If there were a general conspiracy to pretend that people with incomes above the income-tax level never cheated one in a bargain, one could not say “on such-and-such a day you will be cheated in a bargain by such-and-such a person, whose income will be above the income-tax level,” but one could say; “Note the people who swindle you in the next five years, and I will prophesy that some of the number will be people paying income-tax.”

This power of prophecy, which is an adjunct of truth telling, I have noticed to affect people very profoundly.

A worthy provincial might have been shocked ten years ago to hear that places in the Upper House of Parliament were regularly bought and sold.  He might have indignantly denied it The Free Press said:  “In some short while you will have a glaring instance of a man who is incompetent and obscure but very rich, appearing as a legislator with permanent hereditary power, transferable to his son after his death.  I don’t know which the next one will be, but there is bound to be a case of the sort quite soon for the thing goes on continually.  You will be puzzled to explain it.  The explanation is that the rich man has given a large sum of money to the needy professional politician, Selah.”

Our worthy provincial may have heard but an echo of this truth, for it would have had, ten years ago, but few readers.  He may not have seen a syllable of it in his daily paper.  But things happen.  He sees first a great soldier, then a well-advertised politician, not a rich man, but very widely talked about, made peers.  The events are normal in each case, and he is not moved.  But sooner or later there comes a case in which he has local knowledge.  He says to himself:  “Why on earth is So-and-so made a peer (or a front bench man, or what not)?  Why, in the name of goodness, is this very rich but unknown, and to my knowledge incompetent, man suddenly put into such a position?” Then he remembers what he was told, begins to ask questions, and finds out, of course, that money passed; perhaps, if he is lucky, he finds out which professional politician pouched the money—­and even how much he took!

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] A friend of mine in the Press Gallery used to represent “I have yet to learn that the Government” by a little twirl, and “What did the right honourable gentleman do, Mr. Speaker?  He had the audacity” by two spiral dots.

XVIII

The effect of the Free Press from all these causes may be compared to the cumulative effect of one of the great offensives of the present war.  Each individual blow is neither dramatic nor extensive in effect; there is little movement or none.  The map is disappointing.  But each blow tells, and when the end comes every one will see suddenly what the cumulative effect was.

There is not a single thing which the Free Papers have earnestly said during the last few years which has not been borne out by events—­and sometimes borne out with astonishing rapidity and identity of detail.