Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative.
But the silent voter seems to have disdained to adopt fixed and settled political opinions—like the generality of mankind—either by inheritance or by an effort of thought. It may be that he is ignorant of the object of politics, in the general sense of the word; it may be that he knows what it implies, but thinks it unimportant. At any rate, the cries of Party make no appeal to him. He owes allegiance to none of the three great political organizations, nor to any of the many smaller groups formed for the advancement of particular purposes. He is scornful of the mere Party man. “Hack,” indeed, is the word he contemptuously uses. In his opinion ordinary politicians are but gramophones which mechanically grind out echoes of the catch cries that emanate from the Party headquarters or the Party newspapers. Indeed, the Party system appears to him a thing eminently absurd. He sees nothing in it but three scolding political organizations condemning each other’s methods and belittling each other’s achievements, bent solely on the possession of office with its attendant prestige and benefits. In his self-righteousness he accounts himself the ideal elector who, animated by a high sense of public duty, refuses to espouse any side in the Party struggle, and, taking the welfare of the Nation as his guiding light, brings free and reasoned judgment to bear upon the rival political policies at issue in the General Election. On the other hand, the staunch Party adherent calls him a “wobbler”—a sort of backboneless creature who cannot stand steadily upon his legs, much less four square to all the winds that blow, and who, when he votes, is influenced by some petty mood of the moment.
But whatever he may be—whether the idealistic free and enlightened elector, or a creature of unstable mind, whether he represents a low standard of political intelligence, or the highest form of integrity applied to politics—undoubtedly he it is who swings the electoral pendulum. He is the human instrument for the working out of that curious law of electioneering by which, before the World War, with but little irregularity, one Party succeeded the other in office, since the first really democratic extension of the franchise by Disraeli’s Reform Act of 1867, when the principle of household suffrage was established. The “wobblers” are not organized. They have no newspapers. No common consciousness of similar aims unifies or unites them. They do not appear upon platforms nor in audiences, nor do they feel impelled to write to the Press. They keep their own counsel, and rarely talk politics even in their own circles. They are, in fact, ignorant of each other’s existence. Yet their political influence is immense. It is not that they succeed in having themselves largely represented in Parliament. A peer who sits on the “cross benches” in the House of Lords—right in the middle of the floor, unattached, between the Government and the Opposition—is the closest analogue of the “wobbler” to be found in Parliament. Nor are they successful in having their political views considered in legislation and administration. Indeed, it is likely that they are a very varied lot in ideas, sentiments, and tastes. Almost invariably non-politicians are dead against change. So long as things go on pretty much as usual they are content to stand aside. But if it were possible to hold a convention of “wobblers,” and they drew up a political programme, we should have, no doubt, a fearful mixture of Toryism, Liberalism, Socialism, of the principles of free trade and tariff reform, of open doors and closed ports, of loaves big and little, of nationalization and private enterprise, of the whole hog or none.
The power which is wielded by this silent reserve of voters, as opposed to the crowd who belong to organizations, or who go to meetings and make their opinions known, is this—that in many constituencies where the steadfast Liberal, Conservative, and Labour supporters are evenly balanced, they exercise, as it were, the casting vote. In them may be said to lie the decision of the fateful question of the General Election—Shall the Government of the British Empire be Conservative or Liberal or Labour for a term of years? In the mass they may be moved by opposing sentiments and motives, they may be pursuing widely different ends. Many of them, no doubt, are of the kind who can only support a cause so long as it is favoured by fortune. But, as a rule, they are friendly disposed towards the “outs.” “Let the ‘outs’ have a turn of office,” they say, as they place their cross on the ballot paper in the polling booth. Thus swings the electoral pendulum to and fro.
Occasionally there is a wave of national feeling—whether it be enthusiasm for the new cause, or absolute weariness of the old, which, as in the extraordinary General Election of 1906 that brought the Liberals back to power after many years in the wilderness, sweeps over the country like a tidal wave overthrowing the barriers set up by the Party organizations and obliterating the lines of orthodox Party politics. Then it is that the non-political electors who do not trouble to vote on ordinary occasions flock to the polls in their hundreds of thousands, that numbers of voters who held their opinions weakly go over to the other side, and that the candidates of the Party in power are made to feel the full weight of their combined wrath. But this rarely happens. In the periods of calm which more often mark the public life of England, when there are no really fundamental or vital differences between parties, and interest in politics is, therefore, at a low ebb, when the General Election means no more than a struggle to get one set of Ministers out and another set of Ministers in, victory for Liberalism, Conservatism, or Labour depends on organization and persistent urging during the actual contest, each on their own particular supporters, to fail not, on their Party allegiance, to go to the polling booths.
2
The contrast between elections in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries is very striking and interesting. We see the good effects of Party in sweeping away electoral corruption, and also its drawbacks in limiting the scope of independent opinion and character. One of the most remarkable elections ever held was that which led to the return of John Stuart Mill for Westminster, as an independent Member, in 1865. Mill’s views were uncommon at the time. He held that a Member of Parliament should not have to incur one farthing of cost for undertaking a public duty. The expenses of an election ought, in his opinion, to be borne as a public charge, either by the State or by the locality. Mill also contended that the M.P. should not be expected to give any of his time or labour to the local interests. He declared that he himself had no desire to enter Parliament. He thought he could do more as a writer in the way of propagating his opinions. He declined to conduct a personal canvass of the constituency. Mill thus set at defiance all the accepted notions of right electioneering. A well-known literary man, he relates, was heard to say that the Almighty Himself would have no chance of being elected on such a programme. Yet Mill was returned by a majority of some hundreds over his “Conservative competitor,” as he calls his opponent. And all his expenses were paid by the constituency. It was impossible in the state of Party feeling even then existing that so independent a Member as Mill could be allowed to remain very long in Parliament. So Mill was thrown out at the General Election of 1868. “That I should not have been elected at all would not have required any explanation,” he writes in his Autobiography. “What excites curiosity is that I should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards.” The explanation was that his writings gave as much confidence to Conservatives as they did to the Liberals that he would be a supporter of their cause. The reason he was rejected was that in Parliament he pleased neither the one nor the other.
Macaulay, like Mill, was opposed to canvassing. He declared that an elector who surrendered his vote to supplication, or to the caresses of his baby, forgot his duty as much as if he sold it for a banknote. In his contest for the representation of Leeds, in 1832, he refrained from asking a single elector personally for his vote. He wrote: