TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TEE NEW PRIME MINISTER AND THE NEW GOVERNMENT.
MR. ASQUITH and the new Government will unquestionably start work with hopeful omens. Not only has the country very favourable expecta- tions of Mr. Asquith's conduct of public affairs, but there is also to be taken into account the national characteristic which demands fair play and a clear course for any man who undertakes a new and difficult job.
"Let him have his chance" is a principle of universal application with the ordinary Englishman. Of course this " law " for the new man is not a period which lasts for very long. Still, it is one which rests on genuine feeling, and cannot but have its effect on the new Prime Minister and the new Government. We say the " new " Government advisedly, and in spite of the fact that by far the greater part of the Cabinet will consist of men who have been in office since the autumn of 1905. No doubt in one sense the new Cabinet will only be the old Cabinet with the addition of two or three new members. Nevertheless, Mr. Asquith's Administration will be essentially a new Government, and influenced and controlled by new forces. Not only will the directing head be changed, but the corporate entity will also be altered, and there will be a general desire for a fresh departure. It will, in fact, be a great deal more than the old Cabinet with a difference. Admitting this, it is interesting to speculate as to which of the three distinct forms of Cabinet administration we are to live under during the next few years. The first of these is the Departmental Cabinet, of which the late Cabinet was a striking example, in which each Minister is very largely a law unto himself, and conducts the business of his office without interference from his colleagues and without any desire to interfere with them. The Cabinet meets, of course, and discusses matters, but the general rule is : "If you don't bother me, I won't bother you." The result of such a system, as we pointed out some time ago, is at first to produce an atmosphere of apparent harmony. Ministers are very busy and very much absorbed in their own affairs, and the primary effect of each man minding his own business is the avoidance of all friction. Ultimately, however, the cost of such avoidance of friction has to be met. Bills, in a literal and a metaphorical sense, are run up in every direc- tion, and their payment has to be faced, often with results very disagreeable to men who a year or two before boasted how smoothly things were going.
The next kind of government to be considered is that in which the Prime Minister is everything and the rest of the Ministry not so much his colleagues as his subordinates. Though not in form, yet in substance Mr. Gladstone's two last Cabinets took this shape, as also did Lord Beacons- fields second Administration. There is unquestionably a good deal to be said for this system. It requires, however, a Prime Minister either possessed of an extraordinary power of influencing men, or else one with an ascendency in the country which makes resistance to his wishes practically impossible. The danger of the system is to be found in the fact that there is always the possibility of the Prime Minister being got bold of by a clique in the Cabinet, or else by a clique outside, and of thus becoming subject to influences which the majority of his colleagues may bitterly resent even though they cannot resist. Finally, there is the true Cabinet system, of which we have had no very good examples recently, but which prevailed in former generations,—the Government in which the Cabinet really rules, and in which the Prime Minister is rather the foreman of the works who acts for the Cabinet as a whole than the autocratic head. In a Government of this kind all important measures are carefully, and not merely conventionally, discussed and criticised in the Cabinet before any public announcement is made in regard to them, and the order of the day is always : "Nothing can be said or done till the opinion of the Cabinet has been taken." In such a Cabinet the Prime Minister's influence is indirect rather than direct, and is exerted chiefly to ascertaining and making the collective will operative rather than to obtaining a triumph for his own views. We admit that there are considerable drawbacks to such a system. It makes for inaction rather than for action, and for slowness rather than for swiftness. It saves an Administration from follies of commission, but is apt to land them in those of omission, especially in foreign affairs, and when they are opposed by some able wielder of autocratic power on the Continent such as Bismarck. On the whole, however, we are inclined to think that this last system is the best,—that is, the least likely to produce bad results for the country and for Ministers. But it demands great vigilance and great circumspection on the part of the Prime Minister. It remains to be seen which of these forms the new Government will adopt. For ourselves, we trust it will not be the Departmental form, the ill effects of which are so apparent just now. What we believe would suit the situation of the country best would be an old-fashioned Cabinet Government. The difficulty, however, of getting Ministers who have been accustomed for two years to act almost entirely on their own responsibility to agree to such a change must obviously be very great. Therefore we fear that a Departmental Cabinet is likely to be still our fate.
