27 NOVEMBER 1909, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE DUTY OF UNIONIST FREE-TRADERS.

THE division on Lord Lansdowne's Motion will not be taken till next Tuesday. The course of the debate, however, shows that, short of something in the nature of a miracle, the House of Lords will reject the Finance Bill. No doubt a compromise is still possible, but we fear that it is not likely. In any case, our readers know the view which we take of the situation, and we are not going to waste any time in crying over spilt milk. The question that Unionist Free-traders have to face at the present moment is their duty at the coming elections. This duty was admirably expressed in the striking speech delivered by Lord Cromer on Tuesday night. Lord Cromer, who succeeded the Duke of Devonshire as president of the Unionist Free-Trade Club, disclaimed any right to speak for his fellow Unionist Free-traders ; but, as a matter of fact, we believe that his attitude represents the great body of Unionist Free-trade opinion, and that the lead he has given will be largely followed, and rightly followed. Here is Lord Cromer's view in his own words :- "My individual opinion is that in the coming Election a Unionist Free-trader who, in the absence of a candidate who fully represents his own views, votes for a Tariff Reform candidate, as I should certainly do if I had a vote, need not abandon one iota of his Free-trade principles any more than I abandon mine."

That is a line of action which we most heartily endorse, and desire to recommend with all the force at our command to those who sympathise with the views of the Spectator. The reasons given by Lord Cromer for the action he suggests are as sound as his conclusions. After pointing out that increased indirect taxation for revenue purposes may become a most unpleasant and much-to-be-regretted necessity, though not one which involves any violation of Free-trade principles, and after declaring that Protection is not the proper weapon by which Socialism can be com- bated or unemployment reduced, Lord Cromer went on to say that Colonial Preference is not merely objectionable on fiscal grounds, but could no more now cement the different parts of the Empire than it did when it was tried, and failed, sixty years ago. " I still entertain," he went on, " the strongest objection against taxes on food or raw material, and I still hold as strongly as ever that the adoption of a Protective policy is calculated to demoralise public life in this country. ' In regard to retaliation, Lord Cromer declared that he had no objection to it in theory, provided that there was a reasonable prospect of its success, and that we maintained a Navy of overpowering strength, for if a retaliatory policy is pursued, a strong Navy would be of even more vital importance than it is at present. In spite, however, of his unaltered opposition to Protection and Tariff Reform, Lord Cromer went on to point out —and here we are entirely at one with him—that the prospects of Free-trade were by no means as gloomy as they were sometimes represented. There were plenty of alternatives to the Budget other than Protection, and it was absurd to suppose that any such policy as Tariff Reform could be carried out without a much more decisive expression of public opinion in its favour than had yet been obtained, or was at all likely to be obtained. Lord Cromer ended this portion of his speech with another passage which we desire to quote verbatim, as it exactly represents our view of the situation :- " I repeat that in my view Unionist Free-traders who are in the position, as they often must be, that they must either abstain from voting or vote for a Tariff Reformer, need not, in choosing the latter alternative, abandon any one of their essential principles, but might adopt the latter course with a perfectly clear conscience. Voting for a Tariff Reformer is by no means the same thing as voting for Tariff Reform. It will merely imply that the Unionist Free-trader is prepared to proclaim a truce, and will lay aside his special ideas in order to subserve other and, as I consider, even more important ends. And what are those ends? The first and most important cf all is to ensure the continued existence of an effective Second Chamber. The second is to main- tain the union with Ireland and thus prevent the disruption of the Empire. The two issues, that of the Second Chamber and

the maintenance of the Empire, are intimately connected. This has been fully recognised by the leaders of the Irish Nationalist Party. A third end is to ensure the continued existence of the Established Church and to prevent the secularisation of education; and a fourth end is to combat Socialism."

In endorsing Lord Cromer's policy as to the duty of the Unionist Free-traders at the, coming Election—the duty of supporting and voting fvr Tariff Reformers rather than of abstaining, and thus running the risk of allowing the Government candidates to be successful—we shall no doubt be told, as, indeed, we have already been told by several correspondents in the past two or three weeks, that we are abandoning the cause of Free-trade without preventing the advent of Socialism, because Socialism is just as likely to be adopted by the Unionists as by their opponents. We have, indeed, received several letters of this kind during the week, couched very much in the language of a -letter printed by us last Saturday. As, however, our space is limited, and as we could only give the same answer as we 'gave last week, we have, though not without some reluctance, decided not to Print theSi3 letters. We trust that our correspondents will not think that we have rejected their communications out of any desire to stifle their voices, or because we object in any way to being what we may call " baited " with their criticisms.—The evident delight shown by our corre- spondents in, as they appear to think, getting the Spectator into "a tight place" makes it not unfair to suggest the analogy of bear-baiting.—As far as we are concerned, we have no objection whatever to being baited. The process, indeed, makes us ready to believe that there must have been a good deal of truth in the old excuse that the bear, who in the days of our ancestors was taken out regularly once a week into the market-place of the county town and had the dogs loosed on him, quite enjoyed the process. Unfortunately, however, though the conflict may be amusing both for the dogs and the bear, the wider public tends to weary of it. We therefore propose to make this our last answer to any attempts to " bait " us with the criticisms of which we have spoken.

