TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW LIBERALISM.
THE public in a dim way realise that all is not well with the Liberal Party, and that the influence of the Socialists is likely to bring it into a position of great perplexity, if not, indeed, to ruin it altogether. But though the public are right in thinking that somehow or other the Socialists are exerting a baneful influence on the Liberal Party, they do not as yet realise the way in which the mischief is working. They fancy that it will be owing to a direct split or conflict between the two sections of the party. In our opinion, this is not how the danger will arise. The immediate peril will, we believe, spring from the restlessness and ambition of certain Liberal leaders who think that the old Liberalism is played out, and who wish to develop a new Liberalism of their own which they imagine will secure popular support for their party. Though at present there are only small signs and tentative suggestions of this new Liberalism, those who look closely into the matter will see that an unauthorised programme is being prepared, and that the situation is not unlike that which existed towards the end of Mr. Gladstone's great Administration—that of 1880—when Mr. Chamberlain was showing signs of restlessness and of a desire to upset the old family coach. Yet another analogy is to be found in the period when Lord Randolph Churchill began to talk about " the old gang," and to insist that new wine must be put into the old bottles. To take an even closer illustra- tion, the Liberal leaders of whom we are now speaking are thinking the same kind of thoughts which Mr. Chamberlain thought at the beginning of 1903, when be came to the determination that something must be done to popularise Unionism, and when he decided that Imperial Preference and Tariff Reform was the policy which would best rejuvenate the flagging energies of the party. " Not a very good omen for a development on similar lines," it will be said. We agree ; but it is the peculiarity of party politicians never to take the warnings of history. They always imagine that they have some sort of amulet which will save them from the consequences which overtook Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph. Churchill in the instances we have named.
The new policy towards which, as we have said, certain leaders of the Liberal Party are working has not yet been set forth in detail, but its main outlines are clear enough. The advocates of the new Liberalism observe, or think they observe, that the democracy is getting tired of mere Free-trade and of a policy based mainly on the doctrines of free exchange. They think also that trade is going to be bad in the next few years, and that there will be a large amount of unemployment. In these circumstances, they hold that it will be impossible to maintain what they call a merely negative and conservative Free-trade policy. Like Mr. Chamberlain, they think they must " do something " to encourage trade and commerce and secure more employ- ment. But they cannot compass this end by the simple method. of proposing Protection through Custom-duties. That ground has already been covered by Mr. Chamber- lain, and is not therefore open to them. Nevertheless, there are, in their opinion, other methods by which the State can foster and protect home industries, methods allied to the giving of bounties rather than to the indirect protecting and fostering which come by forbidding foreign competition. Those who are fond of investigating the scientific encourage- ment of commerce in foreign countries notice that in Germany and France, and indeed in most of the Con- tinental countries, a great deal can be done, or rather can be attempted, both in the monopolising of the home market and in competing for trade abroad, by means of very low railway and canal rates,—rates so low that no dividend-earning concern could possibly give them, which could only be given, in fact, if the Government owned or controlled " transportation." To put the matter plainly, if the Government owned the canals and railways the State would have a means of fostering industry without recourse to Tariff-made Protection. Therefore the State acquisition of railways and canals is coming to be regarded by the advocates of the new Liberalism as a necessary plank in their policy of fostering trade and employment. And it has this extra advantage in their eyes. Although the policy may be proclaimed as in no sense Socialistic, but, indeed, as in truth anti-Socialistic, it commands the support of the Socialists, who eagerly desire the nationalisation of railways as the first step towards making the State the universal employer. As to the unwisdom of trying to outbid the Tariff Reformers, and the absolute madness of regarding so vast a change as the nationalisation of railways, with the consequence of the direct employment of some million or so of men, as a mere incident of the new policy, we shall say nothing at present. Our object at the moment is merely to draw public atten- tion to the new development, and to try to make the more sober members of the Liberal Party realise what is happening behind their backs while they are foolishly imagining that the most serious matter on their hands is a squabble with the House of Lords over a Scottish Land Bill.
We have given in outline the policy of the new Liberalism. It remains to show the grounds upon which we have arrived at our conclusions. In the first place, we would point to the acts and speeches of Mr. Lloyd. George during the past year, and especially to the speech he made at the Queen's Hall about a fortnight ago, a speech briefly noticed in our last issue. In that speech Mr. Lloyd-George declared that Governments could do more than they had done to promote British trade and industry if they appealed to the best brains to formulate a great policy. Unless Free-traders had such a policy, they would find that the commercial community would fly to Protection as a city of refuge against foreign competition, and that workmen would fly to Socialism as a protection against unemployment. We did not like the ring of these words when we first read them, and a closer examination has led us to the conclusion that what Mr. Lloyd-George had in his mind was very much what we have described above. Those who know Mr. Lloyd-George's inner mind will, we venture to assert, if they are candid, find it impossible to deny that what he is feeling for at the moment is the nationalisation of the railways iu order to give what are in effect bounties for the encouragement and protection of trade. In other words, Mr. Lloyd-George is, if we read him aright, at heart a protectionist, though as at present advised he would no doubt very much prefer to establish his new and patent form of protection directly rather than indirectly. The easier and more convenient system of fostering may perhaps come later ; and if the wind holds in the present quarter, we may yet see him finding salvation in a tariff to secure a minimum standard of wage and comfort for home workers.' When once the main position is aban- doned, and it is admitted to be the business of Govern- ment to foster and protect trade and commerce, Free- trade is soon surrendered altogether. Mr. Lloyd-George is a very able man, and has very little to learn in what we may call scientific party politics. Unfortunately, however, for the nation, and also, in the highest sense, for himself, be is a very restless as well as a very ambitious man. The result will in all probability be a career not unlike that of Mr. Chamberlain, in which the rainbow will always be in the next field.
