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Art. 11.-THE FOUNT OF HONOURS.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, the distinguished American statesman, is reported to have said that when corruption came to an end the Constitution would fall to pieces. Sir Henry Maine tells us that

'the corruption referred to was that which had been openly practised by the Whig Ministers of George I and George II through the bestowal of places and payment of sums of money; but which in the reign of George III had died down to an obscure set of malpractices. Hamilton, of course, meant that amid the difficulties of popular government he doubted whether, in its English form, it could be carried on unless support was purchased by Governments.'

Few will challenge the truth of this statement, and the question arises-What commodity that Governments have to offer is most marketable for this purpose? The usual jargon of democracy teems with platitudes derisive of all distinctions of degree, rank, or place; and it impresses upon those who use it, an unquestioning faith in their worthlessness. They speak as if they thought, and probably convince themselves that they do think, all those things to be worthless, and they congratulate themselves on being superior to any such specious shams. Some one has wisely said that a sham is the name given by a stupid man to that which he does not understand, and therefore laughs at.

Suddenly some scandalous incident turns all eyes to a subject which had previously been held to be of no importance and the nation discovers that its interest in the subject is greater than it supposed. So it is with the recent agitation about Honours. The disposal of what were deemed to be fantastic and frivolous distinctions is found to be so flagrantly faulty as to provoke angry and indignant comment throughout every class in the nation. It is discovered that the national honour is stained, the purity of public life endangered, and the seeds of corruption planted, by the allotment of what those superior critics had been in the habit of considering to be contemptible trifles. The angry comment soon swells into a formidable political indictment, which arraigns the Government on a charge of dishonesty. The nation instinctively learns that the machinery by which rank and

degree are conferred is after all a matter of national importance; and that its misuse may convert that which should be a powerful aid towards a dignified and stable social order, into a corrupt process which brings contempt on that very grading by which society is regulated and controlled.

Such a phase of feeling has been aroused by the unabashed and profligate use, under the present administration, of resources which are in their hands as regulators of the streams which flow from the fountain of honour. It is all to the good that public attention has been sharply arrested, and that public indignation has forcibly expressed itself. We should be sorry to see such an episode pass into oblivion without producing results of solid and permanent valué. It is for this reason that we desire to examine the conditions under which the distribution of honours may be so regulated as to give rise to no undue suspicion and no scandalous abuse, and the causes which have, in these recent days, given rise to a feeling of uneasiness, swelling into amazement and disgust, for recent appointments to honours have left an indelible stain upon those responsible for them, and have inflicted no little damage upon the prestige and dignity of the Crown. We shall also have to consider whether the steps taken by the Government and in Parliament are adequate for the removal of a grave public scandal.

It is necessary, of course, in dealing with the matter to speak quite plainly as to the abuses which have given just cause for complaint, but there is no need to allow ourselves to be dominated by cant or to affect the belief that absolute judicial impartiality must or can always prevail in the distribution of honours. Party spirit is a perfectly legitimate element in political life and progress. Those who support certain political tenets, honestly believed to be for the good of the country, must necessarily acquire a claim on the gratitude of those whose views they advocate, and whose influence rests upon their loyalty. It is idle to pretend that such loyalty is to go without recognition, and is to count for nothing when the question of rewards is under consideration. The leaders of the various parties must acknowledge their debts, and discharge their obligations. If such

alternating recognition, varying with the complexion of the Government which happens to be in power, serves no other purpose, it at least serves to reflect the changing phases of our political history. If its operation is subject to certain fundamental principles, it is a thing to which no one can object. It is only when these principles are outraged that popular indignation is stirred, and stirred with good reason. On the other hand, we must be careful lest in admitting the reasonable operation of political bias, and of a system of fair recognition of party loyalty, we are led to condone action which permits such bias and such loyalty to warrant a defiance of public opinion, or to dispense with at least a modicum of merit, and some specious claim to distinction. The recognition of party loyalty must be conditioned by some pretext of fitness; it must not elevate nonentities into prominence, nor must it be a sordid reward for sordid services. If those are selected for Honour whose reputation is unsavoury, a stain is placed upon the Royal Ermine.

