theory, the highest office is open to any one, be
he Peer or peasant, provided he is not a bankrupt or a criminal. But if the theory is old, it has not hitherto been put into practice. Working men have in the past held small Government offices, but no working man has ever before taken his seat in the inner ring of his Majesty's advisers. Obviously the chances are enormously against a working man making for himself a career in politics. If he enters the House, it will usually be in late life, after he has made a com- petence, in which case he cannot be said to be representative of his class. A Labour Member, again, is a professional politician, and therefore, however single-minded he may be in fact, a person specially liable to misapprehension. He is sent to Parliament to advocate the views of a section, and till that section becomes dominant he will rarely have much influence with a Government formed under the existing party system. Mr. Burns has triumphed in spite of all obstacles. A working man who has fought his way in the world without fear or favour, a Labour Member who has shown a capacity for looking beyond sectional interests, his success is a tribute to a remarkable per- sonality. Few appointments, we think, will be more generally popular, for few men enjoy so wide a popularity on both sides of the House, since Englishmen, whatever their creed, like an honest fighter.
"A fighter," most people will admit,—" but a states- man 2" Whether he possesses the higher endowment remains to be seen, and it is certain that his selection will be subjected. to much criticism. The Conservative, whether he calls himself Unionist or Liberal, will be afraid of revolutionary propaganda. Even if he approves his inclusion in the Cabinet, he would prefer to see him at some other office than the Local Government Board, which presents so dangerous a field for rash experiment. Under Mr. Burns's regime he fears that municipal borrowing will increase, the area of municipal trading be extended, and the question of the unemployed dealt with by means of a wasteful expenditure of public funds. The old stalwarts of the Labour party, on the other hand, have begun to clamour that their leader has betrayed them. "Just for a handful of silver he left us" is beginning to be quoted on Labour platforms, and .it is assumed that Mr. Burns in official harness will "forget the bright speed he bore "• in Battersea. The fears of the second class of critics, we may note in passing, should go far to allay the suspicions of the first. There is still a third class—the scientific Collectivists—who object to Mr. Burns for quite different reasons. They think that he and his followers represent an antiquated dogma, whidh was new twenty years ago, but is now hopelessly belated. They fear that he may attempt to solve such a question as that of the unemployed by methods which they regard with far deeper suspicion than any Conservative. They grant his earnestness and his courage, but their complaint is the same as that of the first critics,—that a man who has shown himself a good demagogue cannot possess the scientific temper and training necessary for so intricate a problem.
For ourselves, we do not agree with any of these views. We have opposed Mr. Burns in the past, and shall doubt- less have occasion to oppose him again ; but we have never failed to recognise him as a sane and valuable force in our public life. There is a real distinction between a statesman in the making and a statesman in office, which is not sufficiently understood. When a man is fighting his way towards recognition he naturally sees only one side of a question ; he would be but a poor fighter if he saw more. When recognition comes he is called. upon to face a different problera, and it is a mistake to assume that his methods will be the same. In Mr. Burns we have always detected a dual personality. There is Mr. Burns the demagogue—and we use the word in the best sense—the man who gives voice to certain great discontents, and is bound by the conditions of his task to overstate his case and underestimate the worth of those who differ from him. And there is the Mr. Burns of Parliamentary Committees and the County Council, who is quite a different being. He makes mistakes, as we all do, but he succeeds in earning the complete respect of his colleagues by his good sense, tact, and moderation. It is the latter whom we may expect to find as President of the Local Government Board. He has the temperament which makes the able, and sometimes the great, administrator, for he is wholly free from any devotion to red-tape, and has acquired from his training the gift of looking squarely at facts. We may be confident that from a man who has gone so courageously through the hard places of life we shall get no sentimentality, no weak sympathy with the loafer and the irreclaimable. For, remember, he knows from personal experience what no ordinary statesman knows, —the modes of thought and life of the very poor. Such a knowledge will give him sympathy, but it will assuredly make him intolerant of humbug. We do not believe that he will be disposed to rash experiments. No type of mind acquires so readily the instinct for practical efficiency as that which faces facts without any screen of dogmas to obscure them. Mr. Burns, indeed, in a very special sense represents the typical British mind, the "man in the street." Such a man will always be called unscientific by the ordinary Socialist because he refuses to cumber himself at the start with a load. of a priori doctrines. He will be called rash by the extreme Conservative, who is equally a doctrinaire, because he refuses to do homage to forms and conventions out of which the virtue has departed. He reserves the liberty of judging each case on its merits, and refuses to be coerced into approval or condemnation beforehand. He will not be scared. away from any measure merely because it is labelled Socialistic ; but no more will he be attracted to it. This sane and sober practicality is, we believe, the distinguishing trait of that "man in the street" who in the last resort rules us all. It may be bourgeois and Philistine, it is certainly not exciting, but it is pre- eminently effective. If Mr. Burns brings this spirit to his new task, his success will be assured, and he will earn the gratitude of his countrymen.
We welcome Mr. Burns's appointment, not only because we believe that he will do well, but because he is a working man. English public life is proved to be still a carriere ouverte aux talents. When all is said and done, we are a democratic nation, and we'like to get practical proofs of it. There is no reason why a man should sit in a Cabinet because he is a workman any more than because he is a Duke, but we wish to be assured that no good man is excluded. merely because he is one or the other. This, be it remembered, is the true democratic view, which is essentially catholic, and has no kinship with the narrow intransigence of some so-called democrats. We wish Mr.
Burns all success, not only because of his personality and the political aptitude he has shown, and because we like to see a good fight end well, but also because his appoint- ment lays fresh emphasis on the truth that England is a democracy and recognises no class distinction in her service.
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