POLITICS LONG AGO

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1929, Page 8

POLITICS LONG AGO

WHEN SEATS WERE BOUGHT Curiosities of politics in the eighteenth century are discussed by the writer of the “Musings Without Method,” in “Blackwood.” Mr. L. B. Namier, in his book “The Structure of Politics at tfie Accession of George III.,” refers among other things to the accounts of the secret service fund administered by the Duke of Newcastle. The magazine writer says that the size of this fund and the corruption wrought by it has been largely overrated by earlier authors; it was spent in a foolish charity rather than in corruption; but the plea that it was

“only a little one” does not excuse Newcastle. He was timid/even in his bribery, and the poor £15,000 which he. spent out of the secret service fund was wasted upon helping lame dogs,

if he had made use of them, or in fumbling attempts at corruption. In the eighteenth century there was very little prejudice against bribery and corruption. Soame Jenyns held that “an independent House of Commonos is no part of the English Constitution.” Henry Fox, a rapacious politician, exhorted the youthful Shelbourne to get place as soon as possible, since it is “the placemen, not the independent lord, who can do this country good.” It was not Newcastle’s fault that he could not find places or money for all the men he wished to favour. Among the motives for going into Parliament at that time were to make a figure (according to Chesterfield), to use the institution as a “very agreeable “coffee-house” or club, and to find in it a mixture of business study and society (according to Ribbon), or to depend upon the House as “the known way to military preferment” (Chesterfield.) It helped toward naval preferment also: in 1740 “most of our flag

officers 'were in the House of Commons,” according to the Duke of Argyll. “Then, as now,” adds the magazine writer, “such lawyers as were determined to climb to the heights found it wise to surmount the mountain of politics as soon as they could. And others there were—the merchants, the bankers, the nabobs —who most easily rose to affluence with the help and patronage of the House of Commons. And lastly there were the adventurers, no longer surviving, who could save themselves from ruin and the debtor’s prison by the immunity afforded by membership of Parliament. “A motley throng,” is the summing up in “Blgckwood,” “differing very little

from that which confronts us to-day; better in manners, perhaps, and speech; of as paltry an ambition, and no loftier aspiration.”

One difference was that “in the eighteenth century purses were weighed; in the twentieth century wo count heads, and on© plan is no more and no less soundly logical than the other.” As the voting was open, those in dependent positions could rarely exercise a free, choice. So late as 1841 a member of the Grosvenor family complained of Mr. Gladstone for having violated the sacred canons of electioneering etiquette by canvassing Lord Westminister’s tenants. “I did think,” says the wounded patrician, “that interference between a landlord, with whose opinions you were acquainted, and his ten-

ants was not justifiable according to those laws qf delicacy and propriety which I considered binding in such cases.” Usually the result of the elections was forordained. The agricultural influence was incontestable, and the great land-owners had their own way. “And who shall say,” asks “Blackwood,” “that the influence of the big land-owners was not better and more wisely exercised than the influence of members of ■ a caucus, completely ignorant of the countryside, and of its cai pet-baggers sent down to represent a county whose name they have never before heard mentioned?”

There were, however, members of various kinds—some benevolent, and others neglectful. Votes and voters were readily bought. In 1774 the notorious Anthony Henley address the tollowing remarkable letter to his constituents of a borough in Hampshire, who had written to him to oppose the Excise Bill:—“Gentlemen,—I received yours, and am surprised at your insolence in troubling yourselves about the Excise. You know, what I very rnV T <now ’ that 1 bou S h t you, and, by God, I am determined to sell you; and I know that perhaps you think I do not know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know also what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God’s curse light upon you- all; may your homes be open and common to all Excise officers. . .