As opponents of a single unchecked and unrevised legislative Chamber, as opponents also of the disruption of the United Kingdom no matter under what alias, as convinced'supporters of the Established Church and of a system of national education which recognises that it is the duty of the State to maintain religious education, and finally as opponents of all Socialistic legislation, we are determined to do everything we can to prevent the return of supporters of the present Government. We do not mean to allow ourselves to be deflected in the slightest degree from that course by accusations of injuring the cause of Free-trade, or by allegationd that those whom we must support in order to defeat the Government candi- dates themselves belong to a party whose record is unsound in the matter of Socialism. We admit without hesitation that in many respects the Unionist Party and the House of Lords have not only not done their duty in opposing Socialistic legislation—take, for example, the unworthy surrender of the House of Lords on the Trade Disputes Bill and the Old-Age Pensions Bill—but also that Unionist 'candidates have in many cases indulged in unprincipled and dangerous attempts to outbid their opponents in the political auction-room. But remember that when a man must get into one of two cabs, the fact that the blue cab is not altogether in a sound condition is not a reason for rejecting it in favour of the red cab which is in a far worse state and has the extra disadvantages of a bolting horse and a driver whose system of driving combines all the disadvantages of anxious timidity and mad recklessness. In a case like this the advantages of choosing the lesser evil are obvious enough, and no man who makes that choice can be accused either of want of sense or of want of good faith because he has made it; nor, again, will he be deterred by the absurd notion that he will somehow be giving his sanction and approval to bad management and bad driving if he enters the blue cab, but that such a line of reasoning does not apply in the case of his patronage of the red cab. Yet when we come to the region of politics many worthy people seem to be quite mastered by the invective of the driver of the red cab and his friends on the subject of the demerits of the first and natural choice of the pradent and conservative traveller- i.e., the blue cab—and tamely submit to being hectored into the greater evils and the greater risks of the red vehicle. Bewildered by the noise of the competing cries, they end by doing the very thing which they specially desired not to do.

• Our advice to the " balancing " elector is to keep steadily before him the guiding principle that his only line of safety lies in acting on the maxim, " Of two evils choose the lesser." In a case like the present this must be- supplemented by the reminder that if the two evils appear to hhu of equal magnitude, then he should unhesitatingly direct his action against the evil which is nearer at hand and more immediate rather than against the evil which is more remote. At the moment, although Tariff Reform and a Socialistic Budget may appear to be simultaneously presented to the elector, as a matter of fact the nearer and more immediate evil is the Socialistic one. A great deal of water will have to run under the bridges and a great many things be done before the Tariff Reformers can carry the more -dangerous and objectionable portions of Tariff Reform. In the first place, they will have to come to a decision as to whether they wish to use their tariff for revenue purposes or for purposes of pro- tection. It cannot be successfully used for both. Next, they will have to decide, not in the region of rhetoric, but of hard fact, what is a raw material and what is a manufactured product. In order to do what they desire —to favour the importation of the one and to secure the exclusion of the other—the distinction must be drawn. When these obstacles are surmounted, they have got to obtain an agreement not merely with one Colony, but with all the Colonies, as to the incidence of preference. As if all these difficulties were not great enough, at the very time that they will be attempting to get over them the Foreign Office will, if we are to judge from Mr. Balfour's speech, be endeavouring to cut the ground from under their feet by Commercial Treaties, the main object of which cannot but be inimical both to the protective and to the preferential side of the tariff. We do not think, then, that we are too optimistic when we say that out of such a tangle it is by no means unlikely that the only thing which will emerge will be some extension of our existing tariff for revenue purposes. That is a result which we, as advocates of direct rather than indirect taxation on the ground that direct taxation is less wasteful, should not altogether welcome ; but at any rate it is one far removed from the paradoxical imaginings of the out-and-out Tariff Reformer.

We have one more word to say. Let no man who votes for a supporter of the present Government because of the fact that the Liberal candidate does a certain amount of lip-service to Free-trade imagine that he will thereby be doing his best for the Free-trade cause. As a matter of fact, he is far more likely to be doing that cause an injury. And for this plain reason. Those who control the Liberal Party are already dreaming of vast schemes of expenditure, and of such dangerous proposals as the nationalisation of the railways and the land. The maintenance of Free-trade is entirely incom- patible with any such policy. Free-trade in the true sense can never " keep house " with such denials of the principle of free exchange as this. We say without hesitation that the policy of the present Government, if adopted, must make Protection inevitable. It is violating every principle upon which the system of free exchange rests. But strange as it may seem, though the support of nominal Free-trade candidates is almost certain to end in the slough of Protection, and to produce an amalgam of State Socialism and exclusive tariffs such as we unfortunately see in some of the overseas nations of the Empire, it is, as we have pointed out, by no means certain that the return of nominal Tariff Reformers will lead to Tariff Reform. In fighting Socialism, as the Tariff Reformers are obliged to do owing to the exigencies of the party game, they are every day raising barriers against their own nostrum, and maintaining principles and arguments which directly militate against that piece of specific Socialism under which the State attempts to regulate and prevent exchanges between those who wish to do business outside these islands.

The advice which we venture to offer to Unionist Free- traders may be wrong, but at any rate we can give it without misgiving or hesitation. Choose the lesser evil, and therefore vote for the Tarif Reformer rather than the Liberal. The Unionist Free-trade voter at the same time must remember that his right to oppose Tariff Reform if it ever becomes a practical question remains as complete and strong as ever. A man may choose the lesser evil and oppose in the only effective way he can a Socialistic policy without abating one jot • or tittle of his Free-trade principles.