MR. JESSE COUINGS AND TRE AVERAGE UNIONIST.
IT is impossible not to admire the devotion of Mr. Jesse Collings to his chief. The doubtful waters of modern political seas carry no stauncher sailor. The ship on which Mr. Chamberlain hoists his flag is the only vessel in which Mr. Collings will handle a, rope or glance at a compass. To the eyes of other more or less nautical persons the ship may seem utterly unseaworthy and bound on a wrong course; Mr. Collings casts his eye on the helmsman, and forthwith his destination is Eldorado and the ship is as sound as a lifeboat. He belongs, indeed, to a ()lass of politician which unfortunately, at all events for party leaders, is becoming rarer every Session. That is the politician who is constitutionally incapable of believing his leader to be wrong. Mr. Collings had an opportunity of providing younger politicians with an example of this kind of political fidelity on Monday, when be met his constituents in Birmingham and took for his subject the unrest in the Unionist Party. "To his mind," he remarked, "the Unionist Party at the present time was in a position like that of men going through a wildernees without a Moses." His feelings, he believed, were shared by "probably the majority" of the party in the House of Commons. "Members were literally chafing at the inaction to which they were condemned. They had a leadership that created no enthusiasm, but rather damped it. They had a leadership that halted between two opinions, that recognised in an academic, half-hearted way the great item in Mr. Chamberlain's programme,— Tariff Reform. The efforts put forward to further it were poor and puny compared with what they ought to be." What ought to be done, of course, is to bring Chamber- Jainism, more and more to the front; the more Tariff Reform in the bolus, the sooner the party will shake off its palsy. But can this be done under present conditions, with an almost vanished hope of taking the field Teucro reduce ? Mr. Collings shakes his head gloomily, though, very properly, he expresses hopes for the ultimate future which could hardly be brighter.
It should be no satisfaction to any Unionist, and most assuredly it is unsatisfactory to ourselves, to watch the confusion and disorder in what was a few years ago a strong and united party. But of the divisions into which the party was split by Mr. Chamberlain's adoption of a policy of Preference, most certainly it is not the Tariff Refortners whose outlook on the future is the more reassuring, or who have the better reason to congratulate themselves on the present. During the past fortnight a very illuminating correspondence has been carried on in the Times on the subject of the new Australian tariff. That tariff, as we have pointed out already, although it grants a nominal preference to British goods, in point of fact raises the tariff-wall so high to all goods, foreign and British, that it is likely to prove in practice prohibitive ; a result which, indeed, must be supposed to have been intended by its originators. The Times, commenting on the probable effect of the new tariff, remarked that the advantage which British goods were to receive as against foreign "is in many cases almost derisory,"—a pronouncement out of which Tariff Reformers may be left to take what comfort they can. The correspondence which followed was instructive. "Tariff Reformer" and Zollverein," each in the promi- nent position and the large type to which their previous published articles have entitled them, have joined issue over the merits, not only of the Australian tariff, but the whole question of Imperial Preference. "Tariff Reformer," gloomily triumphant, takes up the attitude of one who has prophesied evil if his advice is neglected. "I told you so," lie says in effect. "If the Government slams, bars, and bolts the door, and refuses to stir a. finger to help Australia, why should we grumble because Australia in her turn refuses us a gift which we have done nothing to deserve?" "That is not the point," replies " Zollverein "; "the material point is that the Australian tariff constitutes an out-and-out Protectionist measure against Britain, and instead of bringing us nearer the goal of closer economic relations between ourselves and the Colonies, it is a distinct step backwards away from that ideal." To those two arguments ought to be added 4 pertinent comment from Lord George Hamilton. He is told that the rise of the Australian tariff against British goods is due to the refusal of certain British politicians to follow Mr. Chamberlain four years ago in his assaults on Free- trade. "To preach Protection here," he answers, "is to encourage the application of that principle in the self- governing Colonies and in India. This was the advice and warning we gave, and for giving it certain Tariff Reformers wished to drum us out of the Unionist Party." We may reflect on that fact, and in so doing find the more instruc- tion in the Times's characterisation of the preference offered by the new tariff as "almost derisory," and in the awakening of so sturdy an Imperialist as " Zollverein " to the "out-and-out Protection" proposed by Australia against the Mother-country.
Nevertheless, according to Mr. Jesse Collings, all will be well with his leader's policy. "Fortunately," he observes, "Mr. Chamberlain before his retirement placed this question in such a position in practical politics that its success was absolutely certain," Well, Mr. Collings may be able to see signs of encouragement which are hidden from the vision of duller persons. But in what does he find his consolation ? Hardly in reflecting upon the result of the General Election. Has anything happened since te inspire him afresh ? Mr. Chamberlain, regretted by his opponents every whit as keenly as his supporters, has ceased to take any public part in politics. No one has taken his place. No front-rank politician has entered on the task of advocating his policy. But perhaps it is so accept- able to the electorate that it does not need a strenuous advocate ? The result of recent by-elections does not justify such a claim as that. In spite of the fact that the Government have now been in office for nearly two years, and have made more than one deplorable blunder, there is no reawakening of enthusiasm in the constituencies for the policy which the Government are mainly concerned to oppose. Unionist candidates either prefer, or are advised from the top, to postpone dealing with Tariff Reform ; or if they are bold enough to advocate it, they meet with such an answer as the Unionist candidate had at Jarrow, when the Labour, Radical, and Nationalist candidates, all of them Free-traders, polled between them over ten thousand votes, and the Tariff Reformer could not get four thousand. The by-elections will not do. Is there, then, perhaps, some vast upheaval of Colonial opinion in favour of Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, such as would counterbalance the apathy, or stupidity, of electors at home ? The reply to that is the new Australian tariff.
Still Mr. Collings cheerfully waves his flag, and we must applaud his affection for his leader and his gay trust in what is going to happen eventually, even though the sky at the moment is black and unpromising. But be must, surely, have other reasons for believing in the future of Tariff Reform besides his measure of his own enthusiasms. What can they be ? Probably this,—that the Tariff Reformers have captured and possess the Unionist "machine." Let us admit that to the full. The machine was captured, as it would be captured again in similar circumstances. But you cannot capture a party ; or, rather, you cannot capture a machine which will put a party in power. Political parties in this country are alternately put into and taken out of power by a shifting balance of votes which belong permanently to neither great party, each party machine being able to calculate as a rule upon a certain constant proportion of inalienable votes. But the Unionist Party machine at present cannot even calculate upon what at one time it would have been justified in regarding as its inalienable proportion. All the talk about " nine-tenths " and "ninety-nine per cent." of the party being in favour of Tariff Reform is the merest moonshine, as every practical Unionist politician knows who recognises that persons, as well as newspapers, like neither to admit that they do not understand a question thoroughly, nor that they can possibly have been " jumped " or hurried into a premature decision. How many average Unionists, who hate to see their party wandering in Mr. Collings's wilderness, would not be only too delighted if the very name of Tariff Reform had never been mentioned ? Yet us suggest to Mr. Collings another question to be put to prospective Unionist candidates at coming by- elections. Which of these two positions would they. choose,—one, to face the electorate, in the genial phrase of modern electioneering, as a " whole-hogger," with all the difficulties of Mr.. Chamberlain's scheme, plus the new Australian tariff, to be explained away ; the other, to be able by one magic sweep of the sponge to wipe the slate clean of the whole of the Tariff Reform propaganda, to flourish in the voters' faces the Socialistic record of the present Government, and to stand forward as a candidate bolding the same political views which helped into office, and kept in office, Unionist after Unionist under Lord Salisbury ? Which platform does Mr. Collings think a prospective candidate would choose ?
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