TOPICS OF TIIE DAY.
THE PROSPECT FOR PARLIAMENT.
MR. ASQUITH'S declaration at the Eighty Club, that the Government are determined to go on steadily with the Session till they have done at least all that the House of Commons has to do towards the passing of the two measures for the sake of which they summoned the Autumn Session, opens out a still nearer prospect of those exhausting and year-long labours for Parliament, which contrast so strangely with the cry of the working-classes for more leisure and shorter hours. If the Parish Councils Bill is not finished before Christmas, which is now hardly possible, the House of Commons will adjourn to January, and complete its already Brobdingnagian Session in that bleak and trying month before the Prorogation. Then the next Session if no dissolution comes to postpone it, is to be a remarkably full and long one ; the House must meet again in February to attack the Registration Bill, the One Man One Vote Bill, the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, and any other measure which the Government choose to take as properly belonging to the Liverpool programme. That is a prospect of incessant labour before which even the boldest Radical may quail ; nor do we see why, with the modern eagerness of Members of Parliament to speak on almost all the details, as well as almost all the principles, of almost all the Bills submitted to the House of Commons, every Session should not tend to drag itself out to this enormous length, and to curtail, little by little, the bits of holidays, till the whole time of Representatives is as fully absorbed in the work of representing, as the whole time of a brick- layer or a cotton-spinner is in the work of laying bricks or weaving yarn. More and more devotedly the Repre- sentatives toil in the service of the Democracy ; more and more devotedly do they examine and discuss every aspect and every petty regulation which they embody in their more and more elaborate measures for the lightening and protection of other men's labour ; and yet more and more is required of them, and more and. more complex their work becomes. It is easy to see that representation at this rate must soon he a profession, and a very laborious profession ; and not only will it have to be a paid profession, like other professions, but it will fall into the hands of men who will not regard it as the occupation of their leisure, but as the only business of their life ; in other words, into the hands of professional politicians, who think no more of spending their whole lives in the Rouse than bank-clerks think of spending their whole lives at their desk, or agri- cultural labourers of spending their whole lives sowing and reaping and mowing and planting and pruning. We do not see how this tendency can, under present conditions, be anyhow got rid of. Conservatives will• necessarily be as anxious to outdo the Liberals in their energetic competition for the favour of the masses as the Liberals are to outdo the Conservatives. The elaborateness of public measures must increase with every extension of the area of labour with which they deal. The difficulty and the minuteness of the knowledge required in discussing them are always on the increase, as well as the greediness of popular claims. Everything seems to show that the body which is expected to improve the condition of the labourers, will be more and more compelled to sacrifice its own well-being to the well-being of those on whose behalf it labours, until the time arrives, which will arrive before very long, when the people see the vanity of legislative pro- visions for their benefit, and begin, as the Democracy of the United States has already begun, to think that their representatives do more harm than good, and that the more carefully they are restricted to short hours and few Sessions, the less mischief they will do.
One thing seems to us certain, that the tendency of this overwork is to very slovenly work and probably very bad work. The Irish Home-rule Bill is the worst piece of work ever turned out by Parliament ; and if it had been passed into law, would have left the largest crop of unsolved problems and unexpected consequences which any piece of legislation in this country had ever produced. It promises to be the same with theEmployers' Liability Bill and the Parish Councils Bill. At every step diffi- culties arise, which have to be determined, if at all, by the chapter of accidents, and which will lead to innumer- able hardships if these measures ever become law, as they- probably will. More and more the House concerns itself with elaborate measures, which are breaking quite new- ground, and yet new ground essentially affecting the life of hundreds of thousands or even millions ; and more and more difficult is it to foresee how each new pro- posal will work when it comes into practice. Moreover,. the Legislators come to most of these discussions with. thoroughly exhausted minds, instead of minds strong and fresh from out-of-door pursuits ; and in the eagerness to confer on the public new privileges' many of the privileges conferred become privileges which will enable them, and, we should fear, tempt them, to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs. If we understand the Employers' Liability Bill at all, it is one to frighten capital out of trade. And if we understand the Parish Councils Bill at all, it is becoming one which will enormously damp the zeal of philanthropists and reformers. If nobody is to found a new institution without having colleagues forced. upon his trustees who do not enter into his views or share his motives, founders will soon become very scarce indeed.. You cannot seize upon and impound the resources pro-. vided by benevolent men for their own favourite ends, and.
pervert these resources to other uses in which the founders feel no interest, without disgusting them with their philan- thropic schemes ; and. this is apparently what the Parish Councils Bill is going to enable the village Democracy to do. The number of loose threads left, partly intentionally, partly unintentionally, in our modern Democratic legis- lation is alarming. It is by these loose threads that a measure is diverted. from its original purpose to purposes which the Legislature had never anticipated or even conceived ; and yet many of these loose threads are deliberately left, while a good many more are left by inadvertence. Legislation which is at once con- ceived. in a spirit of flattery to the people, and executed by exhausted -Legislators, is Legislation certain, to be converted to ends of which the originators never dreamed.
We do not feel a doubt that services such as that of which Mr. Asquith and his colleagues are gleefully boast- ing as storing up for themselves an immense stock of political merit, must lead, and lead soon, to the payment of Members, and the retirement of the unpaid political labourers from the competition. And the classes who will be driven out of politics, partly by the immense labour demanded of them, partly by antipathy to the work expected of them, will become the objects of popular sus- picion, and the subjects of something like special disabili- ties, if at least special taxation - is, as it surely is, a,. disability. Every fresh ad.va,nce of the Democratic spirit threatens to alienate more and more those who now give. their labour and time gratuitously to the work of legisla- tion as well as those who spend their whole spare time in devising new forms of help for the people. Perhaps. we should not need to regret this, if the successors of these amateur legislators and philanthropists were deeply impressed. with the duty of understanding the limits of our power for good. But this is just what at present they seem least to understand. They want to swamp the County Bench with ignorant and untrained Justices of the Peace,. and to dictate to the employers of labour in the most arbitrary 'fashion what they ought to do with their own. capital. That is the way not only to degrade the House of Commons, but to degrade the sense of justice through... out the kingdom. What seems rapidly approaching is aa. House of Commons as little scrupulous and as much dominated by caucuses as the House of Representatives at Washington, without those strict limitations on their power which the American Constitution imposes on the rashness and impatience of the Democratic spirit.
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