treasury, was a sufficient
retort to the accusations of moral corruption which were levelled at
him. But the Tory money job, as it was called, was none the less a
huge mistake in tactics. Before it took place, the Federation loomed
large in the imagination of the public and the political parties.
This is conclusively proved by the fact that the Tories thought that
the Socialists could take enough votes from the Liberals to make it
worth while to pay the expenses of two Socialist candidates in
London. The day after the election everyone knew that the Socialists
were an absolutely negligeable quantity there as far as voting power
was concerned. They had presented the Tory party with 57 votes, at a
cost of about L8 apiece. What was worse, they had shocked London
Radicalism, to which Tory money was an utter abomination. It is hard
to say which cut the more foolish figure, the Tories who had spent
their money for nothing, or the Socialists who had sacrificed their
reputation for worse than nothing.

"The disaster was so obvious that there was an immediate falling off
from the Federation, on the one hand of the sane tacticians of the
movement, and on the other of those out-and-out Insurrectionists who
repudiated political action altogether, and were only too glad to be
able to point to a discreditable instance of it. Two resolutions were
passed, one by the Socialist League and the other by the Fabian
Society. Here is the Fabian resolution:

"'That the conduct of the Council of the Social-Democratic Federation
in accepting money from the Tory party in payment of the election
expenses of Socialist candidates is calculated to disgrace the
Socialist movement in England,'--4th Dec., 1885."

The result of this resolution, passed by 15 votes to 4, was the first of
the very few splits which are recorded in the history of the Society.
Frederick Keddell, the first honorary secretary, resigned and I took his
place, whilst a few weeks later Sidney Webb was elected to the vacancy
on the Executive.

In 1886 Socialism was prominently before the public. Unemployment
reached a height which has never since been touched. Messrs. Hyndman,
Champion, Burns, and Williams were actually tried for sedition, but
happily acquitted; and public opinion was justified in regarding
Socialism rather as destructive and disorderly than as constructive,
and, as is now often said, e