The cruise of the Nona The story of a cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with reflections and judgments on life and letters, men and manners
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.
To have checked the rot at the very beginning, as, for instance, during
the telephone scandal, would have been easy enough (already, a few
years before, Mundella had been thrown out of public life for what was
then thought a monstrous lapse, but what would now be thought hardly an
irregularity). It was even possible to turn the current as late as the
Marconi scandal. One virile decision in that crisis might still have
saved Parliament. But I do not see, nor do I think any one else can
tell me, how it can be saved now.
The test is very simple. On the day when a Cabinet Minister is heavily
fined or imprisoned for irregular action in connection with money the
tide will have turned. Does any one believe that such a day will come?
I for my part certainly do not. Therefore the decay will continue. The
system, already deep-rooted and established, will become a matter of
course, and there will happen in the long run to the House of Commons
what has happened to every institution which gets past praying for;
but, meanwhile, what of us who have no other instrument? What of the
nation?
One point of view was presented to me by a wise old gentleman who had
spent about thirty years (doing nothing) in the House of Commons and
then wangled a peerage (for nothing) out of his colleagues; for he
desired to live on under the same roof and to spend the last of his
days amusing himself—remaining an indulgent spectator of what was
still, to him, a slightly interesting affair.
It was on the evening of a day when I had been trying hard to dig one