We agree entirely with the Duke of Devonshire's state- ment.
And not merely because we feel ourselves pledged, as we most certainly do, to defend the Union equally with Free-trade. If the Union were to be dissolved, so heavy a blow would be dealt to the Empire that even Free-trade would not save it. But even if we thought more of Free-trade than of the Union, which we do not, we should still hold the policy which we have urged in these columns, and which the Duke maintained on Tuesday, to be the only sound one. If Free-trade were to become permanently associated in the minds of the electors—as unhappily the leaders of the Liberal Party seem bent on associating it—with policies so unsound and so dangerous as Home-rule and Socialism, it would be doomed to irretrievable ruin. In other words, if men came to feel that they could not be Free-traders without also being Home-rulers and Socialists, great numbers would be sure to abandon Free-trade. It is the duty of Unionist Free-traders to show the nation that it is possible to be loyal Free-traders as well as loyal Unionists and anti-Socialists. That we, and those who feel with us, will be able to prove this we have not a doubt. It is not we, or the cause of Free-trade, but the Liberal Party, which will suffer from the refusal of its leaders to make sacrifices in their pasty programme for the maintenance of Free-trade.
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