The London County Council is learning by experience that all
democratic principles will not work. It is one of them that secrecy is bad, that "the people" have a right to know everything their representatives are doing, and that to conceal anything from them gives good ground for suspicion. The Council, however, is drafting a Bill transferring to itself the control of places of public entertainment—which ought, as we have before argued, to be controlled by a State officer like the Licenser of Plays—and some indiscreet clerk or member has revealed the plan or invented a plan, and greatly irritated the " entertaining " classes, who imagine they are all to be compelled to take out annual certificates, which will be "endorsed" like cabmen's papers when they misbehave. The Council is greatly excited by the breach of confidence, and Lord Rosebery, one of whose recommendations is that he knows how to take absurdities seriously when needful, on Tuesday declared that the offence was as grave "as if a Cabinet Minister had handed over Cabinet minutes to the Press." This delicious bit of calculated pomposity soothed the Council, and the "incident terminated;" but "confidential" papers are in future to be kept secret. That is entirely proper, and, indeed, indispensable, if business is to be done well; but it is not the method which the new Radicalism usually approves.
Previous page
