nib FUTURE OF THE UNIONIST PARTY. A! Free-traders, we welcome
the complete victory that has been achieved over the cause of Protection and so-called Fiscal Reform with intense relief. The country has decided—as we always believed it would decide—to maintain Free-trade, and we are thus preserved from the terrible dangers to the nation and the Empire that must have been imminent had any other verdict been given at the polls. But though our relief is so keen on this score, we cannot as Unionists but regret the ruin that has overtaken our party,—the party which under the leadership of men like Lord Salisbury and the Duke of Devonshire rendered such signal services to the State, and which promised to continue those services until Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain led it to its ruin. The party now lies prostrate before its enemies, and has suffered a defeat absolutely Without parallel in our political history. The defeat has not been due merely to the defection of one class in the community, nor, again, has any one part of the country, if we omit the city of Birmingham, where personal feeling for Mr. Chamberlain has determined the issue, proved more friendly to Protection than another. We do not, however, wish to dwell any further on the magnitude of the defeat, or to speak harshly of those who caused it. It is to us a matter, not of pleasure, but of profound pain, to think of what the party once was, and what it now is. What is now necessary is to consider the future of the party, and. how best it may be restored to life and vigour. In our belief, there is one 'way, and only one way, in which the confidence of the nation in the Unionist Party can be restored, and the electors be once more induced to realise that Unionism is not allied with selfish and class interests, but is in the best sense a popular cause, and fit and able to play its part in a democratic State. Only if the nation can be induced once more to feel thus towards the Unionist Party will it have a place in the political life of the future.
Two courses lie open before the party. In the first place, it may follow the advice which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour unhappily seem determined to give it, and may maintain the attitude towards Free-trade which it has adopted during the past two and a half years. That is, it may continue the task of trying to destroy our present fiscal system, and to substitute one which, whether bear- ing the name of Tariff Reform, Fiscal Reform, or Fair- trade, is in reality nothing but Protection under an alias. If such is the task undertaken and the policy adopted by the Unionist Party, it can, in our, opinion, have but one result. That result we may sketch very briefly. Main- taining its anti-Free-trade bias, it will endeavour to oppose the present Government by working with all the elements in the House of Commons that are hostile to Free-trade. It will yield to the temptation of allying itself with the Irish Nationalists, who are Protectionist at heart, and with any members of the Independent Labour Party whose Socialism will incline them to oppose the present Ministry. We must never forget that in the last resort Socialism and Protection have a common base. If un- happily this course of action is adopted, and. we see the Unionist Party allied with Nationalism to further Pro- tection, there can, in our opinion, be only one result. The party will gradually sink lower and lower in public estimation, and will in all probability remain weak and discredited for the next ten or fifteen years. It will follow the example of the Liberal Party, and will only regain power when its rivals have committed some signal blunder, and when it itself tacitly abandons the policy of Protection. That this would mean a great loss to the nation we cannot conceal from ourselves. We do not wish to see the Liberal Party, or any other party, endowed for so long with a virtual monopoly of power. But because we dislike the prospect we do not mean to refrain from facing it and pointing out the peril to the nation. That is one alternative before the Unionist Party.
The other alternative is that it should frankly admit that a great blunder has been committed, and that the only wise course now is to abandon Protection in all its forms, and to reconstitute the party once more on a Free-trade basis. We do not, of course, expect the men who have lately been shouting so loud for Protection, and who doubtless in many cases honestly believed in the cause they espoused, to stand in a white sheet before the nation and say that they have com- mitted a blunder equal to a crime. What we ask is something very different from that. It is merely that the majority of the party should say :—" We have tried to induce the country to adopt a certain fiscal policy in which we believed. The country, however, has, rightly or wrongly, decided that it will have nothing to do with the policy we proposed, but means to maintain Free-trade. That being so, we shall loyally bow to the will of the people. If that will had been expressed in a less unmistakable manner, we might, and should, have declared that we ought to try to convert it to our views, even if it took five elections to do so. The verdict of the nation, however, has not been of a kind to justify such a resolve. The electors have shown us beyond all possibility of doubt or question that they do not mean to alter the present fiscal system of the nation in any particular. Therefore, recognising facts, we mean to abandon the attempt to destroy Free-trade, and shall henceforth accept it as we accept the union of the three kingdoms in one, or as both parties accept the Monarchy,— i.e., as something outside a party conflict. After all, there is plenty of other work for the Unionist Party to accomplish, and this work we mean now to undertake in earnest. It may take some time to reunite the party after so great a disaster ; but such a task is by no means beyond. human power, and the sooner it is undertaken the better."
