LORD ELCHO ON PAID MEMBERS.
LORD ELCHO'S little speech on Friday week was a great pleasure to the House of Commons, and almost a surprise to the country, which had begun to think that Wit and Humour had shaken the dust of the House of Commons off their feet, and departed to regions where the moral atmosphere is less suffocating and mephitic. The wit of the speech consisted in the cordiality with which Lord Elcho accepted the proposal to pay parliamentary repre- sentatives for their services, and then pressed home the logic of that principle to its legitimate results. He regretted that the hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division of Northumberland had been so penurious in applying the principle for which he contended. It was to have been hoped that he would have taken a larger and more generous view of its scope. After nine years of "totally unre- munerated political services," he himself could not but lament that the proposer of the motion had not seen his way to make the salary retrospective. If the object is, as Mr. Fenwick had argued, to enlarge for the con- stituencies the area of choice, surely it would be only reasonable to find some provision also for those who are left stranded at the bottom of the poll by the receding wave of popular favour. And even as regards the successful candidates, the principle had been only half-acknowledged. Should not the wives and children of Members be provided for, when they had succumbed in the discharge of their laborious Parliamentary duties ? Again, should not a payment proposed in considera- tion of sacrifices bear some distinct proportion to those sacrifices,—to the time, health, labour, and self-denial involved in the Member's duties ? Should not the sacrifice of honest political convictions to the wishes of a constituency justify a claim to additional remunera- tion? Yet it would not do to let the remuneration depend on the number of speeches made, or the number of divisions participated in, since the former proposal would greatly embarrass the Speaker in the discharge of his duties, and the latter would tend to make Parliamentary life one long procession through the division-lobbies. Again, as to the amount of the remuneration, the proposer had thought it prudent to insert only the thin edge of the wedge, and had wisely left it to the House to hammer it boldly in, and see that the position of a Member of Parliament should be made something worth having, something worth fighting for. Lord Elcho did not wish to treat the principle in any niggardly spirit. The only difficulty he had in voting for the motion was the remembrance of the censure passed the other day on certain Members who had voted for State expenditure on an enter- prise in which they were themselves personally interested. That seemed to him equivalent to expunging from the division list the names of all hon. Members who are them- selves interested in any vote ; and as his own personal interest in obtaining a salary for himself was clear and direct, he found it incumbent on him, in spite of his earnest desire to obtain the salary, to oppose it, and to support the order for expunging from the division-list the names of all Members who could not prove that they were entirely without interest in the issue. Such was the drift of Lord Elcho's terse and happy speech, the satire of which really constitutes the most effective argument against the payment of Members. If justice be the plea for the proposal, it is clear that there is more justice in paying those who have already done the work without getting the pay, than in promising to pay those who are only hoping to do it. If, on the contrary, the plea be not justice, but the expediency of attracting great ability and talent to the function of representation, how obvious it is that the more considerable the salary, the more eminent will be the services which the House will be able to command ! If the Member is to be recompensed for giving up his livelihood, what pretence can there be for securing the services of a number of rough and imperfectly educated men, and rejecting the services of much more persuasive and much more instructed men, who could only be tempted to take up this parliamentary career if it should be made one of the more brilliant and lucrative of the pro- fessions? And how could the low stipend paid in France or Switzerland succeed in attracting representatives who, if engaged in the professions for which they were best suited, would be earning. five times or ten times as much ? The contention that labourers, or artisans, or miners, or seamen in the merchant service, may sometimes wish to secure the services of those who are thoroughly familiar with the conditions of their own work, and that persons thoroughly familiar with the conditions of their own work are quite unable to dispense with the earnings which they obtain by it, is just, so far as it goes ; but it goes such a little way. In matter of fact, it amounts to saying that men who know part of what is essential for their representative duties, but by no means the most important part, shall be placed at the disposal of the class who desire their aid, but that those who know all that is most essential for their purpose shall not be placed at their disposal. Why is it to be assumed that those who are pretty certain to share not only their familiarity with the hardships of their practical duties, but their narrowest prejudices and most illusory expectations, should be assisted to represent them, but that men who have trained themselves specially for these services, both by acquiring familiarity with their work and by acquiring the general education needful to turn that knowledge to advantage, should not be enabled to represent them ? If it is desirable for a class of sufferers to gain the services of men who know all their miseries and share all their illusions, is it not yet more desirable to gain the services of men who know all their miseries and share none of their illusions ? Why exclude from the House the man who, like Mr. Dana, had sailed before the mast, as well as gained all the general education which makes it possible to interpret to the world at large what sailing before the mast really means ? Why open the House of Commons to men who know what the various classes of labourers suffer, but who have never learned how best to say what they know and remedy what they suffer, and exclude the men who know both ? If it is worth while to pay for a special knowledge of prejudices and limitations and base- less hopes, is it not still better worth while to pay for this special knowledge when combined with the knowledge which can put it to the only good use ? If the needs and sufferings of a class are to be made a special study, why not make it worth men's while to acquire the experience by a special effort, and yet combine with it all the general knowledge necessary to turn that special experience to some useful account ? If representation is to be made an art, make it at least a fine art, and not an inarticulate and groping art which is perfectly incompetent to guard against the worst dangers that it encounters.
The only serious argument for paying Members is that by that means you may get the most adequate legis- lators for dealing with particular wants and sufferings. But the most adequate legislators for these particular wants and sufferings are not to be got without securing for them a large general education as well as a painful special experience. Let us pay for both if we pay for either. If representation is to be paid for at all, let us make it worth men's while to know what to attempt and what not to attempt, as well as to know what the wants and miseries are which need alleviation. On the other hand, the argument against paying Members is, as Mr. Balfour urged, that if you make constituencies the patrons of a particular kind of preferment, the dispensers of places of emolument, you excite a whole multitude of selfish hopes and fears which will altogether alter the relation between constituencies and their Members. You make the constituency aware that it can command the emulous com- petition of a great number of persons who will offer it terms. You make the candidate hope to obtain for himself a rise in life and luxury by :pleasing the constituency and by making a class of promises to it which are now generally condemned by public opinion, and are only covertly made, and made with conscious shame, when they are made at all. The consequence would undoubtedly be a general lowering of the relation between the patrons and the patronised, between the owners of the profitable preferment and the seekers of that preferment ; and so long as we have so large a class of persons willing to do the work without incurring the pecuniary obligation, it would be both foolish and rash to introduce a host of motives for interested action on both sides from which we are at present most fortunately free.
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