■kiU^.gl 
 
THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
THE 
 
 PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 BY 
 
 HILAIRE BELLOC 
 
 AND 
 
 CECIL CHESTERTON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 STEPHEN SWIFT 
 
 10 John Street, Adelphi 
 
 1911 
 
.^ 
 
 vV- 
 
 >.j^ri l^oz^n 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A WORD ON THE LATE ELECTION 
 
 The country has just emerged from the heat and 
 dust of a General Election. We have heard it 
 proclaimed on all sides that " the Will of the 
 People must prevail ! " with slight variations as to 
 the direction in which the Will of the People is to 
 be found. We have seen Mr Lloyd George and 
 Mr Winston Churchill represented on the one hand 
 as patriots confronting a haughty aristocracy (as 
 represented to Mr Churchill by his cousin the Duke 
 of Marlborough), and braving its wrath and hatred, 
 and on the other as a pair of low-born demagogues 
 hallooing on their ragged and illiterate associates 
 to the plunder of the wealthy ! While the Con- 
 servatives have professed to be convulsed with 
 fear lest Mr Redmond should buy up the whole 
 Liberal Front Bench with the sum of £40,000 (or 
 $200,000, which sounds at once larger and more 
 insidiously wicked), the Liberals have been singing 
 a moving war-song of which two lines run : 
 
 One with us is He who leads us, 
 Asquith, God and right ! — 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
6 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 lines which, however open to objection from 
 theologians, must needs be spirit-stirring to those 
 who presumably conceive Mr Asquith as leaving 
 his plough or his smithy to lead the stormy democ- 
 racy whose character and aspirations he in his own 
 person sums up and represents to a great attack 
 upon privilege. 
 
 Well, it is over for the present, and a good many 
 of the voters are beginning to look at each other 
 and to wonder what it is all about. The question 
 is not an easy one to answer in regard to any 
 election of the present day ; but to those who are 
 not in possession of the key, which it is the aim of 
 this book to give, there is about the election which 
 is just over something particularly mysterious. 
 
 In the year 1909 the House of Lords, which 
 had previously mutilated and rejected several bills 
 passed by the Liberal Government, threw out Mr 
 Lloyd George's Budget, thereby forcing an im- 
 mediate General Election. The Liberal leaders 
 declared that the issue at that election was not only 
 the passage of the Budget, but also the limitation 
 of the Lords' Veto ; and Mr Asquith, speaking at 
 the Albert Hall, declared that he would neither 
 assume nor retain office unless he were in possession 
 of guarantees that the Lords' Veto should be 
 limited. 
 
 Well, what happened ? 
 
 On that pledge Mr Asquith won the election. 
 His team was once more returned to power. He 
 did " assume " office ; he did " retain " office. But 
 
 1 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 no " guarantees " were forthcoming, and no attack 
 on the Lords was seriously attempted. Instead, 
 Mr Asquith entered into a " conference " with his 
 alleged political " opponents," and six months 
 were supposed to have been spent in the attempt to 
 accommodate the divergent views of the two Front 
 Benches, and to bridge the " unbridgable gulf " 
 which one of his humbler salaried followers dis- 
 covered, in a notable speech, to exist between the 
 views of his uncle on the one hand, and of his 
 first cousin on the other. Then both sides came 
 out explaining with bland smiles that the Con- 
 ference had failed. Immediately afterwards 
 another election was declared to be necessary, 
 though, as matter of fact, there was absolutely 
 nothing to vote about, the Bill concerning which 
 the two Houses were supposed to be disagreeing 
 never having been really considered by either of 
 them. 
 
 The key to this stage-play is not hard to find. 
 The Conference did not fail. It did exactly what 
 it was intended to do. It saved for a moment the 
 life of the moribund Party System. The failure 
 of the Liberal Government to fulfil the popular 
 mandate in 1906, the Chinese Labour betrayal, 
 the monstrous and unpopular interference with 
 public habit and personal liberty included in the 
 Licensing Bill, the collapse and absorption of the 
 Labour Party, had disgusted most people with 
 party politics, so that, in order to rally their 
 supporters, the old cry of " Down with the Lords ! " 
 
THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 had to be raised. The cr}^ succeeded in its immed- 
 iate object, but it placed the Government in an 
 awkward position when a handful of Radicals 
 began to demand the fulfilment of the pledges 
 upon which the election had been won. Hence 
 the Conference ; hence the alleged " failure " of 
 the Conference ; and, finally, hence the election 
 devised in order to give the Party System 
 " second wind." 
 
 But the game is growing a little too trans- 
 parent, and it has never been quite so transparent 
 as at this election. The resolute refusal of the 
 so-called " Opposition " to attack the really vul- 
 nerable points in the record of the Government — 
 especially the breach of Mr Asquith's Albert Hall 
 pledge, — and the determination of both sides to 
 direct the attention of the public to unreal issues, 
 all this must begin to suggest the idea of collusion 
 to the ordinary elector. He does not know all ; 
 he does not know that practically every move 
 in the silly and dangerous game is arranged before- 
 hand by the confederates on the two Front 
 Benches. But he is beginning to feel that the 
 fight is unreal. 
 
 The object of this book is to support the ten- 
 dency now everywhere apparent and finding ex- 
 pression, a tendency to expose and ridicule as it 
 deserves, to destroy and to supplant the system 
 under which Parliament, the governing institution 
 of this country, has been rendered null. 
 
 We write to show why governments suddenly 
 
PREFACE 9 
 
 abandon causes which they have enthusiastically 
 espoused, and why Oppositions tolerate such 
 abandonment and lend themselves to such 
 manoeuvres. The former are less obliged to con- 
 sider the will of the people than to consult the sense 
 of the Governing Group of which they are for the 
 time the representatives, while the latter are less 
 anxious to overthrow their rivals than to preserve 
 the system which in due course, and by the con- 
 nivance of those rivals, will bring to them also the 
 opportunities and emoluments of office. ^ 
 
 A sincere conviction common to a rapidly in- 
 creasing number of men that, under the present 
 international and domestic condition of England 
 the game is not only farcical but perilous, has 
 supphed our chief motive. 
 
I 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 PAGE 
 A WORD ON THE LATE ELECTION 5 
 
 I 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 
 
 THE IDEA OP REPRESENTATION 15 
 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS 18 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 25 
 
 II 
 
 THE GOVERNING GROUP 
 
 THE MAKING OF MINISTRIES 37 
 
 THE PLACEMEN 44 
 
 THE SECRET ALLIANCE 52 
 
 III 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS IT IS 
 
 THE CONTROL OP THE TIME-TABLE 65 
 
 HOW IT WORKS 73 
 
 A CONCRETE EXAMPLE 89 
 
 THE TONE OP THE HOUSE 95 
 
 11 
 
12 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 IV 
 
 THE SECRET FUNDS 
 
 PAGE 
 THE UNMENTIONABLE TRUTH 101 
 
 THE SALE OF POWERS 103 
 
 THE SALE OF POLICIES 110 
 
 V 
 
 THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 
 
 THE PARTY CAUCUS 119 
 
 THE SELECTION OF CANDIDATES 121 
 
 AN ELECTION 125 
 
 THE SELECTION OF PROGRAMMES 133 
 
 VI 
 
 THE DEFENCE 
 
 THE EXCUSES 143 
 
 THE REAL SUPPORT 159 
 
 THE GRAVE PERILS 168 
 
 VII 
 
 CAN IT BE MENDED? . . 185 
 
 NOTES 
 
 A NOTE ON CO- OPTION 205 
 
 A NOTE ON COLLUSION 212 
 
 A NOTE ON THE PRESS 218 
 
I 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 
 
I 
 
 THE REPRESEINIATIVE SYSTEM 
 
 THE IDEA OF REPRESENTATION 
 
 It is hardly necessarj^ here to argue the abstract 
 question of democrac}^ All rational political 
 systems that have ever been tolerated among 
 men have been based ultimately on the expression 
 of the popular will, and at the present time at any 
 rate no party can be found that explicitly denies 
 the doctrine of the people's sovereignty. During 
 the last two elections the two parties were shout- 
 ing against each other that " the Will of the 
 People must prevail," and the only point in 
 dispute was whether the Will of the People 
 was best represented by the Duke of Sussex or 
 by his son-in-law, the Right Honourable James 
 Blagg. 
 
 It may, however, be worth while to define 
 exactly what democracy is. Votes and elections 
 and representative assemblies are not democracy ; 
 they are at best machinery for carrying out 
 democracy. Democracy is government by the 
 
 15 
 
16 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 general will. Wherever, under whatever forms, 
 such laws as the mass of the people desire are 
 passed, and such laws as they dislike are rejected, 
 there is democracy. Wherever, under whatever 
 forms, the laws passed and rejected have no rela- 
 tion to the desires of the mass, there is no de- 
 mocracy. That is to say, there is no democracy 
 in England to-day. 
 
 Pure democracy is possible only in a small 
 community. The only machinery which perfectly 
 fulfils its idea is the meeting of the elders under 
 the village tree to debate and decide their own 
 concerns. The size of modern communities and 
 the complexity of modern political and economic 
 problems make such an arrangement impossible 
 for us. But it, is well to keep it in mind as a 
 picture of real democracy. 
 
 The idea of representation is to secure by an 
 indirect method the same result as is secured 
 directly in such communities. Since every man 
 cannot, under modern conditions, vote on every 
 question, it is thought that a number of men 
 might combine to send a man to vote in their 
 name. Men so selected may then meet and vote, 
 and their decision, if they are faithful representa- 
 tives of the people, may be taken as the decision 
 of the people. 
 
 Under no circumstances would such a system 
 work perfectly. But that it may work tolerably, 
 it is essential that the representatives should re- 
 present. The extraordinary capacity of politicians 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 17 
 
 for tying themselves in inextricable knots of con- 
 fused thinking was never better shown than in 
 the current sajdng that a representative should 
 not be a mere delegate. Either the representa- 
 tive must vote as his constituents would vote if 
 consulted, or he must vote in the opposite sense. 
 In the latter case, he is not a representative at 
 all, but merely an oligarch ; for it is surely ridicu- 
 lous to say that a man represents Bethnal Green 
 if he is in the habit of saying " Aye " when the 
 people of Bethnal Green would say " No." If, on 
 the other hand, he does vote as his constituents 
 would vote, then he is merely the mouthpiece of 
 his constituents and derives his authority from 
 them. And this is the only democratic theory of 
 representation. 
 
 In order that the practice may correspond to 
 it, even approximately, three things are necessary. 
 First, there must be absolute freedom in the selec- 
 tion of representatives ; secondly, the representa- 
 tives must be strictly responsible to their constitu- 
 ents and to no one else ; thirdly, the representa- 
 tives must deliberate in perfect freedom, and 
 especially must be absolutely independent of the 
 Executive. 
 
 In a true representative system the Executive 
 would be responsible to the elected assembly and 
 the elected assembly would be responsible to the 
 people. From the people would come the impulse 
 and the initiative. They would make certain de- 
 mands ; it would be the duty of their representa- 
 
 2 
 
18 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 tives to give expression to these demands, and of 
 the Executive to carry them out. 
 
 It must be obvious to everyone that these 
 conditions do not prevail in England to-day. 
 Instead of the Executive being controlled by the 
 representative assembly, it controls it. Instead 
 of the demands of the people being expressed for 
 them by their representatives, the matters dis- 
 cussed by the representatives are settled not by 
 the people, not even by themselves, but by the 
 " Ministry " — the very body which it is the 
 business of the representative assembly to check 
 and control. 
 
 It will be the main business of this book to 
 inquire what is the force which not only obstructs 
 but largely reverses the working of the repre- 
 sentative machine, turning into an engine of 
 oligarchy what was meant to be an organ of 
 democracy. 
 
 The detailed causes of this reversal will require 
 some careful analysis ; but if the thing which makes 
 representative institutions fail here must be ex- 
 pressed in a phrase, the two words which best 
 sum it up are the " Party System." 
 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS 
 
 We have just attempted a sketch of representa- 
 tive government as it ought to be, and the English 
 people long believed that they had got, if not quite 
 that, at least a decent approximation to it. It was 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 19 
 
 their boast that without bloodshed or violent 
 severance with the past they had as much of the 
 reality of self-government as the most perfectly 
 planned Republic could have. In what degree 
 this was ever true will form the matter of discussion 
 later. But undoubtedly it was widely believed. 
 Most Englishmen until very lately, if told that they 
 were not self-governing, would have laughed in 
 your face. 
 
 But now a dim suspicion has begun to arise in 
 the minds of at least a section of the people that 
 this historic optimism is not quite as true as it looks, 
 that the electors do not as a fact control the 
 representatives, and that the representatives do 
 not as a fact control the Government, that some- 
 thing alien has intervened between electors and 
 elected, between legislature and Executive, some- 
 thing that deflects the working of representative 
 institutions. 
 
 That thing is the Party System. 
 
 A method of government has grown up in our 
 country under which the representatives of the 
 people are divided into two camps which are 
 supposed to represent certain broad divergences 
 of opinion. Between these two the choice of 
 the election lies, and the side which secures 
 the largest measure of support forms a Govern- 
 ment, the minority undertaking the work of 
 opposition. 
 
 How this system arose, how it has changed, and 
 how it actually works, will be subjects of future 
 
20 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 consideration. At present we are concerned with 
 
 ' the attitude of the public towards it. 
 
 First, it must be said emphatically that the body 
 of public opinion upon which the Party System 
 operates is in the main still honest and pubhc- 
 spirited. Not to admit this would be to nullify 
 the effect of all criticism of the evil which we are 
 trpng to expose ; for, as we are all aware, the 
 theoretic differences at least between policies pro- 
 posed is considerable, and often corresponds to the 
 difference of schools of political thought ; and even 
 if we regard the politician as a mere advocate, he 
 does hold a different brief according to the side of 
 the House on which he sits, and though this brief 
 may be unreal to him, and though, as it is the object 
 of this hook to show, he may have, and probably has, 
 no intention of making it the basis of action, yet it is 
 often real enough to those to whose support he 
 appeals. Thus a Conservative leader must de- 
 nounce the land taxes which the body of his 
 followers in the country quite sincerely detest, and 
 though, as they begin to suspect, he has no inten- 
 tion of repeaUng them, yet it would be childish to 
 question the genuineness of the feelings which he is 
 attempting to exploit. 
 
 / The Party System, which is a game (and a source 
 
 j of profit) to the politicians, is often a matter of 
 deadly earnest to their honest backers in the 
 
 ^ country. 
 
 There are still very many who believe implicitly 
 and fervently in the reality of the conflict. There 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 21 
 
 are Conservatives who are convinced that the 
 Liberal Government is only prevented from drag- 
 ging the nation through spoliation to destruction by 
 the noble patriotism of the Conservative Opposi- 
 tion. There are Liberals who look on Mr Asquith 
 and Mr Winston Churchill as the tribunes of a 
 people rightly struggling to be free, confronting with 
 undaunted courage the frowns of a haughty oli- 
 garchy. The old lady who, on Mr Gladstone being 
 pointed out to her at the funeral of some public 
 personage, remarked : — " Oh, I hope he hasn't 
 come to make a disturbance ! " is still with us, and 
 so is the enthusiastic and credulous Radical who 
 believes that Mr Churchill has become an outcast 
 from his order by bravely taking the side of the 
 people. 
 
 There is another kind of enthusiast who helps to 
 keep the Party System going. This is the man who 
 earnestly desires some particular measure which 
 one of the two parties has espoused, or (what comes 
 to much the same thing) has an intense repugnance 
 to some measure which the other party has es- 
 poused. Thus many men, more or less indifferent 
 to politics generally, think that Tariff Reform will 
 benefit their industry, and accordingly vote for the 
 party that advocates it. Again, a man will often 
 find his particular religion affected by legislation in 
 regard to education or religious establishments, and 
 will support the party identified with his views. To 
 the same class belong the militant teetotalers, and 
 the Irish, to whom nothing matters but the cause 
 
22 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 of their nationality. Men of this type do not form 
 a very large section of the electorate, but they 
 are of importance at elections, and the politicians 
 have to take them into account. 
 
 Finally, there is the mass of ordinary voters, 
 largely indifferent to political problems, yet at 
 times keenly interested in politics. How shall we 
 define their state of mind ? 
 
 Perhaps the best parallel to the attitude of the 
 general public towards politics is to be found in the 
 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Of the crowds 
 that line the towing path every year from Putney 
 to Mortlake there are few that have ever been to 
 either University, have ever known anyone who has 
 been to either, have even the remotest or most 
 shadowy connection with either. Yet they take 
 sides enthusiastically, and would almost be pre- 
 pared to shed blood for their " fancy." Note that 
 this is not a mere question of backing your judg- 
 ment on the merits of the two crews. Not one man 
 in ten knows anything about that, and many are 
 proud of always sticking to the same side year after 
 year, of being always " Oxford " or " Cambridge," 
 whether their favourite colour wins or loses. And 
 just as they vehemently take sides with a Uni- 
 versity to which they have never been, so they take 
 sides as vehemently with a part}^ which they do not 
 control and from which they can never hope for the 
 smallest benefit. 
 
 Such are the mass of the supporters of either 
 party. They derive their political opinions origin- 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 23 
 
 ally from some family tradition or some fanciful 
 preference, but they back them with all the passion 
 of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they 
 know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing 
 the game. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a section of the public, 
 not perhaps large, but certainly increasing, which 
 is beginning to be uneasy about the Party System. 
 It is natural to men to wish to have voice in the 
 government of their native land, and many are 
 beginning to feel that they have no such effective 
 voice to-day. Laws which they detest are passed, 
 passed easily by the consent of both parties, and 
 they are powerless to defeat or even to protest 
 against them. Measures which they ardently 
 desire and which they know that most of their 
 neighbours ardently desire are never even men- 
 tioned. Acts of the Government which seem at 
 the very least proper subjects for criticism and 
 inquiry are suffered without comment. Scandals 
 and blunders of which they have caught a glimpse 
 are suddenly covered over and buried in silence. 
 
 And along with the discontent engendered by 
 these things goes an intangible suspicion that they 
 are in some way the victims of a conspiracy. Why, 
 asks such a man, does not his own side follow up its 
 advantages ? Why do his leaders unexpectedly 
 spare their opponents at the very moment when 
 these appear to be in their power ? How many 
 honest Radicals were bewildered when the Liberal 
 leaders joined with their rivals to stifle the inquiry 
 
24 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 into the Jameson Raid ! How many honest 
 Unionists have been puzzled by Mr Balfour's 
 hesitations and equivocations in the matter of 
 Tariff Reform ! How many on both sides have 
 felt somehow fooled and betrayed when they saw 
 the wild agitation and counter-agitation of last 
 year end in a meaningless " Conference " ! 
 
 It should be remarked, however, that those of 
 whom we speak are generally very far from realising 
 the full truth of their own suspicions. That some- 
 thing is wrong they instinctively feel. What is 
 wrong they would find very great difficulty in 
 defining. They lay the blame now on one leader, 
 now on another. They hardly yet see that the evil 
 is in the system itself. Thus Radicals will say 
 that Mr Asquith is too Whiggish, that he does not 
 fully enter into the feelings of his party in regard 
 to the House of Lords. They do not realise that 
 the whole Liberal Front Bench is as deeply inter- 
 ested as he in keeping the old game going in accord- 
 ance with the old rules, and dreads as much as any 
 Tory could dread any violent change which might 
 suddenly alter the conditions and perhaps put a 
 summary end to the contest. Thus, again, enthusi- 
 astic Tariff Reformers condemn Mr Balfour as weak. 
 They fail to see that the real difficulty is not that 
 he is weak, but that he is strong — strong in the 
 traditions of party, the complex system of relation- 
 ships and alliances that cover English politics like 
 a net, much too strong to allow his hands to be 
 forced by the Tory Democracy. Men of all opinions 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 25 
 
 were puzzled, bewildered, and somewhat perturbed 
 by the Conference, not knowing that it was but a 
 more formal type of those thousand private Con- 
 ferences between opposing leaders behind the 
 Speaker's chair and at dinner parties and social 
 clubs which give their real direction to the politics 
 and to the destinies of modern England. 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 It is an error to suppose that the Party System 
 was always the organised imposture which it is 
 to-day. There was a time when it had a meaning 
 — nay, even within times comparatively recent it 
 meant more than it means now. 
 
 During the seventeenth century there was in 
 England a definite conflict of political ideals. The 
 old conception of kingship was at war with the 
 theory of Parliamentary Government ; and the 
 vital reality of the struggle was proved by the one 
 infallible test, the fact that men were willing to 
 fight and kill and be killed for their own ideal. 
 The war went on with varying fortunes until the 
 Revolution of 1689, which marked the final 
 triumph of one doctrine over the other. 
 
 It is a great though a not uncommon mistake 
 to suppose that that triumph was a triumph of 
 democracy. The Revolution took for its excuse 
 indeed a democratic theory, simply because some 
 excuse of the sort must be taken by anyone who 
 attempts to put his political success upon a moral 
 
26 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 basis. There is not, and never has been, any 
 moral theory of sovereignty conceivable that was 
 not based upon the ultimate sovereignty of the 
 community. But neither in motive nor in practice 
 was there a democratic force behind the Revolu- 
 tion of 1689. 
 
 The Revolution of 1689 was not made by the 
 people. The populace of London and of certain 
 prosperous southern towns may have been in 
 favour of it, but the mass of ancient and rural 
 and then numerically preponderant England was 
 certainly against it. The Revolution was made 
 not only by but for a group of wealthy intriguers 
 with an object in the main financial. That group 
 of men and their successors proceeded to enrich 
 themselves at the public expense in every con- 
 ceivable way. Perhaps the best commentary upon 
 the Revolution of 1689 is to be found in the en- 
 closure during the century and a half which 
 followed the accession of the House of Hanover 
 of more than 6,000,000 acres of common land 
 by the rich landowners and their satellites who 
 had drawn the sword for " civil and religious 
 liberty." 
 
 What triumphed in 1689 and again in 1715 and 
 1745 was not the people but the Parliament. The 
 Parliament did not represent the people ; indeed, 
 it hardly professed to do so. It was jealous of 
 any publicity given to its debates, it gloried in 
 the private possession of seats in Parliament by 
 particular magnates, and perhaps the most signifi- 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 27 
 
 cant symptom of its character was the compara- 
 tive effacement of the House of Lords. 
 
 The ParHament, then, represented a narrow 
 class, which had for its base the great land- 
 owners, but for its buttresses the merchants, and 
 for its recruitment wealth in any form however 
 gotten. But it should be remembered that within 
 this class there were real differences of opinion. 
 The political conflicts of the eighteenth century 
 were therefore, compared with our own, real con- 
 flicts. The Parliament might have little regard 
 for the mass of the people, but it was powerful as 
 against the mere Executive. The fact that strong 
 Ministers were obliged to spend enormous sums in 
 bribing the legislature proves that the legislature 
 was able to control them, and, if not placated, to 
 overthrow them. Such direct bribery has now 
 ceased, but it may be questioned whether this 
 cessation is not due rather to the growing im- 
 potence of the House of Commons than to any 
 increase in public virtue. So again the conflicts 
 of Pitt and Fox had this difference from the con- 
 flicts of rival politicians of the present day, that 
 they extended to the sphere of private life. The 
 two men did not speak to each other. They 
 belonged to the same class, no doubt, for it was 
 the only class possessed of any political power. 
 But they did not, like Mr Asquith and Mr Balfour, 
 belong to the same set. 
 
 The system of politics which lasted from the 
 beginning to the end of the eighteenth century 
 
28 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 was finally disturbed by two forces : The material 
 powers created by the industrial revolution and 
 the ideas generated by the Great Revolution of 
 France. The two combined produced the Reform 
 Bill of 1832. New wealth had been created by 
 the new machinery, and this new wealth led to 
 an extension in the class of the newly made rich, 
 which gravely disturbed the old balance between 
 the merchants and the mere landowners. The 
 newly made rich continued to be rapidly and 
 effectually digested into the governing class ; 
 indeed, it was Pitt's persistent policy to meet the 
 new situation by a wholesale creation of pluto- 
 cratic peers ; but a sufficient margin of rich men 
 remained outside the organism of the governing 
 class to disturb the equilibrium, and hence the old 
 representative system found itself in direct con- 
 flict with masses of the new wealth. 
 
 Throughout the first half of the nineteenth 
 century there was something like a real struggle 
 between the commercial and the territorial rich — 
 a struggle that culminated in the fight over Free 
 Trade. To-day, not only has the struggle ceased, 
 but the line of demarcation can no longer be 
 drawn. Nobles and gentlemen of the old terri- 
 torial class are now deeply interested in commercial 
 speculations of all kinds, not only as urban land- 
 lords but as speculators and directors. On the 
 other hand the newly made rich buy landed 
 estates, county seats, and — what is more im- 
 portant than all — permanent legislative power 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 29 
 
 in the House of Lords. At the present day the 
 purchase of legislative power, which is the normal 
 and shameful method of recruitment in the House 
 of Lords, is almost invariably effected by men who 
 have made their fortunes either in commerce or 
 by money-lending. It is rare to find a large land- 
 owner who is also a commoner entering the market 
 and purchasing a peerage. 
 
 We have to-day to deal not with a divided but 
 with a united plutocracy, a homogeneous mass of 
 the rich, commercial and territorial, into whose 
 hands practically all power, political as well as 
 economic, has now passed. 
 
 During the whole course of the nineteenth 
 century two processes have been going on side 
 by side, the one patent to all the world and the 
 foundation of much comment and speculation, 
 the other almost entirely unobserved and un- 
 mentioned. 
 
 The first is the extension of the franchise. Step 
 by step since 1832, more and more citizens have 
 been admitted to vote for members of Parliament. 
 First the clerk or shopkeeper, then the urban 
 workman, and finally the agricultural labourer 
 became an elector. This process should clearly 
 have meant an increase in the power of democracy, 
 and it has been practically universally assumed 
 that it did mean this. But in fact it is extremely 
 dubious whether the mass of the people have as 
 much political power to-day as they had before 
 the process began. Had the enfranchisement of 
 
30 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 the people come suddenly there is little doubt 
 that something like real democracy would have 
 been achieved. But it came by slow degrees, 
 and there was time for another process to go 
 on side by side with the widening of the 
 franchise. 
 
 That process was the transfer of effective power 
 from the House of Commons to the Ministry, or, 
 to speak more accurately, to the two Front Benches, 
 Government and " Opposition." There was no 
 definite moment at which you could say that this 
 was done, but it has been done very thoroughly 
 by now. Anyone who doubts this will find it 
 easy to convince himself of it by glancing at the 
 relations of the House and the Executive at the 
 beginning of the process and at the end. At the 
 beginning the Government was dependent on the 
 House ; now the House is in a state of abject 
 dependence on the Ministers and ex-Ministers, 
 who arrange between them details of all policies. 
 
 A very simple test will show this. One of the 
 most important historic powers of the House of 
 Commons is the power of driving a Minister or 
 Government from office. That power was not 
 only possessed by the early Parliaments of the 
 nineteenth century, but was continually exercised ; 
 and Administrations, strong in reputation and in 
 parliamentary support, were repeatedly overthrown 
 by revolts of their own followers, and dismissed by 
 the vote of the Commons. So Wellington was 
 overthrown in 1830, and Grey in 1834. So Peel 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 31 
 
 was driven from power by the Protectionist revolt 
 in 1845. So Lord John Russell fell in 1852, and 
 so in a few months afterwards fell the Ministry 
 of Derby and DisraeU. So the Coahtion Ministry 
 of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in 1855 by a vote 
 of censure on the conduct of the Crimean War. 
 So in 1857 Palmerston was beaten on the Chinese 
 War, and again in 1859 on the Conspiracy Bill. 
 So in 1865 the strong Ministry of Russell and 
 Gladstone was overthrown on its Reform Bill by 
 the rebellion of the AduUamites. 
 
 If we take the year 1870 as the pivot year, we 
 shall find that in the forty years that preceded 
 1870, nine Administrations which could normally 
 command a majority of the Commons were upset 
 by the independent action of members of that 
 House. In the forty years that have passed since 
 1870 only one instance of this happening can be 
 mentioned — the defeat of Mr Gladstone's Home 
 Rule Bill of 1886. There the circumstances were 
 in many ways exceptional, and even that example 
 is now nearly a quarter of a century old. In the 
 last twenty-four 3'ears not a single case of such 
 independent action on the part of the Commons 
 has occurred. 
 
 Another illustration, if further illustration be 
 needed, of the progressive emasculation of the 
 House of Commons may be found by comparing 
 its attitude in the matter of the Crimean War 
 waged fifty yeais ago, and its attitude in the 
 matter of the South African War waged only the 
 
32 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 other day. Both wars, whether wise or foolish, 
 just or unjust, were undoubtedly supported by 
 the bulk of public opinion both within and without 
 Parliament. Both wars were scandalously mis- 
 managed. But the Crimean War was fought when 
 Parliament was comparatively free. As soon as 
 the details of the mismanagement began to be 
 known in England there was a fierce popular 
 agitation, and the popular voice was immediately 
 heard not only in the Press but also in Parliament. 
 A Committee of Inquiry was demanded and re- 
 fused. But in spite of the opposition of the men 
 in power the demand was carried in the House of 
 Commons by a huge majority. The result was 
 that Lord Aberdeen had to resign and Lord 
 Palmerston took his place. Palmerston wanted 
 to get rid of the Committee, but the House insisted, 
 and he, powerful and popular as he was, was 
 obliged to bow to its will. All this was done, it 
 must be remembered, not by the Opposition or 
 the Peace Party, but by men returned to support 
 the Government — men who thoroughly approved 
 of the war and merely wished to see it efficiently 
 conducted. 
 
 In the case of the South African War there was 
 plenty of grumbling in the country, and not a few 
 sensational exposures of the incompetence and 
 corruption which weakened our arms. But within 
 the walls of Parliament scarcely a voice was heard, 
 and it certainly never entered the head of any Con- 
 servative member (or Liberal member either for 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM 33 
 
 that matter) to take the strong step of driving 
 out the men in power and putting better adminis- 
 trators in their place. Indeed, the war was con- 
 ducted invariably without consulting Parliament ; 
 and during the whole of its course financial scandals, 
 quite openly talked of among the educated classes 
 of this country, had no place in Parliamentary 
 discussion. The House of Commons had ceased to 
 be an instrument of government. 
 
 To whom, then, has the power of the House of 
 Commons passed ? It has passed to a political 
 committee for which no official name exists (for 
 it works in secret), but which may be roughly 
 called '* The Front Benches." This committee 
 is not elected by vote, or by acclamation, or even 
 by general consent. Its members do not owe 
 their position either to the will of the House or the 
 will of the people. It is selected — mainly from 
 among the rich politicians and their dependents — 
 by a process of sheer and unchecked co-option. It 
 forms in reality a single body, and acts, when its 
 interests or its power are at stake, as one man. No 
 difference of economic interest or of poHtical 
 principle any longer exists among its members to 
 form the basis of a rational Une of party division. 
 Nevertheless, the party division continues. The 
 governing group is divided arbitrarily into two 
 teams, each of which is, by mutual understanding, 
 entitled to its turn of office and emolument. And 
 a number of unreal issues, defined neither by the 
 people nor by the Parliament, but by the pohti- 
 
 3 
 
34 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 cians themselves, are raised from time to time in 
 order to give a semblance of reality to their empty- 
 competition . 
 
 That is the Party System as it exists to-day, and 
 by it the House of Commons has been rendered 
 null, and the people impotent and without a voice. 
 
II 
 
 THE GOVERNING GROUP 
 
II 
 
 THE GOVERNING GROUP 
 
 THE MAKING OF MINISTRIES 
 
 Since we have seen that, during the last century, 
 power has been silently transferred from the 
 House of Commons, it becomes a matter of vital 
 importance to ask to whom it has been trans- 
 ferred. We have already said that it has been 
 transferred to the Cabinet ; but what is a Cabinet, 
 and how is it constructed ? 
 
