SALE OF HONOURS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13456, 30 April 1914, Page 7

SALE OF HONOURS.

T?u> system that has been praeti.-Ked jd ttivftfc Britain of giving honours and tiles in return for contributions to the party funds is largely the outcome of the financial needs of the great parties. It is said that both parties require £50,000 a year far their central organisations. The "Spectator" suggests, as a remedial measure, that the Whips, instead of relying upon great subscriptions from a fuw people, should democratise their appeal. - '' Unquestionably £50,000 a. year could bo obtained by an appeal to the party as a whole if that appeal were properly organised. It would surely be possible to find ten thousand Unionists throughout the country who would be willing to give £5 a year to the patty funds— to back their political opinions by subscribing the kind of sum they are willing «iough to subscribe to a golf club. 6f course some constituencies aro very much richer than others, but we take it that, of the five hundred and sixty odd constituencies in England, Wales, and Scotland, there must be at least five hundred in which it would be quite easy on an average to End twenty men who would bind themselves to give regularly £5 a year. To put it in another way, an average of £100 a year would be raised in every constituency towards the central funds, and thus the party would be entirely freed from havina to lay itself under an obligation to rich- individuals. Possibly in some cases it might be necessary to allow individuals in a constituency to make themselves responsible for several units of subscription, but the ideal would be a flat-rate subscription of £5 from ten thousand subscribers. Before ivo leave the subject we should like- to endorse Lord Milner's most useful suggestion to the effect that whenever a* honour is given a statement should bp made as to the grounds for conferring the distinction. That alone would be a very 'powerful check upon -the bestowal of honours for nothing but. a big subscription."