It may, no doubt, be urged. as an objection to the possibility of such an attitude as this being adopted by the party that it is expecting more than we have a right to expect of human nature to imagine that Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Balfour could be induced to take this course. We frankly admit the fact, and this difficulty in regard to leadership must, we fear, in any case make the work of reconstruction specially slow and specially laborious. Remember, however, that we are not at the moment asking the leaders to adopt such an attitude. The people whom we are addressing are the rank-and-file of the party, and those whore we may call the non-commissioned officers, and who form so great a portion of its strength. We have already seen indications that thousands of the privates and non-commissioned officers of the party are saying to themselves in plain terms : "'What a hash our leaders have made of it Why could not they leave the question of Protection alone? If they bad they might have been beaten, but it would not have been a Sedan." In a word, men of position and influence throughout the country who followed their leaders to defeat are now asking, "Was it worth while ? " If these men proceed from the question of "Was it worth while ? " to "What is the remedy ? " we believe that they must reach the true answer, "The remedy is to give up trying the impossible." But if they reach this answer and make it clearly known through- out the party, we venture to say that they will very soon find leaders willing to lead them on the conditions which they prescribe. The difficulty in regard to Mr. Chamberlain will probably settle itself. Mr. Chamberlain, who is seventy years of age, was the prime cause of the ruin of the party, and, furthermore, has never claimed to represent the party as a whole. For example, he has always maintained his special so-called Liberal Unionist organisation. If, then, as we confess must be probable, he would have nothing to do with a party reconstructed on a Free-trade basis, the party could, we believe, do very well without him. As for Mr. Balfour, he is now out of the House of Commons, and so for a time out of practical politics. Were he to remain out of the House of Commons for two or three years his reappearance as a leader willing to abandon the attempt to revert to any form of Protection would be comparatively easy. But even if he refused to do this, we do not see why the Unionist Party should not begin of its own motion, and from inside, to reconstitute itself on a Free-trade basis. Stranger things even than that have happened in politics. And remember also there are leaders, like Lord Curzon, who are uncommitted on the Tariff question, and other leaders, like Lord George Hamilton and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, not to mention the Duke of Devonshire, who have never wholly lost the confidence of the Conservatives.
We have placed before our readers the two alternatives, and have plainly indicated the one which we desire to see adopted by the Unionist Party. If, however, we are asked to say whether we consider that this second alternative is likely to be adopted at the present moment, we are bound to confess that we do not think it will. Our desire that it should be so adopted cannot blind us to the fact that the omens are unfavourable. What we venture to believe will happen is something not so immediately favour- able to the restoration of the party, and yet something which may save it from permanent ruin. We believe that, to begin with, the majority of the party and the leaders will entirely and scornfully repudiate the advice we have ventured to give them. They will harden their hearts, and insist that the attempt must be made to fight Free-trade to the bitter end. The result will be that we shall see Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain leading their handful of men against Free-trade in the House of Commons, and in doing so allying themselves with the Irish.—No doubt that will be regarded in many quarters as a monstrous suggestion ; but we cannot forget the ominous terms in which the Daily Telegraph about a year ago drew attention to the existence of a large body of Home-rule opinion within the Tory Party, nor the fact that this statement was never contradicted.—This working with the Irish Party against a Free-trade Government will, as we have said above, still further discredit the Unionist Party, and make the people of Britain still more determined to keep the Unionist Party out of power until it has purged itself of Protection. After these futile and inglorious tactics have be pursued for five or six years we shall' have another General Election, and the country will again reject Protection, though a certain number of moderate Unionists' who have tacitly abandoned all forms of this heresy will receive the confidence of the electorate. Then some younger man, or group of men, will arise in the Unionist Party, and will boldly say :—" We have had enough of this: If Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour insist on muttering the worn-out shibboleths of Protection, we are not going to follow them. They have shown that their time is over Let them go their ways, while we lead a reconstructed Unionist Party to victory."
At present, no doubt, this forecast will seem wild and. impossible ; but that is only because the public have not yet realised the true results of the Election. They do not yet see that Chamberlainism and. Balfmnisin are already as dead as Queen Anne, and that if statesmen insist on still remaining Chamberlainites or Balfourites they will perish with their lost cause. We are beginning a new era in our politics with the General Election of 1906, and those who will not conform to the conditions of the new era must perish, even though their ghosts may for a year or two haunt the places where their policies died. In the new era there is, we believe, a place for the Unionist Party, but it is for a new and rejuvenated party, and not for the party as it existed from 1903 to 1906. In the political world, as in the world of Nature, there is a survival of the fittest, and the fittest are those who know how to adapt themselves to their environment. Our, politicians, it is now clear, will henceforth have to live under Free-trade conditions, and consequently only those parties and leaders will survive who can adapt themselves to that environment.
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