 The theory of the Constitution is that Ministers 
 are nominated by the Crown. Everyone knows 
 that this has ceased to be the fact. Many people 
 would tell you that now Ministers are in effect 
 nominated by Parliament. But this is equally far 
 from the truth. The plain truth is that Ministers 
 nominate themselves. They form a self -elected 
 body, filling up its vacancies by co-option. 
 
 The two Front Benches are close oligarchical 
 corporations ; or, to speak more accurately, one close 
 oligarchical corporation, admission to which is 
 only to be gained by the consent of those who have 
 already secured places therein. The price which 
 
 37 
 
L.Ai»Mi^irfM«MM«»i*«KMi 
 
 38 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 has to be paid for admission is, of course, a 
 complete surrender of independence, and absol- 
 ute submission to the will of the body as a 
 whole. 
 
 The greater number of the members of this 
 close corporation enter by right of their relation- 
 ship, whether of blood or marriage, to other mem- 
 bers of the group, no matter of what social rank. 
 They may be called the Relations. This family 
 arrangement must not be confused with what 
 once was the old aristocratic privileges of the 
 Great Houses. 
 
 There are still indeed certain wealthy political 
 families whose members are regarded as having 
 a prescriptive right to share in the government 
 of the country. Their wealth is more and more 
 important, their lineage less and less. 
 
 The traditions of the English political system 
 having been aristocratic in character, render the 
 presence of the members of such families (in 
 lessening degree) antecedently probable ; but 
 while the public realises this, it is not aware of the 
 degree in which mere relationship, high or low 
 born, enters into the making of Ministries, still less 
 of the way in which family ties enter into the 
 formation of the two closely connected Front 
 Benches, where there is no question of aristocratic 
 descent. 
 
 It is neither novel nor astonishing to discover a 
 Duke of Norfolk acting as Postmaster-General 
 under a Conservative Administration. As the 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 3P 
 
 Duke of Devonshire was a member of former 
 governments, so one would imagine that the pre- 
 sent Duke, his nephew, would naturally hold 
 office in any future Unionist Administration. The 
 public even expects that Mr Austen Chamberlain 
 should inherit, as it were, Cabinet rank from his 
 father ; nor is it much scandalised to see the Prime 
 Minister's brother-in-law, Mr Tennant, sitting by 
 his side on the Treasury bench. Mr Churchill, of 
 course, as a member of the family whose name he 
 bears, and as heir to his father's career, has a 
 double right. 
 
 But the list begins to grow long when we see 
 Lord Selborne, the son-in-law of a former Prime 
 Minister, Lord Salisbury, governing South Africa 
 at a moment when his first cousin, Mr Arthur 
 Balfour, is the Prime Minister of the day (being 
 retained there subsequently by Mr Balfour's 
 "opponents"), while that Prime Minister's brother, 
 Mr Gerald Balfour, not only enjoys long years of 
 office through his family connection, but a con- 
 siderable public pension into the bargain when 
 office is no longer open to him. That Lord Glad- 
 stone should inherit from his father may seem 
 normal enough, though his name does swell this 
 extended category. But to find Lord Portsmouth 
 Under Secretary for War, while a cousin of his 
 wife's, Sir John Pease, has yet another post under 
 the present Government, and his cousin again, 
 Mr Pike Pease, the reversion of a " Conservative " 
 post ; and to have to add to this that the Liberal 
 
40 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Whip, Sir John Fuller, is actually the brother-in- 
 law of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, 
 Mr Hobhouse, both being grandchildren by blood 
 or marriage of a Conservative Chancellor, Lord St 
 Aldwyn (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), touches upon 
 the comic when we remember how large a propor- 
 tion of the paid offices available this list represents. 
 Nor do the names here jotted down almost at ran- 
 dom present more than a very small sample of the 
 whole system. 
 
 It must be noted that these family ties are not 
 confined to the separate sides of the House. They 
 unite the Ministerial with the Opposition Front 
 Bench as closely as they unite Ministers and ex- 
 Ministers to each other. 
 
 For instance, to quote again chance connections 
 that occur to one, the present talented and versatile 
 (" Liberal ") Under Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr 
 Master man, is the nephew by marriage of the late 
 ("Conservative") Colonial Secretary,Mr Lyttelton; 
 who, in his turn, is closely connected with Mr 
 Asquith, for they married sisters. The present 
 (" Liberal ") President of the Council, Lord Beau- 
 champ, is brother-in-law of a former Conservative 
 Governor of Madras, Lord Amp thill ; a " Liberal " 
 and a "Unionist" Whip, the two Peases, are cousins 
 (the latter of Ministerial rank, though not of course 
 yet in enjoyment of office) ; and, as all the world 
 knows, Mr Winston Churchill is not only the cousin 
 of a former Conservative Minister, the Duke of 
 Marlborough, but directly succeeded the head of 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 41 
 
 his own family in the post he held, that of Under 
 Secretary for the Colonies. 
 
 Points of this kind are of importance, for they 
 show to how restricted a group of men the func- 
 tions of government have come to be entrusted. 
 They are effects, not causes, of its narrowness. 
 None can deny that the phenomena are peculiar 
 to a political condition exceedingly abnormal. 
 Groups of this sort could not possibly arise in a 
 genuinely democratic society ; and, what is more, 
 are more closely and intricatel}/ bound together 
 even than they were in the days when the govern- 
 ment of this country was avowedly that of an 
 oligarchy. The tendency to govern by clique is 
 not decreasing ; it is increasing. 
 
 But, it may be asked, is there anything wrong 
 in men differing in politics yet remaining on 
 friendly terms in private life ? Is there any reason 
 why a man should not marry a woman because her 
 family belongs to the political party opposed to 
 his ? Not the least in the world. Such things 
 would naturally happen in the most real and 
 earnest political conflict. But they would happen 
 as exceptions ; there would be perhaps one or two 
 such cases in every generation. When we find 
 such things not exceptional, but universal, we may 
 safely say that we are not considering a certain 
 number of examples of personal sympathy or 
 attraction over-riding political differences, but a 
 general system of government by a small, friendly, 
 and closely inter-related clique. We are not 
 
42 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 surprised at Romeo loving Juliet, though he is a 
 Montague and she a Capulet. But if we found 
 in addition that Lady Capulet was by birth a 
 Montague, that Lady Montague was the first 
 cousin of old Capulet, that Mercutio was at once 
 the nephew of a Capulet and the brother-in-law 
 of a Montague, that County Paris was related on 
 his father's side to one house and on his mother's 
 side to the other, that Tybalt was Romeo's uncle's 
 stepson, and that the Friar who married Romeo 
 and Juliet was Juliet's uncle and Romeo's first 
 cousin once removed, we should probably conclude 
 that the feud between the two houses was being 
 kept up mainly for the dramatic entertainment 
 of the people of Verona. 
 
 It should further be noted that the kindly 
 tolerance on which politicians are so fond of con- 
 gratulating themselves is extended only to those 
 who play the game and not at all to those who 
 spoil the game. It was not extended to Parnell. 
 It was not extended to Mr Victor Grayson. It 
 is the result not of magnanimity, but of indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 Finally, the mere fact that the electorate is 
 never allowed to learn the full truth as to these 
 relationships and intimacies is sound moral proof 
 that their motive is a motive of imposture. 
 
 The second division, and reserve as it were of 
 Cabinet material, may be called the Private 
 Secretaries. Sons of good families, inadequately 
 provided for, sons of the new rich with political 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 43 
 
 ambitions, sons especially of persons who have 
 helped to finance prominent politicians or have 
 subscribed largely to the Party Funds, often obtain 
 positions as private secretaries to the great men 
 on the Front Benches. If they are fairly apt and 
 industrious they have little difficulty in making 
 themselves useful, in rising in the political world, 
 and eventually (sometimes quickly) in obtaining 
 Cabinet rank. Mr Montagu's career, like that 
 of his cousin Mr Herbert Samuel, has been of 
 this kind. These two related members also touch 
 another part of our subject, for one is the son, the 
 other the nephew, of the late Lord Swaythling, 
 formerly Sir Samuel Montagu. 
 
 Finally, there are those whom we may roughly 
 describe as the make-weights — persons having 
 no direct family or financial connection with 
 the ruling group, but co-opted by the Ministers, 
 sometimes because they have made some sort 
 of reputation in the House or in the country, 
 sometimes because they are in possession of some 
 other source of influence which it is thought may 
 be useful to the two Front Benches, sometimes 
 because they have given, and are still capable of 
 giving, annoyance to the Professional Pohticians 
 when in an independent position. Clever lawyers 
 are often taken into the service of the oUgarchy 
 in this way, and there is at least one well-known 
 case of an ex- workman being so taken. Such 
 men, not feeling sure of their footing, are generally 
 especially pliant to the will of the oligarchy. 
 
44 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Commonly they become merged in it. Thus, 
 when Mr Asquith entered the Gladstone Govern- 
 ment of 1892, he was, we beHeve, unconnected 
 by any direct tie with the governing group. 
 Now he and his are connected by a dozen such 
 ties. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the method by which 
 Ministries are formed is the method of co-option. 
 No man is made a Minister by election or acclam- 
 ation either of the people or of the legislature. 
 Office, unlike the kingdom of heaven, is not taken 
 by storm. That a man may enter its narrow gate, 
 he must prove himself able and willing to be a 
 serviceable tool of those who hold the keys. And 
 this power of the oligarchy to admit or refuse 
 Ministerial appointments is perhaps the most 
 powerful means used by them to fetter the House 
 of Commons. Their control over the bestowal of 
 places has created in the House a large class of 
 placemen and placemen-expectant, upon whose 
 interested support the machinery of party dis- 
 cipline largely depends. 
 
 THE PLACEMEN 
 
 The Placeman is a historic figure in English 
 politics. He is as prominent and important a 
 figure at the present time as he was in Walpole's 
 day. The publication of Parliamentary proceed- 
 ings and the introduction of a democratic element 
 into the House of Commons have made it necessary 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 45 
 
 to cover his operations with a veil of somewhat 
 greater decency, but his character and functions 
 are in essence just what they always were. 
 
 The Placeman is the man who enters politics as 
 a profession with the object of obtaining one of the 
 well-paid offices in the gift of the Ministry. His 
 mode of operation will necessarily vary according 
 to his talents and temperament. Sometimes he 
 will endeavour to earn the gratitude of the govern- 
 ing group by voting steadily according to the 
 dictation of the Whips (a high record in divisions, 
 when it is not a hobby or a method of duping a 
 constituency, may generally be taken as the mark 
 of an embryo or prospective Placeman), by coming 
 to the rescue of the Ministers, and defending them 
 when their followers prove restive, by always being 
 ready to put down " blocking " motions to pre- 
 vent the discussion of inconvenient topics, or to 
 move " shelving " amendments or inconvenient 
 motions. Sometimes he plays a bolder game, 
 assumes the airs of an independent member, 
 criticises the Government from time to time, asks 
 inconvenient questions, and makes himself a mild 
 nuisance to the Front Benches and the Whips. 
 But by this sign the mere Placeman may always 
 be known that, though he may ask questions 
 or raise matters slightly inconvenient to his 
 " leaders," he will never hint at existence of things 
 inconvenient to both Front Benches and awkward 
 to the Party System as a whole, for on this system 
 he proposes to fatten. 
 
-■»-.-; i-^-^-.---^..»-:- - — ,-■ -^..^»-j--- ■ >- f- - -^^^1-^- ^iV''-"! 
 
 46 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 The change which office produces in men of this 
 type is often extraordinary. Take the case of 
 Mr C. F. G. Master man. Mr Master man entered 
 Parliament as a Liberal of independent views. 
 During his first two years in the House he dis- 
 tinguished himself as a critic of the Liberal Min- 
 istry. He criticised their Education Bill. He 
 criticised with especial force the policy of Mr John 
 Burns at the Local Government Board. His 
 conduct attracted the notice of the leaders of the 
 party. He was offered office, accepted it, and 
 since then has been silent, except for an occasional 
 rhetorical exercise in defence of the Government. 
 One fact will be sufficient to emphasise the change. 
 On March 13th, 1908, Mr Masterman voted for the 
 Right to Work Bill of the Labour Party. In May 
 of the same year he accepted a place with a salary 
 of £1200 a year — it has since risen to £1500. On 
 April 20th, 1909, he voted, at the bidding of the 
 Party Whips, against the same Bill which he had 
 voted for in the previous year. Yet this remark- 
 able example of the " peril of change " does not 
 apparently create any indignation or even aston- 
 ishment in the political world which Mr Masterman 
 adorns. On the contrary, he seems to be generally 
 regarded as a politician of exceptionally high 
 ideals. No better instance need be recorded of the 
 peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these 
 pages to describe. 
 
 In the same category we may include the mis- 
 chief which accompanies the presence of so large a 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 47 
 
 number of barristers in Parliament, where barristers 
 abound, because they always have something to 
 get from the Government. The prizes in this pro- 
 fession are high, and they are all at the disposal of 
 the governing group. Therefore the fairly suc- 
 cessful lawyer is always the most serviceable tool 
 of the Ministers. It was a lawyer, Mr Buckmaster, 
 who moved the amendment which shelved the 
 question of the secrecy of the Party Funds. It 
 was a lawyer, or rather two or three lawyers, who 
 were employed to damp down the Nationalist 
 movement in Wales. Indeed, Wales presents a 
 particularly strong case, for the consistent policy 
 of the Government has been to buy off the Welsh 
 by giving promotion to Welsh barristers. 
 
 A striking case of the way in which barristers 
 are rewarded is that of Mr Horridge. Mr Horridge 
 defeated Mr Balfour at North-east Manchester in 
 1906. It was generally understood that he was to 
 have the first judgeship that fell vacant. When, 
 however, the first vacancy occurred the Education 
 Question was to the fore, and it was felt that a by- 
 election in Manchester would be dangerous. Mr 
 Horridge was therefore passed over, and the place 
 was given to another political lawyer, Mr Hem- 
 merde. When the General Election came, Mr 
 Horridge did not stand again ; immediately after 
 it his fidelity was rewarded with the long-expected 
 judgeship. Now Mr Horridge happens to be a 
 good judge. si sic omnes ! 
 
 There are thus in every House of Commons 
 
48 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 a very large number of men who either have 
 received or expect to receive places which are in 
 the gift of the Government. On the other side 
 of the House are an almost equally large number 
 who expect to receive places from the next Govern- 
 ment as soon as their own party is in power. 
 Between them they make up an important section 
 of the House, and they can be absolutely relied 
 on by Government and Opposition to vote straight 
 as the ruling group direct. 
 
 At the same time it must be remembered that 
 the influence which the Front Benches can exert 
 over members of Parliament is by no means con- 
 fined to those who have places or to the much 
 larger class of those who think they may some day 
 get places. In a thousand ways the position of a 
 man who renders himself obnoxious to the govern- 
 ing group can be made unpleasant ; in a thousand 
 ways submission to them can be rewarded by little 
 favours. One member refrains from pressing some 
 inconvenient inquiries on the Foreign Office or the 
 India Office because he is about to take a trip to 
 Egypt or India and wishes to have no obstacles 
 thrown in his way. Another — perhaps a lawyer — 
 will refrain from taking up a determinedly inde- 
 pendent attitude because, if he gets the reputation 
 of being " impracticable," it may injure him pro- 
 fessionally. Another wants some private Bill in 
 which either he or his constituents are interested 
 to pass smoothly and rapidly. None of these 
 men want to make themselves unnecessarily 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 49 
 
 unpopular with the group in whose hands is not 
 only the disposal of places, but the Executive 
 Government and the absolute control of the time 
 of the House. Add to these considerations the 
 pressure which the Party Caucus can (as we shall 
 see hereafter) exercise upon elections, and it is not 
 surprising that the ancient control of the House of 
 Commons over the Ministry has been replaced by 
 despotic authority of the Ministry over the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 There is, of course, a large margin in any House 
 of Commons to whom no direct or conscious 
 pressure can be said to apply. They would them- 
 selves be quite genuinely and sincerely astonished 
 if they were told that any pressure was exercised 
 upon them, or that any advantage was held out to 
 them by what they would call " loyalty to their 
 party." They are men for the most part wealthy, 
 men who regard a seat in the House of Commons 
 as a social honour which they have purchased with 
 a certain expenditure of their money and their 
 energy, men who take the duties of their position 
 seriously, and who perform all that part of parlia- 
 mentary work which is less touched by corruption 
 adequately and well. They do excellent work upon 
 committees, they busy themselves with the minor 
 details of their constituencies, they speak for hard 
 cases, they try to obtain petty situations for their 
 supporters, etc. These men are perfectly honest, 
 and would be more astonished than any reader of 
 this book, or than any ordinary member of the 
 
 4 
 
50 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 electorate, to hear that pressure was put upon them 
 by the cynical and happily outworn cHque upon 
 which the placemen openly depend for their 
 livelihood. 
 
 Now, to the plain citizen the astonishment is not 
 that pressure should be put upon such men, but 
 that they do not recognise the pressure. 
 
 The plain citizen will never be persuaded that 
 Mr Brown, young Lord Jenkinson, and Sir James 
 Smith always think in the same way upon all 
 matters. He cannot conceive why they should 
 always vote the same way, unless they have motives 
 as bad and as fraudulent as those of the regular 
 placeman whom they support. It behoves us, 
 therefore, to ask how the contradiction arises, and 
 how perfectly honest men can be made to serve 
 the system ? 
 
 The main pivot of the machine lies in the fixed 
 custom of dissolving when a majority is expressed 
 against the act of any Minister. True, this capital 
 point of the whole parliamentary game has latterly, 
 with the advent of groups, lost something of its 
 force. But it still survives as a main instrument 
 by which the ordinary and honest member is 
 coerced. 
 
 The Government does now and then give way 
 when it appreciates that a majority may possibly 
 be formed against it ; and there have been of late 
 years two or three rare and minor instances in 
 which the expression of the popular will through 
 its representatives in Parliament has controlled 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 51 
 
 the Executive — as, for instance, in Clause IV. of 
 the Trades Dispute Bill. But, as a rule, the working 
 of the machine is as follows : — The Government, 
 after consultation with the other half of the clique 
 who sit on the Opposition Front Bench, determine 
 that such and such a proposal is their " policy." 
 If a majority of the House of Commons dis- 
 approve by their vote of such a " policy," a 
 General Election, with all its expense of time, 
 energy, and money, is imposed upon every member 
 of the House. 
 
 The situation is precisely as though a King 
 (when the Crown had real power) had been able 
 to say to the Commons : "I propose to spend so 
 many millions on an addition to my standing army, 
 and if you express disapproval of this I will fine 
 every man Jack of you a thousand pounds, and 
 imperil his chance of ever coming back to oppose 
 my will ! " For it must be remembered that, 
 though the party funds are lavishly used to support 
 even the richest members of the party, they are 
 despotically controlled, unaudited, and immedi- 
 ately withdrawn from any member who has voted 
 against the directions of the Government, whose 
 directions are never more emphatic than when 
 they are issued after a consultation with their 
 nominal opponents. 
 
 It is this necessity, the necessity of " keeping 
 the Government in," or paying a heavy penalty in 
 money, time, energy, and the imperilling of one's 
 place in Parliament, which controls the great body 
 
52 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 of men who cannot come under any of the cate- 
 gories we have yet mentioned, and in a later part 
 of this book we will return to the subject when we 
 consider what remedies there may be for the 
 present impasse. 
 
 THE SECRET ALLIANCE 
 
 The popular defence of the elaborate system of 
 indirect corruption described in the last section 
 is that it is necessary for the maintenance of 
 discipline. 
 
 Now, discipline is a military term, and implies 
 the existence or prospect of a war. It is obviously 
 inapplicable to matters of legislation, except under 
 most extraordinary circumstances. It is the idea 
 of a good soldier that he obeys the orders of his 
 superior — *' His not to reason why, etc." But it 
 is the very object of the legislator to " reason 
 why." His function is criticism ; and discipUne 
 is fatal to criticism, and is meant to be so. Soldiers 
 are not there to criticise their officers, but to follow 
 them. Members of Parliament, on the other hand, 
 are there (or ought to be there) to criticise the 
 Ministers ; and it is certain that they cannot 
 effectively criticise so long as they obediently 
 follow. 
 
 There is only one possible occasion upon which 
 the word discipline could ever properly be applied 
 to Parliamentary affairs, and that would be some 
 momentous crisis (such as only occurs once in two 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 53 
 
 or three centuries) when politics begin really to 
 take on the aspect of civil war or revolution. No 
 one will pretend that such a state of things exists 
 at the present time. But there are still a good 
 many people who believe the conflict between the 
 two parties to be, as far as it goes, a real one. 
 Young Liberals are told that they must drop 
 minor differences that they may present a serried 
 front to the forces of reaction. The Conservative 
 rank and file have it impressed upon them with 
 equal emphasis that their enforced unity is the only 
 obstacle to a devastating flood of confiscatory 
 revolution. 
 
 Now, if we were soldiers in an army subjected 
 to a system of military law of unusual severity, 
 we should perhaps submit cheerfully to our lot so 
 long as we believed in the vital reality and value 
 of the cause for which we were fighting. But, if 
 we found that all the time that we were being 
 flogged or shot for the smallest infraction of 
 discipline, our chief officers were continually con- 
 ferring with the officers of the enemy, were on the 
 best of terms with them, concocted their plan of 
 campaign in concert with them, always carefully 
 avoided every occasion of decisive engagement 
 between the two armies, and generally treated 
 the whole war as a friendly game of mixed chance 
 and skill between themselves and their friends and 
 relations on the other side, — then I think our 
 floggings and shootings would justly become a 
 matter for complaint and even for mutiny. 
 
54 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 That is, briefly, the poUtical situation to-day. 
 On the rank and file is imposed a rigid discipline 
 which nothing but an extraordinary public crisis 
 could justify, while at the same time the com- 
 manders treat the whole affair as the most frivolous 
 of amusements, the keen enjoyment of which need 
 in no way disturb the friendliness of their private 
 relations. That is the situation, and it is becoming 
 to most of us an intolerable one. 
 
 The recent " Conference " of eight members of 
 the governing group to discuss the question of the 
 House of Lords opened the eyes of a good many 
 people who were previously blind to the unreality 
 of the struggle. It was a little too impudent ! 
 Yet behind the irony of this silent compact coming 
 after all the heroic rhetoric of the General Election 
 there was a deeper irony. The ordinary journal- 
 istic picture of the conference suggests that Mr 
 Asquith and Mr Balfour met for the first time, 
 bowed to each other with cold civility, and pro- 
 ceeded to discuss terms of settlement with the 
 pohte hauteur of dignified enemies. As a matter 
 of fact, of course, this Conference, trumpeted 
 through the press as if it were a unique event, 
 was only one of the hundred conferences which 
 various members of the two Front Benches, and 
 especially the two leaders, their secretaries, the 
 two Chief Whips, the confidential hangers-on, and 
 now and then the principal ofiicial paymasters 
 habitually hold to settle the affairs of Parliament. 
 Agreement between the Front Benches is not a 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 55 
 
 rare expedient suited to a special crisis. It is the 
 normal method of governing the country. 
 
 We spoke just now of the generals as carefully 
 avoiding the possibility of any decisive engagement 
 between their followers. Anybody who recalls 
 what has happened during the last twenty years 
 can remember repeated cases where one side 
 seemed on the point of achieving a decisive victory 
 over the other, when a halt was suddenly called, 
 the troops ordered back to quarters, and the battle 
 abandoned. A subject is raised. It forms the 
 topic of numerous and heated orations. The 
 country is wildly excited about it. Then it is 
 suddenly dropped ; nobody knows why — except 
 the Front Benches. 
 
 A very strong case may be found in the Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons which inquired 
 into the Jameson Raid. It will be remembered 
 that that Committee seemed always on the very 
 verge of some startling revelation, but that just 
 at the sensational moment the inquiry — like a 
 newspaper serial — abruptly stopped. Now, it is 
 obvious that, if the fight between the parties were 
 a genuine one, there was nothing more to be 
 desired by the Liberal members of the Committee 
 than an exposure which might have discredited 
 the Ministers in power. Yet Sir William Harcourt 
 and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and their 
 henchman, Mr Ellis, were as eager as any Tory 
 could be to hush up anything that might dis- 
 credit the Colonial Office. Why was this ? 
 
W*<» Brt .>W V 
 
 56 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Because they also were Front Benchers, and at 
 all times of crisis the Front Benches hang together. 
 
 Another case was that of. Chinese Labour. If 
 ever an election was won on a specific issue, the 
 election of 1906 was won on Chinese Labour. 
 This is not the place to express an opinion on the 
 merits of the question ; we simply state the facts. 
 If the representatives of the people had acted 
 according to their instructions, the repatriation of 
 the Chinese would have begun at once and upon 
 the largest possible scale. Everybody knows that 
 this was not done ; on the contrary, anxious 
 negotiations were entered into by the Ministry 
 to propitiate the South African Jews, a common 
 plan was agreed on between the two Front Benches 
 and those magnates, and 1300 Chinese were ad- 
 mitted to the Rand after the change of Govern- 
 ment. But this is not the important point. The 
 important point is that the new House of Commons, 
 elected mainly on that issue, was not allowed to 
 divide on the question or to express any opinion 
 upon the policy which should be adopted. But we 
 shall return to this capital and decisive illustra- 
 tion in more detail upon a later page. 
 
 A third example may be found in the recent 
 " Conference." Who, listening to the torrents of 
 eloquence poured out during the last General 
 Election, to the Liberal fulminations against the 
 tyranny of the Lords, to the Unionist fulmina- 
 tions against the " Socialism " of the Liberals, to 
 Mr Balfour's denunciations of Mr Ure, and to Mr 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 57 
 
 Ure's retorts on Mr Balfour, to the repeated appeals 
 of both sides to the Voice of the People, would 
 have believed that the whole tragic business was 
 to be openly branded as a farce by its very authors, 
 or that these gentlemen would indulge in sham 
 secret meetings, which, even had they pretended 
 to reality, would have been a negation of all that 
 had been said and done five months before ? 
 
 But if, from a past which is known, we turn to 
 a future which may be confidently predicted (for 
 accurate prediction is the best of all tests that can 
 be applied to theory), we have an immediate ex- 
 ample before us. 
 
 The moment at which this book appears offers 
 an opportunity for putting its thesis to the test. 
 
 It has been determined by the two Front 
 Benches to alter both the Constitution and the 
 powers of the House of Lords. In what way will 
 those powers be altered, and what body will take 
 the place of the present Second Chamber ? 
 
 Without any reasonable doubt, the powers of 
 the House of Lords, after the most ridiculous sham 
 demagogy from the Treasury Bench, and equally 
 ridiculous sham indignation from their relatives 
 and private friends across the table, and after 
 perhaps some sham resistance organised to give 
 vitality to the show, will be modified in such a 
 fashion that : — 
 
 (1) The House of Lords shall not be able to 
 prevent the passage into law of measures con- 
 certed upon between the two Front Benches ; and 
 
58 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 (2) The House of Lords shall be able to prevent 
 the passage of measures which, towards the end of 
 a Parliament, are put up in order to secure the 
 *' swing of the pendulum." 
 
 In other words, so far as its powers are con- 
 cerned, the Second Chamber will be turned into 
 a machine subservient to the bi-party system. 
 
 Now as to its Constitution : The House of Lords 
 is at present composed of some hundreds of men, 
 the mass of whom owe their seats to hereditj^ A 
 smaller number owe their seats to the filling of 
 posts within the gift of the professional politicians, 
 such as Colonial Governorships, etc. Another 
 batch owe their seats to purchase — this base 
 method is increasingly common, and has become 
 taken for granted in our modern social habits. 
 A fourth (small) class consists in men promoted 
 in order to permit the easy working of the Party 
 game — they have been in the way or proved 
 failures on one of the two Front Benches. A 
 tiny fifth class, consisting of less than half a 
 dozen, are men who appear simply because they 
 have rendered great services to their country ; 
 in one case a man of letters received this dis- 
 tinction. The lawyers, who must be present in 
 small numbers in order to preserve the fiction of 
 the House of Lords as a Court of Appeal, are a 
 class apart. Then there are the Bishops. 
 
 Now, when the House of Lords is reconstituted, 
 after due consultation and agreement between the 
 two Front Benches, which of these classes will 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 59 
 
 disappear ? Not the handful of professional poli- 
 ticians already present ; certainly not the peers 
 who sit by right of purchase, for the sale of peer- 
 ages is one of the most important aliments of the 
 machine : still less the Bishops. Those who will 
 disappear are the country squires who are in one 
 sense really representative of England, and who, 
 though usually bamboozled to some extent by the 
 intrigues at Westminster, vote either in their own 
 private interests or as they think best for the 
 nation. Those are the men who will go. If new 
 elements are added they will absolutely certainly 
 include nominees of the machine, or, as the pretty 
 phrase goes, " of the Crown." 
 
 Here is a concrete instance, and it will be well 
 worth the while of any reader of this book to 
 watch whether it has not been well chosen and 
 whether its fulfilment does not prove to what a 
 pass the political system has come. 
 
 It is necessary, then, for the understanding of 
 modern British politics to realise that the two 
 Front Benches are not two but one. They are 
 united not only by the close bonds of relationship, 
 intermarriage, and personal friendship which exist 
 between them, but also by a common interest. It 
 is to the interest of both to keep the game going, and 
 it is also to the interest of both to prevent the game 
 from becoming too real. It is, of course, quite 
 true that, within these limits, each side genuinely 
 wants to win. Apart from the sporting interest 
 of the conflict, there are very material prizes to be 
 
60 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 gained by the winning side. To many politicians 
 it makes a considerable pecuniary difference 
 whether they are in office or in opposition — a fact 
 which has decided many a political crisis, though 
 we are all too well-bred to take it into our cal- 
 culations. This, however, remains a secondary 
 object, subordinate to the essential aim of both 
 Front Benches, the maintenance of the Party 
 System. 
 
 With the two Front Benches must be reckoned 
 the Speaker and the Chairman of Committees, 
 officers chosen by them, and working with them. 
 It is no derogation of the admitted impartiality of 
 the Chair to say this. There has never been the 
 smallest reason to suspect the Speaker or Chairman 
 of leaning unfairly to one or other side of the 
 House. Why, indeed, should he, seeing that he at 
 anyrate knows the fight between them to be a 
 sham one ? 
 
 But it is well known that they continually con- 
 sult with the leaders of the House and the Opposi- 
 tion as to the conduct of business, and that when 
 the Front Benches are agreed they can almost 
 invariably rely upon the support of the Chair. 
 
 Now, this governing group, as we may call it, 
 comprising the two Front Benches and the Speaker, 
 has attained absolute control over the procedure 
 of the House of Commons. 
 
 First, it has the allotment of the time of the 
 House. It can settle how much time shall be given 
 to the discussion of any subject, and whether any 
 
THE GOVERNING GROUP 61 
 
 time shall be given thereto. It can therefore in 
 effect settle whether any particular measure shall 
 have a chance of passing into law. 
 
 Secondly, it has control of the order of the House. 
 It can settle what subjects may be discussed, and 
 what may be said on those subjects. 
 
 To the consideration of these matters we shaD 
 now proceed. 
 
f 
 
 III 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 AS IT IS 
 
Ill 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS IT IS 
 
 THE CONTROL OF THE TIME-TABLE 
 
 Often embedded in the stiff and unreal ritual of 
 our Parliamentary system you will find some frag- 
 ment which seems peculiarly fantastic and un- 
 meaning, because it is really, so to speak, the fossil 
 of a forgotten reality. One such case is the rule 
 which compels persons accepting office to submit 
 themselves to their constituents for re-election — 
 a rule dating from the time when the House of 
 Commons was supposed to be returned not to 
 " support " the Government, but to oppose and 
 criticise the Government. Another is the form 
 gone through at every opening of Parliament of 
 giving a first reading to a dummy bill before the 
 King's Speech is delivered. 
 
