A Scandal (Marx, 1862)

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At the moment London is absorbed in one of those characteristic scandals that are only possible in a country where old aristocratic tradition flourishes in the midst of the most modern bourgeois society. The corpus delicti is a Blue Book of the Parliamentary committee set up to report on the embankment of the Thames and a road to be built along its bank within the city, which is to connect Westminster Bridge with Blackfriars Bridge.

The project, very costly, kills several birds with one stone— making London more attractive, cleaning up the Thames, creating more salubrious conditions, a splendid promenade, and finally a new way of communication intended to free the Strand, Fleet Street, and the other streets running parallel to the Thames from the flood of traffic overwhelming them and becoming more dangerous every day, a flood that almost reminds us of the satire of Juvenal’s in which a Roman makes his will before leaving the house, because he is almost sure of being run over or knocked down.

Now, on the section of the bank of the Thames which is to undergo this metamorphosis, on the north bank, east of Westminster Bridge and at the end of Whitehall there are the city residences of some major aristocrats, with their palaces and gardens stretching down to the Thames. Naturally, these gentlemen welcome the project by and large, because it would improve the immediate surroundings of their mansions at government expense and raise their value. They have only one reservation.

The projected construction should be interrupted at those points where it would directly cause the public road to run along their own estates and thus bring them into contact with the “misera contribuens plebs” The Olympian seclusion of the “fruges consumere nati” should not be disturbed by the sight, or the noise or the breath of the busy world of commoners. At the head of these noble Sybarites is the Duke of Buccleuch, who, as the richest and most powerful, went furthest in his “modest” demands. And lo and behold, the Parliamentary committee draws up its report in the spirit of the wishes of the Duke of Buccleuch! The new constructions are to be interrupted—where they would inconvenience the Duke of Buccleuch. On that committee of the Lower House are Lord Robert Montagu, a relative of the Duke, and Sir John Shelley, member for a part of London, Westminster. He may as well start looking for a suit of armour to protect him from the Armstrong bombs in the shape of rotten apples and eggs full of hydrogen sulphide that he is already threatened with at the coming elections.

On the committee’s report itself, The Times says:

“That Blue Book is a maze of ravellings. It consists of eight lines of Report, the rest being a chaos of, for the most part, worthless partisan opinions of members of the public and experts. There is no index, no analysis, no argument. We wander through a wishy-washy, everlasting flood of twaddle, without meeting with facts which we can test or estimates in which we can confide. When we think we are coming at last to some real expert testimony, the Committee suddenly interposes and refuses to hear any evidence discordant with the wishes of the Duke of Buccleuch. The book is a vast and ponderous suppressio veri, It has obviously been compiled with the object of making any substantive Parliamentary debate impossible. For this purpose, even the plan drawings have been suppressed, and are to be published post festum probably after the debate.”

In the wake of this scandal, the Londoner has raised two questions. First, who is this Duke of Buccleuch, this mighty man whose private caprices run counter to the interests of three million people? Who is this giant who single-handed challenges all of a London to a duel? Nobody knows the name of this man from any parliamentary battle. He sits in the Upper House but takes as little part in its work as a eunuch in the joys of the seraglio. The answers he gave before the committee suggest an abnormal lack of phosphorus in the substance of his brain. And so who is “that man Buccleuch”, as the London cockney says in his unceremonious manner? Answer: A descendant of the bastards that the “merry monarch” Charles II gave to the world with Lucy Parsons, the most shameless and notorious of his mistresses. That is “that man Buccleuch”! The second question that the Londoner raised was:

How did this Duke of Buccleuch come to own his “mansion” on the Thames? For the Londoner remembers that the land on which this “mansion” is built belongs to the crown and only eight years ago was managed by the royal Department of Lands and Woods.

The answer to this second question was not long in coming. In these matters the press here does not mince words. To characterise not only the case itself but also the manner in which the English press handles such delicate subjects I quote verbatim from last Saturday’s Reynolds’s Newspaper:

“The Duke of Buccleuch’s privilege of obstructing the proposed improvements in London is not seven or eight years old. In 1854, the duke became the lessee of Montagu House, Whitehall, by a stroke of sharp practice which in all probability would have brought a poor man face to face with a criminal judge at the Old Bailey. But the duke has a yearly income of 300,0001 and, in addition, the advantage of being the descendant of Lucie Parsons, the brazen paramour of the Merry Monarch. Montagu House was Crown property, and it was well known in 1854 that the site on which it stood would be required for public improvements. For this reason, Mr. Disraeli, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, refused to sign the lease drawn up for the duke. But, d’une manière ou d’une autre, the lease was signed. Mr. Disraeli was indignant at this, and denounced his successor, Mr. Gladstone, in the House of Commons for sacrificing the interests of the public to the private interests of a duke. Mr. Gladstone, in his usual ironically suave manner, owned that it was wrong to sign the duke’s lease, but thought there must be some special reason for it. A Parliamentary investigation ensued, when, lo! it was discovered that the signer of the lease was none other than—Mr. Disraeli himself.

“Here, then, comes the above-mentioned sharp practice, reeking of the criminal gang at the Old Bailey, by the noble descendant of Lucie Parsons. Mr. Disraeli declared that he was utterly unconscious of his having signed the lease. But he admitted the genuineness of his signature. No one doubts Mr. Disraeli’s veracity. What then is the explanation of the mystery? The noble descendant of Lucie Parsons used some tool or friend of his to smuggle in the lease for Montagu House among the mass of papers submitted to Mr. Disraeli for signature as part of his routine duties. Thus he signed it, not having the slightest idea of its contents. And thus Lucie Parsons’ descendant obtained the power to oppose his whims to the welfare of 3 million Londoners. The Parliamentary Committee has become the servile tool of his arrogance. If the dwellings of a thousand workmen, instead of the ill-gotten mansion of one Duke of Buccleuch, had been in the way, they would be instantly and remorselessly razed to the ground and their owners bundled out, without one farthing of compensation.”