LORD CROMER ON FREE-TRADE. T HE speech of Lord Cromer to
the Unionist Free-Trade Club on Thursday was an event of real political importance as well as of great personal interest. A few weeks ago we wrote of the unhappy position of the eminent unemployed who return from abroad after dis- charging high functions of government and administration to find that there is no opportunity for them to continue their labours at home, although they may have the strength and the will to remain in public life. Some distinguished men in these circumstances have been known to avoid the rough-and-tumble of party politics at home, perhaps for the intelligible, if insufficient, reason that this seemed to them a method of arriving at results scarcely to be tolerated after one had lived in the serene atmospheres in which every act had its immediate result, where cause and effect was a prompt and visible process ; and also perhaps because to put oneself again at the mercy of stupid, interested, or uninformed invective was like returning to the days of the schoolboy after one had tasted the privileges of manhood. If such reasons consulted personal dignity, they at all events did less than justice to the dignity and needs of political life at home. Lord Cromer, with the fine simplicity which has always distinguished him, has put such thoughts aside, if indeed they ever occurred to him. Before his health is fully restored after his un- grudging labours in Egypt, he comes forward to make a speech to the members of a political club, which gives every opponent of Free-trade occasion to say, if he thinks it worth while to do so, that it is a " party " speech. That is a criticism which a man may meet with equanimity, and even enjoy when he is in sound health and eager for the fray ; but it is not a criticism which a man hastens to court at the first possible moment after retiring from his position through illness. If he does so, there must be a special motive, and that motive could not possibly have been more clearly stated than in Lord Cromer's speech. He thinks that Free-trade must be preserved at the cost of whatever effort, and preserved not merely because it is on the whole the most convenient fiscal policy for Britain, or the least debatable as an economic theory, but because experience has shown that it is the true basis of Empire, —the economic relation which most securely holds together the portions of our loose but harmonious Empire. Lord Cromer spoke as the greatest of our Imperialists. And his summing-up contained not a single concession to any one who on any pretext or under any disguise would weaken the doctrine of Free-trade as Britain practises it to-day. All tariffs are a burden and an impediment. They can be tolerated, since so far they are admittedly necessary, only for revenue purposes.
It is impossible for us to' overrate the significance of Lord Cromer's early incursion into our political life at home, nor can we foresee at once the exact effect of the impact of his opinion upon that of his countrymen. Obviously he thought that a warning was necessary. Let us consider quite dispassionately the value of it. It does not come from a layman ; it comes from a brilliantly successful administrator, one of whose chief duties for many years has been the direction of finance and the framing of Budgets. We would call attention to this point,—that it is an expert financial opinion. But while Lord Cromer's experience of Free-trade was financial, it was also political. He recalled the occasion when, under Lord Salisbury's Government, the Soudan was opened up, and the assurance was given to the Powers that equality of opportunity would be guaranteed to all the traders of the world. Britain would claim no preference over any of them. This assurance, he tells us, smoothed, and indeed made possible, the path of Empire in the Soudan, and he expresses himself as supremely grateful to the doctrine of Free-trade, which proved itself so benevolent a coadjutor in the Imperial task. Lord Cromer's warning, then, is that of an expert financier and a stout Imperialist, who has made finance and Imperialism each serve the ends of the other. Principle and practice have never been more beautifully correlated than in his career. Opponents of Free-trade speak as though " Cobdenism " were inevitably allied to the pre- dispositions of the " Little Englander." Yet here are the doctrines of Cobden stated with less reserve than we often hear them by the most prominent " Great Englander " of our time. Nor can any one really detract from the signifi- cance of the warning on the ground that it is meant to help a particular party. Lord Cromer notoriously served both parties with equal loyalty in Egypt ; and when he retired he went out of his way to record the generous sanction which his policy had enjoyed from the present Government. Indeed, if Lord Cromer's speech is examined, what mere party aspiration does it, or can it, help ? No one can say that it is likely to help the cause of Tariff Reform. If it had been intended to strengthen the hands of the Government, it would not have condemned, as dangerous to Free-trade, one of the most important of the Government proposals. His grave and reiterated warnings as to the perils of a non-contributory old-age pensions scheme, with its attendant burdens on the taxpayer, were one of the most memorable portions of his speech. Lord Cromer's instincts, of course, draw him strongly to the Unionist Party, yet his words appeal only to that part of it which has been driven into political impotence by the madness of the rest. On the face of it, Lord Cromer's speech is a per- fectly candid, impartial utterance delivered with all sincerity and conviction at some personal inconvenience because he felt that the times demanded it. He stands boldly by the side of those who, as the Duke of Devonshire expressed it in his letter of welcome to the new vice-president of the Unionist Free-Trade Club, are determined to do three things, no matterwhat may be the consequences on a rigid party system. Those three things are to. defend the Union, to combat Socialistic legislation, and to maintain Free-trade.
We say that Lord Cromer's warning was demanded by the times, because the time is plainly ripe for a reconsideration of the basis upon which the Unionist Party shall continue to exist. This much is admitted by the Times, which declares that changed circumstances make it inexpedient' to set up Tariff Reform as a test of party loyalty. An increasing number of Unionists who were and are Tariff Reformers apparently share the conclusion of the Times, and we can hardly doubt what the effect of Lord Cromer's speech will be on the minds of other waverers. We do not forget, of course, that Mr. Balfour has never imposed a test, but in the constituencies it has been notoriously applied. We do not ask any one to substitute the appeal to authority for private conviction, but we would none the less point to the peculiar, indeed unique, weight of Lord Cromer's experi- ence as an argument in the Fiscal dispute that cannot honestly be overlooked. Finally, Lord Cromer's treatment of the question of old-age pensions was most telling, because he did not deal with it on the moral side, but simply as a financier deals with a purely financial matter. Where is the money—the twenty or thirty million pounds —to come from ? That is a question which cannot be separated from the proposal to create old-age pensions. On every one who asks for pensions lies the onus of proving how the money is to be raised. It is ridiculous, as Lord Cromer showed so aptly in his amusing story of the conjurer, to talk, as at least one Labour Member has done, as though a scheme were one thing and its cost quite another,—as though it were the business of the Member of Parliament to advocate whatever seductive plans leaped to his brain, and the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to pay for them. Lord Cromer, who year by year and month by month in Egypt had both to create the scheme and to provide for the cost, will not for a moment countenance such folly and heresy. " Where can I find the money ? " was the puzzle he had always to solve, and he will never sanction the shirking of it by others. Lord Cromer evidently believes that we have very nearly reached the limit of the money-producing power of our present taxes, and that the great sum necessary for State-granted old-age pensions could conceivably be produced only by a Protectionist tariff, to the vast detriment of the country in numerous ways,— though even this feat would be a very difficult one. Old- age pensions, in a word, must mean in the end a resort to a tariff. Will a Free-trade party consent to run the risk that this will be the ultimate price which will have to be paid for old-age pensions, even though the Government have recklessly pledged themselves to a universal non- contributory scheme? We fancy that if many Liberals revealed their honest opinion, they would confess that they would be heartily glad to see the proposal of State- paid pensions wiped off the slate. We trust that on this point Lord Cromer's speech, for which we offer him our sincere gratitude, may be the means of inducing reconsideration, and perhaps even calling a halt. If Lord Cromer should prove to have winged Tariff Reform with one barrel and old-age pensions with the other—and we are by no means sure that he has not done so—his will indeed have been a memorable achievement.
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