MR. RHODES'S SUBSCRIPTION TO THE LIBERAL PARTY FUNDS.
WE publish in our correspondence columns a letter from Mr. Rhodes, in which he tells the story of his gift of £5,000 to the Liberal party funds on condition that the Liberals did not evacuate Egypt, and sets forth the letters which passed between himself and Mr. Schnadhorst on the subject. As Mr. Rhodes has said, the correspondence speaks for itself,, and we are quite content to leave our readers and the public in general to judge whether we were not justified in making the transaction the ground for the strong protest which we made in regard to the whole subject of party funds and their conduct and management. But before we deal with the Rhodes-Schnadhorst correspondence in detail it will be as well that we should remind our readers of the facts. In our issue of August 3rd we published a letter from Mr. Charles Boyd (signed. "C. B.") in which Mr. Boyd spoke of a letter from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. Schnadhorst "regarding £5,000 which Mr. Rhodes had given to the funds of the Liberal party on condition that its leaders should not urge or support our retrogression out of Egypt," and referred also to a letter in which "Mr. Schnadhorst replies that the leaders of the Liberal party are not represented in this matter by the expressions of Mr. M—, and that he is directed from a lofty quarter to assure Mr. Rhodes that the Liberals will stick to Egypt and that £5,000."— The allusion is to Mr. Rhodes's declaration subsequent to the subscription that unless the party abandoned the policy of evacuation the £5,000 must be sent to a charity.—Upon this statement, which we knew to be made by a person very closely connected with Mr. Rhodes, we commented, pointing out that Mr. Boyd's statement was to the effect that Mr. Rhodes had bought up the evacuation policy for £5,000. Further, we suggested that the incident might explain why Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir William Harcourt let off Mr. Rhodes so easily before the South African Committee. They were disinclined to press him, we suggested, lest he should make them " supremely ridiculous, and something more, by publishing the story of how he bought and they—or rather the Liberal party— sold all that excellent and useful policy known as the evacuation of Egypt.' No wonder the South African Committee was a fiasco, when Mr. Rhodes could at any moment tell the story of the £5,000 cheque and his deal- ings with the official organisation of the Liberal party." We did not mean to suggest that Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman and Sir William Harcourt knew of the transaction all through—we were well aware that only the Whips and the Caucus officials know the details of the party funds—but we thought it a possible explanation that the Whips had come to them and represented that it would be well not to press a desperate man because that desperate man had most unfortunately had transactions with the Liberal party machine, and might make the Liberal party look very foolish by publishing the story of the £5,000 cheque. That was our attempt to explain why Sir William Harcourt and SirHenry Campbell-Bannerman didnot insist, as they could have done, and as we most certainly should have done had we been in their place, on the production of the letters and telegrams which both Mr. Rhodes and his solicitor refused to produce, and which it must therefore be presumed would in some way inculpate Mr. Rhodes. To refrain from obliging him to do what he so ardently desired not to do—i.e., produce the letters—was, in our opinion, to let him off. We stated so at the time—i.e., in 1897—and declared ourselves entirely at a loss to explain the conduct of the Liberal members of the Committee, who professed to be as anti-Rhodesian as we ourselves, and did not, like Mr. Chamberlain, assert that Mr. Rhodes had done good. work for the Empire in the past and would do so again in the future, and so ought not to be pressed and harried unduly. Bay to continue our narrative. On the publication of our suggested explanation, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman wrote to us, in his name and in that of Sir William Harcourt, the obviously sincere but not very well. mannered letter in which he declared the whole story of the S5,000 subscription to be " from beginning to end a lie," and added—" your deductions are therefore also false Needless to say, we at once admitted. that our suggested explanation fell to the ground absolutely; and this whether Mr. Boyd's statement was true or not. Them could be no question in regard. to the matter after Sir Henry Campbell - Bannerman's statement. His word would, of course, always be sufficient for us in regard to any matter which was within his own knowledge. Upon the appearance of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's letter Mr. Rhodes wrote to us that he would send us his col-re. spondence with Mr. Schnadhorst for publication. This he has done, and it is now before our readers.
The first observation which we feel called to make upon the correspondence is frankly to admit that it does not fully bear out Mr. Boyd's original account of it. It describes what, in our view, is anything but a pleasant or creditable transaction, or one which members of the Liberal party can regard without indignation, but we are bound to say that though our words (quoted above) as to buying up the evacuation policy were not too strong for Mr. Boyd's account of the correspondence, they are too strong for the correspondence itself. We gladly exonerate Mr. Boyd. from any intention to exaggerate or to mislead us in any way, but his recollection of the letters proves not to have been accurate. That being so, we unreservedly admit that our description of the incident as showing that Mr. Rhodes " bought up the evacution policy for .25,000 " is not borne out by the facts when fully presented, and we regret that we made it. But though the incident was not as bad as Mr. Boyd. at first represented it, and though our original comments cannot, therefore, be said to hold good, we have no hesitation whatever in saying that the transaction as disclosed in the correspon- dence is one which is not creditable to the Liberal party organisation.
