POLITICAL LIFE AS A PROFESSION.
ADISCUSSION is going on, in which we may as well join, as to whether political life as a profession pays, whether it is worth the while, as we understand it, of an educated youngster with some capital to make the government of the country his business, as he would make anything else, say, the management of his estate, or journalism, or diplomacy, or the bar. In plainer words, is it well for a young man, or man in early but full man- hood, who feels in himself the power to do things, to strive for a seat in Parliament, and deliberately try to fit himself for high Parliamentary office? Is it not, it is asked in very plain language, easier to acquire as much influence, and find as much occupation, and altogether to get as much done by remaining outside Parlia- ment as by sitting within it? Why go through the more or less dirty and exhausting work of conciliating electors, and convinc- ing stupid persons, and brow-beating malignant fools, when as much can be effected by much pleasanter work outside? It is an important question, that, for if it is answered as we half suspect an acute observer in the Pall Mall Gazette wishes it should be answered, Parliamentary government in Great Britain stands condemned. The moment it is not worth the while of a "good man,"—wo use the epithet in its very broadest sense,—to go into Parliament, the moment constituencies have to "put up" with anybody they can get, the existing scheme of Government ends, and the British people, at all events, will have to invent a new one. This country will not be controlled long by Governors decidedly inferior to the average of the governed, will show no more respect for " members " simply because they are members than it has repeatedly shown for lords or priests simply because they are lords or priests. It is always possible that another of Mr. Disraeli's strange prophecies might come true, that the country might imbibe a contempt or a dislike for the House of Commons ; and if it did, the House would infallibly go down, and we should try some other form of administration. Government by public meeting is not, we may be sure, the final outcome of the human or indeed of the Anglo-Saxon intellect, limited as the latter may be in inventiveness. Such a change would be rapidly accelerated, if it were indeed true that the pro- fession of governing were unattractive, and it is worth while to inquire if it be really so.
IVe doubt it very greatly, at all events as yet. It is true that we English have, by a series of blunders, some of them wilful, some of them accidental, done our very best ta make politics as a profession unattractive to the able. Not really respecting birth, and professing not to reverence wealth, we have almost made birth or wealth the condition of the competitive examination for power. Any member of the thirty-one governing families has a chalice of entering the House even if he has not a shilling, or, at all events, not more than will secure him a bare maintenance, and so has almost any one with a hundred thousand pounds clear of the world. Without either of those advantages the course would be a hard one for either orator or administrator, for Cicero or Augustus. An effort has been making for some time, and is very perceptible in this election, to remove this preliminary obstacle to ambition ; but it is not a very wise one, and does not work very pleasantly. The party will help, we are very often told, and some- times it does help ; but usually the subscription for a seat is very like a subscription to hounds, it is very hard to collect, and when collected, self-respect is, to say the beat of it, just a trifle ragged. Then we have reduced the pecuniary rewards of success in a style which is only wise if we wish office to be a monopoly of the rich. The pay in cash is not quite so bad as it is the fashion to call it, for it is pay given to men with 'establishments, is, as it were, extra pay, and in that sense is suffi- cient, but still by itself it is no temptation. Nobody grows rich in office, and half the mental power which attains a Secretaryship would attain the first rank in any other profession, except indeed the Army, in which we bravely give the preference to money over rapacity; and the Church, in which we piously decree that promotion shall depend on sheer favouritism. The reward in social position is no doubt considerable, but it tends to dimi- nish, as the stupid rich crowd in ; and so, we fancy, does the desire to gain that particular reward. The plutocrats still thirst for it strongly, but it does not influence the ambi- tious and the competent as it did, or we should seethe ambi- tious and the competent make efforts to which those made are child's play. Every London seat may be said to be open to any such man if he has a thousand pounds, and the metropolitan seats nevertheless go begging, or, as in Marylebone, fall to people whom their supposed supporters by no means heartily admire. More- over, to such social advantage as a seat confers there is a counter- poise in the liability to criticism it involves. Life under a burn- ing-glass is not in itself the pleasantest of lives, and with the growth of the press in power, ability, and watchfulness, every public man begins to live with the light concentrated upon his face, till half his strength is exhausted in keeping his eyes from the glare. And then the pay in power, most attractive reward of all, is, or rather appears to be, very small. The sweetness of power as an intellectual gratification depends, we take it, upon the degree in which it approaches pure volition. To command by will- ing—that, no doubt, is an immense luxury, the more a luxury the more a ruler thinks that his right of command is a benefit to the people whose welfare he desires. To have the power just now of willing a perfect educational scheme into existence ! We know, or fancy we know, a dozen men who to enjoy that would endure the Chinese punishment for treason, slow brushing to death with a fine currycomb. But to have only the power of per- suading thirteen other men that if 657 others, most of them egregiously stupid, can be persuaded that the scheme is the right -one, then, unless two or three newspapers scream at the innova- tion, the scheme may stand,—that is not perhaps so enjoyable a luxury, yet to that we have reduced what in unconscious mockery we are pleased to denominate "power." Building is a small though a pleasant exercise of creative force, but our 2Edile is not permitted to build except after a competition among eleven men, not one of whom considers that:the paymaster has the faintest moral right to give him orders, to exercise any will at all, or indeed to do anything except pay him a per-centage carefully arranged so as to increase with waste.
