The Imperialist (19 page)

“Well, you’ve been doing big business,” said Horace Williams.

Lorne shook his head. “We haven’t done any harm,” he said, “but our scheme’s away out of sight now. At least it ought to be.”

“Lost in the bigger issue,” said Williams, and Lorne nodded.

The bigger issue had indeed in the meantime obscured the political horizon, and was widely spreading. A mere colonial project might well disappear in it. England was absorbed in a single contemplation. Wallingham, though he still supported the disabilities of a right honourable evangelist with a gospel of his own, was making astonishing conversions; the edifice of the national economic creed seemed coming over at the top. It was a question of the resistance of the base, and the world was watching.

“Cruickshank says if the main question had been sprung a month ago we wouldn’t have gone over. As it is, on several points we’ve got to wait. If they reject the preferential trade idea over there we shall have done a little good, for any government would be disposed to try to patch up something to take the place of imperial union in that case; and a few thousands more for shipping subsidies and cheap cablegrams would have a great look of strengthening the ties with the colonies. But if they commit themselves to a zollverein with us and the rest of the family you won’t hear much more about the need to foster communications. Communications will foster themselves.”

“Just so,” remarked John Murchison. “They’ll save their money.”

“I wouldn’t think so before – I couldn’t,” Lorne went on, “but I’m afraid it’s rather futile, the kind of thing we’ve been trying to do. It’s fiddling at a superstructure without a foundation. What we want is the common interest. Common interest, common taxation for defence, common representation, domestic management of domestic affairs, and you’ve got a working Empire.”

“Just as easy as slippin’ off a log,” remarked Horace Williams.

“Common interest, yes,” said his father, “common taxation, no, for defence or any other purpose. The colonies will never send money to be squandered by the London War Office. We’ll defend ourselves, as soon as we can manage it, and buy our own guns and our own cruisers. We’re better business people than they are, and we know it.”

“I guess that’s right, Mr. Murchison,” said Horace Williams. “Our own army and navy – in the sweet bye and bye. And let ’em understand they’ll be welcome to the use of it, but quite in a family way – no sort of compulsion.”

“Well,” said Lorne, “that’s compatible enough.”

“And your domestic affairs must include the tariff,” Mr. Murchison went on. “There’s no such possibility as a tariff that will go round. And tariffs are kittle cattle to shoo behind.”

“Has anybody got a Scotch dictionary?” inquired Stella. “This conversation is making me tired.”

“Suppose you run away and play with your hoop,” suggested her brother. “I can’t see that as an insuperable difficulty, father. Tariffs could be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the individual one. We could do it if we liked.”

“Your adaptability might easily lead to other things. What’s to prevent retaliation among ourselves? There’s a slump in textiles, and the home Government is forced to let in foreign wool cheaper. Up goes the Australian tax on the output of every mill in Lancashire. The last state of the Empire might be worse than the first.”

“It wouldn’t be serious. If I pinched Stella’s leg as I’m going to in a minute, she will no doubt kick me; and her instincts are such that she will probably kick me with the leg I pinched, but that won’t prevent our going to the football match together tomorrow and presenting a united front to the world.”

They all laughed, and Stella pulled down her lengthening petticoats with an air of great offence, but John Murchison shook his head.

“If they manage it, they will be clever,” he said.

“Talking of Lancashire,” said Williams, “there are some funny fellows over there writing in the Press against a tax on foreign cotton because it’s going to ruin Lancashire. And at this very minute thousands of looms are shut down in Lancashire because of the high price of cotton produced by an American combine – and worse coming, sevenpence a pound I hear they’re going to have it, against the fourpence ha’penny they’ve got it up to already. That’s the sort of thing they’re afraid to discourage by a duty.”

“Would a duty discourage it?” asked John Murchison.

“Why not – if they let British-grown cotton in free? They won’t discourage the combine much – that form of enterprise has got to be tackled where it grows; but the Yankee isn’t the only person in the world that can get to understand it. What’s to prevent preferential conditions creating British combines, to compete with the American article, and what’s to prevent Lancashire getting cheaper cotton in consequence? Two combines are better than one monopoly any day.”

