how large a share of the spoils goes to the victors whenever there is a change of Government from one side to the other. We talk slightingly of office-seekers and office-holders; but do most of us realise how many members of the dominant party in Parliament are officeholders at any given moment? There are more than fifty places in Parliament or in the Royal Household which are party appointments, and are held by the Ministry of the day and its subordinates and adherents. All these places carry comfortable salaries ranging from £1000 to £10,000 a-year, and if the duties of some of them are onerous those attached to several of the offices are particularly light. All of them compare very favourably with positions which carry smaller emoluments elsewhere. It may safely be said that nobody could earn £1200 or £1500 a-year so easily as an Under Secretary of State; nor could anybody, unless it be one of the paid judges of the House of Lords, draw the superb salary of £5000 per annum for a smaller amount of hard and irksome toil than a Minister holding an office in the Cabinet. But the prizes, or at any rate the substantial rewards, or rewards more or less substantial, of politics are by no means limited to those who may aspire to enter the Ministerial circle. About a fifth of the House of Commons is made up of lawyers. Some of these legislators do, no doubt, enter politics from a taste for the pursuit, or from a disinterested desire to place their services at the disposal of the public; but it is perfectly safe to say that the great majority are in public life for what they can get out of it. They expect, or at least they hope, to derive some solid advantage in return for such expenditure of time and money as they have made in order to obtain Parliamentary honours. The practising barrister of energy and capacity is on the look out for a suitable legal appointment. If he is high up in his profession and has been able to do useful work for his party, he may aspire to a seat on the High Court bench, or perhaps even to become a law officer under the Crown. If he stands a grade lower professionally, he may at least hope for a County Court judgeship, or for the comfortable, satisfactory, dignified, and in some cases wellpaid office of Recorder in a large or small borough. Recorderships vary in their value, but in all cases the holder is very adequately remunerated for such duties as he may perform. He has a judicial status and rank, and he can usually hold his appointment and draw its salary without relinquishing his practice at the Bar. If one of these plums does not fall to him, he may get some other legal appointment, such as a Mastership in the Courts of Justice, or he may be made a Judge or Attorney-General in one of the Crown Colonies; or again, he may find his practice usefully assisted by being appointed counsel to the Post Office or the Colonial Office, or some other department of State. Meanwhile his seat in the House advertises him usefully with the public, makes his name known to solicitors and business people in his own constituency, and generally improves his professional prospects. So that on the whole his election expenses and his subscriptions to local party organisations and charities must be regarded as an extremely good investment. If he plays his cards at all skilfully he is very likely to get a good deal more money out of politics than he has ever put into it, especially in these days when his legislative exertions are rewarded by a regular salary of £400 per annum. But it is only when we descend a few stages further in the social scale that the full advantage of cultivating politics as a profession becomes manifest. About two-thirds of the gentlemen who sit on the Ministerial and Labour benches in the House of Commons, and a very large number of their active supporters in the local organisations, have everything to gain by adopting politics as a business, and less than nothing to lose by it. In their case, even the preliminary outlay of capital represented by the payment of election expenses is avoided; for a considerable portion of the Radical members, and, of course, all the Labour members, have their expenses paid for them by the central office, by subsidies from wealthy Liberal financiers and commercial magnates, by local organisations, or by the trade-unions. Thus they come in free of charge, and have what is to them the very satisfactory living wage of £400 a-year to recompense them for spending their time in the lobbies and committee-rooms of the House of Commons during the summer months. They have the best club in London at their disposal, with excellent diningrooms and luncheon-bars and smoking rooms, where they consume food and drinks thoughtfully provided at cost price for them by a grateful nation. They can rub shoulders with the élite of the country, and entertain their wives and daughters at tea on the Terrace alongside of duchesses and countesses. They can get a column or two in their local newspapers, and perhaps even a certain amount of attention from the London Press, whenever they choose to catch the Speaker's eye and make a speech; and they can occupy many hours of every day during the session in pleasant loafing, varied by conversation and intrigue. It is not nearly so exhausting as working in an office from 9 till 6 daily, or soiling the hands in a grimy engine-shed; and the £400 ayear probably represents a good deal more than the earnest practitioner would have obtained during the same period if he had kept to his industrial or mercantile avocation. Why should a young man of parts and a fluent tongue lie on his back knocking rivets into a boiler all day long at a couple of pounds a-week, when he can obtain four or five times that sum, and dress like the blackcoated members of an effete bourgeoisie, and even affect the manners of the idle and luxurious aristocracy, by adopting a much easier as well as more comfortable avocation? Nor are his prospects limited to a precarious seat in Parliament and an allowance from his Trade Union. With luck and skill he may exchange that slippery foothold for a safe and permanent appointment, with a good, solid, substantial salary, tenable for his working life, and a nice pension to come when he retires. Take the case of Mr Cleon, ex- M.P., that well known "labour - leader." The time was when this gentleman made, if not sausages, at any rate blankets or boots, or wielded a hammer in a great engine-shop. That was long ago, when Cleon was twentytwo or so. Having no taste for football, or athletics, or dances, or dog-fights, or the other amusements of ingenuous youth in his district, he frequented debating societies and public meetings. He had a loud voice and considerable fluency of speech, with a natural taste for argument and disputation, so that he soon became a delegate for his fellows at the local trades committee. A year of hustling and wrangling enabled him to make his mark in this constricted circle. From it