LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A CENTRE PARTY.
tTo THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOrt.".1 SIII,—Your suggestion of a Centre Party is as sound as it is opportune and as opportune as it is sound. The Spectator seems to me to be almost the only newspaper—I read both Conservative and Liberal papers every day—which grips the fact that politics is a business, and that, as in all other• businesses, the first necessity is that it be based on sound economics. Non-contr•ibutor•y old-age pensions, the nationalisa- tion of the means of production, and certain other familiar• Socialistic suggestions appear to me not merely to savour• of, butt° be, economic madness. Lord Rosebery spoke with quite judicial soberness when he said such proposals reduced tc practice would mean "the end of all things." But, Sir, here is a marvellous thing! Everybody one speaks to, whether in the train, or walking home from church, or sitting at the dinner- table, while agreeing that a Centre Party of strong economic capacity and British common-sense is urgently needed—every one seems to be equally incapable either• of making an initial effort in this direction or of giving any resolute help to anybody else who might be willing to make such an effort. Surely, however, the case is urgent! You, Sir, have time and again pointed out the difficulty in politics of undoing when • once a thing is done. Take the case of non-contributory old- age pensions. Does any sane man imagine for a moment that if the aged workmen ar•e once endowed with such pensions it will be possible to take the pensions back again ? They may be doubled or trebled, but they will never be discontinued,— not, at any rate, until the State collapses beneath its intolerable burden. To prevent, to stop the mischief now, by an unyielding putting down of the foot, may be possible; but to cure the disease once it makes serious headway will surpass the wit of man. Middle-class taxpayers, the men and women on whose shoulders lies practically the whole burden of the State's thinking and directing, are threatened with nothing less than ruin. The load it is proposed to put on them they will find it impossible to bear. An ass may kick if its panniers are not too full and heavy ; but if you load it quite beyond its strength it cannot even kick ; it can only drop in a heap and be crushed. The ass should kick now before the panniers are heaped like a mountain on its back ; and then it may kick to some purpose.—I am, Sir, &c., A FULLY TAXED PROFESSIONAL MAN.
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