Why, then, has Lord Rosebery thought it necessary to dash,
or seem to dash, the hopes of his party just as it is going into action? No one knows better than he how necessary it is that the country should give "an overwhelm- ing and final answer" on he issue between Free-trade and Protection. Yet he has himself helped to obscure that issue by his speech at Bodmin, and he did not wholly disperse the cloud by his address to the Liberal League on Monday. The Spectator is an older and more consistent opponent of Home-rule than Lord Rosebery, but the alarm which has taken possession of him seems to us absolutely imaginary. has his strong and his weak points, and among Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's many merits his warmest friends would hardly reckon a happy selection of phrases at critical moments. But the words of the Stirling speech, taken as a whole, seem to us to-day, as they seemed when we first read them, to constitute a sufficient correction to any possible misunderstanding of an isolated position. Sir Henry, it must be remembered, is a convinced and consistent Home-ruler. Of course it is open to any one to say that, this being so, he is not fitted to be Prime Minister. But this is only another way of saying that the Liberal party are not fitted to hold office, and that all Englishmen have to do is to sit down patiently while their tariff is being reconstructed, and watch Mr. Balfour inventing reasons for imposing the duties devised by Mr. Chamberlain and his Commission. The Liberal party is what its antecedents have made it, and among those antecedents is the great controversy which nineteen years ago divided it into two parts. But the battle of Free-trade has to be fought with the weapons which lie within our reach ; and if the Liberal party is to be excluded, what weapons will be left us ? Are we to enter upon the conflict with no support more numerous or more vigorous than that of the Unionist Free-traders ? We have no wish to say unkind things of our own friends, but we must ask what would be the prospects of Free- trade if that were all it had to depend on. The co-opera- tion of the Liberal party is clearly essential to the defeat of Protection.
Fairly interpreted, we can see nothing in the passage in the Stirling speech to which Lord Rosebery con- tinues to attach so much importance that justifies, still less that necessitates, the interpretation he places on it. We are sincerely sorry that he should have misread it in this fashion, because his reference to it at Bodmin was certainly calculated to do harm to the cause of Free- trade at the coming Election, though we may hope that the mischief has to a great extent been removed by the entrance into the Cabinet of Lord Rosebery's most trusted friends, who are as much opposed to the repeal of the Union as himself. We repeat our statement of last week, superfluous as it now is to do so, that the Government have no intention whatever of introducing any Home-rule Bill during the life of the next Parliament; and if there be any of our readers still unconvinced, we would remind them that such a, measure could not be brought forward, even in the Cabinet, without leading to an immediate break- up of the Government. After so many years of seemingly hopeless opposition the Liberals are not likely, now that their chance has come, to throw it away in this reckless fashion. As regards the paramount duty of the moment, we rejoice to be able to make Lord Rosebery's words our own. It is not only "to maintain in every way and by every effort the unity of the Free-trade party, but to strain every nerve that an overwhelming majority of the con- stituencies should return Members in favour of and in support of the present Government." Remember that this advice is by no means unneeded at the present moment. As we pointed out last week, there are plenty of Free- traders who imagine that the battle is already won, and who are beginning to look upon those who continue to dwell upon the dangers of Chamberlainism as mono- maniacs who cannot get away from the bogey of Pro- tection. "The country," they say, "will not have it," and with this lazy and pleasant self-assurance they are inclined to be content. As a, matter of fact, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour, working as they are on independent lines for a common object, were never so dangerous as at this moment. They are freed from the difficulty of explaining away, or apologising for, the amazing actions of the late Government, and can devote themselves without interruption to the congenial task of engineering the Home-rule scare and. declaring that the Empire is in danger. Over-confidence in regard to the destruction of Protection, coupled with the tendency in the public mind to believe in bugbears, constitute a very real danger to the cause of Free-trade. That Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour will be quick to note this fact we do not doubt, and we may expect to see a certain lull in the Protectionist propaganda in order that the situation areas(' by the over-confidence which we have , to the front. After all, that is the issue in which popular audiences still feel most. interest. There is never any difficulty in getting a mass meeting to listen to the defence of Free-trade.
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