SIR HARDINGE GIFFARD'S FIRST SPEECH.
SIR HARDINGE GIFFARD is in Parliament at last, and his maiden speech is considered by all Tories fully to justify the obstinacy with which the Government adhered to their chosen Solicitor-General, in spite of the refusal of any independent constituency to elect him. It is quite natural they should think so. Tories, and particularly Tories of the agricultural kind, quite agree with Mr. Ward Hunt in his recent eulogy of the Turks that "courage is the highest quality of man," and Sir Hardinge's courage in propounding unpopu- lar and unreasonable opinions has always been of the first order, and was markedly displayed in his defence of the City Guilds. They like to hear that the owners of wealth of any kind are beyond Parliamentary control, have a full right to do what they please with their own, and may spend it in particu- lar on delicate food and costly vintages, without any rebuke beyond the abstract remark that luxury is the temptation of our time. They think so, too, and they like to have such proper things said by a Solicitor-General, and feel when they are said amidst applause as if all our ancient institutions, and especially rent and the right of eviction, were safer than before. And they are especially pleased that such things should be said about the City Companies, for they have a special veneration for the City Companies. They are institutions of the good old sort, with "none of that damned intellect" about them. The Guilds are old, and rich, and luxurious in their ways, outside influences, and very brave and hearty and jovial, and as like great old Peers as collections of rather vulgar individuals can easily contrive to be. Tories admire them, and think their successful advocate a brilliant and most agreeable addition to their party in the House. They are quite right from their point of view, but if the Guilds have among their friends, as is quite probable, any shrewd and experienced old politician who knows what English- men really think, and rather dreads bold rhetorical assertions of extreme right, he will probably not agree very cordially with the Tories, will, on the contrary, possibly be heard to mutter something about the imprudence of going so very far. Blank denials of the right of Parliament to do anything seldom secure much good to those who offer them, and the Solicitor- General's speech was nothing but a blank denial of the right of Parliament to inquire into the City Companies' affairs. It might just as well, he said, inquire into the affairs of the wealthy Clubs in Pall Mall, a statement to which he evidently supposed there could be no reply. Unfortunately there is a very simple and complete one. Parliament has a perfect right to inquire into the affairs of any Club in Pall Mall, if such in- quiry is of national importance, and would, on due cause ,shown, exercise its right without the smallest scruple. It has done so within the past thirty days. The Stock Exchange is nothing on earth but a very wealthy and important Club, without any legislative recognition or privileges, and Parlia- ment only twenty-five days ago ordered a Commission to make a thorough rummage into its affairs, and suggest whether a little legislative control of its individual rights might not tend to its improved management and the public good. Long experience has shown the people that it is better not to limit the rights of corporations and individuals over property as most nations on the Continent do, but it is on grounds of expediency only and not of right that they refrain frond asserting their power of investigation and control. Sir Hardinge Giffard's doctrine -would make the mortmain law an unjust interference with the Churches, and the Charity Acts a tyrannical meddling with the benevolent, and the inquiry into Mr. Thelusson's Will, which produced the Act limiting the accumulation of property, an immoral and wicked suspension of individual rights. He goes, 85 he always goes, so far in his defence of a practice, raising it into a sort of divine right, that he produces a reaction of 'Opinion, and makes thousands of people who care nothing about the City Guilds think that if this is their line of defence ,or defiance, their claim to independence of the State had better be tooted and repudiated immediately and once for all.