 The object of this curious ceremony is to affirm 
 the ancient privilege of the Commons to transact 
 whatever business they chose without reference 
 to the wishes of the Crown or its Ministers. It 
 dates from the time when the Crown and the 
 House were at war, and it emphasises the doctrine 
 
 66 5 
 
66 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 that the House can consider any subjects it likes, 
 and consider them in any order it hkes, and is 
 not bound to deal first with the matters brought 
 before it by the Ministers. In other words, it 
 affirms the absolute control of the House over its 
 own time. 
 
 The symbol is still visible, but, alas ! the fact it 
 represented is gone. The House no longer con- 
 trols its own time ; the House no longer chooses 
 its own subjects for discussion. These things are 
 now done for it by the Ministers of the Crown. 
 
 Five-sixths or more of the time of the House is, 
 under the present Standing Orders, at the absolute 
 disposal of the Government. It is devoted to the 
 discussion of Bills proposed by the Ministers, or to 
 the voting of supplies demanded by the Ministers. 
 A certain amount of time is assigned by the Minis- 
 ters to each matter, and at the end of that time 
 the closure automatically puts an end to dis- 
 cussion. It is true that it is a part of the game for 
 the Opposition to protest against such procedure, 
 but the protest is merely ceremonial ; for when a 
 change takes place, the new Government in- 
 variably forgets its past utterances and uses the 
 precedent set by its predecessor to restrict even 
 more closely the rights of private members. 
 Indeed, the farce of the Opposition protest has 
 begun to pall even on politicians, and Mr Balfour 
 has shown a disposition to drop it. 
 
 The private member has two and only two 
 opportunities (apart from Supply, which we shaU 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 67 
 
 discuss later) of bringing any question in which he 
 or his constituents may be specially interested 
 before the House. In the ordinary way one 
 afternoon a w^eek is set aside for the discussion 
 of business not brought forward by the two Front 
 Benches. Even this privilege is held on a very 
 insecure tenure. The Government can at any 
 time demand all the time which this nominally 
 representative and legislative assembly can give, 
 and towards the end of a busy session it usually 
 does so ; but during the early part of the session 
 a private member who is fortunate enough to 
 secure a day may bring any question he likes 
 before the House. The order of precedence for 
 such questions is settled by balloting among the 
 members. 
 
 The mode of bringing forward such a question 
 may take the form either of a Bill or a resolution, 
 but no opposed Bill has the smallest chance of 
 passing into law unless the Ministers are prepared 
 to grant special facilities. If this is not the case, 
 the Bill, even if it passes its second reading by 
 a large majority, is indefinitely shelved. We do 
 not believe that there has been within recent 
 years a single case of a private member's Bill, to 
 which any opposition was offered, passing into law 
 without special facilities from the Government. 
 There have been innumerable cases of such Bills 
 passed by large majorities in successive sessions, 
 and even in successive Parliaments, yet never 
 getting any further. 
 
68 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 If the member confines himself to a resolution, 
 desiring only to test the opinion of the House, it is 
 by no means certain that he will be able to do so. It 
 rests entirely with the Speaker to decide whether 
 he will accept the closure at the end of the debate, 
 so that a division may be taken before the House 
 automatically adjourns, and very frequently he 
 refuses to do so. 
 
 Moreover, it is nearly always possible for the 
 Government to prevent a division on an incon- 
 venient resolution by putting up one of its hench- 
 men to move a shelving amendment. No better 
 example of this could be chosen, nor any better 
 test of the breakdown of representative institu- 
 tions, as we now have them, than the lack of all 
 machinery for the bringing forward of public ques- 
 tions. This is sufficiently proved when we say that 
 so contemptuous a method as the above must, under 
 the present procedure of the House, be necessarily 
 successful. A good illustration of this method 
 was afforded when one of the authors of this book 
 raised the question of the secrecy of the Party 
 Funds. A " Liberal " barrister, Mr Buckmaster, 
 was approached by the officials of the Executive, 
 after full consultation with the Opposition Front 
 Bench, asking whether he would undertake to 
 nullify the debate. The matter was a ticklish 
 one ; when the motion was first tabled, many 
 " experts in procedure " gravely hinted that it 
 would be " out of order " — and it should be noted 
 that whether a motion is declared out of order or 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 69 
 
 not may not be known until the very moment 
 before it is supposed to come on for discussion. 
 Other hints were dropped as to the " pressure " — 
 that is the promise of advantage or the refusal of 
 advantage — that would be brought to bear ; that 
 is, that would be offered or threatened. The 
 task of nullifying the debate was refused by more 
 than one man ; but at last the legal gentleman in 
 question, presumably under some definite arrange- 
 ment agreeable to himself, tabled an amendment 
 to the effect that this secrecy was particularly bad 
 in the case of the Tariff Reform League. This, 
 of course, successfully put a stop to the discussion. 
 The Unionists moved a similar amendment re- 
 ferring to the Free Trade Union ; and the division, 
 instead of being upon the secrecy of the Party 
 Funds, was an ordinary party division between 
 Liberals and Tories. 
 
 It is satisfactory to know that the reprisal 
 threatened by one strong Radical among the many 
 who desired the original discussion, to wit, going 
 down to Cambridge and fighting Mr Buckmaster 
 at the next election, was unnecessary. Mr Buck- 
 master lost his seat, and the two Front Benches 
 were no doubt relieved to discover that they had 
 thus escaped from their bargain. 
 
 Another expedient for preventing the raising 
 of inconvenient questions by men acting in the 
 interests of their constituents is the " blocking 
 motion." 
 
 There is an absurd rule by which, if a member 
 
70 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 has given notice of a motion dealing with a certain 
 question, no other member can discuss that 
 question till the first member's motion is disposed 
 of. As there is no obligation on the first member 
 to move his motion, the Government finds it easy 
 to burke discussion whenever it has a mind to do 
 so. It has only to induce some obedient supporter 
 to give notice of a motion that he has not the 
 faintest intention of moving, and by keeping that 
 motion indefinitely on the notice paper it can 
 successfully prevent any other member from 
 raising the question it desires to evade. In this 
 way Mr Rees, now a knight or baronet in some 
 order or other, distinguished himself during the 
 Parliament of 1906. The most conspicuous ex- 
 ample of an order proceeding from the two Front 
 Benches to prevent discussion, by means of this 
 fraudulent artifice in the hands of a subservient 
 placeman, was the blocking of discussion on 
 India, a matter of the most active and grave con- 
 cern to everyone in these islands. 
 
 The method of raising questions by a motion for 
 the adjournment of the House is hedged round 
 with restrictions. It can only be done in the case 
 of " a matter of urgent public importance," and 
 the Speaker is the sole judge of what constitutes 
 such a matter. The position and reputation of the 
 Chair depend in this matter, perhaps more than in 
 any other, upon a technical impartiality, and it 
 should be recognised that in no matter is this im- 
 partiality more really or constantly exercised. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 71 
 
 The adjournment of the House is a grave matter 
 interfering with the convenience and desires of 
 many ; it is exceedingly important to prevent its 
 being frivolously moved. It may justly be said 
 that if the matter really is of urgent public import- 
 ance, the Chair still allows it to be an excuse for 
 moving the adjournment. But — and this is 
 essential — the mover must find forty members to 
 support him, and if the Front Benches are united 
 in desiring to prevent discussion, this is generally 
 very difficult ; for outside the Irish party, which 
 will probably have no concern in the matter, it is 
 not easy to find forty members present in the 
 House at one time (the House of Commons is 
 usually attended by a dozen or twenty members at 
 the most) who can afford to sacrifice the advan- 
 tages in honour and money which the two Front 
 Benches have to offer. 
 
 The general truth, then, is that the time of the 
 House has passed absolutely into the hands of the 
 little group that governs. The House cannot dis- 
 cuss what questions it pleases, or pass what laws 
 it pleases. It can only wait obediently for the 
 questions raised by the Government, and vote 
 blindly for the laws which the Government chooses 
 to introduce. 
 
 The vital importance of this phrase, " the time 
 of the House," may escape the general reader. It 
 lies in the fact that the Government (or, as our 
 ancestors would have called it, " the Crown ") can 
 not only automatically fix how the time of the 
 
72 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 House shall be used, but can also decide how much 
 time there shall be. That is the vital point. It is as 
 though at a company meeting the directors had the 
 power not only of sa3dng what might be and what 
 might not be raised by shareholders, not only the 
 power of apportioning the time in which discussion 
 should take place on each point, but also the power 
 of saying whether such and such a question or all 
 questions should be debated in meetings of so 
 many hours' duration, and of fixing the number of 
 meetings. Thus foreign affairs are not discussed 
 ab all in the English Parliament ; a few hours a 
 year are perfunctorily allotted to them ; and the 
 same is true of all those departments in which 
 it is desired to avoid discussion. If the process 
 continues we shall have in a few years no 
 matter of vital and real interest open to dis- 
 cussion at a sufficient length for public opinion 
 to be expressed, or for criticism to be allowed 
 any weight. 
 
 There remains only a third method besides 
 motions and bills, and that is the direct asking of 
 a " question " in " question time." No speech is 
 permitted, of course, on such an occasion, nor any 
 characterisation of Ministerial action (though the 
 Minister may make a speech in reply, and say what 
 he likes about the questioner) : nothing but a 
 bare answer can be expected, and even that may 
 be refused. But, such as it is, this method of 
 keeping a subject alive by questions is the only — 
 though paltry — procedure left to a member of the 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 73 
 
 House of Commons who desires to act in that 
 assembly in any representative character. ^ 
 
 With its efficiency and action we will deal in the 
 next section. 
 
 HOW IT WORKS 
 
 That feature which the general public has least 
 acquaintance with in political life is also the 
 feature with which it should most concern itself : 
 the machinery whereby representative action is 
 nullified. 
 
 But, first of all, it is important to point out that 
 this machinery is not a cause of the decline of 
 Parliament ; it is only a limiting condition of that 
 decline. In other words, the machinery whereby 
 all representative action of consequence is repressed 
 is not a machinery continually applied nor acting 
 regularly upon an organised body of resistance. 
 Indeed, it would be better if this were so, for then 
 its daily practice, the friction arising from it, and 
 the public discussion which would necessarily 
 follow, might weaken this particular section of the 
 pathological conditions we are examining. This 
 province of the disease might stand some chance of 
 remedy. 
 
 The machinery which is here described is there- 
 fore most infrequent in its action, and not of a 
 sort which can catch the public eye either by its 
 
 1 Thus questions were tlie only opportunity Mr Wedgwood 
 and others had of exposing the farce of the " Conference " of last 
 summer. They were not ineffective. 
 
74 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 outstanding character or by the frequency of its 
 action. It applies only to rare and exceptional 
 revolts against resistance. 
 
 In order to explain how this machinery applies, 
 let us imagine some strong popular demand corre- 
 sponding to the overwhelming popular demand 
 for the immediate abolition of Chinese labour in 
 the South African mines. 
 
 In the case of that popular demand we all know 
 what happened. The country not only by an 
 overwhelming majority, but with an overwhelming 
 intensity, gave the mandate that the Chinese 
 should go, and that they should go at once. It 
 was a mandate based upon a mixture of popular 
 emotions, not the least of which was the desire to 
 chastise those South African Jews who had com- 
 pelled our politicians as their servants to exploit 
 for financial ends the popular enthusiasm in the 
 matter of the South African war. It was, again, 
 a demand for the signal punishment of the first 
 attempt made since modern industrialism began, 
 to move labour in large batches from place to place 
 upon a scheme arranged by capital for the interests 
 of capital alone. Popular instinct seized at once 
 upon the enormous danger of that initial experi- 
 ment, and perceived with sound sense that if it were 
 not made an example of, and if the South African 
 Jews were not taught a sharp lesson, the whole 
 outlook and theory upon which this vile experi- 
 ment had been based would become the permanent 
 theory and outlook of international capitalism. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 75 
 
 There were other features in the demand, some 
 ignorant and some unwise, but the demand and the 
 mandate were undeniably there. 
 
 The poHticians, when the Parliament of 1906 had 
 met, paid no attention whatsoever to the mandate. 
 The leaders of the two Front Benches consulted 
 with the South African Jews as to what would best 
 suit their convenience. The South African Jews 
 decided that they would be poorer men unless the 
 Chinese were left to work out their contract, and 
 especially insisted that the fresh batches of Chinese 
 whom they had already ordered through the agency 
 of the last Government should be supplied to them. 
 They were indifferent to what should happen after 
 the contracts slowly expired, for by that time local 
 labour would be plentiful again, and cheap, — at 
 the end of the full four years probably cheaper 
 than the continuation of the employment of the 
 Chinese. 
 
 Such were the orders of these gentlemen, and the 
 politicians had nothing to do but to obey. But 
 how was it that, with the House of Commons 
 crammed with men who had received a definite 
 mandate from the electors to do the exact opposite 
 to this, nothing was done to satisfy that mandate ? 
 
 Some millions of the electors must have been 
 asking themselves that question in their bewilder- 
 ment at the action of Parliament immediately 
 after the election ; and of those millions a few 
 hundreds at the most can have known how the 
 thing was worked, so secret and so cunning are 
 
76 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 the workings by which the senile and fraudulent 
 system proceeds. 
 
 Let us suppose a few years hence (for the popu- 
 lace are just now too weary of the politicians 
 to initiate any democratic movement) a similar 
 definite mandate upon some one subject. 
 
 For instance, let us suppose that the Duke of 
 Battersea, a money dealer of sorts, born Heaven 
 knows where, starts in the future some big develop- 
 ment scheme involving the control over many 
 thousands of labourers, the compulsory purchase 
 of much land, and in general so large a public 
 action as makes him need for its achievement the 
 right to make by-laws and to enforce them under 
 penalty, the right to segregate and to punish 
 labourers, and the right to maintain a special 
 police. 
 
 The hypothesis is not extravagant when you 
 consider the pace at which industrialism is develop- 
 ing in this country, and the way in which the 
 House of Commons has become the mere servant 
 of the wealthy. 
 
 It is quite conceivable that the working classes 
 would have brains and courage enough to revolt ; 
 there might be some such movement as there was 
 over Chinese labour : a true popular initiative and 
 mandate. It is quite certain that if any such 
 symptoms of freedom showed themselves the 
 Government Bench and the '* Official Opposi- 
 tion " would combine, as they did over Chinese 
 Labour, to repel the popular demand. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 77 
 
 It is equally certain that they would succeed. 
 The electorate feel that in their bones now, and 
 that is what makes them indifferent to the whole 
 dirty business. 
 
 But how, precisely, would the bosses succeed ? 
 What is the machinery which works the trick ? 
 It cannot be too often repeated that the prime 
 cause of the whole matter is the profound corrup- 
 tion of the Parliamentary system. Batches of 
 lawyers expecting money rewards from the two 
 Front Benches, not one of whom would dream of 
 acting as a representative : batches of elderly 
 wealthy men waiting for honours from the two 
 Front Benches, not one of whom would be such a 
 fool as to lose the honour by representative action : 
 groups of wealthy men who by the aid they afford 
 to others, by the fear their economic power inspires, 
 by their control over the Press by advertisements 
 or direct ownership, are more powerful over their 
 Parliamentary dependants than the officers of an 
 army over their commands, and who know that 
 representative action would lose them their Govern- 
 ment contracts and their lucrative opportunities 
 in the un-free dependencies of the Crown : some 
 fifty or sixty or more, each of whom regards him- 
 self as a candidate for the reception of public 
 money in the form of a salary, and that salary 
 only to be obtained by abstaining from any repre- 
 sentative action and obeying the two Front 
 Benches : the Secretaries of Ministers and of 
 ex-Ministers ; the thirty or forty occupants of the 
 
78 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Front Benches themselves — all these between 
 them make up (when we have excepted the Irish 
 Party, which is happily independent of such intrigue) 
 the great bulk of Parliament. 
 
 But among those hundreds some few would 
 probably be found — perhaps as many as half a 
 dozen — who by temperament or even by self- 
 interest and calculation would be moved to 
 express the demand of the many millions who had 
 constituted the new Parliament. Some one or 
 two, in other words, will attempt to act in a repre- 
 sentative fashion. It is then that the machinery 
 would begin to work, and that machinery we will 
 now proceed to explain. 
 
 The new Parliament has met ; the first few days, 
 in which the memory of the election is still strong 
 upon members, are not yet expired. The earliest 
 opportunity for action occurs in the debate on the 
 Address. After the Speech from the Throne has 
 been delivered, the House of Commons debates 
 for a few days upon the reply to that Address. 
 And any dissatisfaction at the action or inaction 
 of the Government, as expressed in the King's 
 Speech, must take the form of an amendment 
 regretting that such and such a policy has not been 
 mentioned in that Speech, or has been mentioned 
 in it. 
 
 Mr Brown and Mr Jenks note the absence in the 
 King's Speech of any mention of the Government's 
 intention to cancel the policy of the last Govern- 
 ment with regard to the great Land Development 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 79 
 
 Company formed by the Duke of Battersea, with 
 its proposed obnoxious by-laws, special police, 
 and other features odious to the populace. On 
 this point the elections turned, and, like Chinese 
 labour, the elections turned on it by a spontaneous 
 effort of the populace, in spite of the vigorous, not 
 to say frenzied, efforts of the bosses ; among whom 
 must be included of course not only the leaders 
 of the two Front Benches, but the whole vast 
 machine which, by secret funds, innumerable paid 
 agents, local and central, etc., ''runs" a General 
 Election. 
 
 Well, Mr Brown and Mr Jenks put down an 
 amendment on the paper, humbly regretting that 
 His Gracious Majesty (who is by a Constitutional 
 fiction the author of his own speech) has not 
 promised to cancel the Duke of Battersea' s little 
 job. 
 
 Nothing can prevent these gentlemen putting 
 down the said amendment. So wide are our 
 liberties that unless the phrases chosen contain 
 expressions which the ofhcials of the House (who 
 are part of the machine) consider offensive or 
 intemperate or frivolous, nothing could prevent 
 Mr Brown and Mr Jenks from putting that amend- 
 ment down. 
 
 Now, the curious reader will note that nothing 
 prevents anyone of the remaining six hundred 
 men from putting down amendments, or, to speak 
 more accurately, nothing prevents the so-called 
 " Opposition " half from doing so ; for it is part of 
 
80 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 the game that an " Opposition " man putting down 
 an amendment to a Government policy will not 
 spoil his future chance of a salary, contract, 
 baronetcy or what not, on condition that he puts 
 nothing down which has not been allowed by 
 secret understanding between the two Front 
 Benches. When, therefore, it is heard that Mr 
 Brown and Mr Jenks, manfully sacrificing all hope 
 of baronetcies, contracts, or salaries, have put down 
 their highly representative amendment, a dozen 
 or twenty amendments will appear on the paper 
 dealing with as many different subjects, many of 
 which probably were not and could not be in the 
 mind of any of the electorate at the time of the 
 election. Any subject will do so long as it serves 
 to swell the list. 
 
 Therefore, even if discussion were not limited, 
 and if the rules of the House allowed discussion 
 to be free, Mr Brown and Mr Jenks' amendment 
 might come very late in the list, and some other 
 hare might have been started to entertain the 
 public, so that their action should fall flat. 
 
 But these " even ifs " do not apply. 
 
 In the first place there is your " Official Opposi- 
 tion Amendment." You may protest that the 
 Constitution and the very theory of self-govern- 
 ment can know nothing of an " Official Opposi- 
 tion " ; that the phrase in connection with self- 
 government or representation is ridiculous ; but 
 it is the chief reality of the machine and the most 
 notable wheel in the empty grinding of Parliament. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 81 
 
 The Official Opposition Amendment must be 
 taken first. It is, of course, upon some subject 
 agreed upon between the bosses, and not within 
 a hundred miles of the popular mandate which 
 Mr Brown and Mr Jenks have attempted to express. 
 What of the other amendments ? Are they 
 taken by lot or in the order of time in which they 
 were set down ? By no means. They are taken 
 in the order in which the Chair decides, and the 
 Chair is of course one with the two Front Benches 
 in such matters. I mean where the matter is of 
 real and sufficient gravity. For here, as else- 
 where throughout this book, it must be protested 
 that among the wheels of the machine that which 
 is least open to criticism, and among the decayed 
 functions of Parliament that which preserves 
 the old and free conditions most, is the Chair. 
 Subject to the rules and traditions which so greatly 
 favour the bosses and their nominees, the action 
 of the Chair is singularly impartial ; but when 
 something really grave — like Chinese Labour, for 
 instance — which the two Front Benches had 
 determined to settle in a manner of their own is 
 on the carpet, the Chair cannot be impartial, for 
 to be impartial would be to take the side of the 
 people against the poUticians, and it is no part of 
 Mr Speaker's duty to consider the people. He is 
 there to ^ive, subject to the rules and customs 
 of Parliament, a fair and equal chance to every 
 member, and no more, to preserve the courtesies 
 of debate, to keep speakers to the point, and so 
 
 6 
 
82 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 forth. If he were to give Mr Brown and Mr Jenks 
 priority over, say, Mr Isaacs' amendment about the 
 Seychelles Islands, he would be giving preference 
 to two men as against forty or fifty who have 
 assured him that Mr Isaacs' amendment is what 
 they really care about. It is quite certain, there- 
 fore, that Mr Brown and Mr Jenks will come very 
 far down the list, perhaps at the end of it. 
 
 Even so, by patiently waiting, their turn will 
 come ; and if the electorate is not by that time sick 
 and tired of the whole wretched humbug, they could, 
 by moving that amendment, put the bosses into a 
 very pretty hole : for those who vote against the 
 amendment would be flying in face of their election 
 promises so very soon after the election, and while 
 opinion was still so hot, that they might jeopardise 
 their seats, and with their seats the prospective 
 baronetcies, salaries, and contracts aforesaid. 
 
 But wait a moment. The turn of Mr Brown and 
 Mr Jenks will never come. The bosses have not 
 only the power of raising sham discussion, they 
 have not only the power of extending to any number 
 those sham discussions, they have also the power 
 over Time ; it is the leaders of the two Front 
 Benches who decide in consultation among them- 
 selves, and after discovering from their local agents 
 and central agents whether the popular temper is 
 getting dangerous upon the subject, how long the 
 debate on the Address will last. They curtainly 
 will not let it last long enough for Mr Brown and 
 Mr Jenks to enjoy their little show. These valiant 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 83 
 
 men have sacrificed the " prizes " of the game and 
 all their chance of boodle for nothing at all. 
 
 What further action can they take ? 
 
 As we have seen in the former section, by the 
 theory and practice of Parliament three oppor- 
 tunities, and three alone, are open to these worthy 
 men in their quixotic desire to represent their 
 constituents : — 
 
 (a) Any member of Parliament may bring in a 
 Bill ; he may do so under what is called the Ten 
 Minutes Rule, or he may do so in a more thorough 
 manner if he happens to have the luck of the ballot. 
 
 Members ballot for the right to bring in so manj^ 
 Bills ; and each individual member's chance may 
 be ascertained by dividing the number 670 by the 
 number of days which the party bosses allow for 
 this amiable and harmless entertainment. Some- 
 times they will allow as much as, say, twenty-five 
 days ; then Jenks and Brown may count on having 
 about one chance in twelve between them ; but if 
 they only allow a dozen days, then Jenks and 
 Brown only have one chance in twenty-four. 
 
 Let not the reader imagine that bringing in a 
 Bill is the simple thing that laymen would take it 
 to be. The Bill may be out of order ; it may be 
 supposed to cover the ground of what the Govern- 
 ment have already decided to do, or it may con- 
 travene any one of those obscure and almost 
 innumerable rules which not half a dozen experts 
 have mastered in the last thirty years. A Bill 
 brought in under the Ten Minutes Rule is of course 
 
84 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 an absurdity from the point of view of getting 
 anything done. Bills are thus brought in only to 
 give public notice of the grievance they are to 
 remedy, or the right it is hoped to confer. But a 
 Bill brought in through the luck of the ballot has 
 the advantage of a whole afternoon's debate. 
 
 What then ? 
 
 Well, after that there is nothing, unless the two 
 Front Benches agree to allow further stages ; the 
 bringing in of a Bill simply means an afternoon 
 wasted in academic debate. A Bill becomes an 
 Act of Parliament only after it has been read a 
 first time, read a second time, debated in its 
 general principles, then sat upon by a Committee, 
 special or general ; then in its amended stage read 
 a third time, then passed by the House of Lords 
 and assented to by the Crown. The two Front 
 Benches, having control of the time of the House 
 of Commons, always see to it that no Bill which 
 does not suit their convenience shall proceed 
 beyond the first formal stage. And none ever 
 does. When you read in your paper of how the 
 Hon. Charles Lake cleverly piloted the Washer- 
 women's Bill through Committee, and after years 
 of struggle made it law, " though it was but a 
 private member's Bill," you are reading one of 
 those conventional falsehoods which are used to 
 deceive the public. There is no such thing as 
 piloting a Bill. What you do, if you have a private 
 Bill to which the bosses cannot object (as we may 
 conceive the Hon. Charles Lake's Bill to have been). 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 85 
 
 is to put pressure by means of lady friends or your 
 newspaper, or in some other way, upon the bosses, 
 so that when they can allow time in a slack moment 
 the whole of the stages shall be gone through. 
 The Bills that pass in this way have never any real 
 significance. 
 
 We need hardly say that Jenks and Brown's 
 Bill to prevent the Government backing up the 
 Duke of Battersea's concession, even if they had 
 the luck of the ballot, would never go to Committee. 
 
 But would it be divided upon ? 
 
 It might or might not be divided upon, according 
 as the two Front Benches chose. It might be 
 decided that the matter was of such importance 
 that a bare afternoon's discussion was not enough 
 for a division to be allowed upon it. Or again, an 
 amendment might be accepted and debated in 
 its place ; at any rate the poor off-chance of 
 bringing in a Bill is useless. 
 
 (6) A member with a similar luck in the ballot 
 may use his day to bring in a motion. 
 
 A motion, of course, is of no legal effect what- 
 soever. It is mere hot air. It has the one advan- 
 tage of provoking a division, but here again that 
 division will or will not take place, precisely as the 
 Front Benches may decide. ^ 
 
 ^ When one of the joint authors of this book brought in his 
 motion for the auditing of the secret Party Funds, the Front 
 Benches put up an amendment which turned the debate into a 
 discussion upon the abstract economic merits of Free Trade, and 
 to this day no one knows the opinion of any member of the 
 House of Commons, as expressed by vote, upon this most corrupt 
 feature of all the corrupt features of Parliamentary life. 
 
86 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Upon Brown and Jenks' motion, if they have 
 the luck of the ballot (say one in twelve or one in 
 twenty or one in thirty), and bring it in, no division 
 will be taken : the Front Benches will see to that. 
 
 Of course, it need hardly be pointed out that 
 Brown and Jenks bringing in a motion or a Bill 
 to this effect could only be done if it were done 
 with the utmost secrecy. If the two Front 
 Benches got wind of it, na,y, if any but a few of 
 their hundreds of supporters got wind of it, the 
 bosses would arrange with some hack who was 
 waiting for a salary or a title to put down a ficti- 
 tious motion upon the paper. Once a man has 
 a motion down, no similar motion can be debated ; 
 but, by a rule invented for the purpose of carrying 
 on the machine, a motion may be kept on the 
 paper, although the mover refuses to have it 
 debated. The hack, therefore, will put down a 
 motion, covering the point which Brown and 
 Jenks are going to raise, leave it indefinitely on 
 the paper, refuse to have it debated, and so prevent 
 its arising in the House at all. Thus a Liberal 
 manufacturer may solemnly put down a motion 
 to discuss the sale of peerages ; a Jew may put 
 down a motion to discuss the abuse of money- 
 lending ; a High Churchman a motion to discuss 
 the practices of the High Church ; a Catholic a 
 motion to provide for the inspection of convents, 
 and so forth. The action is, by the custom of 
 ParHament, taken in the Pickwickian sense. 
 
 (c) Brown and Jenks may ask questions. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 87 
 
 Such a point has the degradation of Parliament 
 reached that this shred of the old representative 
 power is truly, literally, and without exaggeration, 
 the only active part of that power now remaining. 
 Small and inept as it would seem among a demo- 
 cratic people and in a free assembly, it is to-day, in 
 comparison with the rest that goes on in Parlia- 
 ment, of capital importance. 
 
 The Chair rules that no Minister is bound to 
 answer a question. How old this ruling may be 
 is not to the point ; it would in theory seem to 
 limit the value of questioning so strictly as almost 
 to destroy it. As a matter of fact, however, some 
 sort of answer is usually attempted. Nineteen- 
 twentieths of the questions asked concern adminis- 
 trative points on which the answer is not a Minister's, 
 but that of a permanent official for whom the 
 Minister speaks in the House. ^ 
 
 There is little doubt that this valuable, or com- 
 paratively valuable, privilege of questioning the 
 Ministers will be curtailed in the near future, for 
 it has already on several occasions given anxiety 
 to the two Front Benches. But for the moment 
 it is fairly free. Three whole quarters of an hour 
 a day are allotted to questions, and a supplemen- 
 tary question may be asked, arising out of the 
 original one. 
 
 1 This is notably the case with Foreign Office questions, as has 
 been conspicuously apparent in the last two Parliaments, where 
 the Foreign Minister had no personal knowledge of foreign 
 affairs, nor of the languages, places, peoples, etc., involved in 
 them. 
 
88 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 True, Ministerial answers on a point as important 
 as the Duke of Battersea's concession would be 
 valueless ; they would be ambiguous, general, 
 humorous, or quite off the point. But questions 
 habitually asked by Brown and Jenks would at 
 least suffice to keep the matter alive, and possibly 
 some particularly nasty side of the scandal, which 
 could not otherwise be ventilated, might be made 
 public in this fashion.^ 
 
 But though questions are thus valuable as 
 advertisement, they are quite useless as a means 
 of action. The Ayrshire Foundry scandal, for 
 instance, to which allusion has just been made in 
 a note, was exposed by means of questions to the 
 House of Commons, but it was kept from the 
 public, who are still in the main ignorant of it, and 
 no action whatever followed upon the exposure. 
 No one was punished, and the same thing might 
 happen again to-morrow, without any conse- 
 quences of unpleasantness to the culprits. 
 
 With these three methods — bills, motions, and 
 questions — the power of Brown and Jenks is ex- 
 hausted. We have seen that as methods of action 
 all three are useless. In other words, no repre- 
 sentative action on the chief matter of a general 
 election, if that matter has proceeded from the 
 electors and does not suit the private interests 
 of the professional politicians, can take place ; 
 and, so far as the representative power of 
 
 1 Thus the Ayrshire foundry scandal, in which Campbell- 
 Bannerman was mixed up, was exposed by means of questions. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 89 
 
 members is concerned, the House of Commons 
 is dead. 
 
 There can be all the sham fight you will upon 
 the sham issues which the bosses have arranged 
 between themselves before an election takes place, 
 but there can be no initiative on the part of the 
 electorate which shall have any chance of acting 
 upon the assembly at Westminster. 
 
 A CONCRETE EXAMPLE 
 
 In order to give the reader a clear idea of this 
 monstrosity (for it is no less), let him consider the 
 following case : Public circumstances have ren- 
 dered it acutely necessary to pay certain sums of 
 public money to a large class of individuals upon a 
 certain date, if wide-spread misery is to be avoided. 
 
 There is a conflict upon the area of distress which 
 this vote of public money is to cover. Some say 
 that the famine or what not is only acute in Lanca- 
 shire south of the Ribble ; but those who know 
 most about the local circumstances are confident 
 that the West Riding, though less hard hit than 
 South Lancashire, is still in acute necessity of 
 relief. 
 
 A Bill is drafted and introduced by the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, in the first clause of which 
 it is provided that on a certain date he shall be 
 authorised to pay such and such sums to author- 
 ities or individuals appearing later in the Bill. 
 The exact words run : 
 
90 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 " On or not later than the first of August 
 1910, every person hereinafter named, 
 and the authorities hereinafter named, 
 shall be entitled to receive . . . ." 
 
 and after that follow the amounts proposed. 
 
 Several clauses are necessary, twenty perhaps, 
 to make the Bill workable in view of the various 
 circumstances, previous laws, and local arrange- 
 ments affected by it. Let us suppose that the 
 fifteenth clause is that which, in effect, confines the 
 action of the Bill to South Lancashire. 
 
