25 OCTOBER 1873, Page 8

THE MORPETH ELECTION.

THE news from Morpeth deserves, for many reasons, some- what careful study. Sir George Grey, who for some years has been almost out of politics, and has for many years more had a longing for peace among his woods at Falloden, has announced formally his intention of resigning his seat. The working miners have accordingly announced their inten- tion of taking it, and owing to accidental circumstances, their nominee will probably be returned without a contest. Great numbers of the miners near Morpeth live in the borough, and 3,500 of them have made good their claim to be placed upon the Register. As the borough previously contained only 2,500 electors of all sorts, it is now a nominee borough in the hands of the Miners' Union, and they have announced in a public meeting their intention of sending up their very ex- perienced Secretary, Mr. Burt, as Member for Morpeth to plead directly, instead of indirectly, the cause of labour. They have voted his expenses, which will be small if he is unopposed, as he apparently must be, and have agreed on account of London expenses to raise his salary to £500 a year. The Miners being remarkable both for resolution and for knowing clearly their own minds, there is little chance of altering this decision, even if Sir George Grey were willing to make the effort, and the next Session will there- fore, we doubt not, sea at least one working man in possession of his seat. We do not object ; rather we wish a dozen of the Secretaries of the great Unions were there too, so that the representative character of the House might be complete, and the men who understand the workmen from their own point of view might be brought face to face with the work, and the difficulties, and the talk of the House of Commons. Their presence would strengthen that House, and if there is anything worth fighting for, it is the continued vitality and authority of our one living and popular institution ; while the effect on the artisans, if they did not suspect their leaders all at once of trimming, would be almost magical. They would learn on authority they could not dispute that there were other men besides them in the world, that without compromise political life could not get on, that there was no disposition to oppress them politically, and above all, that the House of Commons will listen as attentively to their grievances as to any others put forward with cool reasoning force. Nothing clears men's minds of bitterness against invisible power like a distinct notion of what the power is, of the means of setting it in motion, and of the principles by

which its action will be controlled. The Members would get rid, too, of the dread that they would be ill received ; and we expect Mr. Burt, in particular, as representative of a trade which so directly interests both the great proprietors and the public, to go back not only a wiser man, but a man of far wider and more useful experience than any trade can have taught him.

But there are two points in the recent action of the Miners of Morpeth which a little break our satisfaction. Why could not they have let Mr. Burt's salary alone, if it were possible for him to live on it, say as a curate lives ? It is perfectly legal to pay him, and as far as a bare subsistence allowance goes, perfectly proper, but to do any more is to make him a paid delegate,—that is, just what he ought not to be, for two reasons. One is, that the House of Commons hates and distrusts paid delegates ; has never, that we know of, confided in any one of them from any class whatever,—from Major Scott Waring, Warren Hastings' agent, downwards ; and the other and much more important is, that the delegate is sure to desire to keep himself perpetually before his employers, to make them see that he is doing their work, to be everlastingly "too obvious," as an American lady has asserted that all children are. There can be no greater mistake in the House

of Commons. Mr. Burt, speaking on subjects he knows, or Mr. Burt quietly canvassing for his friends, or learning up the ways of the House, will be treated with patient cordiality ; but Mr. Burt turned into a Darby Griffiths, hugging his pet subject, in season or out of season, regulating all his votes by Union sanction, or treating his clients as if they were a one-legged race wanting help at every turn, will be voted an unmitigated bore, and probably asked to sing. That reads like a joke, but nobody who has not seen it can understand the exasperation which seizes the House when a Member, however important, will display want of comprehension of itself—or to put it simply, want of tact—and will go on interrupting business with things it does not want to hear. There is no privilege here, as in Washington, of handing an unuttered speech to a clerk to be reported in the Congressional Globe, and the House will not stand too much bore, too much of the paid advocacy of any cause in the world. Mr. Burt may so secure its ear as to be as important to miners as Mr. Bright, for example, would be if he represented the carpet trade; but he will not do it by perpetually talking about coal-mining, as if coals alone I existed among minerals. Then, again, adherence to his bare salary as Secretary would have done Mr. Burt himself good.

£500 a year will not enable him to live as an ordinary representative does ; and if it did, he is not to be an ordinary representative, but a representative of working-men, who ought to live, very much, though not entirely, as they do, and like Andrew Marvell, coolly do the honours of un- furnished rooms. That has been done even in modern days, and though we are reluctant to mention names, everybody in politics remembers at least one man who rose to real im- portance in the House while poorer in cash than any average coalhewer. We are not about to talk nonsense about the dignity of poverty. Poverty by itself is not dignified anywhere, except in a German Professor, and he is all the more impres- sive for decent attire ; but there is, at least, a dignity of inde- pendence which a paid delegate must lose. Mr. Burt earning his living as Secretary to a Coal Miners' Union is as inde- pendent as any other man who has to work for his bread—as an Attorney-General, for instance—but the special salary as Member is a special blow at his independence.

And finally, we do not like Mr, Burt's first speech to his electors at all, it is so absolutely deficient in the originality demanded by the mere circumstances of his election. It reads exactly like one of Feargus O'Connor's statements of principles. Mr. Burt throws his vote on the side of Uni- versal Suffrage, a suffrage which, whatever its other merits, must be fatal to the skilled artisan, who would be lost in the crowd of irresponsible voters ; redistribution of seats, which is all very fair, provided we do not redistri- bute history as well as boundaries ; short Parliaments, i.e., Parliaments too ignorant and fluctuating to be entrusted with absolute power ; and payment of Members, the only use of which is to make of politics a trade. Besides these things, he wants vigorous retrenchment, which is impossible without cutting down either the Army and Navy, or the interest on the Debt, or the Judicial service ; approves arbitration between nations, though he knows that if any one of his electors is kicked he will kick back again ; wishes to abolish school fees, though he knows that the people never respect that which costs them nothing ; would make education, moreover, unsec- tarian and compulsory,—that is, we suppose, would prohibit religious teaching ; would disestablish and disendow the " Churches of England, Wales, and Scotland "; would cultivate the waste lands of the country, and compel better cultivation of the remainder, without in the least explaining his idea of the method to be pursued towards those excellent ends, except by " a reform of the land laws," which may mean anything, though we hope it means the aboli- tion of primogeniture, entail, and long settlement ; desires that the Game Laws be abolished, and would strongly support the Permissive Bill. On class politics, the re-arrangement of the law as between master and servant, the modification of the law of conspiracy, and so on, he is of course sound and clear ; but on all other subjects he talks vague Radicalism of the unsoundest sort —his universal suffrage, for instance, would deliver over England chained and bound to the wealthy—and the one point on which he is distinct is that he would abrogate the right of a miner to get a glass of beer. Mr. Burt may be a teetotaller of the true stamp, one who holds beer-drinking a crime, as well as a sin against digestion, and if so, he is right enough; but he professes to be statesman too, and we ask him in that profession what he thinks would be the effect of a penal law against beer in

llkiorpeth ? An insurrection, or a carefully organised system of lying, in order to break the law He also professes to be a Liberal, and we have no doubt is one—though Mr. Disraeli may yet educate his party up to Disestablishment, on the plea that the Liberals would also disendow—but does he really think it Liberal to imprison a man for drinking a glass of beer ? And if not, why does he, coming forward as the first representa- tive of a new constituency, to represent constitutionally and quietly the labourers' view of the old battle between capital and labour, utter those old-world crudities I There are plenty of men in a far less exceptional position to talk about them, without Mr. Burt deserting a class of subjects which he understands for a class which he obviousiy does not understand, otherwise he would not speak of the " Church of Wales," as if there were such a corporation.