he rose to his district committee and to conferences and discussions with the central organis ation. A seasonable lock-out, in which he figured as the representative of a local body of discontented artisans, introduced Cleon to the Press, and the notice of Great Britain in general. He was four-andtwenty at the time, and thenceforth his upward career was smooth and rapid. He was a delegate at the next tradeunion conference, and took the opportunity to deliver an extremely violent speech, which drew upon him the agitated notice of several Unionist This gave leader writers. him a claim to the general council and the status of a paid delegate. His society made him a local secretary, with a salary of £3 a-week, which was exactly 50 per cent more than the young gentleman had been drawing from his employers, with whom, of course, he now dissolved all further connection. Two years later Cleon was a labour member of Parliament. He naturally abandoned the squalid garret in which he had passed his earlier existence, and took unobtrusive but agreeable lodgings in a respectable London suburb, within a twopenny tube fare of the Palace of Westminster. For some years he devoted himself with assiduity to his legislative duties, speaking with frequency in the House of Commons, where, in his capacity of "labour leader," he was always afforded an attentive hearing, appearing frequently at tradeunion conferences, both on the platform and at the various luncheons and dinners and garden parties given by hospitable his behests, write his letters municipal authorities, and on for him, and address him as two several occasions enlarg- "Sir." All this has come to ing his political education by a him while he is still some years tour through India and other on the better side of forty. portions of the British Empire. Cleon has a brother, two years His expenses were paid by his older than himself, who comadmiring supporters, and he mitted the error of sticking to was received by Lieutenant- his workshop, and is now a Governors, native Princes, Vice- foreman with £3, 10s. a-week, Chancellors of Universities, and and a cottage in the back Colonial Prime Ministers, with streets of his native town. all the dignity and effusion That might have been his suited to his importance. A A own situation at the present famous university conferred the moment if he had not been degree of Doctor of Literature wise enough to adopt the more upon him, ignoring the fact that agreeable and lucrative avocahe had not yet learned to write tion of politics. his own language with grammatical accuracy, and was still a little doubtful as to the placing of the aspirate in private conversation. These various experiences and achievements gave him a claim to the dispensers of official patronage which could not be ignored. In due course the world was interested to learn that Mr Cleon, M.P., was about to resign his seat in order to accept an important position at Whitehall. Thus did our successful demagogue find himself one of the leading members of the Civil Service of the Crown, with a salary of £1000 a-year, duties of a dignified and responsible character, a commodious office in which he spends his laborious days from 10 till 5, with a suitable interval for lunch at the National Liberal Club, and with & whole staff of secretaries and chief-clerks, some of them university men of high academic distinction, to obey It is not perhaps realised how many young men are devoting themselves to this course of life in one form or other. It has been stated that there are nearly ten thousand officials in the various Trade Unions in the country, ten thousand paid secretaries, organisers, agitators, and labour leaders, who between them take some £300,000 a-year from the working-men members of the various associations. Add to this that there is an enormous "miscellanefund to which the various executives have more or less access, and which is freely drawn upon for their expenses. Naturally there is great competition to get into the ranks of the professionals. Not all the ten thousand have adopted the business as their sole career in life. Some are still amateurs doing a certain amount of manual work, but finding the fees for speaking, and other ous commissions for which they receive remunera- manufacturing town. In the tion, a welcome addition to office they did did not regard Most of them, him with admiration. He their wages. of course, aspire to leave the workshop sooner or later, and enrol themselves on the permanent official staff. Many of them will in due course succeed, and make a very fair living as experts in agitation, while a few will rise to the higher grades of the calling, and obtain some of those superior rewards and emoluments which have been specified above. But the professional politician is not necessarily either a member of Parliament or a working man. There is a very good opening also for the astute member of other avocations, the journalist for example. If he is an up-to-date person who understands the ways of the modern world, he does not devote himself too assiduously to the interests of his newspaper alone. He will, if he is wise, attach himself at an early age to the fortunes of a particular party, and, if possible, a particular political group. He will always be ready to do any little jobs for his friends that come in his way, and occupy the leisure left him by the work of the office, and perhaps a little more, in the active duties of the wire-puller. In due course he will reap a reward beyond the reach of most of his brethren of the pen and notebook. There is, for example, Mr Bobus, who began life as a junior reporter in the office of a daily paper in a large was neither very rapid nor very accurate with his copy, nor did he show any tendency to excel in the higher walks of his profession. His descriptive work was dull and his editorials insignificant. In the journalistic race he was easily passed by several of his younger contemporaries. But Bobus knew what he was about. While the other young fellows were sitting up at nights studying the poets, or trying to write literary articles for the magazines, he was making himself useful at the committee rooms of the local Radical Association. He was no better as a speaker than he was as a writer; but he never missed an opportunity of appearing at a political meeting, and was always prepared to say "a few words" when called upon. They were platitudinous, ill-expressed words for the most part; but they served their object of keeping his name before the influential men of the local caucus, and Bobus became known as a zealous “worker" in the cause. Thus it happened that when a secretary was wanted for the People's League for the Suppression of Something or Other, whereof one of Bobus's local patrons was was chairman, the young gentleman was hoisted into the appointment. League passed a few years of futile activity before it died of inanition; but while it existed it gave its secretary many The |