buy the shares before April 19. And as we have
seen, they opened on that day at L3.5.0.]

(2) They--and through the Chief Whip's action the whole Liberal
Party, though it did not know it--were financially interested in the
acceptance by Parliament of the contract. For though they had not
bought shares in the English Company (with which the contract was
being made) but with the American Company (which had no direct
interest in the contract), none the less it would have lowered the
value of the American shares if the British Parliament had rejected
the Marconi System and chosen some other in preference. I may say at
once that I feel no certainty that the transaction was a sinister
effort to bribe ministers. But had it been, exactly the right
ministers were chosen. They were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who
has charge of the nation's purse; the Attorney-General, who advises
upon the legality of actions proposed; the Chief Whip, who takes the
Party forces into the voting lobby. It was this same Chief Whip, the
Master of Elibank, that had carried the sale of honours to a new
height in his devotion to the increase of his Party's funds.

II. THE PARLIAMENTARY ENQUIRY

On July 19, 1912, the contract was put on the table of the House of
Commons. In the ordinary course it would have come up for a vote some
time before the end of the Parliamentary Session. But criticism of
the contract was growing on the ground that it was too favourable to
the Marconi Company. And rumours were flying that members of the
Government had been gambling in Marconi shares (which, as we have
seen, they had, though not in English Marconis).

Even before the tabling of the contract, members of Parliament,
notably Major Archer-Shee, a Conservative, had been harrying Mr.
Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-General. On July 20, and in weekly
articles following, it was attacked as a thoroughly bad contract by a
writer in the _Outlook_, Mr. W. R. Lawson. On August 1, a Labour
Member asked a question in the House about the rising price of
Marconis. The feeling that enquiry was needed was so strong that on
August 6, the last day but one of the session, the Prime Minister
(who knew something of his colleagues' purchase of Marconis but never
mentioned it) promised the House that the Marconi Agreement would not
be rushed through without full discussion. In spite of this Herbert
Samuel* and Elibank both tried hard to get the contract approved that
day or the ne