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THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND THE IDLE RICH.

BY ONE OF THEM.

C'est animal est très méchant,
Quand on l'attaque il se défend.

SUCH is the nature of animals, and Mr Lloyd George must not be surprised if the classes whom he attacks so bitterly show certain powers of self-defence. Mr Lloyd George, on the 17th of October, delivered himself of a very remarkable speech at the City Temple. He addressed a large audience of ladies and gentlemen calling themselves LiberalChristians a combination title which fills the ordinary man with wonder. I suppose the syllogism runs - All Liberals are Christians; no Christians are Conservatives; therefore all Christians are Liberals. Politicians have often called Religion to their aid before this; but one would think that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer of England makes a twentieth-century speech on social questions he might be content to stand upon his own feet on his own platform. However, no lapse from good taste on the part of our modern Sausage-seller can now give anybody ground for much surprise.

The theme of his discourse was that there is something wrong with England (a discovery which he apparently places to the credit of Mr Joseph Chamberlain), and this something appears to him to

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MCXLII.

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that is to say, no huge class of workman whose hours are shorter, whose pay is larger, and whose food is better (on Mr Lloyd George's own showing) than the corresponding hours, pay, and food of the workman in any and every European country. Tell him that nothing but the Navy stands between us and ruin, and he mutters something about "Chimæra bombinans in vacuo" (or words to that effect); ask him what would happen to the Empire if our Regular army were to be disbanded, and he might perhaps tell you of the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. He is an incorrigible idealist, this wonderful Chancellor of ours.

Apparently four

shillings 3 G

a-week make all the difference between a contented and a discontented workman. Mr H. G. Wells told us the other day that the workman's ideal wage is always a shilling a-week more than he has got. Mr George says it is four shillings. Who shall decide when Socialists disagree? But one may assert with a surprising confidence that an additional four shillings a-week would not produce a manual labourer's millennium. And then there are those plaguy Germans too, just across the North Sea-soon to be the German Ocean building Dreadnoughts, confound 'em, as if they were Englishmen and had the right to do so. You must take the rich man's income to build counterDreadnoughts and superDreadnoughts, since the weekly wage is (quite rightly), as far as may be, sacred. But the cake cannot be eaten and kept; you cannot make the same money pay for your safety, and for the "measures of social reform" (a good mouth-filling Radical phrase that!) which can only be carried through under the ægis of a protecting Navy and Army. I suppose the Chancellor in his heart of hearts recognises the fact, however much he and the LiberalChristians may make public moan on the subject of wasteful expenditure on armaments. Yet I have an idea that if we ever have to hang any of our public men for trifling with the Navy, Mr Lloyd George's gibbet will be placed in a fine central position.

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His second point, and he claims it as his own discovery, is that there are some two million "idle rich and their dependents in the country, and that the two million are a useless luxury which no nation can afford. The two million (or their most important members) have apparently been observed by Mr Lloyd George eating their lunch at their clubs, playing golf, walking about the country with a gun under their arm, and scorching along the roads in motor-cars. Of course such conduct is worthy of the strongest condemnation, even though our impeccable Chancellor has himself foozled his tee-shot, and exceeded the twenty-mile-anhour speed limit. But there is one law for the "idle rich" and another for Radical Chancellors.

Now, joking apart, the charge of idleness is a most serious one to bring against the richer men of a nation; and if it were true, the country would certainly be in a highly precarious condition. Let us examine the proposition more closely, and if possible try to understand the mental attitude of him who makes it.

To begin with, the Chancellor has never had any footing in the class which he so unsparingly condemns. He has never at any time thought their thoughts, seen with their eyes, or grappled with their problems. So far as I know, he was brought up with the intention of practising the law in a humble sort of way in Wales. But for his unmistak

able ability he would now be a small solicitor in a little Welsh town. His friends and companions would not be the gentlefolk of the countryside, nor yet the artisans and labouring men, but rather the betwixt-and-betweens, the vet, the dentist, the tradesman, and the farmer. He comes, in fact, from a class which, possessed of many virtues and important enough in a way, has never before exercised any very great influence over the affairs of the nation; a class which, for want of a better term, we may call the lowermiddle. The result is that he does not really understand either those above or those below the class from which he himself is sprung. And we may notice here, that although he is very fond of posing as the protagonist of the working classes, and frequently describes himself as a Son of the People, yet he is really no such thing. He is not a member of any of the big and really important classes; he was intended to eat his bread not by the sweat of his brow, but by the sharpness of his wits; he is the son of a small and intermediate class, a class which of all others is ignorant of the world around it; and his whole character has been profoundly influenced -as must be the case with us all-by his antecedents and upbringing. We must remember that this class, more than any other, is intolerably suspicious of high and low alike. It is an uncomfortable, uneasy class, not sure of its position, suspended between a genteel

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Heaven and an unwashen Hell; sneering at, yet envious of, the denizens of the Upper World, terribly afraid of the H-less abyss into which it has ever a fear of falling. Wales it is invariably Nonconformist, and clings passionately to its Nonconformity as the sheet - anchor of its selfrespect. It is probably very right to do so.