 Here we are dealing with an exceptionally 
 favourable case, for we suppose no opposition from 
 those relatives and friends of Ministers who happen 
 to sit on the other Front Bench ; such a Bill would 
 be '' non-controversial." 
 
 But a number of amendments are suggested, for 
 though the principle of the Bill is accepted by 
 nearly everybody, yet many changes in its pro- 
 visions would make it more acceptable to this or 
 that interest in the House. The amendments are 
 put down ; advantage is, of course, taken of the 
 position by those few who oppose the Bill alto- 
 gether. The first amendment in order is one thus 
 framed : 
 
 " Distress ReHef Bill : Clause I., Line 6. — 
 Leave out from the word ' every ' to the 
 word ' receive,' and substitute the words 
 ' to every person hereinafter named there 
 shall be paid ' for the words so deleted." 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 91 
 
 Many other amendments are on the paper, but 
 this is the first of them, because it applies to the 
 earUest words in the Bill that can be amended at 
 all.^ On Clause XV., however, the really vital 
 amendment affecting some millions of human 
 beings, of immense importance in the eyes of many 
 members of the House, set down by them in several 
 forms, and of no less effect than to include the 
 whole of the West Riding in the measure, is to be 
 debated. It is known that the Treasury, from 
 motives of economy, desires to limit — as indeed 
 its Bill sets forth — the relief to South Lancashire 
 alone. 
 
 Now, then. This is what we will suppose to 
 happen in Committee. 
 
 The amendment suggesting that " to every 
 person shall be paid,'' instead of " every person 
 shall be entitled to receive/' comes on first. 
 
 The Chairman of Committees is in the Chair. He 
 calls upon the mover of the amendment, or selects 
 one name out of several if the amendment has been 
 put down by several people. The mover rises and 
 makes a speech, of not quite a page of Hansard ^ 
 in length ; at the end of that speech the amend- 
 
 1 The very first words of every Bill are a standing formula, 
 " Be it enacted by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, etc., etc." 
 
 2 Hansard's Keports— now succeeded by the Official Reports 
 — are (or were) the fullest available reports of speeches. Those 
 of all save men of Cabinet rank are somewhat condensed, but 
 they are sufficieDtly accurate to afford the most practical stan- 
 dard of measurement, both of time and of number, of words 
 occupied in a debate. The pages are close printed and in double 
 column. 
 
92 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 ment is proposed to the House. The Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer makes a short speech in reply, 
 saying that he does not see that the amendment is 
 of much value ; the mover gets up and answers 
 this short speech in another short speech, apolo- 
 gising for his amendment, and showing why he 
 put it down. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gets 
 up again, and makes a rather longer speech, re- 
 asserting his opinion that the amendment is of no 
 great value. After the Chancellor another Front 
 Bench man gets up and makes a speech in which 
 he says that the " Official Opposition " will not 
 support the amendment (sighs of relief on the part 
 of those who would have had to vote for the tom- 
 foolery if the Official Opposition had supported it). 
 When the Front Bench man has sat down, another 
 gentleman gets up and makes a rather longer 
 speech in support of the amendment ; he is fol- 
 lowed by a fifth speaker, who makes the longest 
 speech of all. Altogether, four pages of Hansard 
 are taken up on this absolutely futile point, there 
 is a division, and the absurd amendment is of 
 course lost. 
 
 Two more amendments, affecting the words 
 immediately following in the Bill, are duly debated, 
 and each duly withdrawn without division. A 
 fourth amendment (coming within two lines of 
 the first in this lengthy Bill) is to the effect that 
 the law shall be law " until Parliament otherwise 
 determines " — in other words, the law shall be law 
 until Parliament chooses to repeal it. Considering 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 93 
 
 that Parliament has the right to make and repeal 
 laws at pleasure, the plain man would imagine 
 such an amendment to be out of order. Nothing 
 of the kind. It is made the starting-point of a 
 perfectly enormous debate ! The mover speaks 
 for more than a page of Hansard ; the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer replies in another page ; a mem- 
 ber of the so-called '' Opposition " Front Bench 
 talks half a page ; three private members then 
 consume a page and a half. Another member of 
 the so-called " Opposition " Bench talks another 
 page ; yet another page is occupied by half a 
 dozen private members who take up a great deal of 
 the time of the House, but who are somewhat con- 
 densed in the official report. Then up gets the 
 " leader " of the " Opposition," and talks for a 
 mortal page and a half on this absurdity ; he 
 is followed by the Prime Minister for half a 
 page ; two more " Opposition " Front Bench 
 men and two private members account for 
 another page. And this ridiculous palaver is not 
 concluded until nearly nine pages of Hansard's 
 Reports are exhausted ! There is a division, 
 and (of course) the meaningless amendment is 
 lost. 
 
 Immediately after, in the very next line, it is 
 proposed to leave out the words " under this 
 Act." In other words, it is proposed to make a 
 verbal alteration which negatives the Bill. That 
 also is in order ! It is duly debated, and then — 
 great heavens ! — withdrawn ! In the same line 
 
94 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 yet another amendment proposes that the law 
 shall only work so long as its conditions are ful- 
 filled ; that is, that the law shall only be operative 
 so long as it can legally be operative. . . . And 
 that is in order ! And that is duly debated ! And 
 that in its turn, to the bewilderment of some un- 
 sophisticated member of the public watching from 
 the gallery, is withdrawn 1 
 
 In the very next line (and the Bill has perhaps 
 150 lines). . . . But we will not detain the reader 
 further. Let it suffice to say that when the whole 
 day has been exhausted, Parliament has advanced 
 in this sort of debate through exactly seven lines 
 of the Bill, and in that advance has changed absol- 
 utely nothing ! 
 
 Day follows day ; amendments of this sort pour 
 in one on top of the other, and at last, when per- 
 haps a tithe in mere space of the Bill has been thus 
 " debated," and long before the vital amendment 
 on Clause XV. has been reached, the two Front 
 Benches decide that the House must now turn to 
 other business, the rest of the Bill is closured, and 
 there is an end of it. The people of the West 
 Riding are left without relief, and, so far as they 
 are concerned, they need not have been at the 
 pains of sending their members to Westminster at 
 all ; their views and necessities have not been so 
 much as expressed. 
 
 The reader will be inclined to say that such 
 inanity, however far the degradation of Parlia- 
 ment may have fallen, is impossible ; that the 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 95 
 
 picture here drawn is a caricature, and can make no 
 pretence to be a true picture. 
 
 Well, for " South Lancashire " substitute des- 
 titute people of over seventy years of age ; sub- 
 stitute for the " Distress Relief Bill " the Old Age 
 Pensions Bill, and for " The West Riding " sub- 
 stitute " destitute old people between sixty-five and 
 seventy," and you have an exact and literal account 
 of what took place in the opening of the proceedings 
 in Committee in the summer of 1908, when the Old 
 Age Pensions Bill was being " piloted through the 
 House " — to use the professional phrase conse- 
 crated to that futile performance. The supreme 
 question, the one thing that most mattered to the 
 destitute, was dealt with precisely as a despotic 
 monarchy would deal mth it, but without the 
 moral right and position which lies behind a de- 
 spotic monarchy ; the procedure of the House had 
 been used simply to cheat the people, and very 
 effectively was that bit of cheating done. 
 
 " THE TONE OF THE HOUSE " 
 
 There pervades the House of Commons a certain 
 moral atmosphere conventionally called " the 
 Tone of the House." 
 
 All corporate bodies, a school, a regiment, a 
 household, present this phenomenon, and the 
 House of Commons is no exception to the rule. 
 
 *' The Tone of the House." would of course be 
 somewhat modified by a renewal of its personnel ; 
 
96 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 it would be greatly modified by even a slight modi- 
 fication of its rules ; it would not be the same were 
 a different type of man chosen for its officers. 
 
 In the absence of any of these changes it con- 
 tinues, changing only slightly as men change, and 
 the times. 
 
 It is the subject of deserved and widespread 
 ridicule ; men entering politics are warned by their 
 experienced friends against suffering its influence. 
 It is not a good moral atmosphere ; it is a stupid 
 and rather a degraded one, much lower than that 
 of the House of Lords, for instance, and not to be 
 compared with that of a good college or a good 
 regiment. But for the purposes of this book our 
 only concern is to ask how far it may be responsible 
 for that disease whose last phase and disastrous 
 effect we are here studying. How far is the Party 
 System, with its two sham sets of opponents, its 
 huge salaries and the rest, dependent upon " the 
 Tone of the House " 1 
 
 The answer of one who has had some years' 
 experience of that atmosphere can only be that 
 it is a far smaller factor in the Party System than 
 those of the public who are palled by " the Tone 
 of the House " when they come across it during 
 their presence at occasional debates might imagine. 
 " The Tone of the House " makes impossible any 
 stimulus applied from within : and that is true, let 
 it be remembered, of every traditional and cor- 
 porate body. Such stimuli are, from the point of 
 view of a corporate body's traditions, mere disorder, 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 97 
 
 and are resented as such. But it does not render 
 impossible decisive action ; what renders that 
 impossible, or rather very difficult, is the code of 
 rules under which the House now debates ; it is 
 only very occasionally that some subject of definite 
 national import can be brought up in the House of 
 Commons, and a man must be either very lucky in 
 the ballot or have some exceptional opportunity 
 to compel the House of Commons to consider any- 
 thing which the double machine does not want 
 considered. But it is not " the Tone of the House " 
 that prevents decisive action of this sort ; these 
 hundreds of men confined hour after hour in a 
 dreary building, the physical air of which is un- 
 wholesome and domestic decoration appalling, are 
 glad enough of any breeze, moral or material. It 
 may verily be said that an anarchist attempt to 
 blow the place up would, if the explosion were 
 sufficiently distant, be welcomed as a break in the 
 crass futility and monotony of the dull and wholly 
 empty round. There is indeed only one way in 
 which '' the Tone of the House " prevents action, 
 and therefore supports the hypocritical nonsense 
 of the professionals, and that is, that it tends to 
 capture any man whose motive is not whole- 
 heartedl}^ a motive of achievement. It is cer- 
 tainly an atmosphere in which it is much easier not 
 to bother, and a man who partly wants reform, but 
 partly also good fellowship, and a sense of ease in 
 his surroundings, will find after a very few months 
 
 that the proportion of his desire for reform to his 
 
 7 
 
98 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 other desires has sunk to zero. But " the Tone of 
 the House " is purely negative, even here, and 
 quite a few men sufficiently determined to destroy 
 the Front Bench arrangements from within could 
 do so ; a dozen would be amply sufficient.^ 
 
 No, " the Tone of the House " has never proved 
 sufficiently strong to prevent, on the rare occasions 
 when such a thing was possible, a damaging attack 
 upon the machine ; that is prevented in a manner 
 much more direct, namely, by the grip, through 
 secret Party Funds, the control of elections, 
 and the choice of candidates in the constituencies, 
 held upon Parliament by the machine. To these 
 practical points the reader must pay a parti- 
 cular attention. They are the most important 
 of all the concrete objects which reformers have 
 before them to attack. With their method of 
 corruption we will now deal. 
 
 1 It has often been suggested by those unacquainted with 
 Westminster that the breakdown of the Labour Party and its 
 absorption and digestion by the professional politicians was due 
 to this influence of " the Tone of the House." The suggestion 
 is plausible, but inaccurate. "The Tone of the House" cer- 
 tainly made the good speakers in the party much worse speakers 
 than they might have become — for " the Tone of the House " 
 is death to rhetoric ; but the definite capitulation of the Labour 
 men to the two Front Benches and the disappearance of the 
 Labour Party as an active force was due to something far less 
 subtle than any "Tone." It was due to a definite compact with 
 the Executive by which places, advantage in moving motions, 
 etc. — ultimately, perhaps, Cabinet rank — should be the price of 
 compromise ; tne bargain was accepted. 
 
IV 
 THE SECRET FUNDS 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
IV 
 
 THE SECRET FUNDS 
 
 ■-•■•■ 
 
 THE UNMENTIONABLE TRa'/H 
 
 t ■» .' ■' 
 
 It is characteristic that the most important fact 
 about EngUsh poHtics is the fact that nobody 
 mentions. The two party organisations of which 
 we have spoken are supported by means of two 
 huge war-chests. Money is urgently needed at 
 every point in the modern political game ; and 
 money is found. 
 
 Whence does that money come ? Whither does 
 it go ? These are questions which cannot be 
 answered with any certainty ; it is our whole case 
 that they cannot be so answered. The Party 
 Funds are secretly subscribed ; they are secretly 
 disbursed. No light is thrown upon their collec- 
 tion save that which the annual Honours List 
 furnishes. No light is thrown upon their expendi- 
 ture save that which the division list may supply. 
 But, briefly, it may be said that they are subscribed 
 by rich men who want some advantage, financial 
 or social, from the Government, and that they are 
 spent in paying the expenses of members of 
 
 101 
 
102 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Parliament — in other words, in corrupting the 
 legislature. 
 
 The total amount so raised and spent must 
 necessarily be a matter of conjecture. But there 
 is no doubt that it must be enormous. Anyone 
 who has had the good fortune to fight an election | 
 with the party organisation at his back knows that 
 he has onty to ask and to have. It is part of the 
 game for the party organisers to proclaim them- 
 selves to be in a state of perennial penury — to 
 declare that the raising of the funds was a matter 
 of immense difficulty, and to issue elaborate bogus 
 appeals to " working men " and others to give 
 their mites to the cause. As a matter of fact, there 
 will never be any lack of funds for either party so 
 long as each has its fair share of power and patron- 
 age and the supply of peerages and baronetcies 
 is unchecked. 
 
 The funds are expended exactly as the Secret 
 Service Funds of Walpole were expended — in 
 buying votes. The affair is more delicately 
 arranged than it was in Walpole's time. Instead 
 of paying members of Parliament, after they are 
 elected, to vote in accordance with the wishes of 
 the Government, the governing gang take care 
 that no one shall be elected a member of Parlia- 
 ment who is not prepared so to vote. This is 
 certainly more decent, probably cheaper, and has 
 the enormous advantage of eliminating the chance 
 of an incorruptible member. In principle it is the 
 same thing. The effect of paying a man's election 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 103 
 
 expenses out of a secret fund at the disposal of 
 the party organisers is that the member becomes 
 responsible not to his constituents, but to the 
 caucus which pays him. If he opposes some fad 
 of the party organisers or their paymasters, how- 
 ever popular his attitude may be with the electors, 
 the governing gang will find a way to get rid of 
 him, either by the withdrawal of funds, by pressure 
 on the local organisation, or, if all other methods 
 fail, by running an official party candidate against 
 him. 
 
 But what must especiall}^ be insisted on is this, 
 that the very existence of this powerful engine for 
 the corruption of Parliamentary representation is 
 carefully kept secret from the mass of the people. 
 Not one man in thirty knows that there are such 
 things as Party Funds ; not one man in a hundred 
 has the faintest idea of how they are raised and 
 spent ; not one man in a thousand realises that 
 they are almost the most important factor in 
 English politics. A deliberate reserve is observed 
 on both sides concerning the whole subject. The 
 politicians do not want it ventilated. They love 
 darkness rather than light — for a reason mentioned 
 in Scripture, but veiled impenetrably from the 
 modern intellect. 
 
 THE SALE OF LEGISLATIVE POWER 
 
 The ordinary method of replenishing the Party 
 Funds is by the sale of peerages, baronetcies, 
 knighthoods, and other honours in return for sub- 
 
104 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 scriptions. This traffic is notorious. Everyone 
 acquainted in the smallest degree with the inside of 
 politics knows that there is a market for peerages 
 in Downing Street, as he knows that there is a 
 market for cabbages in Covent Garden ; he could 
 put his finger upon the very names of the men who 
 have bought their '' honours." Yet the ordinary 
 man is either ignorant of the truth or only darkly 
 suspects it. And most of those who know about it 
 are afraid to bring the facts to light by quoting 
 names and instances, because the administration 
 of our law of libel weighs the scales of justice 
 heavily in favour of the rich, and because a partic- 
 ular case could only be proved if one were able to 
 do — what one would not perhaps be allowed to 
 do — to subpoena the party managers and demand 
 that the party accounts should be brought into 
 court. 
 
 Perhaps the best way, on the whole, to bring home 
 to the average man the real nature of the scandal 
 is for him to glance through the Honours List for 
 any year and ask himself why any of the people 
 mentioned therein were honoured. The case of 
 peerages is specially strong, because a peerage con- 
 veys not only dignity but legislative power. A 
 Peer is a Senator. He is supposed to be a man 
 called to the Council of the Nations because he is 
 in some way especially fitted to advise on some 
 matters of public policy. Now, among ten peers 
 created during the last twenty years you could 
 pick out some half-dozen answering passably to 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 105 
 
 53 
 
 that description — Lords Peel, Kitchener, Curzon, 
 Morley of Blackburn, Fisher, and a few more. 
 Why were the rest made peers ? On what con- 
 ceivable ground is it claimed that their services 
 are necessary to the Government of the Nation ? 
 
 Take only the Birthday Honours List for the 
 year 1910, framed by the advice of a " Liberal 
 Government in the act of denouncing " the Peers 
 in foolish and immoderate language. It includes 
 seven peers. Coronets were bestowed on the Rt. 
 Hon. R. K. Causton, Sir Walter Foster, Sir 
 Hudson Kearley, Sir Weetman Pearson, Sir 
 WilHam Hay Holland, Mr Freeman-Thomas, and 
 Sir Christopher Furness. Among the recipients 
 of lesser honours are one of the '' Liberal " scions 
 of the great house of Harmsworth — a brother of 
 Lord NorthcKffe of the Isle of Thanet, whom a 
 Conservative Government lately thought worthy 
 to be a member of the Senate, — Mr (now Sir 
 Alfred) Mond of Brunner, Mond & Co., and a Mr 
 Charles (or Carl) Maj^er. 
 
 Now, considering only the peers, what are their 
 qualifications ? Remember that the qualification 
 required is a qualification not merely for public 
 honours, but for a seat in the Senate, and legis- 
 lative power equal even in theory to that of some 
 ten to thirty thousand ordinary men, and in 
 practice, of course, indefinitely greater. 
 
 Sir Walter Foster (Lord Ilkeston) is of the 
 seven the one of whom it could best be maintained 
 that he deserved his peerage on public grounds. 
 
106 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 He is a distinguished medical man, and an 
 eminent man of science. A fact which probably 
 weighed more with those who ennobled him was 
 that he had been President of the National Liberal 
 Federation. But the true reason for his elevation 
 was undoubtedly that he consented to give up a 
 safe seat in the House of Commons in order to 
 make room for Colonel Seely, one of the Front 
 Benchers, whose own constituents had rejected 
 him. 
 
 Mr Causton (now Lord South wark) is a very 
 wealthy man, who held during the years 1906 to 
 1910 the unpaid office of Paymaster of the Forces. 
 He was rejected by the electors of Southwark in 
 January 1910, and probably received his new 
 honour as a sort of consolation prize and in re- 
 cognition of his previous services to the Party. 
 But, remember, it was much more than an honour. 
 It was a right to make and unmake laws for 
 England. 
 
 Sir Christopher Furness (now Lord Furness) is 
 the head of a great engineering and shipbuilding 
 firm, a very rich man, and a pillar of the Liberal 
 Party. He was elected for West Hartlepool at 
 the General Election of January 1910, but was un- 
 seated on petition for the errors and irregularities 
 of his agents. He himself, of course, left the court 
 without a stain on his character. He promptly 
 received a coronet, and the right to make and 
 unmake laws. 
 
 Sir William Holland (created Lord Rotherham) 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 107 
 
 was an enormously rich cotton-owner of Lanca- 
 shire. No reason can be assigned for giving him 
 and his heirs in perpetuity the right to legislate 
 except his great wealth and the use he probably 
 made of it in support of his party. 
 
 Sir Hudson Kearley (now Lord Devonport) was 
 the head of a very large firm of importers and 
 merchants. He made a great deal of money in 
 trade, and probably spent some of it in the service 
 of his party. He also served gratuitously as Chair- 
 man of the Port of London Authority. Nothing 
 else of importance is known of him ; and the reasons 
 for his elevation have not been divulged. 
 
 Mr Freeman Freeman-Thomas (now Lord 
 Willingdon) was another wealthy and well-con- 
 nected Liberal M.P. He is the grandson of Lord 
 Hampden, and the son-in-law of Lord Brassey. 
 He was prominently associated with Lord Rose- 
 bery's ill-starred " Liberal League." Nothing 
 but party services can be alleged as an excuse for 
 ennobling him. 
 
 Sir Weetman Pearson is the head of a great con- 
 tracting company, to which Mr Lloyd-George, 
 junior, son of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 has recently been articled. He is a very rich 
 man, and there is an end of it. He is now Lord 
 Cowdray. 
 
 These examples are all taken from last year's 
 Honours List of the present Liberal Government. 
 But it must not be supposed that the examination 
 of any Conservative Honours List would yield 
 
108 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 results in any way more respectable. In point of 
 fact nothing is better calculated to show the essen- 
 tial unity of the two rings which run the " Liberal " 
 and " Conservative " parties than a comparison of 
 the way in which peerages are bestowed by both. 
 The " Liberals " are perhaps the worst sinners in that 
 they make democratic professions which are not 
 made (or at anyrate not made so strenuously) by 
 their opponents. But this is really all the differ- 
 ence between them. Indeed, it often happens 
 that rich families contribute to both party war- 
 chests, and so get a double share of recognition. 
 
 The family of Guest, a wealthy family, with 
 large estates in Dorsetshire, were for many years 
 Conservatives, and their powerful territorial in- 
 fluence made them a tower of strength to Con- 
 servatism in that part of England. The head of 
 the family, Ivor Guest, received the title of Lord 
 Wimborne from his party in 1880. In 1904 the 
 Guests passed over to the Liberal side, and the 
 tactics by which they had brought the truths of 
 Conservatism home to their tenants were now 
 used to put before them with equal cogency an 
 opposite view. The Hon. Ivor Guest, the eldest 
 son of Lord Wimborne, was particularly active 
 in promoting the political creed to which he had 
 been so recently converted. He performed in its 
 support the functions which bear in the Party 
 System the technical name of "social." In no 
 other respect was he other than a mediocrity. 
 In the crisis of 1909, just when the politicians 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 109 
 
 were loudest in their denunciation of the Peers, 
 the Guest peerage was actually doubled, and the 
 Hon. Ivor Guest became Lord Asby St Ledger. In 
 his case it cannot even be pleaded, as some will per- 
 haps plead in the cases of Sir Weetman Pearson or 
 Sir William Holland, that he has served his country 
 as an organiser of enterprise and industry. He 
 never in his life did anything at all to merit special 
 notice, nor ever will. Yet a Liberal Government 
 thought him a proper recipient of that hereditary 
 legislative power which they have pretended to 
 hold in abhorrence. 
 
 A significant case may be noted in the same 
 Honours List which we have just examined. Not 
 very many years have passed since a Conservative 
 Government moved the derision of the world by 
 creating Mr Alfred Harmsworth first a baronet 
 and then a peer, with the title of Lord Northcliffe 
 of the Isle of Thanet. Lord Northcliffe has no 
 children, so that it might be expected that with the 
 death of its first possessor the title would also die. 
 But it is evident that our rulers do not think fit 
 that the memory of so remarkable an event as the 
 enrolment of the proprietor of Answers among 
 the barons of England should so soon perish. 
 Though Lord Northcliffe has no sons, he has a 
 large company of brothers, and it will be noted 
 that one of these has been chosen by a Liberal 
 Government for a baronetcy, and this will doubt- 
 less be for him, as it was for his brother, a stepping- 
 stone to full nobility. Sir Harold Harmsworth 
 
no THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 has not even the claims of Lord Northcliffe to 
 distinction. Lord Northcliffe at least produced 
 Answers and The Daily Mail. We are as 
 yet unaware of anything good or bad that Sir 
 Harold has produced. Nevertheless, the new 
 peerage, which we may confidently expect in a 
 year or so, should the Liberals remain in power, 
 will at anyrate serve to show that what the Con- 
 servative Party managers have planted, the 
 Liberal Party managers are only too ready to 
 water. 
 
 THE SALE OF POLICIES 
 
 The sale of honours, including the sale of legislative 
 power, is the ordinary method by which the Party 
 Funds are replenished, but it is by no means the 
 most socially mischievous method. Side by side 
 with the traffic in honours there is a much more 
 insidious traffic in policies. Many rich men 
 subscribe secretly to the Party Funds in order to 
 get a " pull " or a measure of control over the 
 machine which governs the country — sometimes 
 to promote some private fad of their own, but more 
 often simply to promote their commercial interests. 
 
 It is notorious that the late Mr Cecil Rhodes did 
 this on a large scale. Letters have been published 
 which passed between him and the late Mr Schnad- 
 horst, then head of the Liberal Caucus. Mr Rhodes, 
 than whom none knew men and methods better, 
 offers sums running into tens of thousands to the 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 111 
 
 Liberal Party Funds, but makes it a condition that 
 Egypt shall remain under British government, and 
 that a Liberal Ministry shall look with favourable 
 eyes on his scheme for a Cape to Cairo railway. 
 It does not appear that he ever received in writing 
 any definite promise, but Mr Schnadhorst appears 
 to have satisfied him. Anyhow, it is not denied 
 (a) that the money was paid, and (b) that the 
 Liberal Government did not evacuate Egypt, 
 though Mr Gladstone, who was supposed to lead 
 the Liberal Party, had publicly declared himself 
 in favour of evacuation. We have nothing to say 
 here about the desirability or undesirability of 
 evacuating Egypt. That the evacuation of Egypt 
 would have been disastrous we are not concerned 
 to dispute. But the solution of this question ought 
 to be settled by statesmen on grounds of statesman- 
 ship, and not dictated by a single rich subscriber to 
 the Party Funds. For if a policy of which we may 
 approve can be obtained by purchase, its negative 
 is open to a higher bidder. As it was, Gladstone; 
 though nominally leader, was at the mercy of 
 Schnadhorst, and Schnadhorst was at the mercy 
 of anyone who would give him mone}^ 
 
 Things have undoubtedly got worse since these 
 events took place, but the impenetrable darkness 
 in which all such transactions are veiled makes 
 it increasingly difficult to give specific instances. 
 There has occurred, however, another interesting 
 case within the last ten years, a case which pri- 
 marily concerns the other political party. 
 
112 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 In 1903 Dr Rutherfoord Harris, the well-known 
 South African financier, was contesting Dulwich 
 at a bye-election in the Conservative interest. 
 Being used to the franker methods of young and 
 vigorous communities, he announced publicly that 
 he had sent £10, 000 to the Conservative Party Funds. 
 The candour of this announcement somewhat per- 
 turbed for a moment the placidity of British politics. 
 But the commentary was yet to come. It came 
 when a month or so afterwards a Conservative 
 Government, acting against the best traditions of 
 its party, acting against the most explicit ex- 
 pression of the popular will, acting against the 
 advice of the best Imperialists, sanctioned the im- 
 portation of Chinese coolies into the South African 
 mines. It is not to be supposed that they would 
 have done this merely for Dr Harris's £10,000. 
 But there were certainly other South African mine- 
 owners who were at once equally generous and 
 more discreet. It is further to be noted, as we 
 have already observed, that the Liberal Party, 
 though it won the election of 1906 almost entirely 
 on the issue of Chinese Labour, refused to allow a 
 division on this issue to take place, and entered 
 into friendW negotiations wth the mine-owners, 
 negotiations which assured that the Chinese should 
 not be returned until they had done their work in 
 reducing the wages of the Kaffirs. 
 
 Another case in which the influence of rich 
 subscribers to the Party Funds upon the policy 
 of the party can be very distinctly traced is in 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 113 
 
 connection with the perennial Drink Problem. In 
 no instance, perhaps, is it so clear that the talk 
 about the " will of the people " deciding things is 
 an elaborate piece of humbug. There are several 
 possible policies in relation to the drink trade — 
 municipalisation, for instance, and free trade — 
 which the people are never allowed to hear of, 
 much less to vote for. The only issue ever pre- 
 sented to the people is between Mr Balfour's 
 Licensing Bill, which meant in effect the endow- 
 ment of brewing and distilling firms out of public 
 funds, and Mr Asquith's Licensing Bill, which 
 meant a system of irritating restrictions upon the 
 drinking habits of the people, restrictions leading 
 logically to ultimate prohibition. The alterna- 
 tive of breaking the drink monopoly either by 
 public ownership or by free private competition 
 was never put before the nation at all. 
 
 Why was this ? Simply because the two politi- 
 cal parties need the mone}^ of rich men to conduct 
 the sham fight upon which their own prestige and 
 salaries depend. The polic}^ must therefore be one 
 that will attract some particular section of the rich 
 class. 
 
 The Conservative Party relies largely upon the 
 
 subscriptions of wealthy brewers and distillers, who 
 
 are generally the owners of tied houses. Hence 
 
 the policy of Mr Balfour's Licensing Bill. The 
 
 Liberal Party flings its net wider. Some of its 
 
 subscribers are men who live by manufacturing 
 
 non-alcoholic drinks. Their interest in the sup- 
 
 8 
 
114 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 pression of alcoholic drinks is obvious. Others 
 are interested in the grocery trade (whose organisa- 
 tion is closely connected with the party machinery), 
 and live by selling alcoholic drinks retail. The less 
 public-houses there are, the more uncomfortable 
 they are, the less hours they are open, the more 
 restrictions are imposed upon them, the more drink 
 will these men sell. It is obviously to the interest 
 of a grocery business that the public-houses in 
 its neighbourhood should be closed. Note, then, 
 how the grocery business stands with the "Liberal" 
 Party. 
 
 Finally, the Liberal Caucus appeals to those rich 
 men who have a fad for regulating the beverages 
 of their neighbours, who do their best by means of 
 their economic power to prohibit the sale of drink 
 among their tenants or their employees, and who 
 would gladly use political power to prohibit it 
 everywhere else. 
 
 So it comes about that, while a sane policy 
 which would discourage drunkenness (especially 
 the degraded kind of drunkenness characteristic 
 of the slums, the true name of which is drugging), 
 while allowing normal men to get good liquor 
 under decent conditions, would undoubtedly com- 
 mand the support of the people, it is just the one 
 thing that the people are never allowed to con- 
 sider. Their decision is only between the brewer 
 and the cocoa-manufacturer. Not unnaturally, 
 they usually prefer the brewer. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Liberal poli- 
 
THE SECRET FUNDS 115 
 
 ticians themselves are in the least degree more 
 teetotal than their Conservative opponents. Most 
 of them have quite an adequate taste in alcohol. 
 But that the game may be carried on, money is 
 needed. And the two organisations agree to 
 appeal to different sections of the plutocracy. 
 Thus the paymasters of the politicians are in this 
 sense more sincere than the politicians are. They 
 do want something in the way of legislation or 
 administration, while the politicians want nothing 
 but their salaries. The effectiveness of the two 
 is proportional to their sincerity. 
 
V 
 THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 
 
V 
 THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 
 
 THE PARTY CAUCUS 
 
 We now return to the machinery by which elections 
 are determined. Before one can understand this 
 one must understand that mysterious entity, the 
 '' Centra] Office." 
 
 What is the Central Office ? It is not representa- 
 tive of the people. It is not even representative 
 of the active members of the Party. These active 
 members dispersed throughout their clubs are 
 represented at the conferences of the National 
 Liberal Federation and the National Union of 
 Conservative Associations. These bodies pass 
 resolutions and define policies ; but nothing that 
 they do has the smallest effect on practical politics 
 until it has been ratified by the Central Office. 
 
 The Central Office is the medium of communica- 
 tion between the governing group on the Front 
 Benches and the local party organisations through- 
 out the country. These local organisations them- 
 selves do not represent very adequately the rank 
 and file of the parties ; they are composed of the 
 
 119 
 
120 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 most enthusiastic partisans (a small proportion of 
 the community), and are largely dominated by the 
 local rich men who help to keep them going. These 
 men often covet seats in Parliament and work the 
 local organisation with the object of obtaining 
 them. Yet, unrepresentative as they often are, 
 and controlled by local plutocracy, the local 
 organisations are too democratic to be trusted under 
 such a system as ours with the reality of political 
 power. The Central Office exists to keep them in 
 order. 
 