Nevertheless, rewards are comparative, and in spite of all draw- backs, of the limitations placed on power, of incessant criticism, of tedious delay caused by the exclusive use of persuasion as the instrument of success, we question if any profession open to an Englishman offers rewards comparable with these offered to the energetic, the strong, land the philanthropic, by political life,—life in the House of Commons. In every profession failure is failure, but success in the House, even moderate success, a success of esteem, success which entitles you merely to courteous hearing, places you among the hundred, or, it may be, the half hundred who virtually hold in commission the greatest, the most conspicuous, the most varied of the sovereignties of earth. Power has been limited, truly, of late years, but the range of that limited power has been marvellously extended. It seems a small thing to be Under Secretary for the Colonies, or India, or the War Office, or the Treasury, to have the privilege of making a remark in writing which your superior must read but may disregard ; but that remark is made with full know- ledge, that" must read "means influence, that that little bit of writ- ing may profoundly affect a policy which is building or destroying states, kingdoms, and armies. The power of an English Secretary of State, so strictly limited in degree, is, perhaps, the widest in range which has ever, at least since the Roman Empire fell, been enjoyed by civilized men, and it is enjoyed without counter- balances, without that risk of insanity which poisons the cup alike of Czesars and Czars, without danger of assassination, without that, so to speak, seeming necessity of crime which is the curse of all absolute rulers, from Czars to common slaveholders. Even Trajan is tempted to slaughter lest the Commonwealth suffer, but what disturbs the cool judgment of an English Great Mogul ? What other profession offers anything like the same chance of such a reward ? The Army, perhaps, to one man once in a couple of centuries. What career offers to any man, however able, the same chance of directly influencing history, using the terrible power of a great State as an instrument of his will, affecting for good or evil acts, measures, innovations which modify the future of the world ? The greatest position conceivable by man is probably that of "Founder," of one among the few who have exerted creative power on politics. Well, that is the position pro tank) of the English Member who can insert a new and considerable clause into an Education Act. Mr. Otway is not a very big person, only just belongs to the Century among whom power is in commission, yet just think of what he did when he secured the suppression of flogging in the Army I Every such man in his degree may help, really help, visibly help_ if visibleness is any attraction—to overturn Governments, remodel policies, forbid oppressions, urge on changes which affect kingdoms, raise or depress races, create or set in motion resistless political, machines. Is all that nothing, that it should be better and more attractive to manage a few farms, or plead a few causes, or issue a few ecclesiastical charges, or even to win a few very problematical. battles? The comparison with journalism, the alternative which our- contemporary probably intended, is scarcely fair, for a journalist is. in England a Member of Parliament out of doors, with this per- sonal drawback, that he is invisible to the people whom he sways. Out of London and the London sets, who knows anything of the men who by their pens can modify or arrest an Act ? We say nothing of a reward which we suspect has over most men an irresistible power, the "triumph and the vanity, the rapture of the strife" of debate, where victory or defeat come quick as in the theatre, and a night may make of an insignificance a name quoted throughout the world. Actors say there is no fascination like that. of acting—the applause comes back so instantly—and what is. their reward to that of the man who feels the House sink slowly to the hush which shows him that his brain is exercising for the moment the power next sweetest to that of creative volition, the power of instilling will into those who can will effectively. We say nothing of the chance of supreme authority, authority like Palmerston's, when his will was a distinct element in the movement of the world, for if there is one psychological fact. of our time more marked than another, it is the decrease of vanity in the young. Realism is killing the old sanguineness of youth - There are no sucking Chancellors at the Bar, only intending Judges of County Courts, and men who in the old days would have dreamed of the White Staff now calculate coolly whether the position of a prominent member is worth the hard work and late hours the effort for it will involve. But in spite of the atrocious literalness of the new generation, of the increasing annoyances of the preliminary work, of solvent criticism, and of the limitations on power, political life in England is still the highest career open to an ambitious, an able, or a philanthropic man.
Previous page