What can you prognosticate of an exceedingly clever, able, and discontented lad who is born into such a class, and has raised himself to a great position entirely by his own unaided genius? First of all, I think that he will feel deeply resentful against all and sundry who appeared to him on his road as obstacles to success. He must have felt himself terribly handicapped at times by his plentiful lack of knowledge concerning the social customs of the well-born; by the gaps in his education; by the unwillingness with which one class accepts any member of another class, however able, however pushing. On the other hand, his knowledge of the proletariat is equally faulty

second-hand, inconclusive. Mr Lloyd George has always appeared to close observers secretly to despise his dupes, no doubt because he does not understand them. He promises them anything and everything; tries his best to play the up-todate Robespierre; stirs up class hatred, jealousy, envy, and all kinds of malice. Compounded with his despite and ignorance there is a strong tinge of sloppy sentiment, which seeks to re

lieve the sufferings of the poor with copious doses of a political Mother Siegel's syrup.

But you may say it is no use abusing plaintiff's attorney. The Chancellor may be this, that, or the other, but anyhow a multitude of credulous stargazers are deceived by him, and you must defend yourselves, not by showing that the man is incapable of forming a correct judgment on certain points, but by taking his words as they fall out of his mouth and provYou ing them to be untrue. will say truly that some sorts of electors are particularly fond of an unsavoury or vituperative publicist, as has been proved by many lesser Cobbetts and Bradlaughs. Most men go to public meetings to be amused, and it always tickles the fancy of an audience to hear a Duke blackguarded or a rich man wrongfully accused. Our Chancellor is an indefatigable public speaker, and always takes great care never to be dull or abstruse. As a result, many men depart well satisfied with the entertainment and the entertainer; who, if you tell them that four-fifths of what he said was not to the point, and the remainder untrue, will answer, "Well, any'ow, didn't 'e do down that there Lord 'Amilton proper!" The argumentum ad hominem always pleases the multitude.

That some few rich men are idle cannot be denied. So are a vast number of poor men. Idleness is not the prerogative of the wealthy; most of us hate work like poison, rich and poor alike. If you were to take a

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They want eight, and they won't wait. Yet as soon as they got eight bob a-day they would want ten, and a six-hour day.

It must be postulated that all work is distasteful to the great majority of men born of women. Yet the strange thing about the curse of Adam is, that no man who systematically attempts to evade it is ever really happy. No man can idle away all his days and be satisfied. He may hate his work; but work of some kind he must have, or he will be miserable. Here is a very obvious truth which I suspect the Chancellor of overlooking. If one did not know it for a fact, one could assert a priori that no class of welleducated, well-nourished, wellborn men would be content to live idle days: simply and solely because the more highly educated, the better fed, and the higher born you are, the more positively unendurable

does idleness become. The cart-horse will stand still in his stall for weeks, doing nothing but eat and drink; but the thoroughbred, to be kept fit, must be given exercise.

We will take an excursion into the country-the special preserve of the "idle rich". presently; but first let us take a look round one of the clubs in which Mr Lloyd George has seen them eating their luncheons. Now I (this article will have as many I's in it as a peacock's tail or a Labour member's speech before it is done; but it cannot be helped one must get to grips with one's subject) was lunching in the Oxford and Cambridge Club the day after the City Temple speech. On my right hand sat a Con

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which. I know him to be a Major in the Special Reserve, and Chairman of the County Hospital Committee. Idle? So idle that I doubt if he often has a spare hour between breakfast-time and midnight. Yet here he is, lunching at a luxurious club, looking the picture of middle-aged good grooming and prosperity. No doubt if Mr Lloyd George had looked in at the window he would have chosen him as a typical unemployed rich man.

Here is another one, my friend Y. Sleek, is he not, and well fed? not dusty and sweat-streaming like that man

there who is hammering up the wood - pavement in the street outside. Yet I know quite well which works the harder. Y. is a newspaper man, also a writer of books and no mean poet (but I suppose the Chancellor would not include writing books or making verses in his category of labour). He is working when other men are sleeping, and is certainly using his brain for twelve hours out of the twentyfour.

Opposite me is a well-known London clergyman, with fine features and a sweet smile. He is a great preacher, and never preaches the same sermon twice. There, next the fireplace, is another M.P.; next him a solicitor, who is said to know more scandal than any other man alive-and that is not a knowledge you acquire without working for it. By the window sits a young soldier who joined the army as a university candidate, and next him is а clever young barrister who will some day make people talk as much about him as he talks about them now. And so on and so on. Save for myself (and I am coming to myself when we go off to the country), I don't believe there is an idle man in the room. We all look idle enough, no doubt-idle and well fed, treading on soft carpets and eating delicate food. We are quite capable of deceiving an ignorant Chancellor who merely judges by appearances. Yet the work of the nation would not go forward very easily without a

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