A printed copy of the Articles was passed to each delegate; on the table before Sir John lay the engrossed form in duplicate. From one of these the secretary proceeded to read the terms of the agreement, which was frankly recognised on both sides as the death-warrant of socialistic ascendency in England.
From the Government the League required only one thing: the immediate passing of "A Bill to amend the Qualifications of Voters in Parliamentary Elections," to be followed by a dissolution and its inevitable consequence, a general election. But of the result of that election no one need cherish any illusions, for it would be decided according to the new qualification; and shorn of its parliamentary phraseology, the new Act was to sweep away the existing adult suffrage, and, broadly, substitute for it a £10 occupation qualification, with, still worse, a plurality of voting power in multiples of £10, according to the rateable value of the premises occupied. It was wholly immoral according to the democratic tendency of the preceding age, but it was wholly necessary according to the situation which had resulted from it.
A genial Autocrat, Professor, and Poet has set forth in one of his works, for the sake of the warning it conveys, the story of a little boy who, on coming into the possession of a nice silver watch, and examining it closely, discovered among the works "a confounded little hair entangled round the balance-wheel." Of course his first care was to remove this palpable obstruction, with the result that the watch accomplished the work of twenty-four hours in an insignificant fraction of a second, and then refused to have anything more to do with practical chronometry. On coming into possession of their new toy the Socialists had discovered many "confounded little hairs" wrapped away among the works of that elaborate piece of machinery, the English Constitution, all obviously impeding its free working. Recklessly, even gaily, they had pulled them out one after another, cut them across the middle and left pieces hanging if they could not find the ends, dragged out lengths anyhow. For a time the effect had been dazzlingly pyro-technical when seen from below. The Constitution had gone very, very, very fast; it had covered centuries in a few years; and as it went it got faster. But unfortunately it had stopped suddenly. And every one saw that while it remained in the hands of its nominal masters it would never go again.
Had the times been less critical some other means of effecting the same end might have been found. But although it was scarcely more than whispered yet, for four hours England had been involved in actual, deadly, civil war; and water once spilled is hard to gather up. Under ordinary circumstances the expedient of disenfranchising a party would have proved unpopular even with the bitterest among that party's enemies. As it was, it was simply accepted as the necessary counterstroke to their own policy of aggression.
"If the 'most business-like Government of modern times' can instance a single business where eleven shareholders to the amount of a sovereign apiece can come in and outvote ten shareholders who have each a stake of a thousand pounds in the concern, and then proceed to wreck it," was a remark typical of the view people took, "then—why, then the record of the Government will lose its distinction as an absolutely unique blend of fatuous imbecility and ramping injustice, that's all."
So there was to be a general election very soon in which the issue would lie between the League party and the shattered, shipwrecked Administration that had no leaders, no coherence, and scarcely a name to rally to. It was estimated that Labour of one complexion or another might hold between thirty and forty seats, if the working classes cared to support representatives after the Payment of Members Act had been repealed. It was computed that in more than four hundred constituencies League candidates would be returned unopposed. There could be no denying that our countrymen of 1918 (circa) lived through an interesting period of their country's history. The League party would go to the poll with no pledges, and their policy for the present was summed up in the single phrase, "As in 1905." It was to be the cleanest of slates.
"How soon can the Bill become law under the most expeditious handling?" Hampden had asked of those who formed the earlier deputation, and the answer had been, "Three days!" Solely from the "business" point of view it was magnificent, and it was certainly convenient as matters stood. In three more days a general election could be in full swing, waged, in the emergency, on the existing register supplemented by the books of the local authorities and the voters' receipts for rates or taxes. In a single day it could be over. Within a week England would have experienced a change in her affairs as far-reaching as the Conquest or the Restoration.
Mr Lloyd, to return to Sir John Hampden's library, read the first article to the breathless assembly. It had been tacitly agreed that the time had come when the conditions must be accepted without discussion; but when the fateful clause was finished a deep groan, not in empty hostile demonstration, but irresistibly torn from the unfeigned depths of their emotion, escaped many of the Ministers. Boabdil el Chico's sigh, when he reached the point where the towers and minarets of Granada were lost to him for ever, was not more sincere or heart-racked. Even Sir John could not have claimed that he felt unmoved.
The secretary read on. The League entered into certain undertakings. It guaranteed that the normal conditions of the home coal trade should be restored, and the men called back to the pits by an immediate order for ten million tons. Temporary relief work of various kinds would be instituted at once to meet the distress. The Unemployed Grant would be reopened for nine weeks to carry over the winter; for three weeks fully, for three weeks at the rate of two-thirds, and for the last period reduced to one-third. The colliers in London would be carried back to their own districts as fast as the railways could get out the trains.
There were many other points of detail, and they all had a common aim—the obliteration of the immediate past and the restoration of that public confidence which in a country possessing natural resources is the foundation stone of national prosperity. Already there were facts for the present and portents for the future. Men of influence and position, who had been driven out of England by the terrible atmosphere of political squalor cast over an Empire by a Government that had learned to think municipally, were even now beginning to return; and that most responsive seismograph which faithfully reflected every change in the world's condition for good or ill predicted better times. In other words, consols had risen in three months from 54-1/2 to 68 and the bulk of the buying was said to be for investment.