 At the head of the Central Office is an official 
 nominated bj^ the Governing Group. He is in close 
 touch with the Whips, and, through them, with the 
 Leader. He wiselj^ leaves a certain amount of 
 discretion to the local organisations in things not 
 essential. But, where his intervention is required, 
 as, for example, where a local organisation is disposed 
 to stand by a man who takes an independent 
 attitude, or where a man unacceptable to the Front 
 Bench is nominated, he interferes, and his inter- 
 ference is usually successful, for in truth his power, 
 though hidden, is immense. 
 
 For he holds the purse-strings. Through his 
 hands pass all those huge secret sums of which we 
 have already spoken. It is in his power to give 
 or to withhold these ; and they are constantly 
 withheld from members who do not satisfactorily 
 toe the part}^ line. It is also he who makes arrange- 
 ments with the subscribers to the Party Funds — 
 arrangements of which the Leader is conventionally 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 121 
 
 supposed to know nothing, though he obediently 
 carries them out. 
 
 In fact, the Central Office, though by no means 
 the most really powerful factor in our politics, is 
 the hinge upon which everything else depends. 
 Through it the politicians master the constituencies. 
 
 THE SELECTION OF CANDIDATES 
 
 We have already said that under a really demo- 
 cratic system of representation members of Parlia- 
 ment would be chosen freely by their constituents, 
 probably in most cases from among their own 
 number. In many cases they would be elected by 
 acclamation. In others there might be a contest. 
 But in the final resort it would be the man most 
 thoroughly trusted by his fellow-citizens of that 
 particular district who would become the member. 
 It is clear that this does not happen now. 
 
 How do men get elected to Parliament ? There 
 are normallj^ two processes. Sometimes the 
 richest man in a particular locality interests him- 
 self in what is called " politics," and subscribes 
 largely to the funds of the local organisation, some- 
 times paying all its expenses out of his own purse. 
 In such a case he naturally becomes all-important 
 to the local politicians, and if he cares to contest 
 the seat he is, subject to confirmation by the 
 machine — as we shall see when we deal with the 
 process in the next section — chosen as candidate. 
 This arrangement obviously implies wealth as a 
 
122 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 necessary condition of entrance into politics, and 
 affords no guarantee whatever that the man chosen 
 will really represent his constituents. It is, how- 
 ever, in practice probably less mischievous than 
 the other and commoner course of procedure. 
 
 When a man has no special local connections, or 
 when his political preferences do not accord with 
 those of the locality to which his connections bind 
 him, he must approach the Central Office, directly 
 or indirectly, and ask them to find him a seat. If 
 he is a rich man he will put down a subscription 
 which will be paid into the secret treasury of the 
 Party, and the seat found for him will, other things 
 being equal, vary in security with the amount of the 
 said subscription.! If, on the other hand, the man 
 is poor, he will show himself active in political work, 
 make speeches for other men, write articles in re- 
 views, and generally force himself upon the notice 
 of his patrons as a useful gladiator. If he can get a 
 private secretaryship to a politician or in any other 
 way connect himself with the Governing Group, 
 his path will be all the smoother, and such action be 
 thought more normal if he is a lawyer ; for lawyers 
 are at once recognised as advocates, offered the 
 largest salaries (within and without the House), 
 and further find men of their calling to be already 
 the nucleus of Parliament. They are the most 
 
 ^ Occasionally a rich, but stupid man is duped, an apparently 
 " safe " seat being offered liim as against a really large sum of 
 money, when the salaried officials of the two machines have 
 already winked at a third independent candidature. 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 123 
 
 serviceable tools of the party bosses. Such an 
 apprentice to the game will be generally sent in the 
 first instance to fight some hopeless seat. If he 
 shows himself a good candidate and makes himself 
 agreeable to the leaders, a more hopeful seat is 
 subsequently found for him. His poverty is no 
 obstacle to his success, so long as he is submissive 
 to the machine, for the Fortunatus Purse of the 
 Party Funds is placed unreservedly at his disposal. 
 But the sacrifice of his freedom (and honour) is the 
 condition of his securing these advantages. If, 
 by some accident, a junior actually elected so mis- 
 understands his position as to ask a question or 
 move a motion on some point affecting the machine, 
 he is usually reminded — by an "independent" but 
 wealthy colleague — that his ability to fight his seat 
 again depends upon the will of a secret Caucus, and 
 of those by whose money that Caucus is kept 
 going. 
 
 It must, of course, be remembered that local 
 political organisations are, as will be described in a 
 moment, no more than the old stock " Tory " or 
 " Radical " stagers of the locality. Such men, 
 though usually honest according to their lights, 
 are completely the dupes of the professional 
 politicians in London, and always insist on " lo3^alty 
 to the party " as the first condition of confidence. 
 This condition nullifies all others. For, once he is 
 pledged to do nothing that may injure the party, 
 a candidate can cheerfully pledge himself to almost 
 anything else, well knowing that if the measure he 
 
124 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 is pledged to support is inconvenient to the Front 
 Benches, he will either have no chance of voting 
 on it, or his vote will be rendered harmless and 
 ineffective by the subsequent shelving of the 
 question. If in the last resort he is forced to 
 break his word and vote against what he is 
 pledged to vote for, he can always plead that to 
 have redeemed his pledge would have endangered 
 the Government ; and hj the eager " Liberals " or 
 " Unionists " who make up local political Com- 
 mittees such a plea will generally be accepted. 
 Even if he is so unusually unlucky as to fail to 
 satisfy the local organisation on a particular 
 point, they are, once he has been their member, 
 almost powerless to get rid of him. To do so 
 would be to cause a scandal, to divide the party, 
 and to run the risk of handing over the seat to 
 " the enemy " — as the dupes of one set of poli- 
 ticians innocently call the dupes of these poli- 
 ticians' confederates. 
 
 If any man ventures to run independently of the 
 two political caucuses, the difficulties in the way 
 of his success are enormous. Generally he is 
 severely hampered for want of money, while his 
 official opponents have not only an inexhaustible 
 fund to draw upon, but a fund whose sole purpose 
 is the financing 7iot the winning of elections. Also, 
 though a majority of voters may actually prefer 
 him to any other candidate, they are often afraid to 
 vote for him, lest by so doing they should " waste " 
 their votes : for under an absurd and dishonest ar- 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 125 
 
 rangement, which the machine carefully preserves, 
 no second ballot is allowed. An impartial observer 
 may be pardoned for thinking that, even under 
 this system, a man could hardly waste his vote 
 more thoroughly than by giving it to the nominee 
 of the political bosses, who, when he is once elected, 
 must regard himself as the servant not of his con- 
 stituents, but of the caucus. But British electors 
 are not always impartial observers, and there is 
 no doubt that the hypnotic effect of continual 
 assurances that an independent candidate " cannot 
 win " operates powerfully against him. Votes 
 promised some days before the poll are in such 
 cases continually revoked at the last moment 
 under the influence of this " fear of wasting a vote." 
 Thus it will be seen that only three types of 
 men find it normally possible to get into Parlia- 
 ment. First, local rich men who can dominate 
 the local political organisation. Secondly, rich 
 men from outside who have suborned the central 
 political organisation. Thirdly, comparatively 
 poor men who are willing, in consideration of a 
 seat in Parliament and the chances of material 
 gains which it offers, to become the obedient and 
 submissive servants of the caucus. 
 
 AN ELECTION 
 
 It will be attempted in this division to describe 
 not why, but how, that wheel of the machine which 
 is called " the local Caucus," the agency of the 
 
126 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Machine in a constituency, works towards an 
 election from start to finish. 
 
 Some recapitulation of what has already been 
 read will be necessary, but no comment need be 
 made on it, still less any criticism : a description 
 is enough. 
 
 The two Front Benches have at their disposal 
 a large organisation maintained by salaried officials 
 whose object it is to decide what men shall stand 
 for what constituencies. Each of these organis- 
 ations is approached, and lays itself out for ap- 
 proach, on two sides : first by those who desire 
 to become Members of Parliament ; secondly, by 
 the local bodies that must confirm the choice of 
 a candidate. 
 
 The decision of the Salaried Machine Officials 
 as to who shall stand for where is guided of course 
 by many considerations. A wealthy man who 
 has purchased the right to stand must of course be 
 considered first ; men already noted at the Univer- 
 sities for their connection with party organisation 
 there, and their power of public speaking in con- 
 nection with it, have an obvious claim. Heredity 
 is a claim. A man, the son or connection of a 
 prominent politician or wealthy political family, 
 a Cecil, a Howard, a Churchill, or a Rothschild, 
 will be accepted as of right. A multitude of con- 
 siderations enter here which we need not detail. 
 
 Men whose poverty renders them of no immed- 
 iate importance, but whose gifts of advocacy are 
 worthy of enlistment, will be given for their first 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 127 
 
 trial (as we have already pointed out) places 
 which the officials of the double machine have 
 decided to be " safe " for the " side " opposed to 
 that for which the neophyte is put up. His defeat 
 and the energy he puts into the struggle earn him 
 a right to a better chance next time. 
 
 Men of strong local influence, or possessed of 
 private or valuable information, are of course 
 welcomed — and so forth. 
 
 But one common test is applied : the men so 
 chosen must be prepared to defend not only an 
 existing programme settled between the various 
 officials and professional politicians, but any future 
 decision which their superiors may feel inclined to 
 take. That is understood more or less clearly by the 
 candidates so chosen : the more clearly the better 
 their chance for promotion. A man of no powers, 
 but of doubtful obedience, who might be tempted 
 (were he elected) to speak for those who elected 
 him, is offered the most hopeless opportunities 
 until a few elections shall have schooled him. 
 
 Turn now to the local body. 
 
 In the constituencies the local machine depends 
 upon considerable though dwindling bodies of 
 sincere pubUc feeling. You have not in the 
 provinces that connivance and collusion between 
 supposed opponents which is the essence of the 
 central direction at Westminster. The local " pro- 
 minent Liberals " are usually men of a really 
 different type from the local '' prominent Con- 
 servatives." The mass of the people, of course, 
 
128 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 care little for the "prominent Liberals" and "pro- 
 minent Conservatives " whose business it is to 
 approach the machine and discover a candidate 
 for it. . . . But a few dozen men interested in such 
 subjects surround the local big-wigs of either caucus, 
 meet for the purpose of " electing " them to be 
 " Presidents," " Treasurers," and so forth of the 
 local caucus. 
 
 We say " a few dozen " ; it is never a hundred, 
 and there are many constituencies where it is not 
 twenty or thirty. The local big- wigs thus "elected" 
 by their local dependents and satellites form the 
 " official Liberal " organisation and the " official 
 Conservative " organisation : the word " official " 
 here signifying " recognised by the salaried officials 
 of the central machine at Westminster, and by the 
 professional politicians to whom those officials owe 
 their appointment and livelihood." 
 
 Upon the approach of an election, or perhaps 
 some time before, the " official organisation " 
 " deputes " that one of its members who most 
 loves this form of activity, and who has most 
 leisure, to go up to London and see the salaried 
 officials of the machine. He goes up to London ; 
 perhaps two or three others go up with him ; the 
 interview takes place (we are talking here of course 
 only of seats not already provided with a candidate 
 or sitting member intending to continue in Parlia- 
 ment) ; they have no one ready, and ask for some- 
 one " on the list " to be " sent down," or perhaps 
 they suggest a local man who has spent money 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 129 
 
 largely in the constituency ; and if he has agreed to 
 vote for anything the machine may suggest, he is 
 confirmed by the machine. More commonly in the 
 case of a vacancy it is the official at Westminster 
 who nominates the man ; but though nominated, 
 he is not yet the '' official prospective candidate." 
 Before he can be called by that title he must pre- 
 sent himself to the little local clique and be 
 " accepted by the official (blue or green) organisa- 
 tion." Now and then (it is exceedingly rare, and is 
 the exception that proves the rule) the choice thus 
 made is so appalling that the little local clique is 
 frightened of it ; in ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred they do as they are bid, and the gentle- 
 man becomes the *' official prospective candidate " 
 of the blues or the greens, as the case may be. He 
 maj^ if there is time and if he is wealthy, '* nurse " 
 the constituency ; that is, provide material advan- 
 tages for the benefit of the electorate ; but, though 
 he may " benefit " the electors to his heart's content 
 so far as amount is concerned, he must be wary enough 
 to stop a certain time before the election takes 
 place ; otherwise it is bribery. The length of this 
 time is of course not fixed, but depends on the whim 
 of the judge, should an election petition be tried. 
 Six months is perhaps the maximum. 
 
 From a fortnight to ten days before the election 
 takes place the " campaign " opens ; a set of 
 points are provided for the candidate by the pro- 
 fessional politicians, and he has to defend them in 
 public meetings : questions are put to him which 
 
 9 
 
130 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 he must answer as best he may. If a movement 
 of public opinion is observable on matters outside 
 the brief which he has been chosen to defend, he is 
 expected to turn this movement aside andif possible 
 to destroy it, but it is permitted that he should, 
 in extreme cases of spontaneous popular excite- 
 ment, pledge himself with a view to his return, 
 though always on the understanding that he is 
 bound to the machine and not to the constituency. 
 He is expected to break those pledges always in 
 the spirit, and even, if necessary, in the letter, 
 after his return to Westminster : the complete 
 ignorance of the populace upon the rules of Parlia- 
 ment makes the task an easy one. 
 
 As the day of the poll approaches, the candidates 
 are " nominated " ; that is, nomination papers are 
 handed in bearing the names of certain of his sup- 
 porters. The nomination is not accepted unless he 
 can bring with him and pay down in cash a large 
 sum of money, equivalent to the full year's income of 
 a well-paid skilled artisan. This, of course, is not 
 the whole amount of the entrance fee : the full 
 expenses can hardly be kept at less than £400, 
 average in their avowed or legal amount £1000, 
 and come in reality (if all be counted) to nearly 
 double that sum. 
 
 A day or two before the election takes place, 
 that excitement which the national character finds 
 and delights in where any doubtful event is 
 approaching lends great heartiness to the unreal 
 struggle : unreal so far as any difference of 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 131 
 
 principle is concerned, but commonly very real 
 in the conflicting ambitions of the two candidates. 
 
 The last night or two before the poll is a debauch 
 of mere excitement upon either side, called " a 
 rally," the intensity of which is often a gauge as 
 to whether a few hesitating voters have been 
 drawn into the whirlpool on the one side or the 
 other. But its main purpose is not persuasion, but 
 ritual ; it is very expensive, and there is some 
 finessing as to the bespeaking of halls, etc. 
 
 Meanwhile a number of workers of the poorest 
 classes, who by legal theory give their services 
 gratuitously, are engaged in personally interview- 
 ing every elector and getting him to say that he 
 will vote for their "side." The majority pledge 
 themselves to both sides, as indeed courtesy de- 
 mands ; but a certain proportion answer " yes " 
 to the one side and " no " to the other. As is 
 always the case where large numbers of human 
 beings are being estimated, an average can be 
 struck, and the average of these stubborn souls is 
 fairly fixed ; to estimate the results of the 
 "canvass," as it is called (it is endowed with an 
 elaborate system of checks and counter-checks), 
 a certain percentage is taken off all the pledges, 
 doubtfuls are added to one's opponent's canvass, 
 and the result is thought to be, and often is, a 
 rough indication of how the poll will go. 
 
 On the day of the poll the voters cannot, of 
 course, be expected to register their opinions — 
 for, as a rule, opinions are not at stake — nor even 
 
132 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 to fulfil their pledges ; a vast and (again) an 
 expensive organisation for getting at each voter 
 personally and bringing him to the poll is set to 
 work. The opportunity of a ride in a motor car 
 or a carriage is not without its influence, and the 
 mere pestering by the " workers " is of great 
 effect. Were it not for this costly effort the pro- 
 portion of those who vote would be negligible 
 in most constituencies. It is, of course, essential 
 to the life of the Party System that the numbers 
 should be fairly equal on either of the sham 
 " sides," taking the country as a whole. 
 
 Therefore, to win by 10 per cent, of the elector- 
 ate in any one constituency is an enormous 
 majority ; to win by 5 per cent, a solid and 
 satisfactory one ; to win by 2 per cent, does not 
 mean that the seat is " safe," but the election 
 is hardly called " close " ; blue or green gets the 
 larger number of crosses, and duly goes off to 
 Westminster to vote for anything whatsoever 
 that the machine may give him orders to vote for 
 during the next few years. 
 
 No mention has been made of what is called the 
 '' organisation," with its local salaried officials, 
 noting the removal of every elector, checking 
 the names, places on the list, residences of all, 
 and so forth. That type of work may be easily 
 imagined. Oddly enough it is commonly per- 
 formed (though at a wage) by one of those men, 
 common in the provinces, who sincerely believe 
 in the reality of the differences between the pro- 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 133 
 
 fessional politicians. Their simple faith is one of 
 the anomalies of the system. 
 
 Thus does the party engine work at the con- 
 stituency end of its activities, and thus is the 
 personnel of the House of Commons determined. 
 It helps to explain that personnel. 
 
 THE SELECTION OF PROGRAMMES 
 
 If the selection of members has, of course, been 
 taken completely out of the hands of the people, 
 quite equally so has been the selection of the 
 " programme " of which they are supposed to ask 
 the electors' approval, but which, as a fact, official 
 candidates must depend on as on a brief. 
 
 In a really democratic system, as has been 
 pointed out, the initiative would come from the 
 people. They would ask for certain alterations 
 in the law, and would send men to Parliament to 
 express their wishes. 
 
 The demand by the electors would come first, 
 and the declarations of the candidate would merely 
 embody that demand. Under such a system 
 programmes would naturally vary from con- 
 stituency to constituency according to the special 
 needs and grievances of the locality ; but some 
 demands would be common to all, because the 
 grievance to be redressed was felt by the whole 
 nation. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, nothing of the kind 
 happens. 
 
134 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Two programmes are drawn up by the politicians, 
 usually after consultation with each other, and 
 between these two alone are the voters asked to 
 choose. 
 
 No subject not mentioned in either programme, 
 however much the people may desire to raise it, 
 can be effectually raised. No solution of any 
 problem, except the two prescribed solutions, 
 however much the people might prefer it, can 
 ever be really discussed. Nothing is left to the 
 people but to choose the least of two evils. 
 
 It is true that in framing these programmes the 
 politicians have their eyes on votes. But the vote- 
 catching of politicians is a matter of arbitrary 
 arrangement ; it has nothing to do with any 
 national demand. One side is to bid for the 
 votes of Churchmen ; the other of Nonconformists. 
 One is to secure the support of publicans ; the 
 other of teetotalers. But the question to be 
 answered is framed by the politicians. And to 
 frame the question is to go a long way towards 
 framing the answer. 
 
 It was not always so ; at least not to the same 
 extent. Just as the control of the House of 
 Commons over the Ministry has weakened, just 
 as the control of the electors over their members 
 has weakened, so has the initiative of the people 
 in legislation weakened. 
 
 As an illustration of this, compare the Free Trade 
 movement of the 'forties with the Tariff Reform 
 movement. We do not propose to discuss the 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 135 
 
 question of the relative merits of Free Trade and 
 Protection. 1 But this may be fairly said, that 
 Free Trade was forced upon the legislature by 
 the urgent demand of a section of the people — a 
 minority perhaps, but still a section. TariS Re- 
 form, on the other hand, had its rise in no such 
 demand. There were always, it is true, in this 
 country a considerable number of convinced Pro- 
 tectionists. Some were old-fashioned Tories who 
 regretted the repeal of the Corn Laws. Others 
 were economists who had studied the Continental 
 and American advocates of Protection, and agreed 
 with them. Others were working men who be- 
 lieved that the foreigner had got their job. But 
 these men, though one continually met them, were 
 politically utterly negligible. Suddenly a Cabinet 
 Minister, a member of the governing group, spoke 
 and declared for Protection. On the instant, men 
 who had never in their lives before doubted the 
 validity of Free Trade, but who happened to be 
 professional politicians, suddenly appeared as con- 
 vinced Protectionists, while crowds of their satel- 
 lites and would-be replacers at once followed suit. 
 
 But there is no matter for wonder in this pheno- 
 menon. It is normal to the working of the machine, 
 for the machine pre-supposes that popular opinion 
 shall have no initiative. 
 
 There is no machinery by which, at the present 
 time, the people can raise a particular political 
 
 ^ It is indeed a question concerning wliicli the two authors of 
 this book decidedly disagree. 
 
136 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 question, however intensely it may interest them, 
 unless it is included in the programme of one or 
 other of the political parties. They can indeed 
 obtain pledges from candidates ; but such pledges, 
 as we have seen, are perfectly valueless ; for, 
 though a man may be pledged to vote for a parti- 
 cular measure, he cannot vote for it unless it is 
 brought before Parliament and a division taken 
 on it ; and it has already been shown that the Front 
 Benches can generally prevent a division on any 
 inconvenient question, and even if a division is 
 taken, can prevent the matter going any further. 
 Thus, even supposing, no small supposition, that 
 the elected member is honestly desirous of keeping 
 his promise and carrying out the wishes of his 
 constituents, he will generally find it impossible 
 to do so. The Front Benches, by their control 
 of the House of Commons, control also the effec- 
 tive programmes submitted to the electors. 
 
 Even if the solution of some question is so 
 urgently demanded by the electors (or far more 
 often by the rich men whose money is at the back 
 of the official parties) that the Government cannot 
 ignore it, the voters are not allowed to choose 
 their own solution, but only to vote for one of two 
 solutions put forward by the Front Benches. We 
 have already given one example of this — the 
 Drink Question. The people are from time to 
 time allowed to choose between the suppression of 
 public -houses and their endowment out of public 
 money, but they are not allowed to vote for any 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 137 
 
 other policy, least of all are they allowed to vote, 
 as they certainly would vote if they got the chance, 
 for the removal of some or all of the intricate and 
 mostly senseless regulations which interfere at 
 every point with the habits and festivities of the 
 poor. The numerous Education Bills, drafted 
 not to satisfy the people whose children are to be 
 educated, but solely to gain the support of sec- 
 tarian leaders of all kinds — men who would as soon 
 think of sending their children to be educated in 
 Nigeria as at a public elementary school — afford 
 another example. 
 
 To take cases where the dema^nd comes from a 
 section at any rate of the populace : the two 
 Front Benches decided last November that the 
 reversal of the Osborne Judgment should not be 
 among the issues presented to the electors for dis- 
 cision ; the}" secretly agreed that payment of 
 members should side-track the demand of the 
 workers. The Labour Party of course gave way ; 
 the Front Benches have won. 
 
 In regard to the Unemploj^ed, the people are 
 not and will not be allowed to vote for or against 
 the Right to Work Bill, though they might be 
 allowed to consider Mrs Webb's policy of im- 
 prisoning working men in compounds until thej^ 
 consent to work for the rich. It is more likely, 
 however, that such a proposal would, like the 
 Children's Bill and the Prevention of Crimes Bill, 
 be carried over their heads as a " non-controversial 
 measure." '' Non-controversial measures," it may 
 
138 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 be explained, include all violently unpopular pro- 
 posals for the oppression of the poor, which 
 happen in no way to affect the professional 
 politicians. 
 
 For with the loss of initiative the people have 
 also lost all right of veto, so that not only are they 
 unable to frame the programme which their 
 representative is to carry into effect, not only can 
 their demands, even if their representative is 
 pledged to them, be entirely neglected, but the 
 most detested of measures, for which there is no 
 shadow of mandate, which were never mentioned 
 at the previous election, may be passed into law, 
 and the electorate is utterly powerless to secure 
 their repeal. Even though they should punish 
 their member for voting for such measures by 
 rejecting him at the next election, his successor, 
 the representative of the other team, will probably 
 lack the will, and will certainly lack the power to 
 undo the work, if that work is approved by the 
 Front Benches. The Licensing Clauses of the 
 Budget, which are certainly unpopular, but which 
 the " Conservative " team undoubtedly intend to 
 continue when by mutual arrangement their turn 
 of office comes, afford an excellent example of 
 this. 
 
 It is clear then that, despite all the elaborate 
 machinery of polling-booths and ballot-papers, 
 despite all the frenzied appeals to " the popular 
 will " which are the staple of political eloquence 
 at election times, the people have neither the power 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELECTIONS 139 
 
 to make Parliament pass the laws that they want 
 nor to prevent it from passing the laws that they 
 dislike. The whole power of legislation has 
 passed to that Standing Committee of Professional 
 Politicians which is called in the House of 
 Commons " The Two Front Benches." 
 
VI 
 THE DEFENCE 
 
VI 
 THE DEFENCE 
 
 THE EXCUSES 
 
 The whole of this book so far has consisted in a 
 criticism of the Party System. It is well for the 
 sake of right judgment to consider at the close 
 what may be (and is privately) said in its favour 
 by those who make their living off it. What 
 excuses do they offer ? First this : — 
 
 States, as all the world knows, and as those who 
 know the world least are never tired of informing 
 us, are organic things, not mechanical. You can- 
 not make a State : it has to grow. 
 
 The English State at the present moment, or, to 
 speak more accurately, the British State (exclud- 
 ing of course Ireland, the new countries, and the 
 dependencies) has enjoyed a peculiarly unbroken 
 continuity of institutions. Not a peculiarly un- 
 broken continuity compared with many States in 
 history ; but, during the last 150 years at least, a 
 peculiarly unbroken one, compared with the great 
 States of Europe, its rivals. 
 
 Among the other institutions of Britain which 
 
 143 
 
144 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 have been developed during this comparatively 
 long period of unbroken continuity stands the 
 Party System. Under its machinery, acting 
 according to its rules, England, until she began to 
 experience her recent embroilments and anxieties, 
 prospered. She was, until recently, the wealthiest 
 nation in the world ; and in the full military sense 
 of militar}^ strength, wherein defence is a main 
 part of the problem, she was almost the strongest. 
 Men of high capacity have continually succeeded 
 one another as a product of the Party System, and 
 in general, being an institution in a State whose 
 institutions have been so continuous, it should 
 remain. 
 
 This is the first and most plausible excuse which 
 its beneficiaries make in favour of the Party Sys- 
 tem. There is attached to it a converse excuse 
 of almost equal effect which stands thus : — 
 
 In a State of ancient institutions — indeed, in 
 any State — you must not lightly destroy an in- 
 stitution, for when you have destroyed it you can- 
 not with ease replace it by another institution. 
 The political institutions of men are not theories, 
 they are things. Destroy the monarchy, for in- 
 stance, of a despotic society, and you are bound to 
 supply the gap which it has left by some other 
 definite and powerful organ of government, con- 
 crete because it is human, and because it is human 
 necessarily subject to error and to vice. " Leave 
 well alone " should therefore be a standing motto, 
 so far as primary institutions are concerned, with 
 
THE DEFENCE 145 
 
 every patriotic man. Unless you have some clear 
 alternative capable of concrete expression, and 
 certainly capable of giving as good a result as the 
 institution you propose to overthrow, then an 
 attack upon it is anarchic and profoundly unwise. 
 
 But apart from these two, which are the main 
 excuses offered by the professional politicians in 
 favour of the Party System to-day, its apologists 
 can draw up an abstract series of arguments in its 
 favour. 
 
 The Party System, properly worked, reposes 
 essentially upon this doctrine : that to every 
 question there must be a positive and a negative 
 answer : with every policy suggested by a states- 
 man we must roughly and in the main acquiesce, 
 or we must roughly and in the main dissent from 
 it. An all-powerful Executive, or even an Ex- 
 ecutive which submits to the check that can be 
 given by representative bodies or by other organs 
 in the State, affords no opportunity for the dis- 
 cussion, and the balance for and against, of any 
 policy. The Party System is therefore better 
 than an unchecked or but partially checked Execu- 
 tive ; and indeed it was its superiority over such 
 forms of Executive which was the boast of English- 
 men over the Continent a hundred years ago. 
 
 On the other hand (would sa}^ both the beneficed 
 defender of the Party System and the Don who is 
 happily ignorant of intrigue), actual government by 
 adeliberative body, or even the granting of a supreme 
 power of veto and check to a deliberative body, is in 
 
 10 
 
146 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 practice impossible. A deliberative body, in pro- 
 portion to its excellence in its deliberative char- 
 acter, is incapable of initiative and of directly ex- 
 pressed will. The best thing we can do for the 
 State, therefore, is to preserve a system under 
 which, while one body of men shall be tempted, in 
 order to preserve and obtain large salaries and 
 power, to put forward a policy which they believe 
 to be agreeable to the commonwealth, and which 
 at the same time they know is so debatable as to 
 require open discussion, another body, command- 
 ing followers fairly equal in numbers, shall be 
 present as advocates upon the other side to help 
 decide the issue. 
 
 In many policies the nation will be so much at 
 one that the play of the two parties will not be 
 called upon ; as, for instance, in the determin- 
 ation to grant Old Age Pensions in 1907. In other 
 cases details only, not general policies, are at 
 stake, and for this the kind of debate known in the 
 House of Commons as the " Committee stage " of 
 a Bill amply provides. But for the very largest 
 issues in national policy nothing can work for 
 more open or more thorough discussion, and for a 
 more proper appreciation of the national mind, 
 than the presence in numbers, not too unequal, of 
 two sets of debaters, sent by the electorate to 
 Westminster for the purpose of discussing some 
 great subject which has been put forward as a 
 policy by one or the other of the leading teams. 
 Such a debate we are ha^dng (the apologists for 
 
THE DEFENCE 147 
 
 the Party System would say) upon the great and 
 important national question of Protection versus 
 Free Trade. And the reiterated arguments, ex- 
 amples, rhetorical appeals (the whole criticism 
 and flux to which the policy of Free Trade and its 
 opposite are subjected by the Party System) 
 proves the superiority of that system to any other 
 method of government. 
 
 Again, the Party System provides (it has often 
 been pointed out) an alternative government. 
 The alternative government is potentially there ; 
 no violence, no breach with the past is necessary 
 to establish under our happy institutions even the 
 greatest change in the conduct of the nation. 
 Had a party system been working, for instance, in 
 France when one set of French politicians decided 
 upon religious schism, the electorate would have 
 been consulted upon that issue ; and when they had 
 decided in favour of schism or against it, a body 
 of men trained in government and willing to ex- 
 press the views of the majority of the electors — or 
 rather of their deputies — would have been ready 
 instantly to take the place of the other body whose 
 policy had lost the confidence of the nation. 
 
 Many other minor arguments may be advanced 
 — by such as are interested in it — to defend the 
 Party System. 
 
 It may be urged, for instance, that in England — 
 whatever is the case with other countries — a 
 faint line of cleavage really dividing the nation 
 into two (but providentially not so deep as to 
 
148 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 wound its unity) is to be discovered. There is your 
 English Liberal type, and your Enghsh Conser- 
 vative type, your Chapel man and your Church 
 man, and to this line of cleavage which is a reality, 
 the reality of the Party System corresponds. 
 
 Yet another minor argument resides in this : 
 that with the Party System you can get an organ- 
 isation and equipment of the electorate which you 
 could never get without such a discipline. Thus 
 we may compare the percentage of voters in con- 
 tested elections in England with the percentage 
 that come to the poll abroad, and the advantage 
 in our favour may be' laid to the door of the Party 
 System. 
 
 Finally — and this, as it is the least rational 
 and the most ignorant, is with politicians the most 
 powerful argument of all — the Party System 
 works not only well, but better than any corre- 
 sponding system among our great rivals. The 
 position we hold among the nations, the happiness 
 and the content of our masses, our power of im- 
 mediate and irresistible offence in the vindication of 
 our national rights or desires, our sober, successful, 
 and profound social reforms which are the admira- 
 tion of the universe, have been the product of the 
 Party System ; and even if something theoretically 
 better, nay, something demonstrably better in the 
 concrete, could be presented to us, we should be 
 foolish indeed to abandon that which has made of 
 this country everything that the citizens of any 
 country can possibly desire. 
 
