Crying for the Light Volume Ii Part 9

'What is the chief recommendation of Sir Watkin?' asked one of Mr.

Wentworth's supporters of a friend of the Baronet's.

'Money, to be sure. He's got it here,' said the Baronet's supporter, significantly slapping his pocket.

But the Conservative candidate had money as well. The question was, which had the longest purse.

'And, then, look at the requisition presented to him,' continued the Baronet's friend.

'Got up by his agent, as a matter of course, who was well paid for his work.'

'Then look at his committee.'

'All men who are his tradespeople, or tenants and dependents, or flunkies who want to be invited to the Hall. There has been no independent action in the matter.'

'You are very green if you expect that in Sloville,' continued the Baronet's supporter. 'If you ask nine men out of ten in the borough who they will vote for, the answer will be, "For them as I gets the most by."'

It was too true. The Sloville people were as selfish as their representatives. They were like the voters of St. Albans, who, when the traffic on the great North Road was ruined by the railway, lamented that they had nothing to sell but their votes; or like the voters of Stafford, who requested Sheridan to vote against reform, as it was by the sale of votes that they chiefly got their money. They in this resembled the ill.u.s.trious Samuel Johnson, who, upon his friend Thrale demurring to the expense of a contested election for Southwark, remarked: 'The expense, if it were more, I should wish him to despise. Money is made for such purposes as this.'

It was an Irish M.P. who, when reproached with selling his country, thanked G.o.d that he had got a Government to sell. There were many of the Sloville electors who were of the Irishman's way of thinking.

'I suppose there is little chance for me,' said Wentworth, as he walked home with the Unitarian minister-who had a large chapel, generally empty, but which had been crowded to suffocation to hear him utter his political programme. Wentworth, as the papers say, had received quite an ovation.

He had come amongst them as a stranger; he had made them all friends; he was an effective speaker, and his audience were of his side in politics.

Unfortunately, it consisted largely of excitable young people who had no votes. They had been told to do their duty: to support neither a half-hearted Liberal nor a thorough-going old Tory, but to rally round the gentleman from London. The Unitarian brother heartily endorsed that appeal. He had known Wentworth when he came to preach as a sapling from college. He had sympathized a good deal with him in his view. He had the Christian charity not to judge too harshly of a man who, it seemed to him, had in a sense gone wrong, but who was a man and a brother still.

'My dear fellow,' said he to his guest, as they were seated in his sanctum, ornamented with portraits and darkened with the quartos of the old divines, 'I fear in politics, as in religion, people do much as they please, lecture them as you will. To listen is one thing, to practise what you hear is another. You are for the separation of Church and State, and I support you; but the respected minister who preaches in your old chapel will preach about Christ's kingdom being not of this world, and then will go and vote for the Whig Baronet because he belongs to such a respectable family, and all the respectable Dissenters in the town will do the same, and when Christmas comes will receive their reward. Their deacons are very good men, but they will never vote to offend their rich customers. I could get a thousand people to come and hear you, to applaud all your hits, to see all your arguments, to endorse all your opinions, but I could not get ten of them to vote for you-that's quite another thing. It is all very well to applaud Radical sentiments, so long as business is not interfered with.'

'But the poorer voters-there are a good many of them in the borough, are there not?'

'Well, they will do as their betters, and you can't wonder at it. The Tories and the Liberals give away coal and beef and blankets at Christmas. There are lots of Radicals in the town, but they will not vote for a Radical, however much they may cheer a Radical speech. Their wives wouldn't let them.'

'I fear Sloville is in a bad way,' said Wentworth.

'Well, it is a fair sample of an English borough. I often grieve over it, nevertheless.'

'Why not make it better?'

'Ay, that's the question. I can see no other road to improvement but to go on talking. Liberal ideas spread and light does come, however slowly.

Sometimes I almost feel inclined to ask for a drastic reform.'

'What is that?'

'To get the borough disfranchised. It would be very easy to get up a pet.i.tion for bribery and corruption; it would be easier still to prove it.'

'And then?'

'The result would be that I should lose my congregation, and be the most unpopular man in the town.'

