[TO THE EDITOR OF THE ,'SPEOTAY011:1
have read with the greatest interest the correspond. ence as well as your• articles dealing with this subject. The principles which you enunciate in your issue of the 7th inst. as those which the proposed Centre Party should adopt leave nothing to be desired save, in my humble opinion, the refer- ence to the present fiscal system of this country. While not prepared to support in its entirety the programme of the Tariff Reform League, I, in common with many others, cannot help feeling that there is something wrong in a system which permits our own manufacturers to be so handicapped by the free importation of foreign goods, whereas our exports to foreign countries are so heavily taxed. But I suppose we should not be eligible for membership of a Centre Party as foreshadowed in your• columns ; and, at the same time, because we do not see eye to eye with the Tariff Reform League, we shall be ostracised from the Unionist Party. What course, then, is open to us ? Either we must swallow the Tariff Reform pill, or• be content to sink into the abyss of political oblivion. But neither of these alternatives will be palatable to any patriotic and ambitions citizen, and it is manifest that we cannot join the ranks of the Liberal Party. What, then, are such as we to do ? Can you help us to a solution of this puzzling and unenviable position in which we find our- selves ? Surely it ought to be possible to devise some modus vivendi whereby, at all events so far as the next General Election is concerned, the Unionist Party may go- to the country undivided in its ranks. The existence of the present Government, in spite of its unprecedented majority, is a precarious one, and may be terminated sooner than one realises. But what chance has the Unionist Party of success at the polls if it does not heal up the divisions in its ranks ? If the extreme Free-trader on the one hand, and the extreme Tariff Reformer on the other (for, after all, there is much to be said for and against on both sides), would agree to a truce until such time as a Royal Commission shall have fully gone into and reported upon the present fiscal system of this country, all might be well ; but if no such understanding is arrived at, then disaster must again be the lot of the Unionist Party. I trust, therefore, that the Spectator may see its way to be the pioneer of some conciliatory scheme based on the lines which I have endeavoured very crudely to sketch out in
[We have repeatedly declared our desire that the Unionist Party should come to an agreement that the first duty of a Unionist Government should be to refer the Fiscal issue in its entirety to a Royal Commission. To such an agreement the whole of the Unionist Free-trade group could, we are con- vinced, be brought. Unfortunately the Tariff Reformers will not hear of any such proposal. The result will, we fear, be that predicted by our correspondent. We have no desire whatever to ostracise him from the Unionist Party, but grate- fully appreciate the conciliatory tone of his letter.—ED. Spectator.]
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