PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.
As we say "honour amongst thieves," so we must begin to say "gentlemanly feeling amongst Members of Parliament." There is no community so low as to be without its point of honour, and even honourable Members are still sensitive on the score of their pretensions to be considered gentlemen. The strongest claims on that behalf are appropriately put forth by those who feel the ne- cessity of making a stand against the last destructive inroads of temptation ; and the person who gets up in the House of Com- mons with the greatest eloquence to protest against an abandon- ment of gentlemanly feeling is Mr. William Beresford. This is cheering. We recognize at last the desire to behave in an honour- able and gentlemanly way ; which is much : but it does appear from the theoretical views which were hazarded on the occasion of that memorable appeal, that gentlemanly behaviour is an art which will require some little tuition in order to its being restored on a proper footing. It is, we are told, ungentlemanly to reveal confi- dential communications : granted ; but it does not follow that every communication which happens to be labelled "private and confidential" is by that means consecrated against exposure. Yet Mr. Beresford claims for the words a sort of consecrating power, like the right of sanctuary. In the debate on the great Keogh question, he said— "I do deprecate that spirit which seems to animate honourable gen- tlemen opposite to make public matter of that which is private and confiden- tial, to break down that greatest and surest barrier which stands in the way of the destruction of private and public honour, and to destroy that confi- dence which one gentleman ought to feel in the honour of another. I do protest against what I must call that prostitution of private documents and that exposure of confidential communications which derogate from the honour and dignity of this House, which deteriorate the high character of public men, which are detrimental to the interests of the state, which upset all the feelings one man can entertain in the honour of another, and which reduce, as it were, Members of Parliament to the solitary system ; for, no man can speak to his neighbour lest his conversation be revealed, no man dare write lest his letters be brought against him, and no man can go forth and share in the usual intercourse of life, but he must be guarded and secret in all his actions, or things will be laid to his charge which he never thought of and never intended."
It is a curious and characteristic fact, that "the basis of all the feelings one man can entertain in the honour of another" is here made to be preservation of secrecy respecting his actions or com- munications, to divulge which is "to upset all the feelings," &c. This proposition seems to prove too much. It implies that we can only honour our friends by concealing what they do ; and then we must have friends whose honour is chiefly promoted by hiding their actions. We do not deny that it may often be so on either side of the House, especially amongst those friends with whom Mr. Beresford is familiar in Derby, Admiralty, and Chatham trans- actions. But here at the very threshold we encounter something like a misconception as to a sense of gentlemanly conduct. Evi- dently, that does not lie in the wearing of a veil, but in the very nature of the actions; and it follows that the true gentleman is he who would be most honoured by the public proclamation of his acts. Mr. Beresford and his friends have to learn that elementary principle, almost before they can be admitted to the school. Lord Naas complained that Parliamentary warfare "seems to be degenerating into recriminatory personal attacks, and that it is a sufficient object for statesmen of this country now, to endeavour to damage the character of political opponents." Exactly what Lord Naas's friends the Earl of Eglinton and the Earl of Derby had been doing with Mr. Keogh. They had pointed to his admis- sion to office as the "least reputable" act of a Cabinet whose acts were implied to be not of a high standard. But the use which Lord Naas makes of this remark at the end of a speech beginning with a complaint that private conversation had been betrayed, formed one of the most singular instances that we have ever en- countered of a man's levelling at another the descriptions which exactly apply to his own conduct. It is not reputable, said Lord Eglinton, to take Mr. Keogh into office. "Not reputable !" ex- claims Mr. Keogh, "why you made overtures to me yourself." "Oh !" exclaims Lord Naas, "you are betraying private conver- sations." But let us ask, who was it that most betrayed the pri- vacy—the man who was ready to state the whole that passed between himself and another, or the man who first disarms sus- picion by implying a desire for joint action, and then denounces both the man to whom he had addressed himself and that man's partners as disgraced by their union ; committing himself to utter that most unbecoming charge on the faith that his own overtures towards a partnership will be kept confidential ? We say that man is making the truly unfair use of "private and confidential " com- munications. The practice of using acquaintance in private for your own profit, and then of not only denouncing it in public but denouncing it against others, is one of the basest acts of social cowardice of which a man can be guilty ; but it is one, unluckily, which is beginning to gain ground in society, and now it appears flagrantly in the House of Commons.
From Lord Naas's own account of his advances towards Mr. Keogh, they appear to have been made for a covert purpose, with a mental reservation. They were unfair communications. But if it is to be allowed that men can take advantage of such mananivres by labelling them "private and confidential," we must carry that principle somewhat further. The man who intends to rob your house only needs to communicate the fact to you "in confidence," and you must be debarred from applying to the police ; since, according to the new rule, that would be "betraying a private and confidential communication."
There is something too much of this privacy in public affairs. Lord Naas and Mr. Beresford wanted to make Mr. Keogh's rela- tion with the Ministry of their time a private and confidential mat- ter, as they wanted to make the appointments in the dockyards, and the appointment even of Members of Parliament, private and confidential. In like manner, we have seen despatches from colo- nies, some meant for publication and others intended for the men- tal reservation of Downing Street, marked as private. This is to convert the public departments into private conspiracies ; and it is a direct invasion of our constitution as well as of honourable feel- ing. Admit the custom, and Ministers must talk, not of their colleagues but of their accomplices; and they will have to carry on their official conversation in thieves' slang, lest it be understood by the bystanders. It would be a dangerous principle to admit at all, but to admit that one side in a political communication can himself affix the private and confidential character of it would be preposterous. We do not mean, merely because Lord Naas himself violated the spirit of confidence, by the use which he made of the confidential communication that he had lodged with Mr. Keogh,—although no man can expect that confidence shall be observed towards him un- less he continues to earn it by a reciprocal observance of honour on his own part : but we mean, that in political matters, relating to public affairs, no man can force upon another the reservation of a communication as a secret, unless he has previously asked and ob- tained the consent of that man so to treat their intercourse ; be- cause it would often happen, that if a public man were granted the option, he would refuse intercourse on such grounds. Un- questionably, in the intercourse between men who entertain such peculiar notions of. that which is gentlemanly and honourable as Mr. Beresford or Lord Naas, it woidd hardly be safe to receive them on their own terms.
Previous page
