THE BIDDING FOR THE LABOUR VOTE.
WE note in all the political speeches of the Recess, and most of the political journals of the day, one fact which may greatly affect the future of English politics, There is the strongest disposition, and that in quarters where we did not expect it, to bid for the votes both of the working men and the agricultural labourer. The parties seem half-inclined to put themselves up to auction. The Gladstonians are aware that the electors are very weary of Ireland, and are desirous to make offers so attractive that they may swallow with them the Irish pill. The Unionists, on the other hand, though rejoicing that Home- rule has grown wearisome, are so impressed with the danger of the Gladstonian dodge, that they are casting about for alternative offers which may prove still more acceptable. The Gladstonians, who seem to have Local Self-government on the brain, promise all manner of petty Councils, with vague powers of taxation—they are a little afraid of the ratepayers, who, in towns particularly, are growing restive—and still vaguer powers of expropriating property, while the Unionists are in- clined, as they possess a majority, to make their pro- posals more concrete and intelligible. Sir J. Gorst has been sent on a mission of inquiry into the conditions of labour, in the hope, we fancy, that he may discover some positive proposal of the workers which is at once practicable and attractive, with the result, as we gather from his speeches, that he recognises a deeper discontent than he expected, but finds hopeless disunion on the short-hours question, thinks the allotment question full of difficulties, and is as yet in considerable perplexity what to recommend. Mr. Balfour, however, inclines, if we understand him, while avoiding the subject of hours, to make a definite offer to the labourer which, if reduced to a Bill, would mean that he could claim from the " Local Authority " half-an-acre of allotment at nearly agricultural rent : and Mr. Chamber- lain is definiteness itself. He wants to lift the burden of maintaining the aged from the shoulders of the poor, and therefore proposes State aid and a State guarantee to a fund intended to provide pensions for men and women above sixty-five years of age. All, on both sides, as we read their allusions to the subject, are willing to enlarge im- mensely the scope of the sanitary laws, both to improve dwellings and to provide better medical assistance, and are only doubting how the latter may be most effectively and yet cheaply conceded. The precise proposal has not yet been made, but it would not surprise us in the least to see the leaders of both parties accept in principle the idea of village hospitals, many of which are now working admirably, as one to be extended to every parish, and to receive large and permanent support from the parish rates. We are not out of sympathy with the general move- ment, though the plans hitherto suggested strike us as impracticable, or offered in forgetfulness of many of the conditions of the problem. We doubt whether our people are prepared to accept any form whatever of life-annuity which involves payments continued through long terms of years. We doubt whether the desire to limit the duration and severity of labour, and the desire to grant allotments, which involve most exhausting toil, are not in direct and incurable antagonism. And we more than doubt, we disbelieve, that a legal day can be established without either reducing wages or handing over many trades to the workmen either of the Continent or of Asia. Asiatics are already pressing the textile workers cruelly hard, and they can, if they please, rival or underbid them in every kind of metal-work not requiring elaborate or gigantic machinery. Projects are already before capitalists for iron-founding and copper-founding in India on a gigantic scale ; and the men who made the ring- armour of the Rajpoots and the brass vessels of Benares, are not likely to be wanting in any necessary skill. Still, we have no doubt whatever that the community, if it pleases, can alleviate the general lot of workmen ; can by its guarantees make their benevolent funds more effective and cheaper ; can forbid such labour, espe- cially for women, as is positively dangerous to health ; can improve houses on sanitary grounds ; can devise some method of letting plots of accommodation-land, if the labourers honestly desire them—they differ in every dis- trict—and can, by enfranchising the soil, enable it to pass into the hands most competent to use it. It is possible even to go one long step further. We have never felt satisfied that the provision of hospitals was entirely a matter for private charity ; for if private charity failed, the hospitals must still be kept up, while nobody ever broke his leg or placed himself in the way of typhoid-fever in order to secure for himself treat- ment in a hospital. At all events, that is an arguable matter, and our objection begins at a very different point. It is the offering of these social reforms as bribes to voters, this