CHAPTER V
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE M.P.
1
At every General Election there is seen the old and familiar, but ever curious and interesting, spectacle of about twelve or thirteen hundred men—who, though selected at random from the general mass, yet vary so much in position, ability and temperament that they may be said to reflect collectively the very image of the Nation—engaged in wooing the constituencies which have at their disposal the 707 seats in the House of Commons. What are the irresistible allurements that compel this large body of men, the majority of them actively engaged every day in business or professional life, to spend their money and time, their strength and temper, in order that they may be given the chance of making a gift of their professional capacity and business experience to the Nation, expecting in return, as regards the mass of them, neither fee nor reward beyond a salary of £400 a year?
Macaulay on the subject is well worth giving ear to. Writing to his sister Hannah (subsequently Lady Trevelyan) on June 17, 1833, after a few years’ experience of the House of Commons, he says:
I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts men, who could sit over their tea and their book in their own cool, quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze uneasily on the green benches till three in the morning. Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary for me. My pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister’s company is sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well and cheerful, and let offices in Government and seats in Parliament go to those who care for them. If I were to leave public life to-morrow, I declare that, except for the vexation which it might give you and one or two others, the event would not be in the slightest degree painful to me.
Sir George Trevelyan, in his Life of Lord Macaulay, not only corroborates his uncle as to the inexplicability of the charm of the House of Commons, but gives also from personal experience a still more forbidding description of what he calls “the tedious and exhaustive routine” of an M.P.’s life:
Waiting the whole evening to vote, and then walking half a mile at a foot’s-pace round and round the crowded lobbies; dining amidst clamour and confusion, with a division twenty minutes long between two of the mouthfuls; trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw; and sitting behind Ministers in the centre of a closely packed bench during the hottest week of the London summer.
If this were all that was to be said, it would, indeed, be hard to understand why a seat in the House of Commons should be regarded as an object to be sighed for, and schemed for, and fought for, and paid for by thousands of very astute and able men. The constituencies are not engaged at the General Election in fastening this burden upon unwilling shoulders. How incomprehensible, then, is the action of these who, having had experience of the hard and thankless lot of the Member of Parliament, its mental strain, its physical discomforts, yet labour unceasingly night and day during the weeks of the General Election to induce the electors to send them back again to the dreary round of routine tasks at Westminster. Indeed, Macaulay himself felt keenly the loss of his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, though at the time he was absorbed in his History of England; and in 1852, with his great work still uncompleted, he was delighted to be returned again to Parliament by his old constituency. But the truth is, we have been given thus far only the dark side of the picture. There is a silver lining also to the cloud. The life of a representative of the people has of course its compensations.
Still, the tribulations of an M.P. are undoubtedly many. There are, to begin with, the torments of the post. Cobden, in a letter to a friend early in 1846, when his name as the leader of the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws was in all men’s mouths, gives a glimpse into the contents, half laughable and half pathetic, of the letter-bag of an M.P. He says:
First, half the mad people in the country who are still at large, and they are legion, address their incoherent ravings to the most notorious man of the hour. Next, the kindred tribe who think themselves poets, who are more difficult than the mad people to deal with, send their doggerel and solicit subscriptions to their volumes, with occasional requests to be allowed to dedicate them. Then there are the Jeremy Diddlers, who begin their epistles with high-flown compliments upon my services to the millions, and always wind up with a request that I will bestow a trifle upon the individual who ventures to lay his distressing case before me. To add to my miseries, people have now got an idea that I am influential with the Government, and the small place-hunters are at me.