I will even go so far as to affirm that if men were willing to serve in such situations without salary, they ought not to be permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that the State which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity, as in all things else a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess.
Moreover, if the salaries of office were meagre, statesmanship would become entirely an appendage of wealth. In former times most of the highest offices of the Government were filled by territorial magnates, Whig or Tory—members of aristocratic families with ample private means as well as great traditions of public service. To these men, possessed of personal fortunes of £15,000, £20,000 or £40,000 a year, the salaries of office may have been regarded as unconsidered trifles. And yet, strangely enough, in the seventeenth century, when rich noblemen, their relatives and dependants were at the head of affairs, the political seems to have been quite a lucrative profession, for a Minister often held his majority in the House of Commons together, not so much by principles, as by places and pensions.
But the old custom of confining the highest of the offices of State exclusively to men of hereditary position and wealth and leisure came to an end by the middle of the nineteenth century. The tendency to open the arena of statesmanship to all members of the Party in power of proved ability and distinction, but irrespective of birth or rank or fortune, was strikingly shown in the Administration which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed in 1905, when John Burns, a manual worker from an engineering shipyard, was made President of the Local Government Board and a Cabinet Minister; and as this tendency is bound to become wider and wider still as time progresses, the salaries of Ministers must be at least sufficient to provide a livelihood in order to attract to the service of the State men well equipped for it in intellectual ability, and experience in affairs, but without private means.
The fact, however, remains that the emoluments of office are not the allurement of the public service, and they never can be in any conceivable circumstances under the Party system, and the frequent changes of Government which it involves. Those who make politics a calling are very few in number. As a rule, men do not enter upon a political career with the object of making fortunes as statesmen, or even of securing a livelihood, in the way that men study medicine to become doctors, or law to become barristers. The uncertainty of attaining office and, in the event of success, the precariousness and brevity of its tenure will always make statesmanship the most unreliable of callings in the eyes of those bent on having a good balance at their bankers. The emoluments of office are really not so much salaries as prizes.
If two able young men of equal mental endowment were to set out on the same day to make their way in the world, one going into commerce or the professions, and the other into politics, it is almost a certainty that when the time came for retirement the man who had selected a professional or business avocation, and was successful, would be ten times as wealthy, at the very least, as the man who gave himself to the service of the State, even though he had attained to the most renowned and exalted office of Prime Minister. Members of Parliament are, as a rule, engaged in commercial and professional occupations, and they follow politics as a concurrent career. The few who show a special aptitude for leadership and office ultimately reach the Treasury Bench, but they hold on, nevertheless, to the established and secure positions on which they continue to depend for their bread-and-butter.
6
“Spoils of Office!” The phrase was long since emptied entirely of its eighteenth-century suggestion of “grab,” and remembering the public rage for economy, which is likely to endure for ever and ever on account of national necessities, it may be accepted that “spoils,” in the sense of pecuniary rewards, will less and less attach to service of the State. The responsibility and distinction of governing the country will, happily, always be attractive, and it will always bring the chance of gaining the greatest of most alluring “spoil” of all—that of doing something to maintain the renown of the country for honour and the prosperity and happiness of its people.
“This won’t do. You have taken the Queen’s shilling.” So said Disraeli to a Member of his Administration who was absent without due cause from a division in the House of Commons. It is not often that a Minister has to be reprimanded by his chief for want of devotion either to his Party or to the State. Happy country! Men of the highest class in ability and integrity are ever ready to take its burdens upon their shoulders. It does not, of course, follow that honest and disinterested men are always the best of politicians. Personal integrity and intellectual ability are, indeed, some assurance of wisdom in the guidance of the State. But they are not an infallible guarantee. If they were, there would never be a need for a change of Government. It has happened, now and then, that the principles of an Administration were large and lofty enough almost to bring the nation to ruin. But this much is true—that if Ministers cling to office in times of Party stress and conflict, it is not because of its emoluments. It is, in the main, because of a real concern for the welfare of the Commonwealth. They are convinced that the administration of public affairs in the light of their Party principles is essential to the salvation of the country. That and, fearing they would be beaten at the polls, the human weakness, “to keep the other fellows out.”