“Maybe so. It would want looking into. We won’t see a duty on cotton though, or wool either for that matter. The manufacturers would be pleased enough to get it on the stuff they make, but there would be a fine outcry against taxing the stuff they use.”

“Did you see much of the aristocracy, Mr. Murchison?” asked Mrs. Williams.

“No,” replied Lorne, “but I saw Wallingham.”

“You saw the whole House of Lords,” interposed Stella, “and you were introduced to three.”

“Well, yes, that’s so. Fine-looking set of old chaps they are, too. We’re a little too funny over here about the Lords – we haven’t had to make any.”

“What were they doing the day you were there, Lorne?” asked Williams.

“Motor-car legislation,” replied Lorne. “Considerably excited about it, too. One of them had had three dogs killed on his estate. I saw a letter about it in the
Times.”

“I don’t see anything to laugh at in that,” declared Stella. “Dogs are dogs.”

“They are, sister, especially in England.”

“Laundresses aren’t washerwomen there,” observed Mrs. Murchison. “I’d like you to see the colour of the things he’s brought home with him, Mrs. Williams. Clean or dirty, to the laundry they go – weeks it will take to get them right again – ingrained London smut, and nothing else.”

“In this preference business they’ve got to lead the way,” Williams reverted. “We’re not so grownup but what grandma’s out to march in front. Now, from your exhaustive observation of Great Britain, extending over a period of six weeks, is she going to?”

“My exhaustive observation,” said Lorne, smiling, “enables me to tell you one thing with absolute accuracy: and that is that nobody knows. They adore Wallingham over there – he’s pretty nearly a god – and they’d like to do as he tells them, and they’re dead sick of theoretic politics; but they’re afraid – oh, they’re afraid!”

“They’ll do well to ca’ canny,” said John Murchison.

“There’s two things in the way, at a glance,” Lorne went on. “The conservatism of the people – it isn’t a name, it’s a fact – the hostility and suspicion; natural enough: they know they’re stupid, and they half suspect they’re fair game. I suppose
the Americans have taught them that. Slow – oh, slow! More interested in the back-garden fence than anything else. Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being done, mind, all over the world, done against them – when their shipping is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods undersold beneath their very noses – and the thing they want to know is – ‘Why Are the Swallows Late?’ I read it myself, in a ha’penny morning paper, too, that they think rather dangerously go-ahead – a whole column, leaded, to inquire what’s the matter with the swallows. The
Times
the same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead. Lord, they need ’em! Those are the things they
think
about! The session’s nearly over, and there’s two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills – bishoprics and benefices, and Lord knows what – still to get through. Lot of anxiety about ’em, apparently! As to a business view of politics, I expect the climate’s against it. They’ll see over a thing – they’re fond of doing that – or under it, or round one side of it, but they don’t seem to have any way of seeing
through
it. What they just love is a good round catchword; they’ve only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and they’ll take it for gospel. They’re convinced out of their own mouths. There was the driver of a ’bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he felt like talking, he’d always begin, ‘As I was a-sayin’ of yesterday –’ Well, that’s the general idea – to repeat what they were a-sayin’ of yesterday; and it doesn’t matter two cents that the rest of the world has changed the subject. They’ve been a-sayin’ a long time that they object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won’t get them to
see
the business in changing. If they do this it won’t be because they want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to.”

“I guess that’s so,” said Williams. “And if Wallingham gets them to he ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire. He will, too. Good cigar this, Lorne! Where’d you get it?”

“They are Indian cheroots – ‘Planters’ they call ’em – made in Madras. I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a price you wouldn’t believe for as decent a smoke. You can’t buy ’em in London; but you will all right, and here, too, as soon as we’ve got the sense to favour British-grown tobacco.”

“Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before,” remarked his youngest sister, “because we’re British grown.”

“You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?” said his father.

