Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/126

 ," to convince people that they are excellent in their way, and to cajole them to employ them; on the contrary, people get up and run after them; they are solicited and sent for, and rewarded proportionately (it is to be hoped) to their deserts. So should it be, my honourable friend, in the case of membership of Parliament. The M.P. should be known for his qualities and fitness, and instead of interceding, he should be interceded with, to lend his assistance. He should be at no expense, for serving the people, and his reward should consist in the honour of adroitly managing the business entrusted to him. It should not be considered as a recommendation in an accomplished gentleman, or plain dealing individual, that he act honestly, and without immediate regard to bettering himself. Whereas, I notice that a member of Parliament, filling his post with the common honesty necessary in humbler life to ensure a livelihood, is sometimes considered as a wonder, a phenomenon, without opening his mouth or moving a finger in the work for which he is placed where he is. This would suggest that there is somewhat of laxity of principle acknowledged to exist in Parliament; that people regard it as a sort of necessary evil; and, on the principle that

are content to put up with what they get. My honourable friend, how many among you are known familiarly for their good works? How many of you think it an honour to be the advocates of the people's happiness and improvement? How many of you go into Parliament, but to become other than you were? To be put into a position to do good, is not often the ambition of the would-be M.P. It is to be M.P. And instead of being by his own sheer force, a made man before entering Parliament, he does but consider the House the making of him, and that at the expense of passed over superiority immeasurable. It would seem, I think, my honourable friend, that the men for the duties required, are occasionally chosen at a chance.

In every small section of the community, two or three individuals are known for some peculiar qualities appertaining to usefulness; in every small collection of a dozen huts there is some person whose advice is sought on occasions of emergency; but really, my honourable friend, I never knew you to have been consulted in such wise before you added M.P. to your name. I even question whether many people knew of your existence until you tacked those two letters to your name, and thus made something out of a nonentity. "Who is Mr. So-and-so?" "Oh! he is M.P. for Such a place." "Oh!" That is enough, and Mr. So-and-so knows it; that is why he was so anxious to write M.P. after his name; he knows the meaning, if he do not know the translation, of the moral, "d'un magistrat ignorant, c'est la robe qu'on salue." But such people are to the body of the state as poisons to the system; they engender bad blood, by causing stagnation. How many members are there who give their votes in accordance with any inward conviction of their own, or the wishes of their constituents? How many who know what these wishes are, or knowing, care? How many are guided by them? How many a member votes in the House otherwise than as an adherent to a stronger member, or as an indirectly subsidised agent? Again; is it wholesome, my honourable friend, that at the present day it should be looked upon as a necessary, but vulgar and irksome ordeal withal, that a fit subject for a seat in Parliament should address a noisy mob, with the view of gammoning or flattering them into the notion that he is the very best person they could possibly select to act for them? That this hero, in order to propitiate himself into the good graces of those enlightened fellow countrymen, should pump up poor jests, and lend himself to buffoonery and littlenesses not so honest or harmless, and certainly not so amusing, as the clap-trap of the quack doctor and merry-andrew of the days gone by? That in order to give specimens of how he will act, he should vamp up his version of how he would deal with such and such a question, at such and such a moment—showing a brick as it were, as a sample of the house he would build? There is a strange carelessness as to who's the member, that is taken advantage of by the wary. Ask how it came that a vote was given for such and such a one, what Smith personally or historically knew of him, what he expected of him, what he hoped from him in regard to anything, and you will wait a long time for your answer. At the Presidential election in America, the other day, huge bells, it is said, were sent about, mounted on waggons, to wake up the voters. Some such stimulus is needed sadly in this country in these times, for, as a rule, unless something out of Parliament is to be got for a vote, or some spite paid off, people appear very calm, not to say indifferent, as to giving one at all. But not so apathetic are they where interests more near and plain to them are concerned. The densest will think twice before they entrust a piece of money to friend or foe, to lay out for them; they look out for a strict account of that; but a vote is frequently invested quite at random. What surprise there would be among some of the "lower orders," if they were told that, to all intents and purposes, the M.P. is in their service; that he goes to market for them; that it is his duty to make the best bargains he can for them; that he goes to Parliament not merely because he is the squire, or contractor, or what not of the neighbourhood, but because he is sent by them, as solemnly trusted to speak up for the general interest, and with no more reference to his money than because he has enough money to pay others to do his business whilst he is absent attending to theirs.

Be not puffed up, my honourable friend! It is only some of the speeches on the hustings that are delivered with the aim of enlightenment, and they are held as downright compliments to improved intellectual and educational standing, and are tributes to (as they are tributaries from) master minds, which the most obtuse and ignorant can hardly listen to, without, to some