A.P. Herbert, whose works adorn our more-or-less annual celebration of Income Tax Day, provides a reading for our friends in the District to consider as they take on their legislative duties. This is a portion of one of Herbert's aptly-titled "Misleading Cases in the Common Law," headed "In Re MacAlister," and subtitled "What is the Liberal Party?" An elderly woman has died and left one million pounds to "the Liberal Party," and thirteen different political parties each assert that they are the one true Liberal Party. The judge's efforts to forge a compromise fail, and, as he says, "it says much for the sincerity with which these colleagues detest each other that, rather than share a common bank-balance, they would cheerfully continue with thirteen independent overdrafts." So Mr. Justice Tooth must decide which one of the thirteen Liberal Parties is the Liberal Party, which he does by looking at the principles for which they stand. The rest is quoted from the story, with some light abridgment:
I have therefore turned my attention in another direction, which was suggested by one of the plaintiffs, a Mr. Haddock of Hammersmith, who confesses frankly that the Liberal Party which he represents is a party of one, but insists nevertheless that it is the only Liberal Party. It has struck me as odd that no one of the distinguished Liberals concerned in this case has used the word Liberty, and had it not been for the obscure Mr. Haddock the subject might never have entered my head. But Mr. Haddock has argued with some force that there must at one time have been some shadowy connexion between the Liberal Party and the idea of Liberty. Now in cross-examination, the witnesses Asquith, George, Grey, Simon, Runciman, and indeed nearly all the plaintiffs, have confessed that they have been guilty from time to time of legislation, or proposals for legislation, of which the main purpose was to make people do something which they did not wish to do, or prevent people from doing something which they did wish to do. Few of them could point to an item in their legislative programmes which had any other purpose, and, with the single exception of Mr. Haddock, they have no legislation to suggest of which the purpose is to allow people to do something which they cannot do already. On the contrary, it appears, they are as anxious as any other party in Parliament to make rules and regulations for the eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing of the British citizen. On these grounds, therefore, Mr. Haddock has argued that these plaintiffs have not the idea of liberty in the forefront of their political equipment, and do not therefore deserve the name of Liberal. Mr. Haddock's own programme is simple: (a) to propose no legislation unless its purpose is to allow people to do what they like, and (b) to support no legislation whose purpose is to stop people from doing what they like.
Here and there, he admitted, good cause being shown, he is prepared to compromise; but that, prima facie, is his foundation and beginning. For example, the first measures which he intends to introduce are a Bill to repeal the Marriage Act of 1886, by which a wedding may not take place after three o'clock in the afternoon, a Bill to allow the sale of Bodily Refreshments at any Hour at which Any One is Willing to Sell Them; a Bill for the Institution of the Death Penalty for Police Officers who Enter Respectable Clubs Disguised in Evening Dress, Bills to amend the laws relating to Divorce, Lotteries and Gaming, Sunday Toil and Entertainment, and other beneficent measures whose purpose is neither to improve, uplift, enrich, nor reform the British subject, but to increase, by however little, his liberty and contentment.