TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LIBERALS, FREE-TRADE, AND THE. BRIGG ELECTION.
WE are well aware of all the things that can be said, and truly said, in regard to the unwisdom of exaggerating the political indications of by-elections. Making, however, the fullest allowance for exceptional circumstances and political accidents, we are convinced that the figures of the Brigg election constitute a warning which .the Government and the Liberal Party will be well advised to take into earnest consideration. These figures, and those of the other by-elections held this year, show, in our opinion, a distinct tendency on the part of the electors to make a protest. which we ourselves have of late made on several occasions. The Liberals won their great majority at the last General Election, not because the country was anxious for Socialistic experiments on a grand scale, not because it desired to take the first steps towards Home-rule under an alias, not because it wanted to diminish the defensive efficiency of the Empire, not because it desired to abandon any of its Imperial responsibilities. It was because, in the first place, it was alarmed, and rightly alarmed, at the dangers to which the United Kingdom and the Empire would be exposed unless an emphatic negative were given to Mr. Chamberlain's mischievous proposals, and secondly, because Mr. Balfour's Administration, an Administration from which the saner and stronger elements had been with- drawn on the resignation of the Duke of Devonshire and the other Free-trade members of the Cabinet, had proved itself unworthy of the confidence of the nation. In other words, the victory was a Free-trade victory, and was, before all things, meant to conserve our existing fiscal policy and to prevent the adoption of Protection in any form.
Though we do not doubt that many members of the present Cabinet are fully aware of this, and therefore of the fact that they are primarily trustees for the preserva- tion of Free-trade, the Liberals have most unfortunately not hesitated to use a position won in the name of Free-trade, and owing to the support given by those who transferred their votes on the Free-trade issue, to further causes which not only have nothing to do with Free-trade, but which, if pushed as they have been pushed, must endanger the very existence of Free-trade. We do not, of course, wish to assert that the Government, because they won a Free- trade victory, had no right to do anything but maintain Free-trade. What we do assert, however, is that they should make their main object the preservation of Free- trade, and that the risk of endangering Free-trade should be constantly before their eyes. Instead, their duties as the trustees of Free-trade seem to sit extremely lightly upon the Liberal Party. They have not hesitated to give official sanction to all sorts of schemes which have alarmed, and which will in the future, unless we are greatly mistaken, still more deeply alarm, many of those who at the last General Election gave their votes on the Free-trade issue. That the Government were bound to introduce an Education Bill we do not deny ; but we absolutely refuse to admit that they were under any obligation to pass so extreme, so unjust, and so revolutionary a measure as the Trade Disputes Bill,—a Bill which violates the essential equities of the Constitution, and abrogates the prime duty of the State and its Courts to protect the rights of the individual against the oppressive action of great combinations, whether of employed or of employers. Again, they were under no necessity to plunge, as they have, into giving pledges to introduce a system of universal State-provided old-age pensions, to which the recipient of the pension shall contribute nothing, —a piece of Socialism which, even if begun on a small scale, must in the end result in an expenditure so huge that the necessary money can never be obtained without recourse to a general tariff! Next, we contend that as trustees of Free-trade the Liberals have no right —as we fear is their intention—to raise Constitu- tional issues of a most burning kind in regard to the House of Lords, and to raise them in the most partisan form, a form also which is essentially alarming to men of moderate and conservative views, since it involves the placing of the destinies. of the country at the mercy of a. single unchecked Chamber. Again, how can it be denied that the Government neglected their duty as trustees of Free-trade in proposing an alteration of our electoral system so patently one-sided, and therefore so patently- unjust, as the Plural Voting Bill? They left untouched, and would not even give a verbal pledge to remedy, the gross unfairness of the system under which Ireland has some forty Members more than her fair share, and yet asserted their imperative right to get rid at once of the far less important anomaly under which a certain number of men have more than one vote. They insisted that they had a right to deal with the anomaly which is injurious to them from the purely party point of view, and to preserve an anomaly which is beneficial to them from the same narrow standpoint. Electors who at a great national crisis thought it their duty to vote for Liberal candidates because they were Free-traders, and did so in the belief that the support they thus gave would not be misused, are naturally enough annoyed to find that little or no consideration is now to be afforded them, and that it is to be assumed that all the votes cast for Free-trade were also cast for legislation of the kind that has been passed, attempted, or foreshadowed since the General Election.