overbidding by the two parties for workmen's support, this sale of laws by auction, for it is nothing less, which seems to us so detestable and so dangerous. We can see no limit to the process, except, indeed, the division of all property among electors ; and no limit to the demoralisation. The persons chiefly assailed with these temptations are the labourers, who have already great difficulty in feeling the attraction of political study ; and if they are once taught that they are to use their votes, not for the benefit of the country, but of themselves, it will be impossible to get the taint out of their minds. They will be lost as a strengthening element i i the body politic, and become a mere disturbing force, t) be bought by each party in turn, either with promises, or by the gift of actual and unjust advantages. To-day, it will be better houses ; to-morrow, little farms; on Monday, annuities at cheap rates ; and on Tuesday, Pro- tection in order that the farmers may give better wages. That is not government, but a prostitution of the reserved powers of the State, which no doubt, in extremity, may even dispose of property, as it does already through taxation, in order, not that the State may be saved, but that certain individuals may retain power. How is it possible, when such an example is set him, that a labourer should learn to believe his vote a trust, or should despise legislation promoted on purely selfish grounds ? It is vain to say that in England there is no danger of this form of demoralisation. It is a realised danger in half the democracies. At this moment, no candidate has a chance in a rural district of France who does not promise a local railway, a new town-hall, or at the very least a new and absurdly grandiose school-house. The national fortune is being frittered away in preposterous expenditure on public works ; and were it not that the peasantry have at last got frightened at the waste, the expenditure would be increased until the public faith itself could not be observed. Our own Colony of Canada is governed by promising the voters railways, roads, and duties to prohibit competition. In Australia, every Premier courts the skilled labourers by raising loans for undertakings, sometimes remunerative, sometimes not, which will provide plenty of " work " at 8s. a day. In America, millions of votes are directly pur- chased by promises of Protection, and by grants of public pensions under which no country less rich could stagger along its daily road. Even in Germany, the one condition of the small freeholder's vote is that food shall be made dear, so that he may have good prices ; and he has them even when the price of rye threatens, as is the case at this moment, to create bread-riots in half the cities of the Empire. It may be said these bribes produce content ; but they do not, for the heaviest bribes ever given have been given in Ireland, where the people still assert every week that they detest the Parliament which never refuses a grant demanded with loud clamour, and which even " con- ciliates " the Bar by granting the Courts, solely for pecuniary reasons, a jurisdiction in torts committed outside the island, refused to the Courts whether of England or of Scotland. The system satisfies nobody, for no elector ever thinks he has got enough, and demoralises everybody, for surely if a Legislature may give in order that a district or a class may be contented, the class or district may refuse its vote unless the Legislature will comply with its pecu- niary demands. If a Government may secure the labourers' vote by promising them land, why should it not secure the vote of Manchester by guaranteeing its canal, or of Glasgow by promising it a monopoly of building ironclads ? We are quite aware of the intimate connection between laws and personal interests, and how difficult it is some- times to discover a reform, especially in taxation, which shall not look like a bribe ; but at least we do not promise remissions to secure votes, and we try to make reforms benefit the people, and not classes. We do not take off taxes on sugar to conciliate the sugar interest, or insist on Factory Acts for the protection of women in order that they may vote for their protectors. There is at least a decent pretext of considering the national interest ; and it is even this which some of our present speakers seem careless to maintain. They think it enough to say that a class must be secured or the enemy will secure it, to justify any promise, however hopeless of realisation, or any bribe, however visibly limited to the class which is to pay in votes. We object to Newcastle men threatening Mr. Morley because he will not vote for an Eight-Hours Bill, and then we tolerate a party which offers, in return for votes, three acres and a cow. It is a thoroughly bad system, and will some day give us a Government whose claim to rule is not the support of the people, but the favour of a multitude of " interests " every one of which has been bought at the general expense.
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