'Why not "dare to be a Daniel"?'

'Because I am poor and have a large family to keep; because I love peace and quietness; because I am a little older than you, know a little more of country life, and feel inclined to make the best of it what little time I have to live. If we are bound to run amuck at all we disapprove of, life, I fear, would be a burden too heavy to be borne. I may be slow, but, at any rate, I am sure.'

'So you are, old fellow. You were talking just the same way when I came here to preach-it seems to me ages ago-and a good deal has happened since then.'

'Just what I was going to say,' said the clerical brother. 'Politically we have made great progress. We are on the eve of extension of the franchise and vote by ballot, and whoever we return at Sloville-they are safe. I could have got up a pet.i.tion against bribery and corruption in the place. I ought, perhaps, you say, to have done so. Well, I should have had to spend hundreds of pounds, which I have not got; and if I had succeeded and got the borough disfranchised, I should never have been able to show my face in the town again.'

'But you would have had another call,' said Wentworth, with a touch of sarcasm.

'Not at my time of life. But that is a digression. You London newspaper men may write about bribery and corruption, and you can do good in that way, more even than if you get into Parliament.'

'I am of the same opinion,' said Wentworth; 'but, tell me, is the borough so very bad?'

'That it is. I can point you to no end of people who take money and are not ashamed. There are gangs of them who meet in public-houses, with whom each party negotiates, and who turn the scale. To-day they are Liberal, to-morrow they will be Conservative. The men are notorious, but they are useful to both parties. The only remedy for that is extension of the suffrage so as to include all householders, and to make bribery impossible by the increase of the number to be bribed.'

'I would go a step further,' said Wentworth. 'In our great cities few of our working cla.s.ses have that qualification. This raises a demand for a lodger franchise-that is, a fancy franchise-that will give a great opening for ingenuity and fraud, and will only work well for the lawyers, to whom such a state of things will bring plenty of business. No, we must fall back on manhood suffrage. It is the only real and direct qualification. Give the working man a vote, let him feel that he is part and parcel of the community, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh-not a pariah politically, but a brother man-and he will use his vote for his own advantage, and for that of the rest of the community. 'But, now I think of it, there is a better plan.'

'What is that?' said the parson.

'A money qualification. I was in Jersey last summer, and I found there were a large number of men who voluntarily paid a certain tax in order that they might get a vote. After all, what is Government but a limited liability company for the governing of the nation? In all limited liabilities every man has a vote, but the man who has a larger share than the others has more votes. I would give the vote to every man who cared enough about it to pay for it, and I think that a revenue might be thus raised for the relief of taxation.'

'Your scheme is excellent, but it will never take.'

'I fear so, and that is why I fall back on manhood suffrage.'

'Yes, I quite believe that, but he must have the ballot.'

'I fear so, though with the ballot we shall still have a good deal of intimidation and bullying. The rich employer, unless he be more Liberal than many of them, will try still to carry his friend or himself, as the case may be. It seems very degrading, however, for a man to vote by ballot, as if he were ashamed of his opinions. I always think of what the great American statesman said when he was in England on that subject.'

'And what was that? I never heard of it.'

'When asked at a dinner-party in London whether the ballot prevailed in his State of Virginia, he replied:

'"I can scarcely believe in all Virginia we have such a fool as to mention even the vote by ballot, and I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot would make a nation a set of scoundrels if it did not find them so."'

'Rather hard, that, on the ballot, seeing that we shall have it very shortly.'

'Yes, the demand is a popular one with the Liberals, and they will carry it. There is one measure I should like to see, but I fear there is no chance of its coming yet.'

'What is that?'

'Annual Parliaments.'

'Oh,' exclaimed the parson, 'that will never do! As it is, the amount of mischief an election does in a borough like ours in the way of creating drunkenness, and bad feeling, and lying, and swearing, is incalculable.'

'Yes, but if we had an election once a year it would be quite different.

In the first place, an election would be a tamer and much more commonplace an affair than it is now. A man would not care to spend much money on elections if his seat was only good for a year, and all that time he would be on his good behaviour-attending in his place, helping on needful reforms.'

'Why not triennial Parliaments?'