THE DEFENCE 149 
 
 Now, against these excuses it is fortunately 
 not difficult to open batteries which leave them 
 in ruins. 
 
 If we take the various points mentioned — and 
 they fairly cover the ground of those who still 
 apologise for our moribund parliamentary methods 
 -T-they can be riddled one after the other with an 
 ease that makes one almost ashamed to undertake 
 the task. Let us proceed, as is only fair in such 
 cases, from the weakest to the strongest, and 
 consider the arguments just stated in the opposite 
 order to that wherein we have laid them down. 
 
 The last argument, which certainly has had 
 until lately the greatest force and which is still 
 not without its power in what are called " the 
 residential suburbs " of our great towns ; the 
 argument which in itself was worth, until recently, 
 more than all the others put together, is to-day 
 based, where it exists, upon those two characters 
 which, in any society, are most directly and im- 
 mediately ruinous of its prosperity : ignorance and 
 vanit}^ Nothing but an appalling ignorance can 
 make those who live under the Party System to- 
 day believe that the State has to-day the strength 
 it used to have for offence against foreign enemies ; 
 that it holds the economic position it held a genera- 
 tion ago ; that the condition of our enormous 
 population of very poor is regarded with anything 
 but pity and horror by the more contented peoples 
 of continental Europe ; that our hasty and incom- 
 plete social reforms, our method of raising and our 
 
150 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 present necessities for spending the public revenue, 
 are models for other nations. Even if ignorance 
 permitted a man to hold such fantastic opinions, 
 nothing but vanity could permit him to hold them 
 untroubled. Though a man should never have 
 travelled a mile out of his own country, nor be 
 acquainted with a single foreign language, nor 
 (what is perhaps more important) be capable of 
 one sound judgment upon any foreign thing he 
 saw or any foreign word he read, yet short of a most 
 disastrous and diseased vanity he must know that 
 a complete satisfaction with such a society as he 
 sees round him in the great cities that are the 
 typical polities of Britain, is below the normal 
 standard of human political achievement. 
 
 Though he have no history, and be unable to 
 compare the modern wretchedness with the happi- 
 ness of the past, yet mere instinct and the common 
 conscience of man must, unless he is positively 
 blinded by vanity, teach him that something is 
 very ill with England to-day. 
 
 True, it would be inept to lay at the door of one 
 such institution as the Party System the enormous 
 evils from which Britain increasingly suffers, and 
 their increase at a rate which seriously menaces 
 her future. But that is not the point. The point 
 is that to argue from the excellence of conditions 
 in England to-day to the excellence of the Party 
 System is to argue from a falsehood to a nonsensical 
 result. The social and political conditions in 
 England to-day are not good, but bad : they are 
 
THE DEFENCE 151 
 
 bad compared with our own remote past, bad 
 compared with those of our great rivals, and bad 
 compared with that standard of tolerable condi- 
 tions which all men carry in them and which is 
 something very different from and much lower 
 than any ideal of a perfect society. 
 
 As for the pretension that the parties do corre- 
 spond to a real though not a deep division between 
 two kinds of English thought, it deserves more 
 careful examination. 
 
 In the origin of the Party System that system 
 corresponded to a very real and a very deep 
 division. The system itself was run by an aristo- 
 cracy and run more or less corruptly — very 
 corruptly as far as individual statesmen were 
 concerned. But these individual statesmen were 
 the spokesmen of two great bodies of really 
 divided opinion : the one inherited from Jacobite 
 loyalty, the other from the Whig revolution. 
 Doctor Johnson was not a dupe, he was not an 
 ignorant man, above all he was not a fraud. He 
 was a man very learned, one acquainted with 
 all kinds of his fellows, intensely national and 
 gloriously sincere : and Doctor Johnson did hate 
 a Whig. Two very distinct philosophies once 
 animated the two parties, and the distinction 
 between these philosophies retained some vigour 
 till the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 The echoes of those opposed political philosophies 
 have been heard by many men now living. Indeed, 
 it is possible to forgive an elderly man, sincere. 
 
152 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 informed, and courageous, who still attaches some 
 sort of meaning to the supposed differences between 
 the party leaders. He may have a knowledge that 
 in our moment their play is a pure humbug, but he 
 can remember a generation in which some sort of 
 ideal contest, or at any rate the savour of it, still 
 remained. 
 
 But if we are talking of conditions as they exist 
 here and now, then we must admit, in proportion 
 to our information of what the political world is 
 and of how its sham battles are as a matter of fact 
 fought to-day, that not the memory, not the savour 
 of a real distinction remains. 
 
 There are still a number of Tory squires in the 
 countrysides, but the party which they reluctantly 
 support does not pretend to represent them. 
 
 There are still a number of honest and elderly 
 middle class Liberals lingering in the suburbs of 
 our great towns, but the party for which they vote 
 (those of them who do not call themselves " Liberal 
 Unionists ") is not fighting their battles. 
 
 As for the mass of the people whom once these 
 divisions also affected in some degree, they affect 
 it now no longer. There is no division, not even 
 the adumbration of a division, there is no line, not 
 even the vaguest dotted line, which marks off, 
 in psychology, manners, inherited tradition, or 
 practice of daily life, a wage-earner who votes for 
 Jones from a wage-earner who votes for Smith. 
 The distinction imposed by official candidates is 
 for the mass of workers absolutely unreal ; and the 
 
THE DEFENCE 153 
 
 individuals in the mass of workers b}^ an over- 
 whelming majority would, if the}^ were asked, 
 say so in so many words. They vote thus and thus 
 apathetically, with no hope that any result will 
 come to them from their vote, and they vote with 
 no feeling of intimate sympathy between the 
 philosophy of the candidate they support and their 
 own philosophy ; and that for a very good reason : 
 the candidate whom they may support, whether 
 he stands pledged to obey the one set of leaders or 
 the other, is defending no philosoph}^ at all. The 
 argument from a supposed real division of the 
 people upon the lines of the parties simply will not 
 hold water. 
 
 Nor will the next arguments in the series hold 
 water. It is not true that the Party System pro- 
 vides an alternative Government ready to take the 
 helm at a moment's notice after a great change. 
 Of all systems in modern Europe it provides such 
 a Government least. 
 
 Let a violent Catholic reaction take place in 
 France ; let a strong Particularist movement 
 appear in Italy ; let self-government be granted 
 to Ireland, — and to take over the management of 
 wholly changed conditions capable men could 
 immediately be found. But the Party System in 
 this country' depends upon the very concef)tion 
 that there cannot be any vital or considerable 
 change. All the working of the party men and all 
 their system of living upon the taxes is bound up 
 with the necessity that the point of policy chosen 
 
154 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 to divide them shall never be a vital one ; and that 
 in their method of daily life, the very set of drawing- 
 rooms they frequent, there shall be no differences 
 between Hanky and Panky whatsoever. A sudden 
 change requiring an alternative Government is 
 something which the Party System has taught the 
 public to regard as wholly out of nature. Its 
 appearance in a foreign country, however fruitful, 
 is put by our party poHticians before our populace 
 as something alien and comic ; and such men as 
 really do desire a change, in religion (as some we 
 could name), in economic arrangement (as the 
 Socialists), in national arrangement (as the Irish), 
 are treated by the Party System and its supporters 
 with a violence of vituperation, a swift, determined 
 and calculating offensive which give the lie to all 
 the foolish and hypocritical talk about the delibera- 
 tion and sobriety of our public life. 
 
 The same objection applies to the claim that the 
 Party System permits of free and full debate upon 
 the main issues before a nation : it does nothing 
 of the kind. It permits of full and free debate 
 only upon such subjects as the two allied teams 
 called " the Government " and " the Opposition " 
 have decided to have debated. Now and then, 
 indeed, an intriguer of prominence, for some 
 purpose of his own, breaks the rules of the game. 
 He occupies perhaps a position high enough to be 
 able to do so with advantage. This was the case 
 when Mr Gladstone launched Home Rule without 
 consulting the greater part of his colleagues, let 
 
■ f M^«nw^7-wvr«^aP^«g^qi^^v 
 
 THE DEFENCE 155 
 
 alone his nominal opponents : it was the case, 
 again, when Mr Joseph Chamberlain launched 
 Protection. 
 
 But even these real issues, once launched, are 
 seized upon by the Party System and turned, by 
 a process of digestion, as it were, into unreal issues 
 in the shortest possible time. When once it was 
 appreciated that the House of Lords would not 
 pass Home Rule, the arguments for and against 
 that policy were debated with all the professional 
 rant of the play-actors upon our dull parliamentary 
 stage. There was no conviction in their accents, 
 and for the most of them no definite desire to 
 arrive at a result, save the putting into office — that 
 is, the giving of power and wealth to one of the 
 two teams. 
 
 If anyone doubt this, let him discover the atti- 
 tude of the Irish in Ireland upon the question. 
 He will find that the so-called "Unionist" Party 
 is regarded in precisely the same light as its pre- 
 tended opponents. Every Irishman you will ever 
 meet discussing the advantages his country has 
 obtained during the last thirty years will talk 
 with a complete impartiality of this Act, that 
 policy, this personality, that blunder ; sometimes 
 oblivious of and always indifferent to the supposed 
 party divisions at Westminster. So false is it that 
 the Party System affords opportunity for full and 
 reasoned debate upon great national issues, that 
 not one great national issue since the repeal of 
 the Corn Laws has obtained this supposed ad- 
 
156 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 vantage. Not one piece of policy, however 
 necessary, but, if it has become law, has become 
 law by an agreement between the two sets of 
 actors in the game. Where they have really dis- 
 agreed the result has always been stalemate, and 
 that for the very sufficient reason that a real and 
 permanent victory upon either side would be 
 the death of the system by which both sets of 
 politicians obtain their bread-and-butter. 
 
 Finally, what are we to say with regard to the 
 argument that the Party System, being an 
 institution of this continuous and highly in- 
 stitutional country, should not lightly be tampered 
 with ? 
 
 As was said at the beginning of this chapter, 
 that argument is a very powerful argument indeed. 
 It appeals at once to the heart and to the head 
 of every man who knows what a State is, and of 
 every man who has any reverence for the past. 
 There are innumerable examples to which this 
 argument applies in modern England with more 
 or less force. It is a strong plea for most of our 
 ancient corporations ; certainly for nearly all our 
 ancient, and upon the whole innocuous, customs. 
 It is a plea even for the maintenance of many 
 definite and corporate institutions, ill-suited per- 
 haps to the modern State, but possessing advan- 
 tages of their own which, after reform, could never 
 be supplied ; but it is not an argument for the 
 Party System, because the Party System, as an 
 institution, has lost both the externals that bound 
 
THE DEFENCE 157 
 
 it to the life of the State, and the internal vitality 
 which gave it a real meaning. 
 
 The Party System is now neither a quaint and 
 an innocuous reminder of the past, nor a corporate 
 and living thing still possessed of its identity and 
 forming an integral part of the State. 
 
 It is not a mere symbol of our continuity, as are 
 the wigs of our judges, or the curious little jockey 
 cap which some official (whose name escapes us) 
 carries at a high salary upon his head when the 
 King's assent to Bills is given in the House of 
 Lords, ^ or the archaic English and unnatural 
 accent of the various rituals affected by ministers 
 of religion. 
 
 Nor does it, to turn from relics to living institu- 
 tions, correspond to what the Inns of Court are in 
 the organisation of our legal system, or the col- 
 legiate arrangement of Oxford and Cambridge in 
 the organisation of our University life. 
 
 The Party System, in other words, in so far as 
 it is an institution, is an institution in the last 
 stages of decay, but one which, since it affects 
 the greatest interests of the nation, is not innocu- 
 ous ; moreover, as it has long lost any true identity 
 with its past, it is no longer really alive. The 
 necessity of being rid of it is like the necessity one 
 is under of being rid of a great dead body in one's 
 neighbourhood when it has begun to putrefy. 
 The decay of party has already begun to disturb 
 the national life, and if we are not careful it may 
 
 ^ Is it not the Master of the Horse ? 
 
158 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 poison it — so far has its corruption proceeded — 
 and yet so obstinately do certain interests — 
 mainly of a private nature and generally con- 
 nected with salaries — persist in retarding its 
 natural end. 
 
 We have indeed no need to concern ourselves 
 further with the excuses offered for a continuance 
 of the machine. Nothing remains in practical 
 politics but for the practical politician to destroy 
 the Party System as rapidly and as thoroughly 
 as may be. 
 
 There is no need of finding an alternative. The 
 alternative is there, underlying the evil. A free 
 parliament, the ancient theory of a national de- 
 liberative assembly, is ready to hand when the 
 encumbrance is got rid of. We do not need to 
 frame some scheme which shall supplant the Party 
 System : all we have to do is to make the Party 
 System impossible ; and that end will be accom- 
 plished when a sufficient number of men are in- 
 structed in its hypocrisies and follies, when the 
 real and modern peril which it involves has been 
 brought home to a sufficient number, and when 
 men begin to ask for an opportunity to express 
 their opinions at the polls. Light on the nasty 
 thing and an exposure of it are all that is necessary. 
 It stinks onty because it has been so carefully 
 masked and covered and its natural dissolution 
 thereby checked. 
 
 It is with the object of exposing it that this 
 
THE DEFENCE 159 
 
 book, which happily is but one of many vigorous 
 contemporary efforts in the same direction, has 
 been written. 
 
 One real obstacle does, however, remain to 
 reform, and that is the strength of the only real 
 support upon which the professional politicians 
 and their now exhausted method can rely ; and 
 that real support is the attitude of the " Plain 
 Man " — mainly of the lower middle classes — who, 
 particularly in the suburbs of our great towns, is 
 used by those professionals partly as a dupe and 
 partly as an ally. Let us examine this person. 
 
 THE REAL SUPPORT 
 
 Into all attempt at reform there enters an 
 element which is the converse of mere criticism 
 or of mere exposure, and which forms a necessary 
 basis for any constructive work. That element is 
 the element of popular need. 
 
 Unless the mass of the nation needs a reform, 
 not only is there no necessity for the undertaking 
 of a considerable change, but there is great diffi- 
 culty in accomplishing it ; and it is and has been 
 the continual error of abortive schemes that they 
 corresponded only to some need suggested by 
 historical parallels or present in a contemporary 
 few, but not felt by the general body of citizens. 
 It is not true, so far as political arrangements at 
 least are concerned, that the desires or the necessi- 
 ties of a small minorit}^ immediately or even gradu- 
 
160 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 ally impose themselves upon the State. Opinion 
 may indeed be gradually so imposed by persuasion, 
 and a new philosophy propagated ; but until the 
 new idea is accepted, acts cannot follow, and politi- 
 cal change is invariably accompanied by a general 
 and wide-spread ill-ease, which ill-ease is the ex- 
 pression of a popular need. 
 
 That a need for change is felt in modern England 
 with regard to the machinery by which a small 
 number of co-opted men combine to govern the 
 country in collusion is certain. But there is a 
 body in which that need is not felt, and to which 
 it does not apply. This body, which we have 
 called '' the Real Support " of the Party System, 
 must now be examined. 
 
 We have seen in the preceding pages what 
 excuses might be presented for the Party System 
 of government by those several types of people 
 who are directly interested in its continuance ; 
 and we have tried to appreciate the measure of 
 sincerity which each such appeal would contain. 
 Is there not perhaps a large and popular apology 
 for the same thing, an apology that would pro- 
 ceed not from those interested in the maintenance 
 of the system, but from those whom it governs, 
 and (as the reformer would say) exploits ? 
 
 Let us take a certain type of British elector, 
 perhaps a business man or a shopkeeper or even 
 an artizan, who, though by no means wholly duped 
 by the Party System, yet lends it his support ; 
 and let us ask ourselves whether many such 
 
THE DEFENCE 161 
 
 would not reply to the demand for reform some- 
 what as follows (hoio many would so reply we 
 must discuss later) : — 
 
 " You have been careful to explain to me that a 
 little group of men belonging to a class whose only 
 common mark is wealth, reserve to themselves 
 enormous salaries paid out of my pocket, and 
 monopolise all the political power in the State, by 
 the playing of an elaborate game. Their pro- 
 fessions do not correspond with the true motives 
 of the players, and the rules of this game do not 
 concern the well-being of the body politic, but 
 rather the maintenance of an even balance between 
 two picked and chosen teams, which even balance 
 is necessary to the proper conduct of any pastime, 
 whether lucrative or merely entertaining. 
 
 " Well, I knew that already. I did not perhaps 
 know all the details you have put before me, but 
 in general I was acquainted with the nature of the 
 business. It is not a fraud practised upon me ; 
 it is rather an admitted fiction necessary to the 
 play of our institutions, and a fiction which I 
 readily use. 
 
 " I do this for a number of reasons. I have a 
 
 long tradition of it behind me ; the accidents of 
 
 the game afford me the best opportunity for a 
 
 practical redress of grievances ; it furnishes me 
 
 with a mild excitement which is none the worse 
 
 for being largely make-believe, and there is about 
 
 it just as much reality as I feel inclined to put into 
 
 my view of public life. 
 
 11 
 
162 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 " For instance, I am quite anxiously in favour 
 of the taxation of land values in towns, and would 
 willingly sacrifice a week's holiday or pay a day's 
 wages to see that reform put into practice ; and you 
 cannot deny that that half of the clique which calls 
 itself ' Liberal ' is at the present moment trying to 
 put such a reform into practice, while the other 
 half, their brothers, uncles, cousins, intimate 
 friends, etc., who call themselves ' Unionists,' are 
 on the whole resisting the reform. 
 
 " I feel about my politics what I feel about my 
 religion : the necessity for clothing a few moderate 
 and vague tendencies in strong and exaggerated 
 language, and in a heavy and stiff ceremonial 
 which I know does not correspond to any internal 
 strictness of definition, but which affords me 
 something concrete upon which I can repose. 
 
 " When I go to a public meeting and hear Lord 
 Algernon Crape denouncing Mr Charles Anser for 
 an assassin and a traitor, I know as well as you do 
 that Lord Algernon Crape married last year Mr 
 Charles Anser' s sister, and that the two young men 
 are really intimate friends. But I like that kind 
 of thing in the ceremonial of my political religion. 
 I am an Englishman ; I like to see a prize-fight 
 much more than to see a fight with lethal weapons ; 
 I like to read in books that I am a bold rider, that 
 I love the sea, and that I indulge in fisticuffs — 
 though of course I know very well that I can't 
 ride, that the sea knocks me out, that I do not use 
 my fists in quarrels, and that if I had to it would be 
 
THE DEFENCE 163 
 
 extremely distasteful to me : it is fiction, but the 
 fiction is good for me. Every nation and every 
 society of men has its ritual and its convention, 
 and ritual and convention of their nature involve 
 make-believe. 
 
 " Then again, you are concerned to tell me that 
 this clique of people are very rich, and, where 
 large sums of money are concerned, very corrupt. 
 You have pointed this out to me in rather more 
 detail than I am accustomed to ; but it is with this 
 point as with the rest. I knew all about it before 
 you were kind enough to explain it to me. I 
 happen to like that kind of thing. What revolts 
 me in the conduct of a State is not theft on a large 
 scale by the few rich officials, but the acceptation 
 of bribes on a small scale b}^ the many poor officials. 
 I feel instinctively that the second evil is much 
 more practically dangerous to the State than the 
 first. 
 
 " Mr Pompous, you tell me, made a new office 
 with a salary of about £40 a week attached to it, 
 stuck his mistress's nephew into it, and gave that 
 nephew's brother a fantastic fee out of the taxes 
 for some arbitration work in the Far East. You 
 tell me that Mr Pompous was only able to pull off 
 the double job by letting the money-lender, Mr 
 Judaeus, suck dry the resources of such and such 
 an Oriental district over which Mr Pompous' 
 colleague and first cousin was the master through 
 his position in the Cabinet ; but, my dear sir, had 
 I been in old Pompous' place, I should have 
 
164 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 acted in precisely that same fashion. In my own 
 sphere I act in that fashion every day. I rather 
 respect Pompous for having managed to hold his 
 tongue and to control his face so well for so many 
 years as to have arrived at a position where he can 
 cheat on a really large scale. Meanwhile, I see 
 that the system gives me the services of Pompous' 
 brother-in-law for nothing. This chap inherited a 
 couple of milHons ; what he wants is power and 
 notoriety. He will never take a bribe, and he will 
 give the State all the advantage of his ample 
 leisure and vast opportunities. 
 
 " Best of all, with such a system Pompous and 
 his gang will be absolutely merciless in punishing 
 any corruption apparent in minor officials, and it is 
 that kind of corruption, multiform, universal, and 
 soon ineradicable, which poisons a State. 
 
 " Finally, I have noticed running through your 
 criticism for reform one main note, which is that 
 the Party System, apart from its falsehood and 
 financial corruption, is especially to be condemned 
 because it prevents any true representation of the 
 popular will. 
 
 " Now, my dear sir, I have no sort of desire 
 for the * Representation of the Popular Will.' 
 Phrases like that give me a headache. A machin- 
 ery exists, an institution and traditions, which 
 furnish me with a competent and regularly renewed 
 set of men who look after the public weal. My 
 forefathers have not, since the Middle Ages, con- 
 cerned themselves with such abstractions as * the 
 
THE DEFENCE 165 
 
 popular will,' and though I often use the word 
 * represent ' and the substantive ' representation,' 
 I don't care a row of pins about either. I know 
 very well that a violent and universal national 
 feeling would be respected by the Party System, 
 and it is onl}^ violent and universal feelings of the 
 sort that the people as a whole need be concerned 
 about. 
 
 " I might end by telling you this : I like to be 
 governed by rich men. It makes me feel cosy. 
 Perhaps that is because it rids me of any sense of 
 responsibility and puts me vaguely into touch with 
 luxuries I cannot enjoy. Anyhow, I like to be 
 governed by rich men, and your Party System is 
 precisely the sort of thing which rich men, when 
 you give them their head, will develop." 
 
 That, put much more shortly and much less 
 didactically, is what many such an elector, to 
 whatever class he may belong, up and down 
 England feels when he hears the Party System 
 attacked ; that is the instinctive reply of many 
 such men. How many ? Well, it is very difficult 
 to answer that question. 
 
 Note that the professions of political faith which 
 the average man will make, the man with two to 
 five pounds a week coming into his house from a 
 small business or employment, or from a skilled 
 trade in which, let us say, his sons are helping him, 
 are not identical with nor even closely connected 
 with his political appetites and instincts. The 
 same man who is delighted to denounce at a public 
 
166 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 meeting the rapacity of peers will be equally de- 
 lighted to have as his chairman at the meeting 
 some younger son of a peer who has just decided 
 to call himself a Radical. And such a man will 
 certainly support by his vote and influence any 
 chance party hack against a representative of his 
 own class who shall have made any real attempt 
 to destroy the power of the plutocracy. 
 
 In general, it cannot be denied that the Party 
 System, even in this its last moribund and putres- 
 cent phase, reposes upon certain habits of thought 
 still persistent in sections of the middle classes and 
 established artisans. When, in the near future, the 
 thin shell still covering the nastiness of the fraud 
 shall break, that part of the nation will be ex- 
 ceedingly annoyed and will blame everyone except 
 the politicians for the bad smell ; and one may con- 
 clude that no exposure, no appeal, and no criticism 
 will have any real weight in this quarter, because, 
 before they could have weight, routine, which is 
 the main necessity of such lives, would have to 
 disappear. 
 
 Upon what practical basis, then, can reform re- 
 pose ? To what instincts or needs can it appeal, 
 and what co-operation will it discover in what 
 fractions of the State ? 
 
 The practical basis upon which reform must 
 build, if the strength of the nation is to be main- 
 tained on its political side, is the basis of public 
 utility. 
 
 Both within and without these islands there are 
 
THE DEFENCE 167 
 
 tasks set for modern England which the Party 
 System is wholly unable to accomplish. 
 
 It cannot meet our prompt, centralised, and lucid 
 rivals abroad, notably the French and the Prussians. 
 It cannot save the mass of the people from an in- 
 creasing insecurity in their earnings, and economic 
 conditions increasingly intolerable. In the first 
 of these fields the Party System is beginning to 
 make a dangerous fool of itself, alternately denying 
 its own existence, and then, through some panicky 
 move of its tawdry game, seriously weakening 
 England in one or another department of her 
 foreign or colonial policy. In the second of these 
 fields it slowly tinkers : and even when a social 
 reform is in the right direction, its pace is as a 
 pace of one mile an hour where the rate of growth 
 of the evil is as twenty miles an hour ; either a 
 social reform produced by the politicians is quite 
 oS the point (and this is the case nine times out 
 of ten), or it is negligiblj^ small, or it is hopelessly 
 tardy, and comes too late, with a rush, and is not 
 thought out at all. In both fields, foreign and 
 domestic, the Party System must be superseded, 
 or we shall drop behind our rivals. 
 
 That is the practical need to which we must 
 appeal ; and of the many fractions of the com- 
 munity to which we can appeal the two most 
 important are the inarticulate and despairing 
 mass which has hitherto never considered the 
 governance of England as in any way concerning 
 it, and the youth which is still deceived (though 
 
168 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 less and less deceived with every day) by the 
 pretence of the professional politicians. 
 
 Motive power, however, will be lacking to any 
 reform, unless men can be convinced that the 
 failure of Parliament has led not only or merely 
 to hypocrisy and a contemptible corruption, the 
 degradation of public life and of public office, but 
 also to real and tangible national peril. 
 
 THE PERIL 
 
 The life of a great nation still in full activity, 
 multitudinous, and even numerically increasing 
 (though that last test is a poor one), is a difficult 
 medium in which to express the perils which may 
 threaten its society. 
 
 It is granted on every side that politics have 
 become contemptible, and the political machine 
 ridiculous or provocative of indignation, according 
 to the temper of those who are compelled to 
 observe it. 
 
 But this conviction is a very different thing 
 from the conviction that such an evil is productive 
 of direct and tangible danger to the State. 
 
 What happens in men's minds when they turn 
 to-day with disgust from politicians is not so much 
 to remember that the men whom they thus despise 
 are still in theory the masters of the national fate, 
 but to occupy themselves with the living industry 
 and commerce and the living debates of true public 
 opinion. 
 
THE DEFENCE 169 
 
 The State in which we live has no recent experi- 
 ence of war with a great power. Those who write 
 in its Press, or produce the determining mass of its 
 less ephemeral literature, are not as a rule in touch 
 with the tragic poverty of our country and home. 
 There is no sufficiently active sense of danger 
 within or without for men easily to consider what 
 the breakdown of Parliament may mean : yet 
 that breakdown cannot but mean danger, and it 
 is not difficult to show how near and pressing the 
 danger may be behind the mask of content in 
 national life and of farce in the party business. 
 
 The breakdown of any society, or of any funda- 
 mental institution in society, is but the final phase 
 of a lingering process, the very end of which is 
 catastrophic : so buildings collapse, so men go 
 bankrupt, so drunkards die. 
 
 If the sense of danger were acutely present 
 wherever decay was present, the sudden final 
 consequences of decline might always be provided 
 against ; but it is in the very nature of decline 
 that it should move by imperceptible steps and 
 as it were comfortable to those who suffer it. 
 
 It should be, but it is not, a sufficient'argument 
 against anything wholly false, that falsehood, when 
 it is erected into a system, is of its nature destruc- 
 tive. You cannot build upon a lie ; and if the 
 chief organ of the State attempts to build upon a 
 lie, it should be (but for most men is not) sufficient 
 proof that the State is thereby grievously im- 
 perilled. 
 
170 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 In order to enforce the proof of such peril it is 
 necessary (unfortunately) to do something more 
 than to insist upon the general moral rottenness 
 which public falsehood involves. It is necessary 
 to insist upon particular examples in which direct 
 and tangible peril to the State may be illustrated. 
 
 Five consequences of the Parliamentary rot may, 
 among others, be chosen as the chief, and each of 
 them can be shown to involve tangible and real 
 peril to the nation. 
 
 (1) It puts public responsibility upon men un- 
 fitted to bear it. 
 
 (2) It defers reform in institutions and the up- 
 taking of new weapons in defence and new methods 
 in life at a rate progressively less than the change 
 in the modern world around us. 
 
 (3) It permits minor legislation intensely provo- 
 cative and unpopular, and therefore causative of 
 intense and increasing friction in the public work- 
 ing of society. 
 
 (4) It produces, through the financial corruption 
 of that class which not only legislates but also 
 administrates and judges, an increasing crop of 
 effects wasteful, impoverishing, or directly harm- 
 ful to the community. 
 
 (5) Finally, it prevents the nation as a whole 
 from ordering matters in which an active national 
 opinion is of the first concern ; to wit, defence, 
 finance, and foreign policy. 
 
 Let us consider these five definite points of peril 
 in detail : 
 
THE DEFENCE 171 
 
 (1) We say in the first place that the Party- 
 System puts public responsibility upon the 
 shoulders of men unfitted to bear it. 
 
 It will be the tendency of all those who may be 
 indoctrinated by the Party Press (and what other 
 Press is there !) to doubt this truth. The poli- 
 ticians are so much talked of in that Press that 
 men come to think them great and the worthy 
 inheritors of the past. But when some heavy task 
 is suddenly laid upon their shoulders, how con- 
 temptible is the collapse ! The experiment is not 
 often tried, and the ordeal has not often to be gone 
 through. War is infrequent, grave public tumult 
 more infrequent still, and of the pitiful results of 
 our recent foreign policy the public is kept ignorant. 
 But whenever the curtain is lifted (as it was in 
 the beginning of the South African War, and as it 
 has been for many " superseded " Englishmen since 
 the close of it), the truth of what we say here is 
 apparent. 
 
 The type of man who normally succeeds in 
 obtaining office under the rules of the party game 
 is not fit to administer the affairs of State. 
 
 There are, of course, elements in the position 
 which mask this dangerous truth. For instance, 
 the professional pohtician has behind him the very 
 large and excellently trained staff of public officials 
 which some look upon as the ultimate supplanter 
 of the hopeless Parliamentary decline. 
 
 Again, a proportion of those who struggle for 
 office, a small and diminishing proportion, are men 
 
172 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 of outstanding ability who have entered a political 
 career because the money prizes in such a career 
 under our present system are so considerable ; and 
 these men, though warped by the necessities of 
 their position, still support the falling standard of 
 ability in the political ring. 
 
 We must also count the young men of family 
 who are given office as of right, whose necessities 
 of intrigue are therefore less than those of their 
 middle class colleagues. 
 
 Nevertheless, it should be noted that the effect 
 of the Party System on even the cleverer politicians 
 is to reduce the normal level of their intelligence. 
 It is quite incredible that such men as Mr Asquith 
 and Mr Lloyd George, Mr Balfour and Mr F. E. 
 Smith could under any other circumstances give 
 expression to such imbecilities as those which 
 constantly adorn their public speeches. They 
 would not talk like that at dinner or at their clubs. 
 But the standard of intellect in politics is so low 
 that men of moderate mental capacity have to 
 stoop in order to reach it. 
 
 Examples of this in men who are after all highly 
 educated, and move in a well-instructed world, will 
 occur to everyone. They could hardly be ex- 
 plained in any other way than by the proportion 
 of energy which is wasted under the Party System 
 in bad rhetoric and worse intrigue, which are utterly 
 useless to the Commonwealth. 
 
 We have the Prime Minister telling us that the 
 more capital we export the better ; his followers 
 
THE DEFENCE 173 
 
 solemnly assuring us that export of capital is 
 equivalent to an export of manufactured goods 
 from this country — simply because they have been 
 given orders to reiterate that absurd proposition.^ 
 We have Mr Chamberlain, some years ago, con- 
 sidering the Seven Years' War as the consequence 
 and successor of the American War of Indepen- 
 dence. We have Mr Goschen telling the House 
 that submarines are the weapon of the weaker 
 power, and that there is nothing odd in England's 
 being behindhand with them. We have a parallel, 
 many years afterwards, in Mr Haldane's provision 
 of aviation for British forces. We have Mr Balfour 
 telling us that Lord Milner was of a type " which 
 only this country could produce." To the honour 
 of the House a certain number of its Members 
 smiled. We have Mr George proclaiming that the 
 financial resources of this country are greater than 
 any in the world. We have the present Minister 
 for Education expressing astonishment (and sin- 
 cerely feeling it) that the adherence of Catholics 
 was necessary to his scheme which (but for one 
 quarter of the population of South Lancashire) 
 commanded a general acceptation. 
 
