ITo THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, — I suppose that the
one thing an earnest Liberal, aware of the unpopularity of Home Rule and the pillage of the Welsh Church, must have prayed for was some such pronounce- ment as that by which the Unionist leaders have given him the telling cry, " Food Taxes and no Referendum if you vote against Home Rule." If this be so, the service these gentle- men have done the cause of which they are the trustees is easily estimated. What the outcome of their present policy is likely to be can be best forecasted by a consideration of its results in the past since Tariff Reform became an obsession with the Unionist Party. Firstly, the great Unionist majority, which with a short break had lasted for twenty years, became a helpless rump, though the evils arising from this weakness were largely mitigated by the power of veto still resting with the House of Lords. This was the time—when the Unionist Party, through the unpopularity of its new policy, bad lost half its power of defence—which was chosen by our leaders to force the constitutional question to the front by the rejection of the Budget in the Lords. As a result of their action the Budget, except for a short delay, was unaffected, but the Constitution was destroyed, the Unionist leaders still fiddling on the Tariff Reform string while it was in the flames. Tariff Reform meanwhile came no nearer. Again, they bad a chance of successfully defending the citadel of Unionism ; they reply by promising Food Taxes to all who help. Can it be doubted in view of the past what will again be the result ? The Food Taxes will come no nearer, but Home Rule and Welsh Dis- establishment will pass. Surely they are doing for these measures what no advocacy on the part of those who support them could bring about. One can only think that in their case Deus 'cult perdere. It is a curious reflection that some of the very measures of which Mr. Chamberlain in his earlier and unregenerate days was a powerful but unsuccessful advocate are now, as a result of his inoculation of the Unionist Party with the virus of Protection, becoming accomplished facts.—I
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