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THE CENSURE OF MR LLOYD GEORGE OUR POLITICAL DEGEN-
ERACY
COMMON DISTRUST OF RATS
POLITICIAN

THE

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THE INSPIRED MILLIONAIRE

THE MERE THE TYRANNY

OF TRADE UNIONS-MONOPOLIES GOOD AND BAD-THE EXAMPLE OF CECIL RHODES-AMERICAN SENTIMENTALITY-GEORGE CLUNIESROSS-THE COCOS GROUP-ROSS THE SECOND AND THIRD.

When some weeks since Mr Lloyd George was severely censured by the members of his own profession, it was the few dissentients who administered the cruellest castigation. They wished to spare the Chancellor, on the ground, little flattering to his vanity, that he was not worth their rebuke. "All the world knew of Mr George's inaccuracy," objected one, "and every one knew that in a pinch he would say anything." Few who recall the scandal of black bread and horseflesh will dispute this statement, even though they deplore the disrepute into which a Cabinet Minister has fallen. "It was unworthy of them," said another, "that, because a mere politician in a reckless, random way should have insulted them, they should desire to swallow him whole." In what terms of deeper contempt could a member of the Government be dismissed?

"A mere politician!" These words imply far more than the censure of Mr George. They prove how deeply debased are the politics of England. The profession of government has sunk so low, under the auspices of adventurers who hold office for their own advantage, that

it is not expected to conform to the common standards of honour and honesty. From a lawyer or a soldier, from a man of business or of letters, we may expect truth and justice. The word of a mere politician must not be too narrowly scrutinised. He speaks only to gain an immediate advantage. A flash phrase is more to him than sincerity. He spurns the claims of logic, and permits argument to be trampled under the feet of invective. Briefly, in a pinch he will say anything, and the best thing we can do, when by our votes we have put him in office, is to dismiss him as a mere politician and to disregard his most solemn, portentous asseverations.

The contemptuous levity which underlies the excuse brought forward for Mr George's careless exaggerations is not pleasant to contemplate. After all, the responsibility of Empire is placed in the hands of "mere politicians." Democracy compels us to use the poor instruments of its choice, and does not temper them all for the high duties which they are asked to perform. To direct the affairs of a great country is an enterprise far more difficult than the conduct

of the vastest business, and we the title which he demanded may well tremble for our future, for his wife was not immediwhen it is taken for granted by ately given, he foresaw the many that the Ministers, in destruction of England. In a whose hands the destiny of letter addressed to a young England lies, are capable politician, he thus set forth neither of clear thought nor his theory of statesmanship: truthful speech. By a strange "Ask for any place, Lord of perversity we judge those, who the Bed-chamber, or of the should be men of action, by a Treasury. . . . It is in place faculty of glib rhetoric, and that I long to see you; and when the last echo of insult it is the place-man, not the and falsehood has died away independent lord, that can do on the hustings, we shrug our his country good. shoulders and ask amiably your harness on immediately." what more could you expect Thus spoke the mere politician of a politician? of the eighteenth century; and it is easy to understand why Henry Fox, whom Pitt described as "the blackest man that ever lived," not merely failed himself, but ensured the failure of his brilliant son.

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The sudden decline of our public morality is the more remarkable, because a lofty tradition of office, a keen sense of Ministerial responsibility, have always been reverenced by Englishmen. To assist at the In happier times, again, the councils of the nation was merest suspicion of insincerity once esteemed as high and was enough to deprive the noble a duty as to fight for most ambitious politician of his the nation's cause on the country's trust. Few statesfield of battle. It has been men, for instance, have been discharged faithfully by the more conspicuously gifted than greatest and wisest of our Lord Shelburne, and few have citizens, who have seen in the been more signally incapable service of England an oppor- of winning the public favour. tunity not of aggrandisement What was the cause of this but of sacrifice. There was a incapacity it would be diffitime, indeed, when Englishmen oult to explain. What is cerdemanded of their governors tain is that his motives were honour above all, when they always suspected. An unwould trust none who dared to easy feeling was abroad that place his own preferment above Shelburne was ever ready to the advantage of the State. change his opinions, as he Then came the corruption of would change his coat, and the Whigs which discredited in the eyes of a large majorthat party for many years, and ity he could do nothing right. drove it at last to irrecover- Above all, Englishmen have able ruin. In the eyes of always disliked those who, in Henry Fox, for instance, the the slang of politics, are said end and aim of politics were to "rat." A genuine change place and a peerage. When of heart is SO rare as to

seem incredible. A sudden conversion is apt to suggest selfinterest, and with a certain rough justice a "rat" is generally excluded from the highest place in the State. As he does not hesitate to take the bread of office out of another's mouth, when he can, he has no right to grumble if the very worst construction be put upon his actions. His old friends charge him with treachery. His new friends are never quite certain that he may not play his trick once again and leave them also in the lurch. Sir Robert Peel, for instance, a man of naturally indecisive temperament, could not, after 1846, have recovered the supreme authority which once had been his. And even in our present Government there is one member at least who will never win the sincere confidence of his party.