 Thus, also, the politicians are continually driven 
 to make appeals on grounds which every educated 
 man knows to be absurd, but which are thought 
 (often falsely) to be just good enough for the 
 
 1 Members particularly picked out as the " Official Economists 
 of the team " were most ardent in this contention ! It is as 
 though a proposition in chemistry or mathematics were to be 
 left to advocates with an axe to grind. 
 
174 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 multitude. Thus everybody knows that £40,000 
 would be a drop in the ocean in relation to the 
 funds of our political parties — it is less than the 
 usual price of a peerage — yet a man of the intellec- 
 tual standing of Mr Balfour is induced to echo the 
 foolish outcry about " American dollars," and to 
 suggest that such a sum in the hands of Mr Red- 
 mond constitutes a menace to the purity of English 
 politics. A corresponding case on the other side 
 may be found in the attempt of Liberal politicians 
 to suggest that in consequence of Protection all 
 the inhabitants of the Continent of Europe live on 
 offal, and that the excellent black bread, which 
 many Englishmen go to special restaurants in 
 London to obtain, would be refused with con- 
 tumely by the British Unemployed. Such sugges- 
 tions could not be put forward, in the presence of a 
 reasonably educated public, unless the politicians 
 were relying upon the educated classes to connive 
 at the falsehood Avith the object of deluding the 
 populace. 
 
 No doubt the politicians do ascribe this passion 
 for party to their social equals, but that is because 
 in this, as in other matters, they are behind the time. 
 Probably the Press has helped to deceive them. 
 
 But in spite of all this the truth remains that 
 the standard of ability, reading, and experience in 
 political life is low, and the continual preoccupa- 
 tion of the politician in petty and personal cal- 
 culations, and in the struggle to maintain his place 
 against competitors of his own kidney, leaves no 
 
THE DEFENCE 175 
 
 sufficient margin of leisure or of energy for any 
 development in his character that may be useful 
 to the State. To these causes of failure we must 
 of course add the power which rich men possess of 
 purchasing executive positions for themselves or 
 their relatives : a power which tends more and 
 more to lower the average of ability upon the two 
 Front Benches. 
 
 (2) Next, as we have said, the system involves 
 peril from the tardiness which it imposes upon 
 moral and material reform. 
 
 The policy, perhaps a necessary policy, of estab- 
 lishing national granaries has not yet been so 
 much as considered. The fortification of our 
 naval bases has only had questions asked upon it 
 so far ; the Party System has not yet chosen to 
 discuss it, and the naval bases of this country 
 are virtually unfortified. The same disease has 
 retarded any thorough remodelling of the military 
 forces of the country. We were for some time 
 (and through party) badly behindhand with sub- 
 marines ; we are still hopelessly behindhand with 
 military aviation ; we have not tackled, or have 
 only just begun to tackle, after ten years of petrol 
 traffic, the problem of the roads ; there is no 
 attempt as yet to co-ordinate the railway system, 
 legislate upon rates for agricultural produce, or to 
 subject these national bugbears to any effective form 
 of national control, — and so forth. All those things 
 which an active and informed administration 
 would effect by immediate decisions either do not 
 
176 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 come at all, or come after years wasted in the 
 unfruitful play of partly opposing and partly allied 
 party men. 
 
 Two examples of such delays pushed to the 
 point which destroys the utility of a reform are 
 before us. 
 
 This country, more than any other European 
 country, had the opportunity of finding revenue from 
 the expansion of its great towns. Provision for the 
 taxation of ground values in those great towns, 
 before the agricultural landlords, over whose fields 
 the towns grew, had acquired an uninterrupted 
 habit and a prescriptive right of complete con- 
 trol, would have richly endowed the State. Noth- 
 ing was done until this last Budget ; and what was 
 done then comes, in the first place, too late to supply 
 revenue on a sufiicient scale, and is, in the second 
 place, blunderingly made to apply not to areas 
 specifically urban, but to a number of cases in 
 which the policy produces the maximum of 
 irritation with the minimum of revenue. 
 
 The other example is the menacingly rapid ex- 
 pansion of the numbers of unemployed ; that is, 
 of destitute men outside the narrow ranks of skilled 
 and organised labour. The whole of this toppling 
 problem has been allowed to accumulate during 
 the present generation, and all that the Party 
 System has managed to do — and that with the 
 object of capturing the so-called " Labour " Party 
 — has been the establishment of " Labour Ex- 
 changes," of which the best that can be said is that 
 
THE DEFENCE 177 
 
 they have had no apparent effect, and the worst 
 that they have sometimes proved useful in pro- 
 viding blackleg labour. 
 
 While there was a demand for land by small 
 holders it was not met ; while there was yet a 
 chance of establishing small ownership in the 
 English counties, no one availed himself of that 
 chance in the political world. The party machine 
 was otherwise employed. 
 
 (3) Next, as we have said, to this negative evil 
 there is the positive evil that minor legislation of 
 an intensely unpopular character, and often of 
 an impracticable character, passes almost without 
 comment, because it is not made a matter for party 
 warfare. The Crimes Prevention Act, which is 
 certainly intolerable, and, if we may trust the 
 declarations of the present Home Secretary, is 
 actually breaking down, is a case in point. It was 
 treated as " non-controversial " in the House of 
 Commons ; that is, the bosses calmly proposed to 
 agree that a man who had poached three times 
 upon their land, or three times " lifted " the 
 pocket-handkerchiefs or any other trifle of the 
 wealthier classes, should be imprisoned for life at 
 the discretion of his jailers. It was only at the 
 last moment that the discovery of this amazing 
 proposal by a small group of private members so 
 far modified it as to add only five years to the legal 
 maximum sentence ; and even in that last atro- 
 cious form the House of Commons refused to divide 
 
 upon it ! 
 
 12 
 
178 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 The exasperating folly of such clauses (due to 
 the fertile brain of Mr Samuel) as those which make 
 it criminal for a boy to purchase a cigarette (un- 
 less it contain hay, or some other weed different 
 from tobacco), and which forbid the poor to send 
 their children for the supper beer, are other ex- 
 amples to the point. The tyrannic tomfoolery of the 
 Black List, now happily dead ; the cynical iniquity 
 of the Betting Laws — statutes framed directly in 
 the interests of the rich, — and a host of others, 
 might be cited. 
 
 In the near future, unless public opinion is 
 sufficiently alert, Mrs Webb's amiable proposal 
 that men found out of employment may be com- 
 pelled to work in prisons — a proposal which is 
 already said to have been agreed on as " non- 
 controversial " by the two Front Benches, and 
 which is gravely entertained in the Minority 
 Report upon the Poor Law — may be law before 
 we know it. 
 
 Now these minor things, ^ at the best futile, at 
 the worst perhaps only inhuman, do not destroy a 
 State ; but an accumulation of them is an accumu- 
 lation of sand in the bearings. Of late years they 
 have accumulated very fast, and they simply 
 could not have become law if Parliament were even 
 moderately in touch with the public opinion of the 
 country. 
 
 1 Every reader can suggest an addition of liis own to sucli a 
 list — the bullying of the publican, for instance, and the wretched 
 nagging of the primary education system, etc. 
 
THE DEFENCE 179 
 
 (4) Our fourth point, the practical effect of the 
 corruption of the governing class, may be briefly 
 illustrated by the mere mention of three examples : 
 the gross and proved scandals in connection with 
 the South African commissariat, scandals which 
 were admittedly but a sample of the way in which 
 the public millions were stolen, went unpunished. 
 
 The politicians refuse to interfere with the 
 Rockefeller Oil Trust and the low flash point upon 
 which it insists. 
 
 Land purchase in Ireland, the one wise policy 
 which the wretched machine has ground out in a 
 generation, has stuck : it cannot be started again 
 until the sham-fighters come to some sort of an 
 agreement. 
 
 (5) Finally — and the future historian will find 
 this by far the most important point of the whole 
 — those matters which in every healthy state are 
 supremely the concern of public opinion and the 
 mass of the citizens, that is, external relations and 
 defence, have left the sphere of Parliament. 
 
 They are said to be " above party " ; and so, 
 thank God, they are ; but being above party, and 
 therefore above the ridiculous manoeuvres of the 
 present House of Commons, no national organ ex- 
 ists whereby they can be nationally handled. The 
 grave problem of India, the position of the English 
 " Advisors " in Egypt, our attitude towards the 
 groups of continental powers, what army we shall 
 have and how it shall be administered — these 
 things are not permitted to occupy the House of 
 
180 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 Commons for more than a very few hours a year, 
 and the debate upon them is no more than an 
 empty show. 
 
 As the House of Commons now is, the rule is 
 undoubtedly a wise one : better a hack politician 
 at the Foreign Office, ignorant of Europe and the 
 world, than men trained in the Party System pre- 
 tending to speak of foreign affairs, let alone to 
 direct them. Better the blundering action of a 
 professional advocate at the India Office than 
 dangerous protests which could never be followed 
 by action, and that would be uttered by men in the 
 House of Commons whose lack of position at home 
 does not correspond to their fictitious importance 
 in the East. 
 
 Yet what could more properly concern a true 
 representative assembly than the establishment 
 and preservation of English power in the great 
 dependencies of England, and the place of England 
 in her international relations with the continent of 
 Europe ? 
 
 There is no better proof, indeed, at once of the 
 depths to which Parliament has sunk, and of the 
 danger of that decline, than the firm but necessary 
 withdrawal of such entertainment as the discussion 
 of vital policies from the " freely chosen represent- 
 atives of the nation." In the absence of the play 
 of public opinion upon these vital policies we are 
 compelled to take the second best, the merely per- 
 sonal decisions of professional politicians acting in 
 secret ; but even that has become preferable to 
 
THE DEFENCE 181 
 
 the decision of the House of Commons in its present 
 condition of a mere function of the " Machine." 
 
 These are the perils : they are glaring to anyone 
 who will consider his country and its institutions, 
 not as a remote and unchangeable body, but as one 
 of many capable and eager rivals of whom some 
 one or more may at any moment become an eager 
 and capable enemy under arms, . . . Still more 
 is it true that those who see the social condition of 
 England as it is, and contrast it with the social con- 
 dition of the countries around it, perceive how 
 acute and immediate, though still masked, are the 
 dangers springing from the degradation of the 
 House of Commons. If ever there was a case for 
 using the discredited phrase, *' Something must be 
 done," the occasion is here. 
 
VII 
 
 CAN IT BE MENDED? 
 
VII 
 
 CAN IT BE MENDED? 
 
 When the question is asked : " Can a dying in- 
 stitution be revived ?" it is in the whole tendency 
 of modern learning to answer that it can not. 
 
 The House of Commons has ceased to be an 
 instrument of Government. Its ancient functions 
 have been killed under the prolonged and con- 
 tinuous action of hypocrisy. It affords to-day 
 (if we except the three Irish parties, which have a 
 definite political object and pursue that object) 
 no more than an opportunity for highly lucrative 
 careers. That career is founded upon the bam- 
 boozlement of the public (whose faculty for being 
 duped these professionals hope to prey upon in- 
 definitely), with the complicit}^ of nobodies con- 
 tent to write M.P. after their name as a suffi- 
 cient reward for supporting the Party System : 
 to whom, of course, must be added the lawyers and 
 business men for whom Parliament offers definite 
 financial rewards, and that in proportion to their 
 indifference to their representative duties. 
 
 All modern scholarship, we repeat, would tend 
 
 185 
 
186 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 to say of any institution which had fallen into such 
 a condition that it was past praying for ; and his- 
 tory is there with a hundred examples to support 
 this modern conclusion. 
 
 We have in history case after case of a national 
 institution falling into contempt and some other 
 more vigorous organ supplanting it. The greatest 
 case of all is, of course, the slow substitution of 
 the Empire upon the ruins of the ancient Roman 
 system of government. 
 
 It is here precisely that the crux of our problem 
 comes in. Nothing is appearing that can take 
 the place of Parliament. In its decay and futility 
 it still makes our laws, and makes them and un- 
 makes them at a greater rate than ever it did 
 before. True, most of those laws are the work of 
 the permanent officials ; but some of them, or some 
 parts of them, are due to the professional poli- 
 ticians.i 
 
 In other words, the House of Commons, though 
 fallen into a universally recognised decay, is still 
 our only instrument for making laws. Nothing 
 is rising to take its place, and in its decay it con- 
 tinues to work very appreciable evil. 
 
 The progress of the disease is now so rapid, its 
 probable future effect so menacing, that, desperate 
 as it must always be to attempt to revive a dying 
 
 1 Thus the land clauses in the Budget are known to be the 
 suggestion of Sir Edward Grey, and the ill-thought-out, crude, 
 and most unjust licensing clauses are ascribed to the Chancellor 
 himself. 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 187 
 
 institution, it is the business of every man who 
 cares for his country in the crisis through which 
 it is passing to ask whether some remedy might 
 not be devised. 
 
 Electoral changes will do nothing. A mere 
 extension of the franchise, if the party machine 
 were left as it is, would make little or no difference. 
 Where to-day ten thousand apathetic men are 
 seized by the paid agents of the machine and 
 worried to the polls in groups as nearly equal as 
 can be arranged by the managers of the show, 
 to-morrow twenty thousand would be similarly 
 drilled and run. The abolition of plural voting 
 is common sense, but it would go nowhere near 
 the root of the trouble. If it gave to one of the two 
 teams a permanent preponderance over the other, 
 the honour which obtains among gentlemen would 
 compel the two in combination to devise some cry 
 which should make the parties more nearly equal 
 again. 
 
 To forbid canvassing would have the effect of 
 course of enormously reducing the number of 
 voters, the vast majority of whom vote under a 
 sort of moral compulsion, and after several days of 
 heavy badgering, concluded by a forced march to 
 the polls. The bulk of men can never really care 
 for the issues, either false or unimportant, which 
 the bosses provide them with : nay, in the last 
 election there was no issue at all, and the people 
 were too weary to invent one for themselves, as they 
 had done in the Chinese Labour Agitation in 1906. 
 
188 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 But this decrease in the actual number of voters, 
 though it would show up the nonsense, would have 
 no practical effect : the game would still be played 
 just as it was played before, and the actors would 
 be of the same general competence in human 
 affairs. 
 
 Payment of election expenses and payment of 
 members are measures obviously desirable in 
 themselves, but they would do little to break the 
 Party System now, though they might once have 
 done much to prevent its coming into existence 
 in its present form. The official expenses of an 
 election are a very small fraction of what the 
 candidate has to find, so that their payment by 
 the State would still leave the independent at a 
 grave disadvantage as compared with the party 
 hack, who could draw without limit on the Party 
 Funds. The payment of members might make 
 it easier for an honest man to remain independent, 
 but it would in no way restrain the Front Benches 
 from corrupting members by the promise in the 
 future of pecuniary rewards larger and of a far more 
 stable character. To the contractor, the merchant, 
 the newspaper owner who enters politics with an 
 eye to their corruption, the little sum thus guaran- 
 teed is insignificant. The great press of lawyers 
 are looking for posts, the least of which will be a 
 matter of £800 a year, the highest of £10,000 and 
 £15,000. The professional men, to whom this or 
 that permanant job as an inspector or depart- 
 mentaFchief is the bribe, would not be the less 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 189 
 
 eager to take money because he had already 
 received it. 
 
 It has been suggested that the auditing of the 
 secret Party Funds might undermine the Party 
 System. To inaugurate such a practice would 
 certainly deal the Party System a heav}^ blow, but 
 the success would not be final. Side by side with 
 the officially audited Party Fund another secret 
 fund would at once spring up. A drastic penalty 
 might indeed be attached to any such form of 
 secret bribery. 
 
 But the law would tend to be a dead letter in 
 the absence of an alert pubUc opinion behind it ; 
 for secret bribery, when it has become a national 
 custom, is not so easy to eliminate. Nothing is less 
 easy to prove, since all parties to the crime are con- 
 cerned in defending it and in hiding it, and no one 
 person can feel himself aggrieved. It may further 
 be urged that the very high expenses of an election 
 remaining what they are, the depletion of the Party 
 Funds, which would probably follow the publi- 
 cation of their accounts, would advantage the 
 wealthy candidate as against the poor one. The 
 independent candidate would indeed benefit, for 
 his funds would be no less than now, while those 
 of his official opponents might probably be 
 reduced ; but the poor man financed by the 
 Party System would probably suffer. Whether 
 or no this would be an advantage — in other words, 
 whether the direct rule of the rich is better or 
 worse than the rule of their hired dependants — 
 
190 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 may be an open question. In any case, with the 
 payment of official election expenses by the State, 
 and the stricter limitation of unofficial expenses, 
 this tendency might be checked. 
 
 A law which we are inclined to think would be 
 even more to the purpose would be one whereby 
 the duration of Parliament should be limited 
 within a certain short fixed period (four years at 
 the very most), and should be indissoluble within 
 that period. 
 
 The effect of this reform, were it made law, 
 would be immediate. A vote of censure upon the 
 executive of the day (the King, as our forefathers 
 called the thing) would not entail upon those who 
 passed it the expense, disturbance, and personal 
 peril of a general election. They would be free 
 to vote ; and the executive, that is the two 
 Front Benches, would have to bow to their 
 will. 
 
 The mere appearance of an adumbration of 
 independent voting made the late Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman and the other professional 
 politicians give way in the matter of the Trades 
 Disputes Bill. The principle has already entered 
 the House of Commons, and all that is neces- 
 sary is to seat it firmly by forbidding the 
 professional politicians the right to dissolve 
 Parliament. 
 
 In this connection it may be well to mention the 
 suggestion made by Mr Jowett, M.P., in his ex- 
 cellent pamphlet, " What is the Use of Parlia- 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 191 
 
 ment ? " ^ Mr Jowett would abolish the Ministry 
 with its collective responsibility altogether, and 
 substitute a number of Departmental Committees 
 of the House, similar to those that transact business 
 on local councils. All parties would be represented 
 on these, and to them the permanent officials 
 would be responsible. The Minister would pre- 
 sumably be retained, but only as chairman of the 
 Committee, where he might on any given question 
 be outvoted by his colleagues, and the decision of 
 the Committee might be reversed by the House. 
 Neither of these events would, under Mr Jowett's 
 scheme, lead to any political " crisis " ; the Minis- 
 try would not resign, neither would there be any 
 dissolution. This last condition is essential, for 
 otherwise the Minister could always secure a 
 majority both on the Committee and in the House 
 by threatening resignation or dissolution ; and 
 the Party System would remain almost unaltered. 
 If, therefore, Mr Jowett's plan is to succeed, it 
 must be accompanied by the provision already 
 
 1 This little pamphlet, of no more than thirty pages, should be 
 in the hands of everyone who is interested in the ]»resent decay 
 of Parliament, and concerned to find a remedy. The futility of 
 the Commons procedure, the effect produced by the House of 
 Commons on a member submitted to that procedure, has never 
 been more lucidly or accurately put. The examples chosen are 
 peculiarly striking and typical. The remedy Mr Jowett pro- 
 poses is not only worthy of debate, but will provoke it, and there 
 will be conflict of oj^inion upon it : there can be no conflict on 
 the value, sincerity, and effect of the exposure upon which the 
 tract is based. It is the second of the Pass On pamphlets, pub- 
 lished by the Clarion Press, of 44 Worship St., E.C., and may be 
 purchased for a penny, or by post l^d. 
 
192 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 discussed of fixing by law the duration of Parlia- 
 ment, and taking from the Front Benches the'X 
 right of arbitrarily forcing a dissolution. 
 
 With this reservation, it may at once be allowed 
 that Mr Jowett's scheme, if freely and honestly 
 carried out, would not only smash the Party 
 System, but provide a proper working machinery 
 for a free deliberative assembly. 
 
 But, as things stand, what chance is there of 
 honestly carrying out such a scheme, even if it 
 could get accepted on paper ? 
 
 If the Committees were packed with partisans, 
 placemen, and place-hunters, the Minister would 
 give them onl}^ such information as he chose, and 
 would dictate the policy which they would obedi- 
 ently endorse. The Committees might even be 
 used to increase (if that be possible) the modern 
 irresponsibility of members, by affording a buffer 
 between them and the House. As to independent 
 members, it would be easy to keep them off Com- 
 mittees, or at any rate off the particular Commit- 
 tees where they might be dange Mr Victor 
 Grayson has told the world how he applied to be 
 put on a Committee of Social Reform, and was im- 
 mediately told that he had been appointed to sit 
 on the Committee to consider the Irish Linen 
 Marks Bill ! 
 
 That is perhaps no insignificant indication of 
 what might happen if Mr Jowett's plan were adopted 
 in a House still dominated by the Party S^^stem. 
 
 The institution of primaries and the choice of 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 193 
 
 candidates by their localities would be valuable 
 enough ; but it must be remembered that it will be 
 no easy task to graft primaries with their postulate 
 of popular initiative on to English society, as it is 
 at present. 
 
 Another suggestion made for the democrat- 
 isation of our politics is the Referendum. This 
 proposal, excellent in itself, has of late been ren- 
 dered a trifle ridiculous by its sudden and obviously 
 insincere exploitation by one of the party teams. 
 Mr Balfour's " Referendum," so far as its nature 
 can be guessed at, amounts to no more than that 
 the " bosses " of the two sides acting, as alwa3^s, in 
 collusion, should from time to time entertain the 
 people by submitting to their judgment proposals 
 in which they take no interest whatsoever, a course 
 which might also prove convenient as a means of 
 burying some highly unpopular proposal insisted 
 on by a wealthy subscriber or a too-persistent 
 colleague. The only Referendum which will 
 prove of the sHghtest value to the people will be 
 the Referendum accompanied by the Initiative ; in 
 other words, the right of the people (as expressed 
 by a certain number of electors) to determine on 
 what subjects they shall vote. Such a right would 
 indeed be of incalculable value ; but before it is 
 likely to be obtained the people must develop a 
 sufficiently alert political sense to make their 
 initiative a reality. 
 
 It would seem, then, that changes in political 
 machinery will prove either impossible or in- 
 
 13 
 
194 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 effective, unless the people can be awakened to 
 political consciousness and to a resolution to make 
 their will prevail. An alert democracy, even with 
 unchanged machinery, could knock the bottom 
 out of the Party System to-morrow by refusing 
 to elect party hacks and by sending to Parlia- 
 ment men fully determined to make an end of 
 the corruption and unreality of our politics. In 
 proportion as the mass of men understand the 
 nature of the present system, and resolve to replace 
 it by a better, the Party System will become more 
 and more difficult to work. 
 
 The political education of the democracy is 
 therefore the first step towards a reform. 
 
 The first need is exposure. To tell a particular 
 truth with regard to a particular piece of corruption 
 is of course dangerous in the extreme ; the rash man 
 who might be tempted to employ this weapon 
 would find himself bankrupted or in prison, and 
 probably both. But the general nature of the un- 
 pleasant thing can be drilled into the public by 
 books, articles, and speeches. True, the Press will 
 do its utmost to prevent the dissemination of the 
 truth with regard to public life ; for the Press, as we 
 have seen, is one of the chief accomplices in this 
 side of the national decline. But it is an error to 
 imagine that publicity, because it is at first re- 
 stricted, will be ineffectual. 
 
 So suspicious is an increasing section of the 
 public growing of the whole political scheme, and 
 of the printed support of it, that the continued 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 195 
 
 exposure of the evil, even if it be undertaken 
 by comparatively few men, has a wide effect. 
 
 It may have for its organs of expression only a 
 few and ill-capitalised papers ; but one man speaks 
 to another, and truth has this particular quality 
 about it (which the modern defenders of falsehood 
 seem to have forgotten), that when it has been so 
 much as suggested, it of its own self and by example 
 tends to turn that suggestion into a conviction. 
 
 You say to some worthy provincial, " English 
 Prime Ministers sell peerages and places on the 
 Front Bench." 
 
 He is startled, and he disbelieves you ; but when 
 a few days afterwards he reads in his newspaper of 
 how some howling nonentity has just been made a 
 peer, or a member of the Government, the incred- 
 ible sentence he has heard recurs to him. When 
 in the course of the next twelve months five or six 
 other nonentities have enjoyed this sort of pro- 
 motion (one of whom perhaps he may know from 
 other sources than the Press to be a wealthy man 
 who uses his wealth in bribery) his doubt grows 
 into conviction. 
 
 That is the way truth spreads, and that, by the 
 way, was why this book was written. 
 
 The truth, when it is spoken for some useful 
 purpose, must necessarily seem obscure, extrava- 
 gant, or merely false ; for, were it of common 
 knowledge, it would not be worth expressing. And 
 truth being fact, and therefore hard, must irritate 
 and wound ; but it has that power of growth and 
 
196 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 creation peculiar to itself which always makes it 
 worth the telling. 
 
 Again, exposure (within the limits which the 
 machine is compelled to allow — and the machine 
 is not without its power over the judiciary) works 
 in a manner less just, but still of some value ; it 
 works by ridicule. 
 
 Men love to laugh, and if you can present your 
 liar, 3^our coward, your place-hunter, your hypo- 
 crite, not as hypocrite, place-hunter, coward, and 
 liar, but as a buffoon, though the action may be 
 unjust, you have not done wholly ill. As a buffoon 
 he is well advertised ; once advertised, a discovery 
 of all that he really is will follow. 
 
 The Party System is not principally, though it 
 is largely, a piece of buffoonery ; principally it is 
 hypocritical ; it reposes upon falsehood ; it has 
 for its main instruments avarice and fear. 
 
 These things are dreadful, not ridiculous ; but 
 their ridiculous side can be happily harped upon 
 until men attend : comprehension of the rest will 
 follow. 
 
 For instance, during the late election one of the 
 younger men who had just been put upon the 
 Front Bench by the machine said that the " gulf " 
 between the two Front Benches was " unbridg- 
 able " ; he said it to a mass of men much poorer 
 than himself, whose votes make him what he is. 
 They had no opportunity to see behind what 
 scenes the actor moves. He deliberately deceived 
 them. Well, this young man had his place from 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 197 
 
 marrying a lady whose uncle had made many 
 thousands in one half of the team ; the same lady 
 had a first cousin who had made a much larger 
 number of thousands in the other half of the team. 
 One of these new-found relatives was labelled 
 " Opposition," the other " Government," and the 
 poor men who listened were told that there was 
 an " unbridgable gulf " between the one relative 
 and the other ! 
 
 It would be well if the world were such that 
 falsehood of this sort could be burnt out. Failing 
 that, to make it ridiculous is no small advance to 
 its removal. 
 
 After exposure the second line of attack is the 
 advocacy of definite reform within the machine 
 itself. By which we do not mean a change in the 
 procedure of Parliament, for, in the first place, 
 Parliament is free to effect that whenever it chooses, 
 and, in the second place, it is so hopelessly corrupt 
 that it will not of itself ever effect the manifold 
 and detailed reforms which would be necessary 
 for its purification. 
 
 But it might be possible, by scattering and using 
 a sufficient number of trained workers, to extract 
 from candidates definite pledges during the electoral 
 period, which would have an effect upon the Party 
 System comparable to the introduction of wedges 
 into the diseased fabric of an ancient tree. Of the 
 method of action of these pledges we will speak in 
 a moment ; for it is notorious that as things now 
 are, the pledges of a candidate are worth nothing, 
 
198 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 if only for the simple reason that no candidate has 
 any initiative, let alone the innumerable other 
 reasons, one of which is that very few candidates 
 under the present system have either any inten- 
 tion of carrying out their pledges or take any steps 
 towards that end. 
 
 The principal pledge which should and could be 
 extracted from candidates would be a pledge that 
 they would vote against the Government — what- 
 ever its composition — unless there were carried 
 through the House of Commons, within a set time, 
 those measures to which they stood pledged already 
 in their election addresses and on the platform. A 
 schedule could easily be drawn up, within whose 
 limits certain measures were required by the elec- 
 torate to pass the House of Commons. 
 
 A supreme advantage attaches to this method, 
 and a grave weakness. 
 
 We will deal with the advantage first. The 
 supreme advantage is that by this method even 
 the professional politician cannot wriggle. 
 
 Thus, in the matter of Chinese labour it was 
 easy to pledge a man " to vote that the Chinese 
 should leave South Africa " ; but had he publicly 
 promised to vote against the Government unless 
 the first cargo of them had left South Africa before 
 the 1st of March 1906, and to vote against them 
 again upon all measures they might propose after 
 the 31st of December 1906, if by that time the 
 last Chinaman had not left, your politician would 
 have been caught. He could not get out of it by 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 199 
 
 saying that " his vote would have involved the 
 fall of the Government, with all its rich promise 
 of democratic legislation, etc., etc." The pledge 
 would stand. 
 
 Such a pledge for definite action would be 
 efficacious — which no pledge now is. It would 
 hold up the party boss and say, " Here are you 
 and yours with such and such salaries. You can 
 bend to the popular will, or you can go." By such 
 a pledge, and by such a pledge alone, could short 
 parliaments and the withdrawal of the professionals' 
 power to dissolve Parliament be obtained. 
 
 In a word, a rigid pledge of this sort is a real 
 instrument of war, or, to use the more accurate 
 metaphor, of surgery. With it one might cut out 
 the cancer. 
 
 Now for the weakness of the method : 
 
 That weakness does not consist (as we may 
 imagine the professional politician at once re- 
 marking) in the fact that anyone might ask for 
 any pledge, and that a mere confusion would arise. 
 
 The people know very well what they want, and 
 they want a very few and definite things ; and it is 
 precisely in those things, as they are wanted with 
 each phase of the national life, that the politicians 
 cheat and betray the people. 
 
 For instance, the Trades Disputes Bill and 
 Chinese Labour are excellent examples of what 
 we mean. 
 
 Moreover, if (as will probably be the case) a 
 multitude of pledges might be demanded, that or 
 
200 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 those which had a definite popular demand behind 
 them would very quickly be appreciated in public 
 meetings. Cut off as the politician is from the 
 life of England, the insistent presentation of one 
 type of question throughout the election would 
 get to him at last, and he would be afraid of it. 
 But above all things it will be essential that the 
 questioner should ask him not to " pledge " him- 
 self in general — a practice of which everyone is by 
 this time heartily sick, for it is futile — but to 
 pledge himself in particular that if the thing were 
 not passed within a definite date (by the House of 
 Commons, not by the Lords of the Crown), then 
 he would vote against the Government upon all 
 measures whatsoever. 
 
 No, the real weakness of the proposition lies in 
 this : that the mass of men have so despaired of 
 the House of Commons and its methods that no 
 sufficient organisation with this end could be con- 
 structed. What they feel is : " The old thing is 
 fading ; let it fade. The enormous effort required 
 for making any impression on it at all is not worth 
 while." 
 
 Well, if it so prove, if freemen will not make an 
 effort to control their representatives, then it is 
 necessary to decide that the law-making institu- 
 tion of England, which has already ceased to be 
 an instrument of Government, is done with. 
 
 A spasmodic life may be, and probably will be, 
 lent it in the desperate attempt of the professionals 
 to keep up the old interest in their trade. Questions 
 
CAN IT BE MENDED? 201 
 
 of real import may be raised. It is conceivable, for 
 instance, that a " Conservative " leader might 
 frankly adopt Protection, or a '' Liberal " prefer 
 Adult Suffrage. It is exceedingly likely, nay 
 almost certain, that, as matter of self-preserva- 
 tion, the politicians of the immediate future will 
 establish temporary divisions upon which true 
 interests can range themselves ; but they will not 
 thus restore Parliament, for purpose is lacking to 
 them. The body will jerk, perhaps — it will not 
 revive. 
 
 For on this thing all observant men are now 
 settled : the House of Commons in its present 
 inaptitude, producing as " leaders " the type of 
 men who play at the rotation of the party game, 
 cannot deal with the vast and rapidly changing 
 necessities of the country at home, where men 
 starve — or abroad, where (behind their backs) they 
 are humbled. 
 
