The representative is to be commended by all means in resisting these illegitimate demands. Macaulay, when Member for Edinburgh, was asked to subscribe to a local football club. “Those were not the conditions upon which I undertook to represent Edinburgh,” he answered. “In return for your generous confidence I offer parliamentary service, and nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objectionable that I must plainly say I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds than comply with it. If our friends want a Member who will find them in public diversions, they can be at no loss. I know twenty people who, if you elect them to Parliament, would gladly treat you to a race and a race-ball each month. But I shall not be very easily induced to believe that Edinburgh is disposed to select her representatives on such a principle.” On the other hand, there is something to be said for the constituents. Surely they may very properly ask: “From whom can we more reasonably seek aid for our deserving local charities than from our Member of Parliament?” They recall to mind his accessibility and graciousness while he was “nursing” the constituency. Was he not ever ready to preside at the smoking concerts of the Sons of Benevolence, to sing songs or recite at the mothers’ meetings, to hand round the cake at the children’s tea parties, to kick off at the football contests?
His speeches are also remembered. Did he not regard service in the House of Commons while he was seeking it more as a distinction and privilege than as a public duty? Did he not tell the electors from a hundred platforms that for all time he was absolutely at their service? Did he not come to them literally hat in hand begging the favour—mind you, the “favour”—of their vote and influence? Yet to this cynical end has it all come, that, badgered by requests for subscriptions to this, that or the other, he replies—to quote the prompt, emphatic and printed answer which one representative has sent to all such appeals: “I was elected for —— as Member of Parliament, not as Relieving Officer.”
4
In the House of Commons itself some disappointments also await the M.P. The motives which induce men to seek for a seat in Parliament are many and diverse; but there is hardly a doubt whatever that the main reason is a genuine desire to serve the State and promote the well-being and happiness of the community. Accordingly, in the first flush of enthusiasm after election our representatives zealously set about informing themselves of the subjects which are likely to engage their attention in Parliament. But soon comes a rude awakening, bringing with it the first of the disappointments that await them. They find that to instruct themselves properly in questions that are ripening for legislation would leave them very little time for the calls of business and social life.
The breakfast table of the M.P. is heaped almost every morning during the session with parliamentary papers of one kind or another—Blue Books, Bills, reports and returns. Blue Books are popularly supposed to be unattractive reading. This is a mistake. They may look ominously ponderous in outward appearance, but their matter is not therefore portentously dull. With a little delving, illuminating facts for the serious student of the condition of the people—the supreme and all-embracing question of politics—come to light. There are, however, not only too much of them, but too many. On an average, eighty are issued every year, making an impossible demand on the attention of even the most conscientious representative. The Bills are more inviting than the Blue Books, for, embodying as they do the fads and hobbies of the 707 Members of the House of Commons, they bring one into touch with curious manifestations of common human nature and individual political ideals. About 300 of them are introduced every session. After the formality of a first reading, they are printed and circulated among the representatives, who are expected to make themselves acquainted with their provisions.
It is to be feared that many M.P.’s give up this task in despair. Instead of attempting to arrive at independent conclusions by personal investigation and study, they are content to rely upon their Party leaders to direct them on the right path in regard to Government measures dealing with the main public questions of the day, and upon their Whips as to whether they should oppose or support the Bills of private Members. Yet it is not always plain sailing, even when the lazy course is pursued of just giving one’s ear to the leaders on both sides attacking and defending. “The worst effect on myself resulting from listening to the debates in Parliament,” writes Monckton Milnes, “is that it prevents me from forming any clear political opinion on any subject.” Of the 300 Bills brought in every session, very few are passed. So supreme is the command of the Ministry over the time of the House of Commons that the private Members have little chance of carrying legislation. Only the Bills of the Government set out on their course through both Houses of Parliament with a fair prospect of reaching the Statute Book.
Furthermore, the M.P. who is ambitious “the listening Senate to command,” also soon discovers that the opportunities for talking are flagrantly restricted in the interest of the Government. He may have devoted many days to the making and colouring of artificial flowers of rhetoric with which to decorate his speech in a great debate. Sometimes he may get the chance to deliver it in a House almost empty, and containing but two interested listeners—one the hon. Member who hopes to follow, and is impatient of his prolixity, and the other his wife in the Ladies’ Gallery, fuming at the indifference with which his eloquent periods are being received. That is bad enough; but there is a worse fate still. He may sit night after night on the pounce to “catch the Speaker’s eye” and yet fail to fix the attention of that wandering orb. Meanwhile he may hear his arguments and his epigrams made use of by luckier men, who probably got them in the Library from the same shelf, the same book, the same page as himself. Finally, the debate may be brought to an end, leaving him baulked in his design, with a mind further oppressed by the burden of a weighty unspoken speech. Then his constituents say unpleasant things of him because they do not see his name in the newspaper reports. He is neglecting his duty, or he is an empty-minded “silent Member,” who, having nothing to say, says it.
There is an old proverb at Westminster which declares that “they are the wisest part of Parliament who use the greatest silence.” Again, in the opinion of the leaders of the Party in office he is the most useful of Members who never consumes valuable time by speaking, but is ever at hand to vote when the bells ring out the summons to the division. The man who always votes at his Party’s call and never dreams of thinking for himself at all is to be found by the score in the House of Commons. But to many another M.P. it must be a sore trial to find his opinions often dictated by his leaders and his movements in and out of the House controlled by the Whips. Party discipline is strict in all the political groups, and violations of it are rarely condoned. The speech of the Member who is sincere and courageous enough to take up an attitude independent of his Party in regard to some question of the day is received with jeers by his colleagues, and, what is perhaps more disconcerting, with cheers by the fellows on the other side. There are, to be sure, representatives to whom the House of Commons is but a vastly agreeable diversion from other pleasures and pursuits. Imagine the feelings of such an easy-going Member when, on a dull night off, an urgently worded and heavily underscored communication from the Whips demanding his immediate attendance is delivered by special messenger at some most inopportune moment, perhaps as he is just sitting down to a pleasant dinner or is leaving his house for the Frivolity Theatre. If, prone as he is to yield to the temptation of the flesh, he should ignore this peremptory call of Party duty, he is held guilty, like the crank and the faddist, of a grave breach of discipline. His past services in the division lobbies—on nights when the proceedings in the House were to him a most enjoyable lark—are forgotten. He gets a solemn lecture from the Chief Whip on the enormity of his offence. Worse still, his name is published in an official black list of defaulters, or a nasty paragraph exposing his neglect of duty appears in the newspaper which most widely circulates in his constituency.
And yet what model M.P., Liberal or Unionist or Labour, with all his sincere attention to the desires, the whims, the caprices of his constituents, with all his willing surrender of private judgment to his leaders, of personal pleasures to the Whips, can confidently feel that his seat is safe? It is hard to get into Parliament. To remain there is just as difficult. The insecurity of the tenure of a seat in the House of Commons is perhaps the greatest drawback of public life. Many a man with ambition and talent for office does years of splendid service for his Party in Opposition. The General Election comes. His Party is victorious at the polls. But he himself has been worsted in the fight, and he has the mortification of seeing another receive the office which would have been his in happier circumstances. To such a man with his capacity for public life, with his keen enjoyment of the Party fights in Parliament, existence outside must be barren and dreary indeed. Yet never again may he cross the charmed portals of the House of Commons.