LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
WANTED, A NEW PARTY.
[To TUE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR.") Srn,—May I draw attention to the difficulty in which a very large number of voters will be placed when the next General Election occurs, by the extraordinary position in which the two great political parties find themselves P The Conserva- tive Party is mainly Protectionist and (I take it) entirely anti-Home-rule. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, is mainly for Home-rule and entirely for Free-trade. At present those who are both Free-traders and anti-Home-rulers can safely give a general support to the Government, because its leading members have distinctly pledged themselves that they will not support any measure of Home-rule during the present Parliament. But what of the future? What will be the position of those voters, and how are they to vote, when the next General Election takes place ? No one knows how soon this may come. It seems hardly possible that the Conservative Party will abandon Protection, or the Liberal Party Home-rule. There is also a third question which is rapidly coming to the front, and which will make the present position of politics still more 'complex. I refer to that con- nected with the spread of Socialism and Socialistic ideas. Is it quite impossible to form a new party which shall draw to itself the best elements of both.the great parties,—which shall
be anti-Socialist, as well as for Free-trade and an undivided Imperial Parliament ? This new Centre or Constitutional Party will not want for leaders, for it seems to me that it has in the Free-trade Unionist Party a splendid nucleus. It would have a clear and clean-cut programme, which the country will well understand, and I venture to think that it would attract to itself a powerful following from all classes of
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