CHEQUERS ESTATE BILL. (Hansard, 18 December 1917)

§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)
My Lords, before we proceed with the business of the afternoon—the discussion of the Representation of the People Bill—I have to ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to a measure, small in itself, yet big with consequence. It is a Bill to give validity to the deed of settlement by which Sir Arthur and Lady Lee have presented the historic house and estate of Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, to the nation for the enjoyment of the Prime Ministers of the future, or, failing them, of other high officers of State. I am sure you will all agree that this is a splendid idea, as generously executed as it has been nobly planned. Others, perhaps, have dreamt of the idea of presenting an official residence in the country to the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, but it has been reserved for Sir Arthur and Lady Lee to carry the idea into execution.
My Lords, we like to think in this country of our statesmen, at the end of a hard week of work in Downing-street, going down to enjoy the repose and to bear their share in the interests of the countryside. Burke at Beaconsfield, Canning at South Hill, Disraeli at Hughenden, and Gladstone at Hawarden—all these are pictures dear to their contemporaries and enshrined in the memories of the nation. But it must be remembered that in the case of these places, very often at some distance from the metropolis, the statesmen who owned or occupied them could only go down in vacation; they enjoyed them in most cases only by the accident of ownership, and could not so have enjoyed them had they not been possessors of independent means. What grateful use can be made by public men of an official residence presented to them by the nation is shown by the historic example of Walmer Castle, the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Two of the most distinguished men who occupied that building and made it their home wore Pitt and Wellington. There, as we know from the records of the time Pitt planted his garden, cultivated his farm, and drilled his volun- 224 teers. There to this day is the bed in which he slept, and the dining-room chairs in which he entertained his friends. The great Duke of Wellington spent a considerable part of each year at Walmer Castle for something like thirty years, and one of the historic possessions of the nation is the little room still furnished with the humble camp bed on which he slept and the arm chair in which he died.
At the other end of the world we have an even more striking illustration of the opportunity which is afforded by the generosity of Sir Arthur and Lady Lee. I speak of the famous Dutch house built at Groote Schuur by Mr. Cecil Rhodes and left by him in his will as the future residence of the Prime Ministers of the South African State. Some of us have stayed in that building. I was there at the time when the Constitution of the South African Commonwealth was being framed, and well do I remember that place as the rendezvous of statesmen of every type and party, a temple of reconciliation, and a haunt of peace.
Now, my Lords, Sir Arthur and Lady Lee have come forward, and with a similar object in view are presenting the Chequers house and estate to the nation. How appropriate is the gift for the purpose for which it is intended! Standing in one of the most romantic sites in the Home Counties, amid typical English scenery, within easy reach of London, itself an example of the most characteristic period of English architecture, consecrated by historic memories, repaired and embellished with refined taste, stored with priceless objects, and invested with every amenity that natural beauty or cultured taste can supply—this is a unique possession for which the nation will be grateful and for which its future occupants will be more grateful still. As the Prime Ministers of the future, at the end of a week of toil, fly away from the fumum et opes strepitumque Romœ and go down to this charming spot, they will forget in that favoured retreat Parliaments and Cabinets and what the late Lord Lytton so wittily described as "the despotism of red boxes, tempered only by the occasional loss of keys," and they will be tempted, I am sure, to exclaim, in the words of the famous Persian couplet inscribed over one of the marble arches in the beautiful Hall of Private Audience at Delhi, "If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here."
225 I feel that if I continue to address your Lordships I shall lapse still further into discursive quotation, and therefore I had better close by asking you to give a Second Reading to the Bill which provides for the dedication of this princely gift to the nation. I will only add that to-morrow, if you give a Second Reading to the Bill to-day. I shall ask you to suspend Standing Order No. XXXIX in order to pass the Bill through its remaining stages, and to introduce, in Committee, an unimportant but necessary Amendment on a matter of legal form. I beg to move.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE
My Lords, I think we should hardly be excused if some voice from this Bench did not add a few words to the eloquent speech which has been made by the noble Earl who leads the House expressing the gratitude of all your Lordships for this remarkable and splendid gift of Sir Arthur and Lady Lee. I will do so in the fewest words, and with a complete abstinence from that flow of quotation into which my noble friend opposite said he might be tempted. We shall all agree that the gift is in itself a most noble and generous one, but what I think specially signalises this Bill is the obviously close care and attention which has been given by the donors to all the possible circumstances that might arise in connection with it. Of the last seven or eight Prime Ministers there have been, I think, at least four who, for one reason or another, would not have been able to avail themselves of the accommodation afforded by this gift. Some such future possibility has been foreseen by the donors, and they have made elaborate provision for a possible refusal by the Prime Minister, or by other high officers of State, to take advantage of this beautiful residence. All this shows a most delicate and attentive care on the part of the donors to which I think a tribute ought to be paid in addition to that which is first raised in the mind—namely the princely generosity which has inspired them. I need not say that I most cordially support the Second Reading of the measure.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
My Lords, there are two or three sentences which I should like to add, not in qualification of the approbation which everybody must feel for the generosity of the gift and the admirable care with which it is framed. 226 It is a splendid piece of public spirit which has animated Sir Arthur Lee. But I was concerned at the imaginative flights into which the noble Earl opposite lapsed in regard to the Prime Ministers of the future. The picture of a Prime Minister flying down to the country and taking his leisure amid the beauties of the Chequers is not my conception of what the Prime Minister is likely to find for himself. My conception of what is in store for him is very different. I doubt whether, with the enormous volume of public business always increasing and becoming more and more complicated in the reconstruction period after this war and continuing to grow, the Prime Minister will be able to do his duty if he absents himself from town much in the week-end. In the good old days, when there was little to do compared to what there is now, it was all very well; but I venture to say that there are few things which have embarrassed Governments and from which Ministers have suffered more than the absence of their colleagues from town during the week-ends. The very period for quiet consultation is the period that has been abstracted. All I wish to say is that, while joining in the appreciation which your Lordships are offering of Sir Arthur Lee's most generous gift. I wish wholly to dissociate myself from the picture which the Leader of the House has drawn of the future of the Prime Minister. I think it is totally inadequate to what are likely to be the realities of the position.