SD/ STAFFORD NORTHCOTE ON HIS FRIENDLY SOCIETIES' ACT.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE seems determined to burn boats, bridges, and everything else that can possibly be of use to him if he should ever wish to retreat from the position he has taken up about Friendly Societies. He can only be compared to a mother who goes on worshipping her zicketty offspring, until she ends by persuading herself that it is as fine and healthy a baby as any neighbouring nursery can show. A wiser advocate would have been thank- ful that the Bill had been carried through Parliament, and have said nothing about it during the Recess. But the miracle that it did not die of weakness during the process of becoming law has seemingly turned its author's head. From excusing its defects as necessary faults, Sir Stafford Northcote has now got to glorifying them as positive virtues. 'Look at it,' he cries, measure it, weigh it, and then confess that you never saw such an Act in your life. Observe how it trains the poor to exercise themselves in the virtues of discretion and forethought, by surrounding them with pitfalls at every step. Notice how it guards them against the fatal Continental error of trusting too much to the Government, by making a Government registration worth just nothing at all. Admire the modesty with which the State, even when, for form's sake, it insists on periodical investigations of accounts, declines to say by whom the investigation shall be made, and so leaves any erring societies free to hear their own confessions and to grant their own absolutions. Don't fall into the com- mon-place blunder of supposing these characteristics to be mere blots in the Act, which may be removed by subsequent legisla- tion. They are the Act itself. They are the very features which make it what it is, a grand lesson in the art of self- government, a noble monument to the wisdom of rulers who lead their subjects into scrapes, in order that they may learn by experience how to get out of them 2'
This is the general drift of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech at Ilfracombe. When it is examined in more detail, it resolves itself into two parts,—a terrific combat with an ad- versary of Sir Stafford Northcote's own creation, in which, of course, he comes off an easy conqueror ; and an appeal to the public generally to do for members of Friendly Societies what the Government has not thought fit to do for them. The imagi- nary adversary is supposed to argue that the Government ought to have taken upon itself the whole business of insurance against sickness and death._ With this wicked suggestion Sir Stafford Northcote is indignant beyond measure. It would have put the Government, he thinks, in the position of the fox who got out of the well on the horns of the goat. The new Government Association would have profited by all the information that the Friendly Societies have got together, at so much trouble and embarrassment to themselves, while these Societies would have been left, with their millions of people and millions of pounds invested, "to the horrors of insolvency and compulsory winding- up." Even if it had been possible for a virtuous Minister to overlook the meanness of such a proposal, he ought not to have overlooked its danger. The Government knows a great deal about Insurance, but it does not know everything, and if a State Friendly Society had blundered, the con- fidence of the people, both in the Government and in the system, would have been irreparably shaken. Would not any one reading this suppose that it came from the lips of a sworn opponent of all dealings on the part of the Government with Friendly Societies Sir Stafford Northcote admits that his views upon the question were once very different from what they are now, and one is tempted to fancy that this whole passage is a survival from a period when he held that registration of any kind was a mistake. No one has found fault with the Government for declining to found a State Friendly Society, and there are many persons who would have found no fault with them had they abolished registration, and left every Friendly Society to stand on its own merits. The vice of the legislation of last Session is, that it retains the form of Government control without the power of it, that it enables the least solvent and the least honest society to assert that the Govern- ment sees no difference between it and the most solvent and the most honest society. It is no defence against this charge to say that the Government are afraid of doing too much. If they think that to make the adoption of sound tables and of independent audit and valuation a condition of registration would be doing too much, they ought to have the courage of their opinions, and do nothing at all. It would have been rea- sonable to say 'We do not know enough about the conduct of Friendly Societies to make registration an efficient guarantee of solvency, and therefore there shall be no registration.' It would have been reasonable to say, 'We know enough about the con- duct of Friendly Societies to make registration an efficient guarantee of certain conditions of solvency, and therefore registration shall be declared to imply these conditions, and no others.' But it was not reasonable to retain registration, and with it the appearance of guaranteeing something, when the Govern- ment know perfectly well that nothing is guaranteed. No amount of declamation about independence of Government aiN; can justify this wilful perpetuation of a form which the Govern- ment allow to be taken as having a meaning, though they are well aware when they perpetuate it that it is really meaningless.
It is fair to Sir Stafford Northcote to admit that he does not wish other people to follow the example which the Government
set them. He hopes that "benevolent persons and persons in authority" will "devote some of their time and attention to the study of the subject," and will endeavour to give "advice and assistance to the Societies in their own immediate neighbour- hood." What is this in effect but an adjuration addressed to the educated public not to be taken in by Government regis- tration? 'We know,' Sir Stafford Northcote may be supposed to say, that ignorant persons will, in all probability, be de- ceived by the system which stamps good and bad Societies with the same official brand. It is for you to convince them that this brand is of no possible value. They will trust them- selves, perhaps, to your superior judgment, and depend upon it, you cannot do them a greater service than by showing them the worthlessness of registration. Make them understand that we really certify to nothing ; explain to them that the essen- tials of solvency are not a barren conformity to certain tech- nical rules, but the adoption of sound tables, the submission of their accounts to a rigid audit, and the periodical valuation of their assets and liabilities. Left to themselves, they may think that the fact of registration implies these three last condi- tions. It is for you to tell them that it only implies the first.' We quite agree with Sir Stafford Northcote that benevolent per- sons and persons in authority cannot employ themselves better than by dispelling the mists in which it has pleased the Government to involve the solvency of Friendly Societies. We agree that is not enough for the clergyman or the squire to send a donation to the funds of the local society, or to attend its annual dinner, or walk with its members to church. Besides doing this, it is his duty to "look a little into the condition of the society, and to take care he does not en- courage people to join a society which is rotten, and thereby lead them into an error." Only we should be disposed to apply the exhortation to a person who is certainly a person in authority, and who may be presumed to be benevo- lent. This person is constantly engaged in looking into the
condition of Friendly Societies. It is the subject upon which he principally and professionally exercises his intelli- gence, and by long observation he has probably attained a re- markable power of detecting a rotten society almost at a glance. But having detected it, he is strictly forbidden to do what Sir Stafford Northcote wants the clergyman and the squire to do. Instead of taking care not to encourage people to join a society which is rotten, his business is to encourage them by all means to join it. He knows that it is insolvent ; he knows that its tables of contributions are too small and its tables of benefits too large to enable it to keep its promises to its members ; he knows that its accounts are audited and its assets and liabilities valued by persons who are merely the creatures of its managers, and that this is done pre- sumably to keep the members in ignorance of the real con- dition of the society's affairs ; he knows, further, that if he affixes a certain stamp to this rotten society, it will be re- garded by ignorant people as a certificate that the society possesses the recommendation which he knows that it does not possess. And yet, knowing all this, he has no option but to affix the stamp, and to send forth this rotten society marked with the outward and visible symbol of solvency. This person is the Registrar of Friendly Societies. There is no private person who, by any exercise of intelligence or by any willing- ness to take trouble, could obtain the knowledge which this official possesses almost as a matter of course. If the Govern- ment would but let him, he could in the long-run do ewe to prevent people from joining insolvent Societies than all the squires and all the clergymen put together. It is unfortunate that under Sir Stafford Northcote's Act, he should be the one person whose mouth is officially closed on the subject.
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