The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds
The other day on a stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I
climbed up upon one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards
from which the dead seem to look down upon all the living.
It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus was a mountain of gods.
In that church lay the bones of great Puritan lords, of a time when most
of the power of England was Puritan, even of the Established Church.
And below these uplifted bones lay the huge and hollow valleys
of the English countryside, where the motors went by every now
and then like meteors, where stood out in white squares and oblongs
in the chequered forest many of the country seats even of those
same families now dulled with wealth or decayed with Toryism.
And looking over that deep green prospect on that luminous
yellow evening, a lovely and austere thought came into my mind,
a thought as beautiful as the green wood and as grave as the tombs.
The thought was this: that I should like to go into Parliament,
quarrel with my party, accept the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds,
and then refuse to give it up.
We are so proud in England of our crazy constitutional anomalies
that I fancy that very few readers indeed will need to be told
about the Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. But in case there
should be here or there one happy man who has never heard of such
twisted tomfooleries, I will rapidly remind you what this legal
fiction is. As it is quite a voluntary, sometimes even an eager,
affair to get into Parliament, you would naturally suppose
that it would be also a voluntary matter to get out again.
You would think your fellow-members would be indifferent,
or even relieved to see you go; especially as (by another exercise
of the shrewd, illogical old English common sense) they have carefully
built the room too small for the people who have to sit in it.
But not so, my pippins, as it says in the "Iliad." If you are
merely a member of Parliament (Lord knows why) you can't resign.
But if you are a Minister of the Crown (Lord knows why) you can.
It is necessary to get into the Ministry in order to get out
of the House; and they have to give you some office that doesn't
exist or that nobody else wants and thus unlock the door.
So you go to the Prime Minister, concealing your air of fatigue,
and say, "It has been the ambition of my life to be Steward of the
Chiltern Hundreds." The Prime Minister then replies, "I can imagine
no man more fitted both morally and mentally for that high office."
He then gives it you, and you hurriedly leave, reflecting how
the republics of the Continent reel anarchically to and fro for lack
of a little solid English directness and simplicity.
Now, the thought that struck me like a thunderbolt as I sat on
the Chiltern slope was that I would like to get the Prime Minister
to give me the Chiltern Hundreds, and then startle and disturb him
by showing the utmost interest in my work. I should profess a general
knowledge of my duties, but wish to be instructed in the details.
I should ask to see the Under-Steward and the Under-Under-Steward,
and all the fine staff of experienced permanent officials who are
the glory of this department. And, indeed, my enthusiasm would
not be wholly unreal. For as far as I can recollect the original
duties of a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds were to put down
the outlaws and brigands in that part of the world. Well, there are
a great many outlaws and brigands in that part of the world still,
and though their methods have so largely altered as to require
a corresponding alteration in the tactics of the Steward, I do
not see why an energetic and public-spirited Steward should not
nab them yet.
For the robbers have not vanished from the old high forests
to the west of the great city. The thieves have not vanished;
they have grown so large that they are invisible. You do not
see the word "Asia" written across a map of that neighbourhood;
nor do you see the word "Thief" written across the countrysides
of England; though it is really written in equally large letters.
I know men governing despotically great stretches of that country,
whose every step in life has been such that a slip would have sent
them to Dartmoor; but they trod along the high hard wall between right
and wrong, the wall as sharp as a swordedge, as softly and craftily
and lightly as a cat. The vastness of their silent violence itself
obscured what they were at; if they seem to stand for the rights
of property it is really because they have so often invaded them.
And if they do not break the laws, it is only because they make them.
But after all we only need a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds
who really understands cats and thieves. Men hunt one animal
differently from another; and the rich could catch swindlers
as dexterously as they catch otters or antlered deer if they
were really at all keen upon doing it. But then they never have
an uncle with antlers; nor a personal friend who is an otter.
When some of the great lords that lie in the churchyard behind me
went out against their foes in those deep woods beneath I wager
that they had bows against the bows of the outlaws, and spears against
the spears of the robber knights. They knew what they were about;
they fought the evildoers of their age with the weapons of their age.
If the same common sense were applied to commercial law,
in forty-eight hours it would be all over with the American Trusts
and the African forward finance. But it will not be done:
for the governing class either does not care, or cares very much,
for the criminals, and as for me, I had a delusive opportunity
of being Constable of Beaconsfield (with grossly inadequate powers),
but I fear I shall never really be Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.