It may well be doubted whether an examination of the matter, in the light of present political and social conditions, is greatly helped by investigation of its remote historical aspects, or by comparisons suggested by some of the episodes of the past. We all know that the story of the flow of the stream from the fountain of honour, as it was dispersed in generations more or less remote, is not one which is altogether suitable for example or appropriate for purposes of edification. The example of France led, after the Restoration in 1660, to the assignment of patents of nobility in England, as it had done even earlier in the more austere atmosphere of Scotland,* to ladies whose charms and whose frailty had commended them to the favour of the Crown, or to the offspring of those ladies. That usage, which was tolerated at least, if not entirely approved, by the nation, continued for the first half of the 18th century, and spread sporadically even into the days which immediately preceded the Victorian Age. It is not likely to be revived, and it need not hope to find defenders nowadays, but it had marvellously small effect for evil either socially or politically:

* John Knox did not object to the patent of nobility granted to the Earl of Murray.

and it has left some enduring marks upon both our consti tutional and social development, which are not altogether matter for regret. The kindly hand of time obliterates stains, and invests with a certain historical dignity even some unedifying episodes of a romantic past. At least no popular right was invaded, and no conscious merit was offended, by dignities conferred upon those who had won the royal favour by questionable methods. The most austere combatant for Parliamentary freedom scarcely found the chief object of his denunciation in the ennobling of the fair ladies of Whitehall and their offspring. They might be easy butts for jest and sarcasm: yet they made no mark in the political arena, and aroused no popular indignation. The balance of political power was not affected by them, and the mass of the nation regarded them with amusement or indifference.

It would be idle to pretend that in the allotment of honours, at any period of our history, selfish, ignoble, and partisan motives have been entirely absent. Human nature repeats itself, and it never shows at its best in the sphere of politics. It would be the merest affectation to assume either that it has been left to this generation to develop a baseness of procedure to which other ages were strangers, or that it is reserved for our own time to establish a code of absolute honour which will altogether banish the traces of chicanery and sordid trickery which prevailed of old. Probably we are neither very much better, nor very much worse, than our grandfathers, but circumstances have vastly changed: and the present atmosphere and conditions have developed dangers to which previous generations were not exposed.

We are all familiar, from the journals and confidential records of the 18th century, with the sordid scheming, and the servile grovelling, which those who ought to have known better, were not ashamed to employ in order to secure a peerage, or a step in social rank, from each successive Ministry under the Hanoverian kings. It is strange to find Ministers, who were con cerned with the highest spheres of politics, and whose names were destined to be writ large on the page of history, using every device to secure for themselves & step in rank, and feeling no shame in the unabashed effrontery with which they pressed their claims and

magnified their own services. They did not disdain to stoop to the paltry tricks of the back-stairs. It never seemed to occur to them that such conduct was undignified, and they were almost amazed at the contempt and indifference with which a rare type of participants in the political struggle, such as the younger Pitt, regarded such distinctions. The fact is that, in the restricted political arena of those days, such things had a significance which has altogether ceased to belong to them, and they were really important tokens in the recognised currency of political influence. If we wish to appreciate their true character, we have only to glance at the pages of Stanhope and Macaulay. These two wrote from the most opposite points of view. Each adduces flagrant instances of abuse, and is not slow to pass sentence of indignant condemnation upon the delinquents-whether shameless petitioners, or those who polluted the waters of the fountain of honour by corrupt partiality and trafficking. But neither of them treats the sordid traffic with the contempt that was the most fitting weapon to use towards the miserable childishness of the whole wretched make-believe. In their eyes the sycophant and his corrupt patron were equally worthy of moral condemnation, but they were not dealt with merely as participants in a fantastic and pitiful delusion: they were looked upon as a really substantial element in political administration. Their work might be sordid; but it was treated by historians like these as a weighty influence in the shaping of history, and as demanding grave record. Perhaps it did exercise such influence; but whatever might be the case at a time when party organisation had not yet developed into a vast complicated machine, and when Ministerial responsibility did not bulk so largely as now, that is no longer the aspect of the case which presents itself to us. We are no longer concerned with the question of who amongst a little knot of aspirants, possessing qualifications much upon a par, and whose selection for special promotion depended upon the balance of party influence, should be the recipient of an honour at a given moment. The owners of rotten boroughs all belonged to the same class. Their merits as statesmen were fairly equal: and it was really not of much importance to the nation

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