{101}
It is characteristic that the most important fact about English politics 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 If 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 collection save that which the annual Honours List furnishes. No light is thrown upon their expenditure 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 {102} 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 only to ask and to have. It is part of the game for the party organisers to proclaim themselves 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 patronage 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 Parliament 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 {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, however 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 especially 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 ordinary method of replenishing the Party Funds is by the sale of peerages, baronetcies, knighthoods, and other honours in return for sub-{104}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 particular case could only be proved if one were able to do—what one would not perhaps be allowed to do—to subpœna 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 conveys 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 {105} that description—Lords Peel, Kitchener, Curzon, Morley of Blackburn, Fisher, and a few more. Why were the rest made peers? On what conceivable 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 William 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 Northcliffe 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) Mayer.
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 legislative 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} 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 Southwark) 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 recognition 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 unseated 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) {107} was an enormously rich cotton-owner of Lancashire. 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 Chairman 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-connected Liberal M.P. He is the grandson of Lord Hampden, and the son-in-law of Lord Brassey. He was prominently associated with Lord Rosebery’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 contracting 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} results in any way more respectable. In point of fact nothing is better calculated to show the essential 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 difference 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 influence made them a tower of strength to Conservatism 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 {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 perhaps 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 doubtless be for him, as it was for his brother, a stepping-stone to full nobility. Sir Harold Harmsworth {110} 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 Conservative Party managers have planted, the Liberal Party managers are only too ready to water.
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 Schnadhorst, 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 {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 statesmanship, 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 in 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 money.
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 primarily concerns the other political party.
{112} 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 perturbed 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 expression of the popular will, acting against the advice of the best Imperialists, sanctioned the importation 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 friendly negotiations with 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 {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 presented to the people is between Mr Balfour’s Licensing Bill, which meant in effect the endowment 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 alternative 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 political parties need the money of rich men to conduct the sham fight upon which their own prestige and salaries depend. The policy 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-{114}pression of alcoholic drinks is obvious. Others are interested in the grocery trade (whose organisation 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 command the support of the people, it is just the one thing that the people are never allowed to consider. 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-{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.