If in addition to what has already been done to alarm the moderate section of the community we are to have proposals for Devolution which will be proclaimed as intended to strengthen the case for Home-rule, and if Parliament, as on Wednesday night, is to record its readiness and willingness to separate Church and State, the process of disillusionment will be carried a step further, and those who cast their votes at the last General Election for Free-trade, and not on mere party grounds, will assuredly have been given good cause for saying that the Liberal Party are consciously or unconsciously—it hardly matters which—betraying the cause of Free-trade.
We have always held and declared that Free-trade is so vital to the interests of the nation and the Empire that it is necessary for those who realise its importance to make great sacrifices for its maintenance, and to this view we adhere as strongly as before. But this does not mean that the sacrifices are to be all on one side,—only to be made, that is, by Unionist Free-traders like ourselves, or by non-party men such as are to be found at all times scattered throughout the nation. If they are honest in their views, the Liberal Party also must be willing to make some sacrifice for Free-trade, and must at a time of crisis like the present be ready to forego a certain amount of their purely party programme in order to help in preserving the cause of Free-trade. Unfortunately, we see no tendency amongst Liberals to recognise this fact. In their view, apparently, the sacrifices all belong " to the other man," and they are to have the right to proceed with their programme in its extremest form without a thought as to the ultimate consequences of their action. If they continue to act in this way, we are confident that they will find themselves greatly mistaken as to the temper of the nation. When it is too late they will realise that there are plenty of electors who feel that Liberal legislators who contemplate measures which, dike old-age pensions, must end in the expenditure of thirty millions sterling a year are in reality choosing a quicker and more direct way to a, Protective tariff than even that recommended by Mr. Chamberlain.
Cynical Liberals will perhaps tell us that they do not think very much of our warnings, and that as long as the Tariff Reformers continue to preach Protection they can feel certain of the support of Unionist Free-traders, and, indeed, of all who put Free-trade first in the region of politics. Such men cannot, they will say, vote for the Tariff Reformers, and even if they grumble a little, will, when the next General Election comes with the issue of Free-trade and Protection again dominant, be obliged to vote for Free-traders, or at any rate to abstain from voting for Protectionists. We readily admit that this cynical view is largely held, but we are by no means sure that the Liberals will be wise to count upon it. In the first place, we do not believe that the next General Election will be fought upon the issue of Free-trade and Protection. It is almost impossible to find a case where two Elections running have been fought upon the same issue. It is far more likely that the next
General Election will be fought upon the legislative merits and demerits of the Government in power,—one of these demerits being the failure of the Liberals to discharge their trust in regard to Free-trade. The Tariff Reformers may just now talk big about Tariff Reform; but when an appeal to the people is in sight, say in four years, the wiser and keener electioneerers among them will, in our belief, be, quite willing to let Tariff Reform sink into the background, and to combine with all the other elements in the country which are hostile to the Government. Their main desire will be to turn out the Ministry, and they will find little difficulty in virtually pledging themselves not to upset our fiscal system " in the next Parliament," pro: vided they obtain the help of those Free-traders who supported Government candidates in 1906 solely on Free- trade grounds.
For ourselves, then, we are not in any sense alarmed as to the ultimate triumph of Free-trade. We do not, however, while calling ourselves Free-traders, mean to 'abet the present Government in undermining the cause of Free- trade or in betraying their trust. We will do nothing which will teach the country to connect Free-trade with causes so alien to it as old-age pensions, the placing of Trade-Unions above the law, the feeding of school-children out of the rates, the overthrow of the Established Church, the creation of the single-Chamber system, the maintenance of the over-representation of Ireland, the establishment of a ha1f-way house to Home-rule, or, finally, the sapping of the strength of the nation by a series of Socialistic or semi- Socialistic measures. If the country were to be forced to think that Free-trade could only be bought at the price of consent to such legislative proposals as these, our cause would be irreparably ruined. Instead, we shall continue to do our best to show the nation that it may maintain a sound and moderate system of government, and may avoid Socialism, while at the same time maintaining Free-trade. Free-trade and Individualism, Protection and Socialism,— these are the essential allies.
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