NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TO-DAY the elections begin, and, thanks to the states- manship and patriotism of Mr. Balfour and the other Tariff Reform leaders, the battle opens with the best possible prospects for the Unionist Party. They have made a sacrifice, and a very difficult sacrifice, in order to secure a concentration of Unionist effort to save us from single- Chamber government and to preserve the Union,—the sacrifice of declaring that no tariff shall come into operation until it has been submitted to the direct vote of the people. Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Austen Chamberlain and Mr. Bonar Law, and the rest of the Tariff Reformers literally took their political lives in their hands when they agreed that, if they won, their tariff should be subjected to the Referendum. Their boldness has been more than rewarded. As so often happens, they have discovered that the thing which seemed to involve such grave risks has proved the path of safety. What they feared could not at short notice be explained to their followers, and so would depress and annoy them, has turned out to be the thing which those followers desired above all else. In the whole of our political experience no action on the part of a political chief has proved so dramatic and so successful. To Mr. Balfour's announcement at the Albert Hall, quoted elsewhere, we may apply a line from a Persian poet : "By these words a world was affected." Mr. Balfour has made a new heaven and a new earth in the region of politics.