But, though the Radicals may still fear the competing "rat," for the rest they show little respect for the traditions of their craft. There are all the signs in politics of a general decline. This decline began when politics became a mere profession for the uninstructed adventurer. In old days a man was sure of his vocation before he presumed to govern the State. If he were not a man of genius, he carried in his veins the blood of administrators. He received, from his youth upward, a stern discipline in the school of statesmanship, and when he was given office at last he filled it boldly and well, because his

ancestors or his genius had endowed him with the habit of leadership. He did his best to fit himself for his task by learning the lessons of the past. He approached the governance of the country in the spirit of humility and patriotism. For him it was not enough to mean well. If he did not do well he was conscious that he had failed in his duty. To-day another spirit prevails. Politics are regarded by these as a game, like golf or cricket; by those as a profession or means of advancement. Even if the strenuous politician gets no office, there are still peerages to be obtained as a reward of faithful service from the lordloving Radical. And in all this clamour of self-interest and profit the claims of the country are forgotten. Then follows, naturally, a contempt of politics. How shall you hold the craft of government in respect if the reward of the governor be its ultimate aim?

On the heels of disrespect follows licence. The manners and morals of the political "boss" invade the House of Commons. Cabinet Ministers do not scruple to say that which is not, and sacrifice for what they believe an immediate advantage the candid demeanour and high standard of truth which have been the tradition of English politics. The present Government, during its few years of office, has done more to debase the coinage of life, to outrage the dignity of Parliament, than all the Governments which have preceded it. It has blustered,

it has threatened, it has denounced. Mr George has made his Budget speech an excuse for rancour and abuse. He has confused West and East; he has mistaken Westminster for Limehouse; and many of his friends, who lack his volubility, have attempted to rival him in exaggeration. And so intoxicated have they become, that they can brook no interference with what they call the people's will, which is in reality nobody's will but their own. Thus they would abolish the House of Lords at the very moment when their own licence renders its retention absolutely imperative.

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The worst product, then, of our new policy is what the Law Society calls the "mere politician." Let us attempt a character of this strange animal. The mere politician is who enters the House of Commons with no other end in view than his own advancement. Generally he has served his apprenticeship in a vestry or on a Board of Guardians. In the strife of local politics he has cultivated a loud voice and a rapid trick of vituperation. So that when he arrives at Westminster he is physically equal or superior to the best (or worst) of his opponents. He can talk more rapidly, he can pitch his voice higher than the others, and he soon regards himself as indispensable to the triumph of Radicalism. Of history and politics he knows no word. His education began with his first entrance into what he calls magniloquently "public life,"

and he devoutly believes that before him there was nothing. In In his modest opinion the future of England is involved with his own success, and he is sure that all is wrong with the world if he be not in a high place. To make this certain he will gladly destroy the Constitution, or assert that England's best chance of

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defence is to face her enemies unarmed. If he think it immediately profitable he will not scruple to stir up class hatred, the most dangerous of hatreds, of which no man may see the end, and which he who stirs it up is powerless to check. "In a pinch he will say anything. His levity of mind persuades him that he need not be too careful to test his statements. Everything is justified that is thrown off in the heat of parliamentary warfare. The scruples which gentlemen feel in the adjustment of their private differences have no place, we are told, in the political arena. Those who were once proud to set an example of high-mindedness to the people they pretend to represent, plead cheerfully that the standard of politics is neither high nor exacting. In brief, it is the heyday of the "mere politician,' and we know not how we shall rid ourselves of him, save by a foreign war or by a wise revolution.

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What place is there, then, in this modern world of ours for the optimist? Wherever we look we see the baleful retrogression of Democracy, tem

pered by material progress. At the very moment that excellence of any kind is declared to be a crime, space is annihilated, and a new kingdom is conquered in the air. Yet the curiosity of new inventions is an insufficient compensation for the tyranny and insecurity of governments. Where, indeed, shall we look for help? To inspired millionaries, says Mr Gerald Stanley Lee,1 whose interpretation of America, recently published, is at once original and optimistic. Mr Lee thinks very ill of Socialism, which is born of despair and infidelity. He does not think it possible to cure the evils of society by emasculation. He sees clearly the folly of Tolstoi's ambition, which is to bring the whole world down to the level of the Russian peasant, and which, as he says with perfect justice, "would wipe away four thousand years with a sweep-temples, orchestras, libraries, Michael Angelo, Copernicus, Shakespeare, steamships, and wireless telegraphy, -and begin the world all over again, stupidly, and from the bottom up." At the same time, Mr Lee is gravely conscious that the world is sick for the moment, and he sees salvation only in well-spent dollars.

Mr Lee has an evident respect for millionaires, inspired or otherwise. He contemplates millions with an awful pleasure, and he sees clearly that neither their owners nor the

great American people get the full advantage of them. He is not wholly satisfied with the great captains of industry. He is restless about his millionaires. He recognises that too many of the men, who help to build up their fortunes, degenerate into machines. He complains, and we endorse his complaint gladly, that it is an old -established principle in many factories to take away men's souls and minds and to give them libraries in exchange. With all that he says concerning the folly of regeneration by books we are in cordial agreement. It is far better to be alive than to pore over printed pages. "If a man cannot use his mind," says Mr Lee, "the most intelligent thing he can do is to drop it." That is admirably good sense. So also is this other aphorism: "The thing that a man does his knowing with and his real reading with is his life." With equal wisdom Mr Lee deplores the waste of indiscreet charity. He wonders with a quiet irony 'why it is that the schemes that are put forward in behalf of the very poor and for the betterment of the condition of the rich seem to come to so little." He need not wonder. The truth is that no man can be bettered by any other than himself, whether he be rich or poor, and that without personal endeavour all the preaching in the world is an idle waste.

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And that is the worst of Mr Lee, he is a preacher-in-grain.

1 Inspired Millionaries: An Interpretation of America. By Gerald Stanley Lee. Northampton, Massachusetts.

VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXXXVIII.

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