Politics in the Good Old Days

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 24, 24 March 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

Politics in the Good Old Days

Bv way of praising polities to-day. may I draw you a short hut truthful picture of British polititeal life as it was during the eighteenth centurv and up til] 1832? writes C. A. Lyon, in the Sundav Chronicle. To begin with, the management of the national accounts by the politicians was a scandal. Each Cabinet Minister or head of a department was king of his own little Treasury. Between the time he received monev from the central Treasury and when ho paid it out. to his subordinates, or between the time when ho received the money as taxes and sent it to the Treasury, it was for all effects and purposes his own property. He could do what he liked with it. He could put it in a bank on deposit and draw the interest. He could even use the national money entrusted to him for a flutter in stocks. Lord Melville. First Lord of the Admiralty, actually did this, about the vear 1800, to name one instance. A second, and. if anything, greater scandal was the method by which high Government officials. all politicians, were paid. They had a salary. But they also had “fees.” Tn some cases these fees were determined by the amount of money th<‘V received and spent. The higher the taxes went, the more salary the Treasury officials drew. On the other hand, the more a Minister could make his ■ department spend, the more the nation ■ paid him for his trouble. The system made it to the interest of influential office holders to have a war. I There were four highly-paid officials whose gilded office was called the Tel- | lershipr of the Exchequer. These officials were paid on commission. As long as there was a war thev each drew | £25,000 a year. When there was peace I in the land they drew less. But the third ami greatest scandal, was the “patronage” scandal. The' whole political system of Britain was! run on a system of briberv and cor- , ruption. You gave an M.P. a fat job with nothing to do, and he voted for you. You put your nephews and cousins j in all the best jobs. All the Civil Service was political, and many were the snug jobs an obedient politician might have therein. There were the commissionerships of stamps, the commissionerships of the Customs, the commissionerships of ExI cise. One thousand pounds a year apiece and no work. There was the Clerkship of the Pells, duties negligible, pay £7OOO a year. The Paymastership of Widows’ Pension. The Keeper of his Majestv’s Tennis Courts. Sometimes these posts involved certain menial duties, and then a deputy ■was paid a small salary to do the work. ‘ When a man got a job in the Government he stayed in it for life. Xot onlv that, but he could leave the job to his son when he died. Or he could arrange I for the next one or two holders: of the job after him. And the salary went on and on. Buying and sidling offices , for money or services performed was an evervday affair. The mistress of the Duke of York, who was head of the War Office, was found to bo sidling commissions in the Army. Even the Judges were part of the •corrupt system. They also had their “fees.” These fees gave them a direct interest in prolonging proceedings Almost everybody who was anybody had a “cut” out of John Bull’s monev. Election time produced fantastic incidents. Dead or dying (owns that had o.ice been great still sent one or more members to Parliament. Old Sarum (Wilts) was ploughed fields. Gatton (Surrey) consisted of six houses. Another borough was only a wall, and on certain of the stones was written: “This is a house.” or some such inscription for electoral purposes. The “electors” were brought down to such towns on a stage coach the night before by the candidate they were paid to vote for. Such constituencies were valuable. Gatton. for instance, was sold with its six houses for £lOO,OOO. But the system was seen in .its worst form in those constituencies where the voter was free and could demand whatever price he wanted for bis vote, so great were the perquisites of a politician when he was once elected. (There were not so many voters in the countrv. Scotland had only 2400 all told. It was quite possible to bribe the whole electorate). Three candidates contesting the Yorkshire seats in 1807 spent almost half a million pounds. In 1812 the Harewood family, in Yorkshire, announced that they were readv to spend £12.000 on an election if a rival candidate dared to come to the polls.