Lord, 164, 
 
 165. 
 
 Hawkins, Mr Justice, 202. 
 Henderson, Mr, 17, 23, 
 
 189, 218. 
 Henry VII., 34. 
 Henry VIII., 38, 84. 
 Hensman, Mr Howard, 
 
 202. 
 
 Herald, The, 19. 
 Hereditary legislators, 259. 
 Holidays of politicians, 
 
 250. 
 
 Holy Alliance, the, 90. 
 Home Rule, struggle over, 
 
 163-6. 
 Honours, sale of, 199-202, 
 
 205-7. 
 Hours of Parliament, 248- 
 
 50. 
 
 Householder- votes, 71. 
 Hungry Forties, the, 110. 
 
 ILLINGWORTH, Mr, 23. 
 Increased production, 194. 
 Independent members, 
 
 weakness of, 229, 253. 
 Indian Silver Scandal, the, 
 
 225, 226. 
 
 Inglis, Sir R. H., 99. 
 Innocent III., 29. 
 Innocent VIII., 30. 
 " Irish Brass Band," the, 
 
 157. 
 
 Irish Land Bill, 1870, 151. 
 Ivan III., 27. 
 
 JACKSON, President, 133, 
 
 185. 
 
 James I., 41. 
 James II., 48, 49. 
 Jefferson, T., 127. 
 Jeffreys, Judge, 48. 
 Jesuits, the, 32. 
 
INDEX 
 
 285 
 
 Johnstone, Sir H., 160, 
 
 201. 
 
 Jones, Ernest, 89. 
 Julius II., 81. 
 Justice, administration of, 
 
 108. 
 
 KITCHENER, Lord, 183. 
 
 LABOUCHERE, Mr, 160, 167, 
 
 201. 
 Labour, demands of, 18, 
 
 21. 
 
 Labour Leader, the, 19. 
 Labour Party, state of the, 
 
 265-71. 
 Law, Mr Bonar, 9, 12, 18, 
 
 17, 18, 175, 176, 185, 
 
 206. 
 
 Lawrence, Sir T., 199. 
 Layard, Sir A. H., 196. 
 League of Nations, the, 
 
 192. 
 
 Leeds, Duke of, 58. 
 Leo X., 28, 81, 85. 
 Letters of Junius, 80. 
 Lewis, Wyndham, 109. 
 Liberals, the, 110, 118, 
 
 120, 128, 157-64, 166, 
 
 167, 173, 198. 
 Lincoln, President, 186. 
 Liverpool, elections at, 77, 
 
 93. 
 London in the eighteenth 
 
 century, 77, 80. 
 Londonderry, Lord, 113. 
 Lonsdale, Earl, 73. 
 
 Looe, East and West, 54. 
 Lords, Reform of the, 162. 
 
 167, 168, 211-4. 
 Lowe, Robert, 123. 
 Lowther, Mr, 222. 
 Luttrell, Colonel, 80. 
 Lytton, Sir E. B., 197. 
 
 M 
 
 MACCLESFIELD, Earl of, 63. 
 Machiavelli, 27, 28. 
 McKenna, Mr, 179, 186. 
 M'Neill, Mr R., 175. 
 Madison, James, 127, 129. 
 Magee, Chris, 146. 
 Magna Charta, 34. 
 Malmesbury, corruption at, 
 
 92. 
 Manchester School, the, 
 
 114, 118. 
 Marconi scandal, the, 224, 
 
 225. 
 
 Markham, Sir A., 187. 
 Marlborough, the Duke of, 
 
 59-61. 
 
 Masterman, Mr, 189. 
 Meres, Sir T., 45, 46. 
 Meyer, Mr, 181. 
 Midhurst, burgages at, 73. 
 Midlothian Campaign, the, 
 
 156. 
 
 Mill, James, 88. 
 Minneapolis, corruption in, 
 
 145, 146. 
 
 Molesworth, Sir W M 98. 
 Mompesson, Sir G., Jl. 
 Montague, Lady Mary, 61. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 35, 36. 
 Morley, Lord, 111, 114, 
 
 116, 153, 168, 202. 
 Munitions, prices of, 182. 
 
286 
 
 INDEX 
 
 N 
 
 NABOBS, the, 65, 79. 
 
 National Liberal Federa- 
 tion, the, 151. 
 
 Newark Election, the, 111, 
 112. 
 
 Newcastle, the Duke of, 
 64 ; Program, the, 167. 
 
 New York, political de- 
 velopment in, 131-3, 139- 
 44. 
 
 New Zealand, politics in, 
 265, 266. 
 
 Nicolai, F., 32. 
 
 Nietzsche, 277. 
 
 Nobili, F. de, 32. 
 
 Normans, work of the, 34. 
 
 North, Lord, 82, 84. 
 
 North Briton, the, 80. 
 
 Northcliffe, Lord, 188. 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 
 155. 
 
 O 
 
 O'CONNELL, Daniel, 95, 97, 
 
 109. 
 
 Oldfield, 54, 74. 
 Old Sarum, 54, 66, 73. 
 Owen, Robert, 88; R. D., 
 
 141. 
 