The next witness whom we shall call to support our view of the new Liberalism is Mr. Winston Churchill. His wordy paper entitled " The Untrodden Field in Politics " which appeared in the Nation of last Saturday is one of those political manifestoes in which no observer of experience can fail to recognise the marks and signs of conspiration for a new departure and a new adventure. When politicians become vague, pompous, and ambiguous in language, and use " tall ' talk as to the need. of doing something for the people with a big " P," it is always as well to look out for squalls on the political ocean. Mr. Winston Churchill's paper has all these marks and signs written large upon it. lie begins by suggesting that the Liberal Party was placed for a time in a position of unnatural conservatism by having to defend Free-trade. " The defensive role of moderator was not congenial to a democratic and Radical Party, and cannot but be out of harmony with its essential character." Now, however, " Radicalism is back again in the collar," and the forces behind the present Administration are strong enough, "if boldly commanded, not only to ward off the dangers of Protection, but at the same time to urge forward the social march." Mr. Winston Churchill then goes on to point out that the present House of Commons is pervaded by a social spirit " which is all the more lively and earnest because it has yet to find clear-cut and logical formularies of articulate expression " :- "A great body of opinion is slowly moving forward, conscious of possessing in its midst a vital truth, conscious, too, of the almost superhuman difficulty of affording to it any definition at
once sufficiently comprehensive and precise It is in such a situation, party and national, that the movement towards a Minimum Standard may well take conscious form. It is a mood rather than a policy ; but it is a mood which makes it easy to perceive the correlation of many various sets of ideas, and to refer all sorts of isolated acts of legislation to one central and common test We see the curse of unregulated casual employment steadily rotting the under side of the labour market. There are political philosophers who complacently resign themselves to the doctrine of the residuum It is false and base to say that these evils, and others like them, too many here to set forth, are inherent in the nature of things, that their remedy is beyond the wit of man, that experiment is foolhardy, that all is for the best in Merrie England.' No one will believe it any more. That incredulity is one of the most noteworthy features in the evolution of public opinion to-day. The nation, which is greater than either party, demands the application of drastic corrective and curative processes, and will crown with confidence and honour any party which has the strength and
wisdom necessary for that noble crusade But the future offers larger hopes and sterner labours. We have to contemplate the serious undertaking by the State of the elimination of casual employment through the agency of Labour Exchanges, and the scientific treatment, in every conceivable classification, of any unabsorbed residuum that may exist. The House of Commons has unanimously approVed the institution of Wages Boards in certain notoriously 'sweated' industries, and this principle may be.found capable of almost indefinite extension in those industries which employ parasitically underpaid labour. We have to seek, whether through the acquisition of the railways or canals, or by the development of certain national industries like Afforestation, the means of counterbalancing the natural fluctuations of world trade."
From this hubbub of words it is evident that Mr. Winston Churchill, just now at any rate, would like to establish not only a minimum wage and the principles of the Sweating Bill, but also those of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald's Unemployed Bill. Far more . important, however, is his endorsement, in the passage which we have printed in italics, of the scheme which is apparently fermenting in Mr. Lloyd-George's brain for nationalising the railways and canals, and by these and other ways giving bounties to our home industries.
Here, then, is the new Liberalism, the new unauthorised programme. Is the Liberal Party going to let itself be committed to this policy gradually and inch by inch, or will it have the wisdom to keep in the old paths, and not be afraid of true Free-trade and the consequent conservatism of attitude of which Mr. Winston Churchill complains ? We fear that there is little hope of any real and serious pro- tests in the Liberal Party against these new developments. No doubt there will be a good deal of grumbling at first, and a good deal of talk in certain quarters about it being utterly unimportant what Mr. Lloyd-George and Mr. Winston Churchill may say, since they have no power to commit the party. Unfortunately, however, the big battalions are in reality with them, and there will not, we venture to prophesy, be anv real resistance either in the Cabinet or in the party. The die was cast when, without effective objection from their Free-trade colleagues in the Cabinet or from the party, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer committed themselves to the policy of old-age pensions. No doubt Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman and Mr. Asquith thought that they could somehow square the circle and reconcile the adoption of Socialism with resistance to . the policy of the Socialists. Mr. Asquith and his supporters are finding out, now that it is too late, that they have abandoned an outwork so important that the citadel can no longer be held.
The only chance left is for Mr. Asquith and his colleagues frankly to admit their mistake, and to announce that after reconsideration they have come to the conclusion that it will be impossible for them to adopt the policy of old-age pensions ; that they mean to carry out the sound Liberal policy of reducing taxation. instead ; and that accordingly they are going to abolish the Sugar-duty, and thus free not only the food of the people, but also a most important raw material, from taxation. Alas ! that is a suggestion far too heroic for the present Cabinet. What is much more likely is that we shall hear a good many sound abstract speeches in regard to freedom, Free-trade, and free exchange made from the Treasury Bench., speeches which will at once be contradicted by votes for what are in effect Protec- tionist measures. When the Dissolution comes no doubt I the banner emblazoned with the nationalising of the rail- ways and the fostering of home industries and home employment—the significance of which we have now ferreted out—will be waved aloft before the electorate. Unless we are very much mistaken, however, those who desire Protection will decide to deal with " the old firm." The British public always prefer the real thing to an imitation placed on the market for competitive purposes.
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