It remains to ask what will be the policy of the new. Government. We say plainly that if it is to be the policy of that which it succeeds, its life will be short and precarious. If, however, it has the courage to conduct a new policy, then it may very well be that it will regain the confidence of the country. What should this new policy be ? The Westminster Gazette in a very able and striking leading article on Monday declares that "the Government will more and more have to remember that they are the trustees of Free-trade." We need hardly say that nothing could be more satisfactory to us than such a change as this. As soon as the General Election was over, we ventured to tell the Government that they were placed in office as "the trustees of Free-trade," and that it was their duty to act as trustees, and to remember that a victory won on the Free-trade issue did not give them the right to use their triumph to carry all sorts of purely party measures. On several other occasions during the course of the last two years we have reminded the Govern- ment of this trusteeship, but, unfortunately, with very little encouragement. Indeed, our Liberal contemporaries, including, if we remember rightly, the Westminster Gazette, told us in polite language to mind our own business, and added that we must not forget that the Govern- ment were a Liberal Government, and that they had other things besides Free-trade to think about. Though Free- trade was no doubt very important, it was no& everything. That was in effect, though not, of course, in words, the answer we received. Our satisfaction, then, in finding the Westminster Gazette a convert to the principle that the Government are primarily "trustees of Free-trade" is naturally very great.
But it is no good to accept this principle merely in words. If it is to be of any use to the cause of Free- trade, it must be followed by action, and by action of a kind which, we fully admit, will necessarily be disagreeable to a great many Liberals, including the editor of the West- minster Gazette. It is useless for a trustee to make fine speeches about his devotion to the duties of his office as a preliminary to a breach of trust. If the trustee theory means anything more than empty words, it must mean that the Liberals should refrain from doing that which later is certain to lead to the overthrow of our present fiscal system. They must not lay the foundations of Protection in the name of free exchange. As all true Free-traders know, the short cut to Protection is through large national expenditure. The last and most effective alias for Tariff Reform is "broadening the basis of taxation." To broaden the basis of taxation you require an excuse, and that excuse is the necessity for raising a huge revenue. Mr. Balfour, wishing to find a reason for putting himself right with his own friends, told the House of Commons the other day that in order to carry out social reform a great deal of money would be wanted, and that this money can only be got by broadening the basis of taxation, —in other words, by a tariff. It is idle for Liberals to say that they mean to have large expenditure and still keep our present fiscal system. They must know in their hearts that such an assertion is untrue. They realise, also, if they are honest to themselves and the nation, that they will sooner or later be succeeded by a Government under no obligations to Free-trade, and that such a Government will find in large expenditure exactly the easy road to Protection which they desire. That being so, it must surely be the duty of those who consider themselves first and foremost the trustees of Free-trade to avoid bloated expenditure. But considering the dangers of the European situation, and therefore the necessity of strong armaments, there is only one way of keeping taxation within reasonable bounds, and that is by the avoidance of large expenditure on so-called social reforms. Yet the Government are con- templating the most expensive and the most dangerous of all proposals for social reform. It is impossible to adopt old-age pensions without an expenditure of at least eight millions a year, and this will only lay the foundations of a scheme which will ultimately cost thirty millions a year. If once the country is committed to a system of old-age pensions, the cry of the Tariff Reformers, "Put us in office and we will finish the job which the Government have begun, but have not had the pluck or the wit or the ability to carry through," will be irresistible. Therefore there is no exaggeration in saying that the Government, if they persist in their scheme of old-age pensions, will be guilty of a breach of that trustee- ship in regard to Free-trade which the Westminster Gazette places as their ideal. Unfortunately the Westminster seems to be totally unaware of this fact, for a few lines below our previous quotation come the words : "We look forward to a Session devoted in the main to the reform of the Poor Law, and accompanying this, a serious attempt to deal with the question of the unemployed." Poor Law reform is, of course, a euphemism for old-age pensions,—that is, for indiscriminate outdoor relief to aged persons to the tune of at least eight millions a year. For such a trusteeship in the matter of Free-trade we say at once that we have no use. If the new Government really desire to win the right to call themselves the trustees of Free-trade, they must abandon their proposals in the matter of old-age pensions. This is a test case, and we sincerely trust that those Unionist Free-traders who agree with the Spectator, and who offer a true and not a lip service to Free-trade, will at the coming by-elections remember that it is a test case. A Government who lay the foundations for a universal system of old-age pensions are also laying the foundations of Protection, and cannot possibly claim to be trustees of Free-trade.
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