MILLIONAIRES IN POLITICS.
SOMEBODY is " financing " General Boulanger ; for he is a poor man, and the expenses of his campaign—which must be considerable, addresses, placards, photographs, and voting-tickets being distributed by the hundred thousand— are certainly not defrayed by the electors. A good deal of curiosity exists upon this subject in Paris, where, from the days of Philippe tgalite, the intervention of the hidden rich man in all revolutionary movements has been a fixed idea. M. Lafitte was denounced as the ultimate author of the Days of July ; and if Louis Napoleon had not succeeded, a Jew firm would, it was said, have hardly escaped banishment, if even it had avoided the guillotine. The Times lately hinted that the source of the Boulangist supplies was an American millionaire, and that he was spending his money for amusement, or rather in order to obtain out of his vast fortune some commensurate excitement. We greatly fear that supposition is a little too charitable, and that if the American is really pouring out
dollars in the manner described, which is doubtful, many Boulangists indicating a person more nearly connected with the General, he sees his way to getting them back again, not without additions to the pile. The suggestion was, however, a natural one, as well as a kindly, for the ever-present trouble of these new millionaires, who never had a past and are in- different to the future, must be to make their genii, their slaves of the lamp, their unresisting embodiments of power, perform the tasks which, as their owners dimly perceive, they have the capacity of performing. The modern Aladdin is wretched not because he has lost his lamp—that would make him happy, for then he would hunt the thievish magician round the world —but because he cannot think of anything which it is worth while to order the lamp to do. Money, it must be remem- bered, after the first million or two, is, especially to an American, not money in the ordinary sense of the word,— that is, it will not buy him anything he wants and could not have obtained without all that weary surplus. The scale of luxury, no doubt, has enlarged ; but all that a man cares to do for his personal enjoyment, even if he is a collector of pictures or a buyer of old prints, can be done for a hundred thousand a year, and three millions will yield that, even in times made miserable for the rich by a " converting " Chancellor of the Exchequer. The surplus money is only potential power, and if its possessor has the misfortune to have either wishes or ideas, the desire to make that power active, to do something large or interesting with all that bottled force, must be a constant preoccupation. If a man could distribute death by willing, and was too good or too self-distrustful to exert his power, he would go mad from incessant dwelling on his valueless possession. If the mammoth millionaire is benevolent, the problem is solved, for there is no limit to human misery, and some of it can be ameliorated, or even ended, by wisely applied gold. We imagine that, as a matter of fact, Mr. Vanderbilt, supposing him to possess what the New York tax-gatherers say he possesses—he is not, we ought to say, supposed to be the impresario of the Boulangist drama— could in five years terminate slavery in Brazil, or put down the Arab slave-hunts within Eastern and Central Africa. In Brazil he would only have to compensate men whose ownership is perishing by effiuxion of time; and in Africa the Governments of Europe would give him any necessary authority, the arming of the hunted tribes with repeating-rifles would not cost two millions, and with a small force of desperadoes, a few liberal " compensations " to Sheiks, and a few judicious executions, that awful source of suffering, which it is almost unsafe to look at closely, lest one doubt of Providence. as Goethe did after the earthquake, might be brought to a final end. Two gifts at the most would terminate the kidnapping of Chinese for the guano islands, and one to the Sultan would end the oppressions of Armenia. There are some forms of pain, too, which might be ended, or nearly ended, without any risk of pauperising anybody, by a millionaire of that magnitude, who might, for example, cover India with colleges of female doctors, and stamp out in a life- time agony so widespread as to be comparable only with the tortures endured by the brute creation. Such a man would be powerless against poverty, as, indeed, the whole human race is, because in curing it by charity we renew its most prolific causes ; but he could wage in any one country with infinite chloroform a nearly victorious war on the more terrible forms of pain.
