BOOKS.
THE PARTY SYSTEM.*
ACCORDING to Messrs. Belloc and Cecil Chesterton, Great Britain is ruled under a system which requires a sham fight to be kept up between the two Front Benches in Parliament in order to impose upon the public, but which aims only at keep- ing the spoils of office in the hands of a clique. The nominally opposing factions of this clique enjoy the spoils in turn, and it is their object never to permit a vital change in the political system, because their occupation would then be gone. Thus the authors explain that the tame ending of the enquiry into the Jameson raid and the appointment of the Constitution Conference were capital exampleb of preventing things in- jurious to the party system going too far ; and they prophesy confidently that the coming changes in the Constitution will also be kept within very safe limits by the office-holding clique. The uncles, nephews, cousins, brothers, and men of the same set must be enabled to retain the management of the " teams," as the authors call the two great parties. Self- interest, guided by complete cynicism, will drive the two Front Benches into some secret compact which will enable everything to go on much as before, while the voters will be persuaded to I elieve that they are really looking on at a battle. In brief, the authors regard our British political machine as fairly comparable with that of the Portuguese rotativists, and we can only suppose that the " revelations " of this book supply the reason why Mr. Belloc did not stand again for Parliament. He preferred his freedom, and the battle cry of freedom is uttered with remarkable zest and loudness in these pages.
It is strange that a man of Mr. Belloc's remarkable acumen should rush to conclusions which the ordinary reader will find as clearly unjustifiable as they are clearly expressed. But we suppose that it is his fatally clear logic which is his weakness. One has marked in French politicians the irresistible force of logic which is often made to lead to a conclusion contradicted by all experience. Mr. Belloc's mind works like that; he scents conspiracy or treachery and, with a strong prepossession, pro- ceeds to turn every available fact to the uses of the prosecu- tion. We need hardly say that though there is, and is bound to be, a certain truth in all his arguments, his total of infer- ence is quite beyond the range of belief. The "rotationism," for one thing, obviously works very badly. Mr. Belloc, to be fair, should be able to show that it works smoothly and regu- larly. For many years the Liberals never tasted office, and now it is by no means certain that the Unionists, who have already been thrust back at three elections in succession, will not suffer similarly. We pay our countrymen the compliment of believing that if they really wanted to play the Portuguese game, they would play it with more effect. The Constitution Conference, so far as we know 'was not the result of apiece of hanky-panky behind the Speaker's Chair,but a genuine attempt to hush political contention in the presence of a great national sorrow, and loyally to smooth the path of the new King. if the author's logic were acted on there would be no give and take, no nods and becks across the table between. the rival leaders, but a condition of unremitting and, in our opinion, deplorable enmity.
What do the authors require ? The rancour of French politicians P A willingness to meet one's opponent half-way is by no means a sign of sinister collusion. We are reminded of the old lady who, having engaged counsel to conduct her case for a considerable fee, was horrified to observe him lunching with counsel for the other side. Nothing would
* The Party System. By Hilaire Moo and Cecil Chesterton. London: Stephen Swift [as. 6d. net], persuade her that she had not been betrayed. What the authors wholly ignore is that there is, and must be, an advocate's side to political life. The politician may know in his heart that he will not get all he wants in the way of legislation, but the weapon he uses for getting as much as he can is public opinion. He cites public opinion as evidence, and it will be very poor evidence if he has not been able to stir genuine and strong feelings among the electors. All this predicates, in the circumstances of our society, a good deal of extravagance of expression. Now, when the Member of Parliament accepts much less than he spoke of as possible to his constituents, Messrs. Belloc and Chesterton spy rank levity and corruption. We do not agree. That politics become a game of opportunism all too frequently we know, but this book discovers far too ranch. And we cannot help saying that Mr. Belloc treats at least one of those who were formerly his nearest political associates with much less generosity than he had a right to expect.
In one respect we find the book admirable—in the description of the manner in which power has slipped away from private Members in the House of Commons. The anthers fall foul, it is true, of the fashion of speaking of the modern private Member as a "delate "; but this is not because they regard him as other than an automatic recorder of votes. They explain that " delegate " means precisely what a Member of Parliament ought to be—a delegate of his constituents. That is so, and no doubt the word is generally used loosely. It is clear enough, however, that we, who often use the word in this respect, mean, with most people, that the private Member has become the obedient slave of the Caucus. The authors state the case against rule by Caucus so powerfully that we could wish the whole book were devoted to so good a cause. Every voter would be the better for reading what a former Liberal Member says of the complete dominance of the Cabinet and the complete impotence of the House to check it. And yet we are told by Liberals that the only practical check which has been proposed—the reference of any questionable Bill to the people themselves—is undemocratic! The general object of the book, however, is to expose collusion, and doing so the authors credit the Party System, as we have said, with far more defects than it has. Take this, for example :— " Nevertheless, it should be noted that the effect of the Party System on even the cleverer politiei-qns is to reduce the normal level of their intelligence. It is quite incredible that such men as Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour and Mr. F. E. Smith, could under any other cireninqances give expression to such imbecilities as those which constantly adorn their public. speeches. They would not talk like that at dinner or at their dubs. But the standard of intellect in politics is so low that men of moderate mental capacity have to stoop in order to reach it. Examples of this in men who are after all highly educated, and move in a well-instructed world, will occur to everyone. They could hardly be explained in any other way than by the proportion of energy which is wasted under the Party System in bad rhetoric and worse intrigue, which are utterly useless to the Common- wealth."
We are no defenders of most of the results of the Party System, but we fail to appreciate the sense of attributing to it a blame which properly belongs to the want of education of the electorate. Any political appeal under any system would be made to the present voters in the same way. An election has just been held at Cambridge University. The candidates appealed to the voters by means of a few dignified circulars explaining their opinions. Feel one knew that if he issued lies on posters and uttered catchy and vulgar appeals he would certainly be defeated. Yet this election was conducted under the Party System.
The authors discuss in a rather half-hearted spirit the possibility of persuading Members to vote without fail against any Government which does not carry out its programme in a certain time, and they end with this note of pessimism :—
" The degraded Parliament may ultimately be replaced by some other organ ; but no such other organ appears to be forming, and until we get our first glimpse of it we are in for one of those evil spaces, subject to foreign insult and domestic misfortune, which invariably attach to nations when, for a period, they lose grip over ' their own destinies.'
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