We quite admit that it would be most unadvisable for Parliament to inquire into the expenditure of private fortunes without good cause shown, but then where is the proof that the fortunes of the Companies are private fortunes ? Sir Herainge Gifford says they are, so far as such fortunes are not left on trust, but where is the evidence of the assertion ? Where is the proof, till inquiry has been granted, as Mr. James proposed, that the Guilds are merely huge copareenaries, like the proprietors of the Carlton or the Reform ? The prima facie presumption, apart from the Solicitor-General's peremptory dictum, which is not quite equivalent to a revela- tion, is all the other way. Can a City Company sell its pos- stallions, and divide them among its members? Sir Hardinge Clifford, says it can, but nobody else does, and the Carlton certainly, can. Is every member of a Guild responsible for his Company's debts The member of the Carlton is. Can a member of the Carlton vote in the election for Members of Parliament in right of his admission to the Club ? The member of a City Guild can. Can the Carlton confer the right to trade within the City of London, the centre of all trade throughout the world The City Guilds can. Has the Carlton possession by law of direct and important authority over the most important of all trades? One, at least, of the City Companies—the Goldsmiths' Company—has. If Sir Hardinge Gifford is right, then the first thing the City Reformer has to do is to introduce a Bill declaring that privileges such as those of the City Companies ought not to belong to "private individuals," that their charters must be cancelled, their exceptional right to hold land taken away, their right to deprive the Treasury of succession-duties com- pensated for by some other contribution, the special privileges of two of their number—the Goldsmiths' Company and the Stationers' Company—abolished, and they themselves reduced legally to the position which the Solicitor-General, who ought 40,.know, says they morally hold,—that of mere associations of .lirPfate individuals, aggregated at their own pleasure and for themown interest. The whole thing is absurd. The Companies, whether they are muncipal corporations or not, are public bodies, performing, some of them, public functions, and enjoying all of them public privileges, and Parliament has as much right to inquire whether they could be made more useful by taking away those privileges or extending them, as it has to inquire whether Corporations outside the Municipal Act ought to con- tinue or not, or whether the Stock Exchange manages its business so as to be as beneficial to the community as it might become. The extent of their property bas nothing to do with the matter, except so far as the richer they are the more power and responsibility they have, and the sneer that such inquiry is a "general Communistic inquiry, principally founded on the suggestion that City Companies have large funds," is a mere bit of vulgar abuse of the old iducl, which we are surprised to see elicited even Tory cheers. We thought Parliamentary orators of any mark had learned to leave that "high falutin' " rubbish to tenth-rate demagogues, and were as much ashamed of calling laws Communistic as of calling a common jury "that Palladium of our liberties," but then, no doubt, we thought so before Mr. Deakin had retired.
While repudiating, however, as flatly as possible, Sir Hardinge Giffard's notion that a City Hall is an enclave or peculium within the State, as much beyond the action of Parliament as if it belonged to a foreign Power, we by no means wish to imply sympathy with Mr. James's or Mr. Pease's ideas. We do Lot know what they are. They may be going to vote all the property of the Guilds to Dr. Kenealy or the ex-King of Hanover. We have no desire to see the Companies abolished, or fined, or stripped, or even worried, any more than we desire to see those unpleasing operations performed upon the Colleges of Oxford and Cam- bridge, which stand just in the same position as to their pro- perty as the Companies. For aught we know, the very best thing to do with the Companies would be to let them alone, and suffer them to reward the admirable management of their affairs by their members by feasts of unlimited turtle-soup and undeniable Lafitte. The point is not the pay, and still less the mode of pay, but the work. If great citizens of London like to be paid in extravagant allowances of meat and drink, like ornamental footmen or Devonshire labourers, we might condemn their gourraandise, but should not care to abolish that mode of payment by sumptuary legislation. What we do care for is that these corporations, despite their anti- quity, of which the Times makes so much, and their wealth, and their uncertain utility, and their certain popularity with gluttons, and their alliance with the City Corporation, and their good-fortune in eliciting sueli sympathy from Sir Hardinge Gifford, should be compelled to acknowledge that Parliament is above them, to show cause for their privileges, and generally to surrender their absurd pretensions to be self-existent, irresponsible, and entitled, as their great advocate says, to divide their own money among themselves. We should not prime/ facie have deemed this a fitting time for inquiry, for it is of no use to inquire into abuses when the House of Commons is devoted to their maintenance, but 'Sir Hardinge Gifford has made delay too dangerous to be tolerated. When her Majesty's Solicitor-General, -speaking from his place in Parliament, can give an opinion like this, it is high time for Liberals interested in London 4o bestir themselves :—" In so far as they were possessed of private funds, which it was perfectly possible to distinguish from charitable funds, the Livery Companies were in no position different from that of a private society or individuaL It was much to their credit that, being in possession of large funds, instead of squandering them, or dividing the money among themselves, they had kept them for the purpose of carrying out, so far as they could, the objects for which the Guilds were founded, just as political clubs or other establishments would do." If Mr. Trevelyan will not stir, the Companies may take the hint, crown their long experiments in ventral endurance by one final banquet of the Gods, and disappear from the scene, taking with them the rich revenues which, according to Sir Hardinge Gifford, they have a right to eat up in .a day.
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