But in any case, the question whether we did or did not use too strong language in the first instance is a compara- tively small matter, and we ask our readers and the public in general not to be led. away from the main point at issue by any discussion as to whether the Spectator went too far, whether Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman went evenfurther, or whether, if we put ourselves in the wrong, he gave us jus- tification by his violence of language. All such discussion is really beside the mark. As we said before, the really important thing is to make a strong and effective protest against the party managers accepting big cheques from wealthy outsiders,—especially when those wealthy outsiders are playing for great stakes in the political world. If once we allow a state of things to grow up under which the millionaires will be welcome to give big and secret subscrip- tions with political conditions attached, we shall soon find our political system hopelessly degraded and we shall de- generate into the worst form of plutocracy,--a form in which the millionaire does not come into the open and take his share of the duties and responsibilities of great office, but from behind the scenes dictates policies to the party machine which he has captured by heavy cheques. People talk about the danger of men being rewarded with baronetcies and peerages for party subscriptions ; but though that is bad, it is in truth nothing like se dangerous as the dictation of policy by millionaires with political views. Take the case of Mr. Rhodes, assuming his own account of the matter and not attempting to go below the surface. He first gives £10,000 to the Parnellites, in order that his special policy of the Irish Members remaining at Westminster shall prevail. He next gives £5,000 to the Liberals, with the evident intention of as far as possible preventing the Liberals evacuating Egypt. Now many people think that in this way Mr. Rhodes secured, or, let us say, in one case secured, and in the other tended to secure, two very good things by means of his subscriptions. But are we, . therefore, to say that the accepting of such subscriptions is to be condoned ? If we once admit or look leniently on such transactions, how are we to prevent a rich man at some future date giving a subscription which will enlist the machine of one of the parties on the side of some very dangerous policy ? In our view, the leaders on both sides should not turn their eyes away from the party funds as something dirty and disagreeable, though necessary, but should insist upon blowing the sources of all big sub- scriptions ; upon no conditions ever being attached to any subscriptions ; and upon all money being returned which is sent by any person who is not a loyal and recognised member of the party, but, whatever may be the label he temporarily assumes, an outsider with special politi- cal views of his own. Unless this is the rule, and if the party managers are given a free hand, it is certain that the eager and pushing Whip or head of the Caucus, anxious to fill his coffers, will trade and traffic with wealthy men like Mr. Rhodes, and involve the party in all sorts of difficulties and entanglements. Central party funds are, we suppose, necessary and must be main- tained; but unless they are managed with' the utmost caution and discretion, and placed in the hands of men who will not reach out after big subscriptions at all costs, they are certain to end by demoralising our public life. We rejoice greatly to think that the present exposure will have done something to bring about a healthier and more vigilant public opinion in regard to party funds, and we sincerely trust that it may be maintained. We do not suppose that at this moment any party manager would dream of entering into such a correspondence as that between Mr. Schnadhorst and Mr. Rhodes. For the time, at any rate, " the clean-up " in regard to party funds which we desire has taken place.
We have no wish to attempt to dot the "i's " or cross the " t's " in the letters themselves. We prefer to leave them to the judgment of the public with the simple question; "Is this the kind of thing that the honest and sincere ordinary member of the Liberal party in 1891-92 would have liked to think was going on at . the official headquarters of the Liberal party ? " The picture of Mr. Schnadhorst dispensing such offices as that of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and indulging in such unworthy and uncalled-for sneers as that in regard to the late Lord Granville in order to mollify the annoy- ance of his wealthy correspondent, is not a pleasant one. Mr. Schnadhorst talks of " the pliant and supple Granville," but we venture to think that had he dis- closed the record of his traffickings with Mr. Rhodes to that honourable and high-minded statesman, he would have found him anything but " pliant and supple." As to Mr. Rhodes's share in the transaction, we will only say we see in it nothing that can make us change our views as to his influence on our political life ; but we are bound in fairness to note that Mr. Schnadhorst approached him first with the request for a subscription. Whether Mr. Schnadhorst did or did not tell Mr. Gladstone of the 45,000 is, of course, not clear from the letters. It is obvious that Mr. Rhodes wished him to do so, and believed that he had done so, holding that this was the hest way of getting his condition as to Egypt secured. Possibly the members of Mr. Schnadhorst's family can prove that he did in fact tell Mr. Glad- stone. If they can they should in the interests of his Memory state the fact, for it is clear from Mr. Rhodes's second letter that he relied on Mr. Gladstone being told. Again, it is possible that Mr. Gladstone's papers may con- tain some intimation from Mr. Schnadhorst. In any case, what an astonishing state of things is disclosed as to the condition of the Liberal party. All through the spring of 1892, and even after the General Election, plenty of anti- Imperialist Liberal writers and speakers fully believed that evacuation was part of the authorised Liberal policy, and were writing and speaking to that effect. Yet all the time the party manager, the incomparable Mr. Schnadhorst, the Carnot of the Liberal party, was quietly assuring Mr. Rhodes that he need have no fear as to the condition on which he subscribed his £5,000 being fulfilled, and that there would. be no evacuation.
We have only one more observation to make. As one reads the correspondence as a whole it is impossible not to be struck by the resemblance between Mr. Rhodes's course of action and that of the old-fashioned recruiting sergeant. Mr. Rhodes seems to make comparatively little of his Conditions at first, just as the balancing recruit hears little of the Mutiny Act. When, however, the King's shilling has been taken in the shape of the £5,000 cheque, the new recruit is soon reminded of the obligations he has under- taken almost unawares, and he is made to realise the con- sequences of mutiny. That is just the tone of the second half of Mr. Rhodes's second letter.
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