All politicians live a life apart from the general mass of the less wealthy, less privileged classes, though they themselves are so largely drawn from these strata. It is astonishing when one hears them talking among themselves to discover how remote they are from the general interests of the public, and how seriously they take their own sham divisions and sham battles, and with what strange simplicity they believe that these sham battles are of vast moment to the electorate. The public as a whole is now fully acquainted with the nastiness and degradation of public life. It certainly does not appreciate the ultimate consequences of these, but at any rate it is no longer under any illusions. Indeed, my experience is that the ordinary member of the public, the average man in the liberal professions and in commerce, rather exaggerates the evil than otherwise, although he does not recognise its danger. He is ready to believe that pretty well any politician may be found taking money, and he does not distinguish as he should between the two sharply different types of Parliamentarians: those with a dirty record of their own, and those with a clean record who permit and support the dirt in the midst of which they live. For it must be admitted that public life is full of men who would never dream of themselves doing such actions as have come to mark their profession as a whole; but these men do not on that account stand excused. They support the nastiness in the midst of which they live; they refuse to correct it; they even, as a rule, join those who would prevent its exposure. They are accessories to all those acts which they not only personally despise and are disgusted with, but which in private they denounce. For they could put an end to the system if they preferred justice to their own little careers and the general good of England to their personal ease or notoriety.
Sometimes they try to salve their consciences by substituting a general for a particular condemnation—the oldest device known to governing man for shirking the duties of government.
I remember an excellent comedy of this sort in which I myself took part. The Admiralty had given an order for the making of an important part of a man-of-war to a small company (what is called a ‘one-man’ company) run for the profit of a friend of the Prime Minister of the day.
There was nothing excessive about that bit of favouritism. It was natural that a politician should help a friend: some one must have the order, and there was no great harm done to the State. But the next step was of real importance.
It turned out that the part supplied was defective. Those who supplied it might plead that they did not know the defect to exist, nor indeed would it be to their advantage to have allowed such a defect. It was probably an accident, though it did point to the work having been given to people inadequate to its gravity. The part was sent back to be put right. Instead of being put right, as it should have been, an operation was performed with the effect of concealing the defect, instead of remedying it. The part was sent back in such a condition that, had the flaw not been discovered, the great man-of-war itself and its crew might have perished. This was obviously a very serious matter indeed. If there is one thing the politicians must not be allowed to play tricks with, it is the Navy.
Now, the Parliamentarians appointed to look into public accounts issued a fine bombastic denunciation of the awful business, and used such words as would have satisfied Jeremiah. _But they were very careful not to mention a single name._
That seemed to me something of a defect. I was in Parliament at the time, and I set out to find out who were the actual human beings responsible for this crime. Unless one got on to them and punished them, one might as well have done nothing in the matter. If things of this sort can be done with impunity, they will certainly be done again.
I found the greatest difficulty in getting any single one of those six hundred-odd men in the Commons to act with me in the matter. I did not, of course, approach more than a few, because there were not more than a few who would even consider the public good; but by one of those few I was told that it was not usual to act in this fashion; that such action was regarded as ‘personal’; that the thing was now some months concluded and ought to be buried; that it was difficult to arrive at the ultimate responsibility in these affairs—and so on. They all applied to a principal unit of the British Navy, to an English man-of-war and a thousand English lives, the principle that the politician was more important than ship or crew, and that their own Parliamentary skins were more important than the country.
The individual private member of Parliament has no power of action in Parliament except the chance of the ballot or the putting-down of a question. I put down my question. It was answered in the most pathetic manner by the politician directly responsible, who called Heaven to witness that I had traduced by my question an old and valued friend of his own whom he loved as a brother. That the fault was that of ‘a subordinate.’ The House murmured its sympathy. I pointed out that I had traduced no one, that I had only asked for the names of the responsible people and for their prosecution. Whereupon, as another journalistic phrase goes, ‘the matter was allowed to drop.’ But I need hardly add that the person nominally responsible was promoted to a public honour, and that no ‘subordinate’ appeared.
It was only a small episode, though it would not have seemed small to the officers or crew if their ship had struck in the middle of the night owing to a defect in the steering gear—still, honestly, it was a small matter as politics go. There are hosts of much graver instances, but it was a characteristic one.
The argument that this now universal taint covering public life is tolerable because the same thing goes on in every country where there is a Parliament, and therefore does not weaken us in the face of our rivals, has two bad flaws in it.
The first is a neglect of the fact that the cancer called Parliament is no longer universal. Some of our rivals are already rid of it: all are disgusted with it; most will probably have cut it out within a generation.
The second is that nowhere is Parliament bound up with the Nation as it is in England.
The French parliamentary system is at least as corrupt as the English: from the little I know of it, I should say it was worse. The American, I understand, is not so bad; but it is still sufficiently corrupt to excite the perpetual vigilance of the American electorate and press, which are as ruthless in exposing such evils as we are resolute in concealing them. Of the Polish and German systems, which have just come into existence, I know nothing. The Italian was contemptible, and the Spanish a joke. They have both been happily kicked into the street, and I trust we shall hear of them no more.
But the parliamentary corruption of other countries is attached to an institution which in those countries is subsidiary to the national life. No one in France, for instance, regards the Parliament as a necessary, or even a properly working, part of the national existence; it is a modern experiment, very unpopular, and standing in some dread of far more permanent and deep-rooted institutions, such as the University, the Army, the Church, and the landed system, with which it has to work as best it may. The politicians in Paris can and do work great harm in all departments, but they do not form the traditional organ of government, rooted in the country, as the Commons do here. They live under perpetual protest.
In the United States, as everybody knows, the central representative assembly is altogether subordinate. The Senate is far more powerful, and far more respected. The President is high above both. He has monarchic powers superior to anything of the kind in Europe—superior by far to those exercised by the King of Prussia in the days when that individual was also military head of the Reich.
But in England Parliament is the great national institution. It is bound up with the whole life of the country. A disease attacking it is a national disease. The lawyers’ guild, which is in England far, far more powerful than in any other country, is inextricably bound up with Parliament. There can in England never be any question of the armed forces acting apart from Parliament; nor can there be apparently (and unfortunately) as yet a kingly power, like that of the President of the United States. A King of England would to-day find ample popular support against Parliament; but how is he to move?
Therein lies the gravity of the situation. Parliament will not reform itself, and yet there is no power external to Parliament capable of reforming it. Though the nation were in the last extremity of peril, we have not at hand some force external to Parliament capable of pushing aside its maleficent impotence and taking over the reins. Indeed, when certain politicians were secretly trying to make peace behind the back of the Allies during the crisis of the Great War, no one moved—except a few humble seamen, who stopped one important voyage of their own accord. Should we live to see an invasion of this country, or a shameful capitulation, I fear that the disaster and the shame would still be presided over by the politician. During the Great War we owed half a dozen insanities to the fact that with us a politican can order the movements of armies, in spite of the soldiers, and affect—though he can hardly direct—the foreign policy of the country, in spite of its competent permanent officials. It is true that the millionaire newspaper-owner, especially if he be devoid of instruction, and therefore of all responsibility, has more to do with the framing of a policy than has the politician, and it is true that the great and weighty financial interests are much more powerful. But Parliament is the door through which everything must pass—or, to change the metaphor, it is the instrument which alone can be used for direct effect; and its decline is on that account of very grave moment to the future of the country. It is therefore a despairing thing to say that the decline cannot be checked, that the disease must run its course; yet I fear there is nothing else to say. It is manifestly too late to set things right. There came one moment after another in which a remedy could have been applied; but each opportunity was refused, and I do not see how any sufficient one can arise in the future.