LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE NEED FOR A CONSERVATIVE PARTY.
[To THR EDITOR OF THE " SpEcnvroa."3
Sin,—The great need of the present day is a Conservative Party,—not a party which calls itself Conservative, but one which really is Conservative. The present so-called Con- servative Party seems to imagine that it can get back to power by being just a little less Radical than the Radicals themselves in some things, and even more Radical than the Radicals in others, notably in advocating a leap in the dark as regards our fiscal policy.
The first thing to be done to restore confidence and harmony between the two wings of the Conservative Party is to call a truce as regards the fiscal policy. Could not a truce be called without any sacrifice of principle on both sides, as follows ? Let the Tariff Reformer cease to ask every one to vote for a tariff which he has never seen, and let the Free-trader cease to denounce a tariff which he has never seen. Let the Leader of the Conservative Party give an undertaking that no tariff shall come into force until the full schedules of articles pro- posed to be taxed shall be submitted to the country at a General Election. Is not this suggested truce reasonable ?
A Conservative Party advocating violent changes is no longer Conservative. Since the Conservatives promised free education English politics have got into the position that both the great parties are trying to make the public believe it is going to get something for nothing,—something at some- body else's expense. They are both trying to bribe the people with the people's own money.
At present there is no Conservative Party; at least, there is no party which is Conservative. Never was a Conservative Party so much wanted. The crushing load of taxation, which ultimately affects the working classes more than any one else, is bringing thousands of voters to the verge of saying "Oh, please do let us alone !" The crazy Land-taxes are killing the Veto agitation, if they have not killed it already. A little longer study of the Land-tax papers which we are puzzling over will cause the majority of electors to come to the con- clusion that the House of Lords which referred the 1909-10 Budget to the country was a great deal wiser than the House of Commons which put together such a fantastic scheme. It is the present House of Commons which will have to go, not the House of Lords, which is to-day stronger than for a generation.
And what then ? We are faced with the unpleasant alternative of a Conservative Party which proposes to act in a Radical way. The enthusiasm of the real Conservative is at a very low ebb, for he feels insecure, and if he votes afi all it can only be as the choice between the lesser of two evils. Oh, for Lord Salisbury and safety, and less of a policy of radical change masquerading as Conservatism I Is there no chance of a truce on some such lines as suggested P—I am,
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