“Oh, the other’s of course the awful poverty – the twelve millions that haven’t got enough to do with. I expect it’s an outside figure and it covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but it’s the one the Free Fooders quote, and it’s the one Wallingham will have to handle. They’ve muddled along until they’ve
got
twelve million people in that condition, and now they have to carry on with the handicap. We ask them to put a tax on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle ranges. We say, ‘Give us a chance and we’ll feed you and take your surplus population.’ What is to be done with the twelve million while we are growing the wheat? The colonies offer to create prosperity for everybody concerned at a certain outlay – we’ve got the raw materials – and they can’t afford the investment because of the twelve millions, and what may happen meanwhile. They can’t face the meanwhile – that’s what it comes to –.”

“Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation,” Mr. Williams remarked; and his eye had the spark of the practical politician. “Can’t you hear ’em at it, eh?”

“It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth politics. Any other remedy is too heroic. They go on pointing out and contemplating and grieving, with their percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go on poulticing the cancer with benevolence – there are people over there who want the State to feed the school children! Oh, they’re kind, good, big-hearted people; and they’ve got the idea that if they can only give enough away everything will come right. I was talking with a man one day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class justified governing a great country on the principle of an almshouse. He asked me who the almsgivers ought to be, in any country. Of course it was tampering with my figure – in an almshouse there aren’t any; but that’s the way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow was frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food – he nearly cried – but would be very glad to see Government do more to assist emigration to the colonies. I tried to show him it would be better to make it profitable to emigrate first, but I couldn’t make him see it.

“Oh, and there’s the old thing against them, of course – the handling of imperial and local affairs by one body. Any body’s good enough to attend to the Baghdad Railway, and nobody’s too good to attend to the town pump. Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own shops and Russia walks into Thibet? The eternal marvel is that they stand where they do.”

“At the top,” said Mr. Williams.

“Oh – at the top! Think of what you mean when you say ‘England.’”

“I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured goods is growing,” Williams remarked, “even the anti-food-tax organs are beginning to shout for that.”

“If they had put it on twenty years ago,” said Lorne, “there would be no twelve million people making a problem for want of work, and it would be a good deal easier to do imperial business to-day.”

“You’ll find,” said John Murchison, removing his pipe, “that protection’ll have to come first over there. They’ll put up a fence and save their trade – in their own good time, not next week or next year – and when they’ve done that they’ll talk to us about our big ideas – not before. And if Wallingham hadn’t frightened them with the imperial job, he never would have got them to take up the other. It’s just his way of getting both done.”

“I hope you’re right, father,” said Lorne, with a covert glance at his watch. “Horace – Mrs. Williams – I’ll have to get you to excuse me. I have an engagement at eight.”

He left them with a happy spring in his step, left them looking after him, talking of him, with pride and congratulation. Only Stella, with a severe lip and a disapproving eye, noted the direction he took as he left the house.

P
eter Macfarlane had carried the big Bible up the pulpit steps of Knox Church, and arranged the glass of water and the notices to be given out beside it, twice every Sunday for twenty years. He was a small spare man, with thin grey hair that fell back from the narrow dome of his forehead to his coat collar, decent and severe. He ascended the pulpit exactly three minutes before the minister did; and the dignity with which he put one foot before the other made his appearance a ceremonious feature of the service and a thing quoted. “I was there before Peter” was a triumphant evidence of punctuality. Dr. Drummond would have liked to make it a test. It seemed to him no great thing to expect the people of Knox Church to be there before Peter.

Macfarlane was also in attendance in the vestry to help the minister off with his gown and hang it up. Dr. Drummond’s gown needed neither helping nor hanging; the Doctor was deftness and neatness and impatience itself, and would have it on the hook with his own hands, and never a fold crooked. After Mr. Finlay, on the contrary, Peter would have to pick up and smooth out – ten to one the garment would be flung on
a chair. Still, he was invariably standing by to see it flung, and to hand Mr. Finlay his hat and stick. He was surprised and put about to find himself one Sunday evening too late for this attendance. The vestry was empty, the gown was on the floor. Peter gathered it up with as perturbed an air as if Mr. Finlay had omitted a point of church observance. “I doubt they get into slack ways in these missions,” said Peter. He had been unable, with Dr. Drummond, to see the necessity for such extensions.