[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I am convinced that the Spectator is right in harking back at the present juncture to Lord Goschen's advice that the internal rift in the Unionist Party on the subject of Tariff Reform can best be cured, or patched up for coming General Election purposes, by the common advocacy of an impartial Royal Commission, to be appointed as soon as the Unionist Party has been replaced in power. I believe that with the internal difference thus composed we should win all along the line, and that the forces of Socialism and of Home-rule would be ignominiously dispersed. Let me give you two personal experiences in support of my argument. For some months past I have been engaged in an endeavour to formulate a somewhat detailed scheme of what I hoped might prove to be a "common ground " of agreement between the Tariff Reformers and the Free-traders of our party. I approached the leaders of both sections, and up to a point I met with a success which encouraged me to persevere. But the success was incomplete, partly from the inherent difficulties of formulating financial principles acceptable both to Pro- tectionists and Free-traders, but mainly from the conviction, real or assumed, which the more ardent partisans professed that everybody was coming round to their views, and that any one who differed from them had better "shut up " and accept the views of what they asserted to be the majority of the party. There is, I am satisfied, no ground for this assurance. I believe it to be delusive, and I fear that reliance on it may encounter a rude awakening. I have therefore been forced to the concluiion that the general acceptance of a detailed common policy on Tariff Reform is for the present unattain- able, and that unless we can quickly agree on something simpler, we may have a General Election on us with our party still disrupted on this important question, and that our divided forces may again suffer defeat at the bands of a united body of Socialists and Home-rulers. Concurrence in slurring over differences is, of course, possible ; but it would be unsatis- factory, and probably unsuccessful. Agreement, then, is urgent ; and it must be on. terms plain and simple. Happily, the policy of further inquiry is one which neither section of our party can reasonably dissent from. Both of our tikhtiag divisions honestly desire only what is for the benefit of our country, and neither can wish for the success of their policy unless it can answer that test. None of us, I sincerely trust, are so obstinate or so arrogant as to assert, in the face of so much divergence of educated opinion, that the matter is too clear for discussion. I was engaged as Unionist candidate in a hard-fought election contest a few months after Mr. Chamberlain's propaganda was first launched. I was not particularly captivated by it ; but recognising the complications of the subject, and the insufficiency of my own knowledge of its details, I thought that the wiser course was to advocate inquiry. I think so still. For the last four years I have been studying the question with almost continuous assiduity; and although I have now attained what approaches to certainty of conviction, I am con- tinually discovering new facts and new arguments on either side. The policy of a Royal Commission for further inquiry is therefore, in my opinion, not only tactically but substantially
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