 PAINE, Thomas, 86. 
 Palmerston, Lord, 120, 
 
 121, 122, 197. 
 Papacy, the, and political 
 
 corruption, 28-32. 
 Parliamentary procedure, 
 
 244, 248. 
 
 Parnell, Mr, 164, 202-4. 
 
 Paul, III., 32. 
 
 Paul, Mr Herbert, 121. 
 
 Pease, Mr, 186. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 105, 116. 
 
 Pelham, Henry, 64. 
 
 Penryn, 93. 
 
 Perceval, Mr, 89. 
 
 Petre, Father, 49. 
 
 Philadelphia, corruption 
 
 in, 146, 147. 
 Phillpotts, Bishop, 102. 
 Pitt, W., the elder, 66, 79, 
 
 88 ; the younger, 83, 84, 
 
 87. 
 Pittsburg, corruption in, 
 
 146. 
 
 Place, Francis, 88. 
 Plimsoll, Mr, 155. 
 Pocket-boroughs, 70, 71. 
 Pork Bills, 148. 
 Pre-Reform Parliament, 
 
 the, 74-76, 77, 87, 91. 
 Private secretaries, 217. 
 Profiteering, 14, 180, 182. 
 Proportional Representa- 
 tion, 273. 
 Puritans, the, 37, 40, 43, 
 
 44. 
 
 R 
 
 RADICALS, the, 83, 89, 104, 
 
 105, 109, 118. 
 Reform Bill, the, 95-7, 99- 
 
 103. 
 
 Reform Club, the 150. 
 Reform of Parliament, 274- 
 
 6. 
 
 Reformation, the, 37-40. 
 Reformed Parliament, 
 
 work of, the, 106-10. 
 
INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Registration, evils of, 240. 
 Repeaters, 142. 
 Rhodes, Mr Cecil, 202-4. 
 Robertson, Mr J. M., 187. 
 Roberts, Lord, 173. 
 Roosevelt, Mr, 172. 
 Rosebery, Lord, 167. 
 Rosenthal, 144. 
 Rotten boroughs, 54. 
 Rousseau, 80. 
 Runciman, Mr, 179, 181, 
 
 186. 
 Russell, Lord John, 93, 99, 
 
 102. 
 
 ST Louis, corruption in, 
 
 145. 
 Sale of honours, 199-202, 
 
 205-7. 
 Salisbury, Lord, 162, 164, 
 
 165, 218. 
 Schnadhorst, Mr, 161, 167, 
 
 203. 
 Serajevo, the murders at, 
 
 177. 
 
 Seymour, Sir E., 58. 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 113, 
 
 114. 
 
 Shelburne, Lord, 72. 
 Simon, Sir John, 188. 
 Smith, Mr F. E., 176. 
 Somers, Lord, 57. 
 Sons of Liberty, 126. 
 South Sea Bubble, the, 62. 
 Spa Fields Riot, the, 90. 
 Spain, corruption in, 224. 
 Speaker, position of the, 
 
 245. 
 
 Spencer, Earl, 74. 
 Spicer, Sir H., 213. 
 
 Stanhope, General, 61, 62. 
 Sunderland, Earl, 56, 57, 
 
 62. 
 Swathling, Lord, 226. 
 
 TAMMANY Hall, 140 ; Soci- 
 ety, 131-3, 139-44. 
 
 Tennyson, Mr, 105. 
 
 Thelwall, John, 86. 
 
 Thomas, Mr J. H., 188. 
 
 Tooke, Home, 81. 
 
 Tories, the, 46, 55, 56, 81, 
 95, 102, 105, 109. 
 
 Treasury, control of seats 
 by the, 78, 81, 83. 
 
 Trevor, Sir John, 52, 58. 
 
 Tweed gang, the, 139, 143. 
 
 U 
 
 UNREFORMED Parliament, 
 
 the, 91-3. 
 Upcher, the Rev. A. P., 
 
 287. 
 
 VAN BUREN, Senator, 133. 
 Victoria, Queen, 214. 
 
 W 
 
 WALLINGFORD, corruption 
 
 at, 72. 
 Walpole, Horace, 61, 64; 
 
 Sir Robert, 60, 61, 63, 
 
 64. 
 
288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 War, antecedents of the, 
 
 171-8. 
 
 Ward-heeJers, 142. 
 Wardle, Colonel, 89. 
 Wedgwood, Mr, 222. 
 Wellington, the Duke of, 
 
 95, 102. 
 
 Westbury, burgages at, 78. 
 Wetherell, Sir C., 100. 
 Wharton, Lord, 57, 58. 
 Whigs, the, 45, 46, 55, 56, 
 
 80, 95, 97, 102, 105, 108, 
 
 116. 
 
 Whips, 149. 
 Wilkes, John, 80, 81. 
 
 William III., 49, 52, 59. 
 William IV., 94, 102. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 34, 35. 
 Women in politics, 271. 
 Worcester Petition, the, 
 
 233. 
 Wyndham, Mr, 84. 
 
 YARMOUTH Petition, the, 
 
 233. 
 York, the Duke of, 89. 
 
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