 The degraded Parliament may ultimately be 
 replaced by some other organ ; but no such other 
 organ appears to be forming, and until we get our 
 first glimpse of it we are in for one of those evil 
 spaces, subject to foreign insult and domestic mis- 
 fortune, which invariably attach to nations when, 
 for a period, they lose grip over their own destinies. 
 
NOTES 
 
A NOTE ON CO-OPTION 
 
 In connection with this system of choosing the 
 chief officers of the State, it will be of advantage 
 to pause a moment and consider fully its modern 
 meaning. An evil may often be perfectly well 
 known to exist, and may even have become a 
 commonplace, and yet not be realised. It may be 
 all the less realised, and the conception of it may be 
 all the fainter in the public mind, precisely because 
 it has come to be taken for granted and has become 
 a commonplace. Let us first, therefore, repeat 
 clearl}^ what the process of selection is as compared 
 with that of our great rivals. 
 
 In the German Empire the men ultimately 
 responsible for the chief posts of administration 
 are chosen by one man of known character with 
 definite duties attached to his office and under no 
 necessity for intrigue among equals, or for the decep- 
 tion of inferiors. That man is the Emperor ; his 
 judgment, being a personal judgment, may be wise 
 or unwise, but it is exercised for public ends and 
 in the public view, and, precisely because it is 
 personal, is subject to public appreciation. It is 
 on this very account that the various men succes- 
 
 205 
 
206 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 sively picked out in our generation to be responsible ] 
 for military, naval, and civil matters, stand out as 
 prominent and great ; or, again, recede as small 
 and incompetent, and are judged, as it were, upon 
 a certain scale of merit, because their merits and 
 aptitudes are not fictions but realities ; they are 
 really chosen for a real work for which they are 
 supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be really apt. 
 And if they fail it is the failure of judgment in 
 those who choose, not a failure of motive. 
 
 In the French Republic a method superior from 
 the point of view of democratic theory, inferior 
 in continuity and personal initiative, exists. 
 Ministries are formed in any one of an almost 
 indefinite number of combinations, the object of 
 the one last arranged being to secure the support 
 of a majority in Parliament : and as that majority 
 is, in spite of much corruption and many contempt- 
 ible features in French Parliamentary life, at least 
 independent of any such self-appointed organisa- 
 tion as " the two Front Benches," it fluctuates at 
 will ; in other words, unless those men are chosen 
 who, each in his own department, can satisfy a 
 majority of the Chamber, the Ministry will be 
 rejected. Sometimes the Ministry will fall as a 
 whole and be replaced by another combination 
 more nearly representing the tone of Parliament 
 at the moment ; sometimes members of it prove 
 worthless or unworthy, are dispensed with, and 
 the Ministry is " reconstructed " ; but the Ministry 
 must always be representative of a real majority 
 
A NOTE ON CO-OPTION 207 
 
 in the Commons, or it is not allowed to adminis- 
 trate, and this is true of each of its important 
 appointments singly as well as of the Cabinet as 
 a whole. There is no machinery for compelling 
 Parliament to accept whatever it may be given in 
 the way of Ministers under pain of dissolution and 
 a general election. Still less is there a permanent 
 understanding between the Radical group and the 
 Conservative group, or their chief men, by which 
 automatic voting can be secured in favour of any 
 combinations " passed and approved " by those 
 chief men behind the scenes. 
 
 In the United States of America, where Federal 
 responsibility, though its initiative is of capital 
 importance, covers a more restricted area than 
 the responsibility of British Ministers, it is, as in 
 Germany, the direct and responsible will of one 
 man which is mainly responsible for the choice of 
 the heads of departments, and these are particu- 
 larly excluded from the action of the Party System, 
 which is almost as rigid as our own. True, that 
 " monarch " is elected upon a party ticket, but 
 it is characteristic of this wise provision for the 
 selection of a single man to exercise ultimate 
 authority at the head of the State, that his per- 
 sonality is ever a capital feature. In proceeding 
 to a Presidential election great National Conven- 
 tions have the chief influence and weight. Not 
 always, but usually, a real leader emerges from 
 what is not only a real but sometimes a frenzied 
 competition, and one has only to cite the names 
 
208 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 of the American Presidents to see how large a pro- 
 portion of them are the names of men who, whether 
 we approve them or disapprove them, acted, led, 
 and did with the objects of the Commonwealth 
 before their eyes. In less than thirty names you 
 may count Washington and Jefferson, Van Buren, 
 the elder Harrison, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, and 
 Roosevelt, and these are but the most prominent 
 of all. 
 
 Now what happens here ? 
 
 We are not asking what did happen, when, with 
 the machinery apparently similar to our own 
 to-day, very different results were obtained. We 
 are asking what does happen as a fact at the 
 present moment. 
 
 What happens is this : an existing set of persons, 
 a dozen or so, distributed between the two Front 
 Benches, exercise the right to recruit their perma- 
 nent organisation, to recruit it gradually and to 
 recruit it continuously. Over this right Parlia- 
 ment has no actual check. The Crown is reported, 
 once or twice at the most in a whole lifetime, 
 to have some modifying influence in the case of a 
 couple or at most three selections. How far the 
 rumour is true we cannot tell, because the whole 
 process is conducted with that secrecy which has 
 become the rule of our political life. This clique, 
 perpetually recruiting itself by co-option, has 
 become a definite organism separate from the rest 
 of the political body, with the inevitable result that, 
 as we have seen, and as we have insisted upon 
 
A NOTE ON CO-OPTION 209 
 
 throughout this book, it has become more and more 
 a family affair, introduction to which is mainly 
 secured by personal and private influence. 
 
 Some will argue that a proportion of the men so 
 chosen are and will continue to be of service to the 
 Commonwealth and of ability. That is true — and 
 the flaw in the argument is that it would be equally 
 true under any system of government whatsoever, 
 however corrupt and however self-seeking. The 
 decencies must be maintained, and a certain mini- 
 mum of efficiency is as necessary to the conduct of 
 this arbitrary form as of any other arbitrary form 
 of government ; but it is as true of this arbitrary 
 form as of other arbitrary forms, that they tend 
 to become inefficient in proportion as they escape 
 from pubHc control and public criticism, and the 
 most sanguine can hardly believe that, by a pure 
 coincidence, a little group of men so closely inter- 
 related must continuously and traditionally form 
 the best or even a good selection of public officers. 
 
 But (another will object) this same machinery 
 existed in the past, and gave results under which 
 Great Britain continually increased in prosperity 
 and power. This is true ; but there were three 
 elements present in the past which have gradually 
 lost effect and are now eliminated : the first was 
 aristocracy, which, whether we approve it or dis- 
 approve it, has always had certain characteristics 
 wherever it has existed in a State, among which 
 was the spontaneous selection of a sufficient 
 
 number of men within its ranks who should pro- 
 
 14 
 
210 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 perly conduct the common weal. An aristocracy 
 admittedly in power has, in its effects, something of 
 the representative character which a national mon- 
 archy possesses ; and, what is more, selection being 
 frankly confined to a certain and fairly large area 
 in which is to be discovered one type of man, there 
 is an active and real competition within that area. 
 
 Secondly, the Crown possessed a real determin- 
 ing influence which watched over each Ministry 
 and clearly affected it. 
 
 Thirdly, and much the most important, there 
 was the real and effective control of Parliament. 
 
 To-day all those three salutary factors are gone. 
 
 It is true, of course, that there are remains of 
 aristocratic tradition, but they are not dominant. 
 They work only where aristocracy is combined 
 with great wealth, and they prefer great wealth to 
 lineage. Now, it is in the essence of the healthy 
 working of aristocratic institutions that they shall 
 be open, national, and admitted : when they work 
 under tolerance, as it were, and with dwindling 
 effect, their function in the Commonwealth is petty 
 and directly evil. 
 
 The influence of the Crown may revive. It is a 
 part of the game the self-appointed clique play to- 
 day to hint mysteriously from time to time at the 
 existence or revival of that power, but it is not 
 definite, and it is certainly exceedingly weak — if it 
 exists at all. The public knows nothing of it, and 
 if the hints dropped by the professional politicians 
 are as truthful in this connection as their state- 
 
A NOTE ON CO-OPTION 211 
 
 ments upon any other matter, they may be safely 
 neglected. 
 
 As for the control of Parliament, by far the chief 
 factor, it has utterly disappeared. It is impossible 
 to conceive of any appointment made to either 
 Front Bench, however monstrous or absurd, which 
 would lead to remonstrance from the drilled voting 
 machine which the Front Benches control ; nor can 
 any critic of what we here advance point out such 
 remonstrance during the course of many years. 
 
 To sum up, the method of recruitment is simply 
 that against which every corporate body particu- 
 larly and specially guards itself. It is an under- 
 stood matter, wherever men act in common, in a 
 college, a public company, or any other form of 
 activity, their Executive must be watched, chosen, 
 and controlled ; and that the one disease most 
 fatal to the success and health of the whole is the 
 letting of the Executive become a clique which has 
 and exercises the power of appointing friends and 
 relatives in its own renewal. Yet that is exactly 
 what the Executive in the most important cor- 
 porate body of all has become. The Executive of 
 Parliament is a clique, possessing and using the 
 power to renew itself by the co-option of relatives, 
 connections, and friends ; and this method, with 
 just so many exceptions as may keep the system 
 alive, is the normal and recognised method by 
 which we have come to choose those who shall be 
 responsible for the national safety and well-being 
 when next some peril shall arise. 
 
A NOTE ON COLLUSION 
 
 It is exceedingly important in this connection 
 to observe a due proportion of criticism. That 
 which is concealed, and that the true nature of 
 which is carefully and deliberately misrepresented 
 to the public, cannot be exposed by a mere negation 
 of the public's false conception. For, in the first 
 place, no such general conception would be held by 
 a great number of men were there not an element 
 of truth in it; and, in the second place, all false in- 
 trigue designed to deceive great bodies of men is 
 necessarily careful and tentative in its action. 
 
 When, therefore, insistence is laid on the col- 
 lusion maintained between the leaders of either 
 nominal " side " in the House of Commons, it is 
 not and cannot be meant, by their most ardent 
 critics, that there is neither ground of opposition 
 between them, nor even that collusion is their 
 chief preoccupation. The process may be best 
 compared to one of those active but ordered 
 struggles wherein men find so much of their occupa- 
 tion and even profit : ranging from a game of 
 cards at the least to the great competitive activi- 
 ties of commerce at the greatest. 
 
 212 
 
A NOTE ON COLLUSION 213 
 
 Now in all such engagements the interest of the 
 sport and (if there is money in it) the avidity for 
 gain bring out real differences of action, real 
 conflicts of object, and even sometimes, and in 
 proportion to the magnitude and sincerity of the 
 affair, real passions. 
 
 Were party ever so fictitious, some elements of 
 conflict would still remain. Had all political ideals 
 disappeared in the business, something would have 
 to be invented to play for. But, conversely, were 
 party ever so real or ever so deadly earnest, some- 
 thing would still have to be held in common, which 
 is the security and well-being and order of the 
 community. Thus in the fierce competition of 
 the great capitalists, one thing is still more im- 
 portant than success in the competition, and that 
 is the maintenance by law and armed force of the 
 whole capitalistic system. Thus also, at the other 
 end of the scale, when men play golf or whist or 
 bridge, one thing is more important than winning, 
 and that is seeing that the rules shall be observed, 
 in other words, that the game shall continue to 
 exist and be possible. 
 
 It must therefore be granted that though the 
 very maximum of difference were present between 
 true and vivid political ideals, separately held and 
 cherished by the leaders of the two parties, yet for 
 the very existence of government by debate one 
 thing would remain more important than those 
 ideals, namely, the preservation of the system under 
 which they could be discussed, and the decisions 
 
214 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 of majorities arrived at and upheld. To deny this 
 is to admit what none can admit, save in the rarest 
 and most absolute of conflicts, the need of civil 
 
 war. 
 
 We may imagine, therefore, one leader and his 
 followers, sincerely convinced that a war was 
 morally justifiable, and (what is almost the same 
 thing) of advantage to England ; his opponent 
 and his opponent's followers, as strongly con- 
 vinced that it was a crime and a national disaster, 
 and yet both those men preserving the decencies 
 of the debate, occasionally conferring upon matters 
 whereon the whole nation was agreed and in which 
 administrative skill was required. We may imagine 
 them using their efforts to keep the House of 
 Commons united after a great defeat in a plan 
 for recovering the national honour ; that would 
 not be collusion, that would not afford matter for 
 criticism in the judgment of any but a fanatic. 
 
 But as things now stand, the line is drawn at an 
 indefinite distance from this ideal line. The thing 
 which the nominal opponents find it essential to 
 preserve by their secret understanding, is not the 
 security of the country nor even the order of 
 debate, but the conditions under which they and 
 their clique shall retain the opportunities for large 
 salaries within and without the country, and for 
 power. The things on which they prevent division 
 are precisely the things on which opinion is really 
 divided and the policy of the majority is expected 
 to rule. The things which they forbid to arise in 
 
A NOTE ON COLLUSION 215 
 
 debate are precisely those things which form the 
 secret basis of their position, the sale of honours 
 and legislative power, the connection between 
 nominal antagonists, the reform of the procedure 
 of the House, the widening of opportunities for 
 private members, the lowering of salaries, the 
 establishment of control by public committees, 
 and so forth. It is true to say that no one im- 
 portant policy for now fifteen years has been 
 allowed by the two Front Benches to form a 
 clear division in the House of Commons, with 
 the exception of the policy of Women's Suffrage ; 
 and even in this case it lies entirely with the two 
 Front Benches whether that policy, no matter by 
 what majority it may be passed, is to have an 
 opportunity of becoming law, or even of reaching 
 Committee stage. ^ 
 
 The collusion we speak of is particularly apparent 
 in matters of administration which to-day, in the 
 complexity of public affairs, are of particular im- 
 portance. It is strikingly apparent where the 
 interests of great financiers are concerned : the 
 Ministerialist who most loudly denounces the power 
 of the rich is seeing to it that a stroke of financial 
 
 ^ Thus in the form of an extension of the suffrage to the 
 well-to-do, the two Front Benches are on the whole, or at least 
 by a majority, agreed, and the adherence of the Labour Party to 
 this scheme is particularly significant, for their attitude is always 
 an index of the official view held on either side of the Speaker's 
 chair. The alternative proposal to extend the suffrage to all 
 women i^, on the contrary, discountenanced by the two Front 
 Benches. Time would be required to make such a scheme fit in 
 with the machines that feed and support them. 
 
216 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 policy carried on by some cosmopolitan banker in 
 Egypt or Ceylon should be kept from the public, 
 and his '' opponent " is told of the matter, con- 
 sulted upon it, and heartily supports it. 
 
 All evils tend to reach their remedy by excess, 
 and this evil has certainly come to a pitch which 
 should bring it very near the breaking point. If 
 by some accident leaders have not been able to 
 meet so as to arrange a common policy, a note will 
 be tossed across the table at the House of Commons. 
 Time and again the Whips confer openly to prevent 
 a majority decision upon some matter which keenly 
 divides opinion among rank and file. The common 
 decision to exclude amendments to the Address 
 which are not " official " is no longer secretly 
 negotiated, but part of the open business of the 
 House. When new salaried posts are created, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, or whoever else is 
 the responsible Minister in connection with it, will 
 announce his intention of conveying the favoured 
 names to the Front Bench he faces, and will ignore 
 aU criticism or questioning from " his own side." 
 
 In fine, it is this basis of collusion, now firmly 
 laid down as the foundation of the whole system, 
 which directly creates what is otherwise inexplic- 
 able and what the plain elector marvels at ; to wit, 
 the way in which even a real question, once started, 
 at once becomes a false issue and is argued upon 
 premises that neither interest the pubhc nor really 
 concern the vital points of the debate. 
 
 Thus it is proposed to increase the salary of one 
 
A NOTE ON COLLUSION 217 
 
 of the clique from £40 to £100 a week ; probably 
 the " other half " will hold their tongues — for the 
 money is always in prospect for them later on ; 
 but if they argue it they will argue that the office 
 is not " of a dignity " to carry such a salary ! As 
 though in this country the dignity of position 
 corresponded with its emolument ! Or, again, it 
 is proposed to pay members of ParHament, where- 
 upon an exceedingly wealthy Front Bench man, 
 who has already lifted thousands out of the taxes, 
 will jump up to suggest that the proposition is 
 aU very well for those who cannot afford to sit 
 at Westminster, but is in danger of creating " the 
 professional politician." 
 
 Another gentleman in a happy and irresponsible 
 moment proposes the referendum. His " side " 
 all suddenly cry out in chorus (only for a few days 
 it is true) that the referendum is good because it 
 is cheap, clear, and would avoid the turmoil co- 
 incident with an election. At once the professionals 
 of the " other side " argue that men voting yes or 
 no on the Licensing Bill, for instance, would not 
 know their own minds, and that the very spirit 
 of democracy requires that a small co-opted clique 
 should govern the country. Nay, the crushing 
 argument is discovered that the word referendum 
 is not of Anglo-Saxon origin, whereupon the 
 original defenders on the first " side " triumph- 
 antly substitute the word " poll " ; and win. 
 
 This done, both parties abandon all mention of 
 the referendum for ever. 
 
i 
 
 A NOTE ON THE PRESS 
 
 In considering both the evils produced by the 
 Party System and the chance of remedying them, 
 a reader acquainted with EngHsh life will at once 
 be met by one of the most important factors in 
 that life : the influence of the daily Press. 
 
 In some ways that influence is peculiar to this 
 country ; but a statement of its characteristics — 
 the predominance of a very few great daily news- 
 papers, the urban life in which alone the mere 
 suggestion which they represent could have such 
 power, the immense sums necessary to found and 
 to conduct one, the anonymity of the opinions and 
 information they impose and convey — all these 
 are matters so familiar to an English reader that 
 they may be taken for granted. 
 
 The Press is certainly devoted to the Party 
 System : more devoted to it than is any part of 
 the State, except the professional politicians them- 
 selves. If, then, the Press can be shown to suffer 
 from the pressure of party-machinery, that is, if 
 the party agents actively taint public information, 
 then certainly we have here one of the most evil 
 examples of its influence, and an evil that will be 
 
 218 
 
A NOTE ON THE PRESS 219 
 
 best corrected by the correction of its cause, the 
 Party System itself. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the motive force is the other 
 way, if the Press is a voluntary agent freely support- 
 ing the Party System and its hypocrisies, then in 
 considering this poison in the source of public 
 information we must attack not the Party System 
 in its connection with the Press, but the Press in 
 its connection with the Party System. 
 
 Let us examine the problem. 
 
 That the Press is grossly and even ludicrously 
 warped in its connection with our modern machine- 
 made politics no one will deny. The great daily 
 papers are advocates for the one team and the other, 
 and, in connection with political discussion, they 
 never rise above, nor are more intelligent or lively 
 than, mere advocacy. The policy adopted by the 
 so-called " Liberal " team will be enthusiastically 
 defended in the Star, the Daily News, the Man- 
 Chester Guardian, the Westminster Gazette, etc. 
 The policy put forward by the " other "i team will 
 be similarly championed by the Times, the Daily 
 Telegraph, the Birmingham Daily Post, the Pall 
 Mall Gazette, and so forth. That is a common- 
 place : and the superficial observer might be 
 tempted to the conclusion — a foreigner would 
 certainly be tempted to it — that the professional 
 politicians were controlling the Press QSfen more 
 thoroughly than they control their hack followers, 
 
 1 Just now it has no fixed name. Shall we call it (in January 
 1911) "Conservative"? 
 
220 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 and presumably controlling it by the same corrupt 
 methods. 
 
 In other words, a first approach to the problem 
 would make us conclude that the Party System 
 was the cause, and the warping of the Press (that 
 is of public information) the effect. Many a man 
 has smiled during the last few weeks to read, in 
 the so-called " Liberal " papers, enthusiastic 
 battle-cries, such as that the " Peers " were 
 opposed to the " People " in the farcical election 
 of last December. Many a man has smiled to read 
 in " Conservative " newspapers majestic eulogies 
 of such few commonplace and second-rate pro- 
 fessionals as were shouting in one breath the 
 necessity of defending the ancient Constitution 
 of the country, and the necessity of utterly trans- 
 forming one of the estates of the realm. 
 
 The absurdity of the sorry business is apparent 
 to most readers, but it is particularly apparent to 
 that large class of readers who know how a great 
 newspaper is produced. Who know, for instance, 
 that the writers on such and such a " Conserva- 
 tive" paper are largely Socialist; the chief influence 
 in such another " Free Trade " paper is that of 
 a convinced Protectionist ; that the ownership of 
 such and such an organ is divided between men 
 who vaguely profess adherence to both teams, or, 
 as is more common, are indifferent to the success 
 of either. 
 
 Knowing such things, one might be tempted to 
 say that they were the product of methods directly 
 
A NOTE ON THE PRESS 221 
 
 corrupt, such as are the familiar and common 
 instruments of the professional politicians. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, they are not the results 
 of such methods. The pressure of the politicians 
 upon the papers can be exerted only in one form, 
 which is the granting of honours to such of their 
 proprietors as desire those distinctions. That is 
 not a very powerful lever ; and, as a matter of fact, 
 it has become rather a matter of routine that such 
 honours should be granted when they are asked for. 
 
 For instance, A, B, and C on the Treasury Bench 
 promote a Bill for the nationalisation of a railway. 
 They have the intention, of course, of paying the 
 shareholders (to many of whom they are related) 
 more than it is worth. D, E, and F (cousins, 
 uncles, stepsons, etc. of A, B, and C) formally 
 oppose the Bill, the success of which they ardently 
 desire, and the financial proceeds from which they 
 and their relatives are expecting as eagerly as any. 
 
 Mr Muggs owns a newspaper which has been 
 supporting A, B, and C, or perhaps buys it ; it 
 continues to support A, B, and C. His brother, 
 -Johnnie Muggs, owns an opposition paper, and 
 supports D, E, and F. When the time has come for 
 the two teams to arrange an election and to have 
 " a swing of the pendulum," that is to swop 
 salaries, Mr Muggs is given his baronetcy or what- 
 not (no money passes in such cases) ; and when 
 D, E, and F come in after the election, Johnnie 
 Muggs, within a decent interval, gets the little 
 handle to his name, whatever it may be. 
 
222 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 The whole thing is native to the atmosphere of 
 modern poHtics, and much less corrupt than most 
 features of political life. It would be easy to name 
 half a dozen great owners of newspapers who 
 could perfectly well obtain such honours if they 
 desired them, and who have either refused them or 
 shown no sort of inclination for them. As for places, 
 direct payments, jobs, contracts, and the rest, the 
 Press is, of all the industries in the country, the 
 least touched by the party disease where they are 
 concerned. It would probably be impossible to 
 point to a single case in which the support given 
 by a newspaper to a professional politician could 
 be connected with any money reward of the kind. 
 
 Where, then, does the cause lie ? What is the 
 motive which makes a man, otherwise honest, and 
 one whose main duty it is to earn his living by 
 conveying true information, talk of the *' magnetic 
 personality " of the late Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Banner man or the " arresting eloquence " of some 
 member of the Churchill or Cecil families ? 
 
 Primarily, it is the fact that the public, which 
 buys the newspaper, is, by what is now a hard and 
 fossilised journalistic tradition, supposed to desire 
 this sort of farce. There are, of course, great num- 
 bers of the middle class, especially in the provinces, 
 who do actually desire to have the game played in 
 this fashion for them in the sheets which they 
 daily read ; and though half a dozen independent 
 and instructive newspapers should arise to-morrow, 
 fuUy capitalised, well advertised, and properly 
 
A NOTE ON THE PRESS 223 
 
 written, yet the mere momentum of custom would 
 cause party to linger in the great body of the 
 Press for many years. It would linger, we may be 
 sure, even though the Party System itself should 
 have disappeared : for instance, traces of it would 
 remain for an appreciable time under the govern- 
 ment of an open coalition. 
 
 We must take it, then, that the motive of action 
 here is a social force not yet spent, and one which 
 will probably outlive the Party System itself. 
 Something of the sort is to be seen in the matter 
 of religious and historical conventions : the Press 
 feels itself bound to repeat these conventions long 
 after they have ceased to have reality in the minds 
 of its readers ; and its readers, on their side, expect 
 this ritual to be performed. 
 
 Against a force of this kind there is no immed- 
 iate remedy. Ridicule, exposure, continual crit- 
 icism, may rapidly undermine the Party System 
 in action, and may so scatter sand into the bearings 
 of that " machine for grinding wind " that it shall 
 be brought to a standstill. But ridicule, ex- 
 posure, and the rest will find nothing tangible to 
 work on in the party attitude of the Press, for the 
 simple reason that that attitude is not corrupt, but 
 merely conventional. You can, by the habit of re- 
 peated exposure of similar jobs in the past, make a 
 particular professional poHtician afraid of per- 
 petrating some particular job in the present ; and 
 when you have made an appreciable number of 
 the politicians afraid to act corruptly on an appreci- 
 
224 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 able number of occasions, the Party System will 
 be done for. But in the case of the Press there is 
 nothing to expose. Its attitude is not wicked, it is 
 merely stupid. 
 
 The true tactic of those who regret the extension 
 of this disease to the newspapers is to continue 
 their attack upon that Parliamentary game which 
 is not the cause but which is the object of the news- 
 papers' fatuity. If that game can be slackened 
 down, put off, confused, and so ended, the Press 
 will be ultimately the wholesomer for the change, 
 and will lie less ; but its health must come in- 
 directly ; no medicine will reach it till the party 
 politician (who is the stock-in-trade of the Press) is 
 made impossible. 
 
 Meanwhile it is difficult to see why some man of 
 wealth and enterprise (or some group of men pos- 
 sessed of both these valuable but incongruous 
 qualities) should not start a journal, the object of 
 which should be the conveyance of information 
 rather than the wearisome advocacy of set policies 
 designed in conclave by the " Government " and 
 " Opposition " Benches. 
 
 Why should it not be possible for a newspaper 
 to lay before its readers the advantages and dis- 
 advantages of a duty on hops, while at the same 
 time giving its readers full information upon the 
 effect of a duty on wheat at five shillings a quarter ? 
 Why should its writers not determine against the 
 second and in favour of the first innovation ? 
 More important still : why should we not have a 
 
A NOTE ON THE PRESS 225 
 
 stray journal or two which would print what 
 " party '* now prevents either " side " of journal- 
 ism from printing ? For instance, why should we 
 not have journals prepared to denounce the sale 
 of legislative power by either team or a corrupt 
 job, whether of the Minister for the Fine Arts, or of 
 his wife's cousin, the late " Opposition " Minister 
 of Public Worship and Justice ? Why should not 
 a newspaper which thought it just to lay an in- 
 crement tax upon urban land, and asinine to dis- 
 tribute broadcast such a farrago of details and often 
 unanswerable questions as Form Four, express 
 both opinions ? They are not logically discon- 
 nected ! 
 
 A journal which thought it necessary to increase 
 the strength of the British Navy in capital ships 
 need not, one would imagine, be bound to hold up 
 Belfast as a model for the rest of Ireland ; nor need a 
 paper whose proprietor or staff thought the present 
 expenditure upon the Navy excessive be compelled 
 to regard the drinking of a glass of beer as an 
 enormity. 
 
 Most men sunk in the managerial routine of 
 journalism would say there was " no room " for 
 such a paper, '' no public " for it, and nothing but 
 financial disaster in front of it. 
 
 Those who argue thus can never have noticed 
 how many thousands are daily driven to consult 
 the organs of both the nominal " sides " in order to 
 guess at the truth which an independent journal 
 would have given them without such labour. 
 
 15 
 
226 THE PARTY SYSTEM 
 
 There is a public of many, many thousands, 
 especially in London, awaiting such an experi- 
 ment, and it is noticeable that the best edited of 
 the morning papers, the Daily Mail, continually 
 admits discussion and adverse opinion upon 
 matters in which the public judgment requires 
 rather information and the balance of opinions 
 than advocacy. 
 
 However, a pursuit of this consideration would 
 lead us far from the object of our book, and this 
 short section is no more than what we have called 
 it, a " Note." 
 
 It is enough to conclude that no direct remedy 
 is applicable to the existing Party Press : it must 
 drag its weary way a little longer, and continue for 
 a few more years to tell us of the dreadful antagon- 
 isms which separate the Siamese Twins of poUtics. 
 
 No policy is possible to the reformer save that of 
 disregarding the official Press, of leaving it on one 
 side, and of advancing upon the only active force 
 remaining to the Party System, the cupidity and 
 intrigues of those few whom it benefits. The 
 Press has long ceased to affect opinion.^ 
 
 1 It has ceased, that is, to affect opinion where " Party " is 
 concerned : largely because very little true opinion in the matter 
 of party now exists. It has not, of course, ceased to affect opinion 
 in another sense ; it can affect the public very deeply indeed by its 
 choice of information upon foreign affairs. The attempt, how- 
 ever, to influence the party game through the purchase of news- 
 papers has latterly proved financially so disastrous that we shall 
 probably not see it repeated. 
 
 PRINTED BY NULL AND 00., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
 
honely Rngland 
 
 By maud GOLDRING 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE DOWNSMAN, 
 
 THE TENANTS OF 
 
 PI XT FARM, 
 
 SThis book deals with '• one of the loneliest of all the 
 inhabited islands of the sea," — that England which 
 Englishmen are beginning to rediscover with wonder and 
 joy, after years of neglect and false ideals of living. 
 
 1 
 
 The author, with deft and subtle power, suggests that 
 to-day, as ever, fairyland lurks in all the English country- 
 side, its gates set wide for all simple hearts to enter. 
 
 ^ The book tells of what only yesterday befell people as 
 *J ordinary as any among the myriads of the Strand, when 
 
 once they had escaped down the long white road that 
 
 leads away from towns, 
 
 M There are songs and verses scattered about, and the 
 *J Wind of the Heath blov/s through all the book. 
 
 FOUR FULL- PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR 
 
 5s. net 
 
 STEPHEN SWIFT 
 
 10 John Street, Adelphi 
 LONDON 
 
1 
 
 3 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 The Rector of 
 St Jacob 's 
 
 BY 
 
 SENEX RUSTICANUS 
 
 This novel possesses phenomenal interest in that it is the fresh 
 work of one who will shortly enter his 8oth year. In spite of 
 his advanced age, the author's mental vision is almost piercingly 
 accurate, and his mind, though stored with the memories of well- 
 nigh a century of controversies, is keenly responsive to the 
 thought-movements of to-day. Indeed, he is at the moment a 
 constant reviewer of philosophical and religious books for one of 
 the biggest Reviews. 
 
 But the book is not only a "prodigy of age," but a searching 
 study of thought, motive, and action, and the types of character 
 so vividly depicted are in our midst to-day. 
 
 The main interest of the story centres round the struggle between 
 the sacred associations of the past and the rationalistic or scien- 
 tific conclusions of the present going on in the mind and life of 
 Reginald Twyford, Rector of St Jacob's, in the small town of 
 Mossborough. Much of the action is carried on by the leading 
 inhabitants of this decaying country town, and particularly by 
 Ottiiie Arkcole, a young lady with heretical and hygienic ideas. 
 
 The book is a living document of unique interest. 
 
 6s. 
 
 STEPHEN SWIFT 
 
 10 John Street, Adelphi 
 
 LONDON 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk ot any 
 University ot Calitornia Library 
 or to the 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 Bldg. 40a Richmond Field Station 
 University ot Calitornia 
 Richmond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 • 2-month loans may be renewed by callino 
 (510)642-6753 ^ 
 
 • 1-year loans may be recharged by brinqinq 
 books to NRLF 
 
 • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 
 days prior to due date. 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 EP 21999 
 
 ^^ t ^TMhNCD 
 
 ^Pf? ^ ;ooo 
 
 r». 
 
 12,000(11/95) ' ~ ~ Y 
 
U,C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CD3^3^sbfl^