T HE new Member for the Horsham division of Sussex has
only just completed his twenty-first year. This is a conspicuous return to a state of things which seemed almost to have passed away. Youth has long ceased to be a characteristic of the House of Commons. Now and again chance or unusual aptitude brings a man into Parliament early, but when this happens it commonly means that some unlooked-for opportunity has revealed an exceptional stock of political ability. In Lord Tumour's case there has been no time for anything of this kind. The electors might take him or leave him, but if they took him they must take him untried. Still, apart from the question of politics, Lord Tumour's election is an en- couraging incident. Of course, it would easily lend itself to foolish jests about our rulers being babes, and the like ; but though we do not desire to see twenty-one the ordinary age for men to enter Parliament, it would be a real gain if a minority of the House of Commons were not very much older. We have almost forgotten that politics—Parliamentary politics, at all events—is an art that requires some training, not a pursuit to be taken up for the first time after a man has retired from professional or business life. There is a good deal of drudgery in a political career,—much wearisome attendance to be submitted to in order to learn the ways and under- stand the temper of the House of Commons, much keeping within sound of the division bell when there are greater attractions elsewhere. This is not a discipline to which men easily submit, still less impose upon themselves, unless the habit which makes submission to it easy has been formed betimes. The results of disregarding this fact are visible at every change of Government. The Prime Minister is at his wits' end how to fill up subordinate offices. They have got to be filled somehow, and upon the way in which they are filled, the smooth working of his Administration will largely depend. But he has often to make his choice from among men who have shown neither particular capacity for the work they will have to do, nor desire to undergo the preparation which ordinarily leads to its acquirement. His Administration necessarily suffers from his having to put up with subordinates of this type. More work is thrown upon the chiefs of Departments, since they have to be constantly prepared to make good. the mistakes of others. For Ministers who have to be in their private rooms at the House, or are unavoid- ably kept at their offices, question-time is surrounded with unknown terrors. Nor are the subordinates who are so nearly useless in office of any greater value when they hclp to fill the Front Opposition Bench. If the leaders are absent, the duties of watching and criticising the Government go unperformed, or are performed so ill and with such imperfect knowledge that Ministers are only the stronger for the attack. No doubt this is an exag- gerated picture. Men who come late to the business of Parliament do not always do it thus badly, nor are young men quite unknown in the House of Commons. But though exaggerated as a picture of fact, it is true as a description of tendency.
The cause of this state of things is to be found in part in the change which the composition of the House of Commons has undergone. When it was filled to a large extent with country gentlemen, the squire looked forward to eventual retirement in favour of his son. Accident, or indisposition to spend so much of the year away from home, tended to bring about this substitution while the son was still a young man. In those days there was less than there is now to divert him from public life. It was itself the ordinary means of escape from the narrow circle of local and family ties. There was no big game to be shot in other continents, and none of those openings in commerce which now present themselves on every side. Peers did not go on the Stock Exchange. Old names were not seen on the directorates of new companies. The sale of tea and wine was left in the hands of men bred to the business. Thus the enterprising young man who had no taste for the Army looked to political life as his natural profession. As an increasing proportion of the House of Commons came to be drawn from the commercial classes the average age of the Members increased. Com- mercial wealth has first to be made and then to be maintained, and neither employment leaves much leisure to those engaged in it. The merchant is for the most part elderly before he turns his mind to Parlia- mentary life. No doubt there are advantages in this arrangement. The new Member brings to the House of Commons a wide experience of affairs and a wide know- ledge of men. But this is not a training that necessarily fits a man for holding those subordinate offices in which his most important duty will be not to commit his chief in his absence, or not to let him venture on an explanation when insufficiently informed as to the facts about which he is speaking. Still less will this want be supplied by the new Labour Members. They have to gain the confidence of their class before they can hope to command their votes, and this confidence must be won by years of labour in the shop or in the yard. Yet however inevitable the dis- appearance of young men from the House of Commons may be, it is none the less to be regretted. It means the loss of the special material from which statesmen are ordinarily and most easily made.
It is not at Westminster only that the election of a young man to Parliament is to be welcomed. It is a good thing for the country that the tie between a Member and his constituents should have its origin in a life spent among them, and largely devoted to the furtherance of their welfare. From all parts of the country the same, complaint is to be heard. Half the woes of agricultural England are laid at the door of the absentee landlord. His farms are unlet, those that he has in hand are badly cultivated, fewer and fewer labourers are employed on his estate, the great house is shut up, and either there is no one to take any interest in the villagers, or those who try to take interest in them are strangers who have hired the house for a few years. Often, no doubt, all this is not the fault of the landlord. To him the depression of agriculture has been a phrase burdened and overburdened with meaning. If he is an absentee, it is because he cannot afford to keep up the establishment which his heuse requires, or because he wants the rent of it to eke out his diminished income from the land. But there are other cases in which the absence of the landowner is due to purely personal causes. He does not live at home because he likes living elsewhere better. The sport that he can get in his own district is not what he thinks worth having. He hunts with a famous pack, he shoots on a Scottish moor, he fishes on a Norwegian. salmon river, or he leaves even these delights behind him and finds his pastime in South Africa or the Rockies. It may be that he has ambition ; but if so, it probably urges him to make money fast and to play for great gains by great ventures. Pursuits of this sort are too absorbing to allow a man to live on his land. So, it may be said, is political life. The young Member who wishes to follow a Parliamentary career must be at Westminster, not at home among his woods and. fields. That is true ; but the absence which Parliament demands is different both in kind and duration from that demanded by any other career. The young Member must be away for more than half the year, but he is away on. business which is his constituents' as well as his own. He represents them in Parliament, and to do this he must not leave his seat in the House of Commons empty. The electors know from the local journals, if not from those of greater importance, what he is doing and saying. They take pride in his punctual attendance at divisions, they follow with interest his growing reputation as a speaker. More than this, regard for himself as well as for them compels him to take account of their wishes when- ever these rise to a Parliamentary level, and he is bound to come home in the autumn for the safety of his seat, if for no better reason. These are considerations which are of yearly increasing weight as the tie between landowners and the land becomes less close. Political life, when it is led by a young man sitting for the constituency in which he lives, and in which his property and his interests all lie, has the double advantage of being good for those to whom he goes and for those whom he leaves behind. It tends to make him useful to the leaders of his party, and through them to the Government which from time to time they have to carry on. It enables him to be useful to his con- stituents in his double character of neighbour and repre- sentative. It, indeed, would be an excellent thing for England if the rural constituencies would more often return the son of a great landowner when he is still young enough to be moulded into the right Parliamentary form. After the warm welcome we have given Lord Tumour, it may prevent misunderstanding if we say that we should see the example of Horsham followed with much greater pleasure if the young representative should be a Free-trader.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ON THE PHYSICAL SIDE.
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