the same business of fitly rearing, housing, distributing, coordinating, and training for
war and peace the people of this commonwealth; a party which seems to have no name,
no official leader, no paper even, but which I believe, when it comes by a soul and a
voice, will prove to include a majority of the British in Britain and a still greater majority
of the British overseas." (2) There can be no doubt that these were Milner's sentiments.
He hoped to give that unformed party "a soul and a voice," and he intended to do this
apart from party politics. When he was offered the position of president of the imperial
federalist organization he refused it, but wrote to the secretary, Mr. F. H. Congdon, as
follows:
“Personally I have no political interest worth mentioning, except the maintenance of
the Imperial connection, and I look upon the future with alarm. The party system at home
and in the Colonies seems to me to work for the severance of ties, and that contrary to the
desire of our people on both sides. It is a melancholy instance of the manner in which bad
political arrangements, lauded to the skies from year s end to year's end as the best in the
world, may not only injure the interests, but actually frustrate the desires of the people. I
can see no remedy or protection, under the present circumstances, except a powerful
body of men—and it would have to be very powerful—determined at all times and under
all circumstances to vote and work, regardless of every other circumstance, against the
man or party who played fast and loose with the cause of National Unity. You can be sure
that for my own part I shall always do that....”(3)
Milner, in his distaste for party politics and for the parliamentary system, and in his
emphasis on administration for social welfare, national unity, and imperial federation,
was an early example of what James Burnham has called the "managerial revolution"—
that is, the growth of a group of managers, behind the scenes and beyond the control of
public opinion, who seek efficiently to obtain what they regard as good for the people. To
a considerable extent this point of view became part of the ideology of the Milner Group,
although not of its most articulate members, like Lionel Curtis, who continued to regard
democracy as a good in itself.
Milner's own antipathy to democracy as practiced in the existing party and
parliamentary system is obvious. Writing to his old friend Sir Clinton Dawkins, who had
been, with Milner, a member of the Toynbee group in 1879-1884, he said in 1902: "Two
things constantly strike me. One is the soundness of the British nation as a whole,
contrasted with the rottenness of party politics." About the same time he wrote to another
old Balliol associate, George Parkin: "I am strongly impressed by two things: one that the
heart of the nation is sound,—and secondly that our constitution and methods are
antiquated and bad, and the real sound feeling of the nation does not get a chance of
making itself effective." Two years later he wrote to a friend of Rhodes, Sir Lewis
Michell: "Representative government has its merits, no doubt, but the influence of
representative assemblies, organized on the party system, upon administration—
'government' in the true sense of the word—is almost uniformly bad."(4)
With sentiments such as these, Milner laid down the duties of public office with relief
and devoted himself, not to private affairs, but to the secret public matters associated with
his "Association of Helpers." To support himself during this period, Milner acted as
confidential adviser to certain international financiers in London's financial district. His
entree to this lucrative occupation may have been obtained through Lord Esher, who had
just retired from a similar well-remunerated collaboration with Sir Ernest Cassel.
Milner's most important work in this period was concerned with the administration of
the Rhodes Trust and the contacts with Oxford University which arose out of this and
from his own position as a Fellow of New College.
The Rhodes Trust was already in operation when Milner returned from Africa in 1905,
with the actual management of the scholarships in the hands of George Parkin, who had
been brought from his position as Principal of Upper Canada College by Milner. He held
the post for eighteen years (1902-1920). The year following his appointment, an Oxford
secretary to the trustees was appointed to handle the local work during Parkin's extended
absences. This appointment went to Francis Wylie (Sir Francis since 1929), Fellow and
tutor of Brasenose, who was named by the influence of Lord Rosebery, whose sons he
had tutored.(5) The real control of the trust has rested with the Milner Group from 1902
to the present. Milner was the only really active trustee and he controlled the bureaucracy
which handled the trust. As secretary to the trustees before 1929, we find, for example,
George Parkin (1902-1920), Geoffrey Dawson (1921-1922), Edward Grigg (1922-1925),