The mammoth millionaires are, however, rarely benevolent, dealing, as they must do, too much with humanity in great blocks, and getting hardened to ever-recurring incidents ; and if they are not, it is only by interfering in the move- ment of human affairs—in politics, that is—that they can achieve any results commensurate with the forces they can set in motion. Any one of them could, if at once geographical and imaginative, found a Kingdom in Asia or Africa, and, indeed, one of them is doing it, and a good big Kingdom too. Leopold II.'s rank in Europe helps him much ; but it is not as Coburg or as King of the Belgians, but as heir of his father's accumulations, that he is trying to found an India on the Congo, and to establish the external order which is the condition of progress from the lower waters of that river to the shores of the great lakes. If he succeeds, which is doubtful, he will give a new chance of happiness to millions of men. That is the biggest thing. we imagine. that any millionaire is doing just now ; but we could imagine one making his influence decidedly felt in the course even of European affairs. A hundred thousand repeating- rifles and a cartridge-factory would make all the difference to Crete just now, and would not cost one of the first-class Americans above a month's receipts. The same might be said of almost any State in the Balkans, where, indeed, five millions carefully spent would change the whole aspect of affairs, and organise a confederated Army of Defence which even Russians would not attack with a light heart. All those petty Govern- ments would accede at this moment to any reasonable condi- tion to obtain very moderate loans. Even the great Govern- ments are not beyond attack or defence by the master of millions, for it is the strangest note of our time that the most enthusiastic Revolutionists, the most determined friends of order, even the Secret Societies, all need money to become efficient. Boulangism spends thousands a month ; the Social Democrats are always asking for funds ; Fenianism is vital because of subscriptions ; and the Nihilists are always assailing provincial treasuries—or, at least, Russian newspapers say so—to obtain money to advance " the cause." It is not that they want cash for themselves, but that all the conditions of effort are nowadays affected by money. If the instrument of attack is the voice of the people, the people must be asked for its voice ; and being million-headed, the cost of reaching its million brains runs to large figures. A million of penny stamps costs £4,000; and a million of stamps will not go far, and are useless without a million addresses, newspapers, photo- graphs, and tickets for the ballot. If, again, the instrument is an armed force, every member of it must be armed, clothed in uniform, fed regularly, and, unless he is a Garibaldian, paid. Or, if it is only a devoted agent, bound by enthusiasm, or oaths, or terror, he must be moved about, lodged, provided with explosives, and kept clear of a police which, on the Con- tinent, is not much restrained by law. A millionaire who happens to be on the side of revolution, or, in Eastern Europe, of defence, can just now get much excitement for his money, and in many instances, if he selects his object wisely, without overstepping either the law or any principle he is at all likely to respect. We imagine, too, that even in the great and strictly organised States, he could make himself a most potent influence, though he might not be able either to " run revolutions," or to secure any other kind of highly dramatic result. Parties on the Continent, more especially popular parties, are badly hampered by want of money ; and the man who, having chosen his side, could always be relied on to supply funds for an election, would be a most potent individuality. He would have, of course, to know what he could and could not ask ; but if he kept his requests within bounds, the reluctance to lose his aid would be extreme, and he would be a sort of Sovereign. He might, for instance, clear an Irish estate, and yet be entirely free of any dread of the "unwritten law."
It is an age in which the individual does not dwindle, what- ever Tennyson may say ; and as the strife of parties becomes fiercer, owing to the more direct intrusion of the " rights of property question " which is so rapidly advancing upon Europe, we fully expect to see individuals armed with wealth which they dare spend, become much more potent in European politics. They would have become so before now, but that the great owners of masses of personalty have been either Jews or Americans, or men too advanced in years to care about new adventure. They have often been ignorant men, too, who have not recognised the strength of the means at their disposal, or have not cared for the objects which might have been attained. The wish to free Greece comes to Byron, not to a mindless rich man, and no energy will in complicated politics quite supply the place of knowledge. Wealth, how- ever, in large blocks will soon be in the bands of the young, and they will not all be content with travelling like Princes, or indulging half-vulgar, half-Sultanesque fancies of volup- tuousness. They will sigh for new excitements of the larger kind ; and as they cannot move armies, there are only three open to them,—exploration with a view to conquest; inter- ference in ordinary politics ; or the running of the adventurers who from time to time, either from birth or the favour of a
people, are able, if only they can live through the struggle, to make great clutches at power. Most of them will do pure mischief ; but so do many politicians, and, after all, those who financed Louis Napoleon (lid, we suppose, though uninten- tionally, liberate Italy.
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