In
short, it is too silly to suppose that anybody could ever have discussed
the desirability of funds. The only thing that even idiots could ever
have discussed is the concealment of funds. Therefore, the whole
question that we have to consider is whether the concealment of
political money-transactions, the purchase of peerages, the payment of
election expenses, is a kind of concealment that falls under any of the
three classes I have mentioned as those in which human custom and
instinct does permit us to conceal. I have suggested three kinds of
secrecy which are human and defensible. Can this institution be defended
by means of any of them?
Now the question is whether this political secrecy is of any of the
kinds that can be called legitimate. We have roughly divided legitimate
secrets into three classes. First comes the secret that is only kept in
order to be revealed, as in the detective stories; secondly, the secret
which is kept because everybody knows it, as in sex; and third, the
secret which is kept because it is too delicate and vague to be
explained at all, as in the choice of a country walk. Do any of these
broad human divisions cover such a case as that of secrecy of the
political and party finances? It would be absurd, and even delightfully
absurd, to pretend that any of them did.
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