This salutary truth had been arrived at, of course, by many other
channels. The scandalous arrangement between the Front Benches which
forced the Insurance Act down our throats was an eye-opener for the
great masses of the people. So was the cynical action of the
politicians in the matter of Chinese Labour after the Election of
1906. So was the puerile stage play indulged in over things like the
Welsh Disestablishment Bill and the Education Bills.

But among the forces which opened people's eyes about the House of
Commons, the Free Press played a very great part, though it was never
mentioned in the big Official papers, and though not one man in many
hundreds of the public ever heard of it. The few who read it were
startled into acceptance by the exact correspondence between its
statement and observed fact.

The man who tells the truth when his colleagues around him are lying,
always enjoys a certain restricted power of prophecy. If there were a
general conspiracy to maintain the falsehood that all peers were over
six foot high, a man desiring to correct this falsehood would be
perfectly safe if he were to say: "I do not know whether the _next_
peer you meet will be over six foot or not, but I am pretty safe in
prophesying that you will find, among the next dozen three or four
peers less than six foot high."

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. T