- THE LATE MR. ELLIS. T HERE is nothing more curious
in English politics than the position of a successful Whip. He is as com- pletely unrecognised by the Constitution as the Cabinet is, and is usually paid either as " Patronage Secretary to the Treasury," or through some sinecure office, but he is when efficient one of the most important wheels in the political machine. He writes no reports, he. exercises no patronage of any moment, he is responsible for no measure, and he is rarely. one of the speakers relied on by the Government ; the public seldom know anything about him, and he is, as a rule, only criticised in the newspapers when he has made a blunder ; but he has more influence in shaping the internal policy of the country than any Cabinet Minister outside the two or three, who really rule. He is the true " power behind the thione," and many a project has been baffled, many a grand programme draWn up, because a Whip has shaken his head or has urged that on such-and-such :a matter " some- thing must be done." His business is not merely, as the public imagine, to warn Members of important divisions, and so keep the party together and enable business to get on, or even, as Sir William Hayter once defined it, "to conciliate the real masters" by persuasive words, small concessions, pleasant arrangements, or whispered promises of political or social advancement. He performs those functions, it is true, and is lucky if in performing them he does not become some- thing of a cynic, and doubtful of the perfectibility of human nature ; but he has a higher function than that. It is his busi.7 ness to gather up in intimate conversations the true sense of the House of Commons, and especially of. his own party in it, to understand why a proposal will not '" go down," to detect the half-formulated wish of a majority, to penetrate, in fact, to that inner will which so- often controls the conscious will, and which is possessed not only by most strong individuals, but by all great corporations. He confides his opinion to the Cabinet, and specially to the Premier, and unless the head of her Majesty's Government is a man of very resolute and independent, judgment., or the Cabinet _possesses within itself a born Whip, his report has a graver weight,than almost any speech or even vote. The first contingency, which practically reduces the use of; the Whip to the smaller business of legislation, is not, however, so common at one would expect, the strong Premier being often aware that he is a little out of touch with average Members, end sometimes distrustinghis own social knowledge. Both Sir Robert Peel and John Russell are said , to have felt a certain deficiency in this latter respect, akin, perhaps, to Lord Melbourne's, who, man of the world as he was, sometimes could.pot comprehend why Members cared so much about the things they asked for. The second contingency is less frequent, but it occurs. Lord Palmerston, for example, alyvays put in the dabinet if he could Mr. Vernon Smith, a man whom the public, and in a lesser degree the House, considered a well-dressed fribble. He was not a fribble by any :means, but cool-headed, observant man of the world with a weak will, but possessed of a power which Lard Palmerston, who understOod men, had early detected. He had some faculty in him, probably based on sympathy with the average political mind, which enabled him to tell almost unerringly what the House of Commons was thinking and would think, and his chief trusted, and after his manner nobly repaid, his friend's aciunen. In the absence of such a man within the Cabinet, a good Whip who can be trusted to know in a crisis what the majority think, what is wanted, possible or impossible—the House at this moment wants imposeible, because contradictory, thins in China—is invaluable,• and wields a secret authority which has often-' serious effects upon the course of events. The strongest Minister dislikes dragging the House with him, and the' efficient Whip knows and says whether he is dragging it, or just persuading it to follow.
Is the function . one beneficial to the country ? That deppeends entirely .upon the man who fulfils it. It is, we believe,, a necessary function if the House is not to split, as in France, into a congeries of minute groups, each with a separate leader, who makes his own agreement with the Minister, but its utility. depends to an unusual degree . upon personal qualities. However careful or upright the Whip may be the general- sense of the House or party has to , be strained through his mind, and however. self-controlled he may be the report will receive from that mind a certain amount of colouring. Men abso- e,.
lutely without bias are very rare, and we think most experienced men will bear us out in saying that those who have no fanaticism upon special subjects—e.g., Sir William Harcourt when any Erastian principle comes up—are few and far between. Sir William Hayter—we quote him be- cause old Whigs say he was the best Whip who ever existed —had,:we fancy, an inner contempt for mankind, and once or -twice misled his chiefs by forgetting that the sentiments of men about trifles and about serious matters are not in- variably the same even in kind. ' What rubbish people talk about patriotism,' says the Member, who when it comes to the point will be chopped in pieces sooner than give a vote or do an act which he thinks seriously, injurious to. his country. The late Mr. T. E. Ellis, whose loss all Members of both parties are this week deploring, was another instance in point. He was: a most competent Whip, with a genius for making himself acceptable to his own party, and, indeed, to the House generally, quick, observant, genial, and devoted to his work, but he was at heart a bit of a fanatic, and we cannot.but think occasionally misled his party and his chiefs. He read into Members, especially on education questions, more earnestness than was in them, and so heartily wished Radicalism to win that he forgot that Radicals differ from each other like other people. He was •a man of, whom no one wishes to say any but good words, but we doubt if he was so perfect a Whip as Radical journals say, and, indeed, we suspect that as the House becomes more and more composite, the perfect Whip will be harder and harder to discover. His functions will have to go into commission, to the infinite worry of the statesmen who have to decide and be responsible. The sameness is gone' out of the House of Commons, and as there are no dividing lines like those of caste, early education; and wealth, real knowledge of the inner mind even of- majority is becoming almost too difficult to obtain. A majority used to be a caste with, say, three hundred and fifty men in it, all much alike ; it is a body of three hundred and fifty men, all different, who wish to act with the coherence of a caste. There are few men in the House of Commons now who feel sure how the groups will vote on a question not in- volving the fate of a Ministry, and probably not five who have anything- like certainty as to the result of an appeal to the country. Demos is a dumb Lord, and though the reticences of Demos are not carried fully into the repre- sentative Chamber, they exist, to the occasional bewilder- ment of Whips, who again tend more and more to be devoted to the success of causes rather than of Adminis- trations, and to cast glances too frequently towards electors rather than Members. That may be, nay is, a merit in the Minister of a free State, but it is a blunder in a Whip. lie has to think solely of representatives ; and though representatives have to obey constituents, they do not always think with them. It was, we believe, impos- sible, for instance, for Mr. Ellis to report the probable action of Welsh Members upon a tenure Bill without im- porting into his report a recollection of the opinion of their electors, — a most -fertile source of , error. 'The detached man may, however, be found, and we certainly hope he will be ; for if the party coaches are travelling on better roads to a better goal than heretofore, they are ocrtainly lumbering and stopping more upon the way.
Previous page
