TOPICS OF THE DAY.
• HOW TO KILL THE UNIONIST PARTY.
PROTECTION is the evil genius of the Unionist Party. It falls .like one of those family curses, which strike always at the moment of hope and fruition— when the heir is twenty-one, when the eldest daughter is betrothed, when prosperity seems to be at its zenith. The accession of Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Hartington, and the rest of the dissentient Liberals to the Unionist Party seemed to place that Party in a position of unrivalled force and influence. It commanded the confidence of the country. Its rivals were distracted and divided. And then the curse of Tariff Reform and Protection fell, and the Party suffered the worst reverse it had ever experienced. So now. The Unionist Party was caught in the toils of a Coalition which was sapping its vitality and making it an accomplice to folly and falsehood abroad and corruption at home. Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Baldwin, to their eternal credit, freed it from this embarrassment and discredit. By their courage and single-mindedness they not only saved their Party, but won it the support and confidence of the nation as a whole. It is not too much to say that when Mr. Baldwin took office last spring the Unionist Party had never stood so high in popular regard.' It provoked no enmity. Its watchwords were Stability, Retrenchment, Good Faith, Democracy, and Reform without Revolution. And the country felt that these were not tricky advertisements to cover bad stock, but genuine resolves with honest and strong men behind them. The impact on the popular mind did not end there. The most notable thing of all about the political situation was the tendency of men of soberness of view and sincerity of purpose to rally to the Unionist banner. Here, they felt, is the Democratic Centre Party which we have dreamed of for so many years—the Party which no man, whatever the old ticket on his back, need be ashamed of joining.
And now look at the Party. It is shivering as a ship shivers when she has struck a huge mass of floating wreckage—the wreckage of Tariff Reform and the Chamberlain policy. She is not going to founder at once, but no man can say how far the damage has spread. The Party is anxious and distracted within. Outside, the unattached men in every constituency who were looking to it as their future political home, and who would have given it, not perhaps a permanent majority, but a permanent predominant partnership in the State, feel themselves repulsed—driven back to waste their political strength and virtue in forming some weak group of their own, or remaining in listless and ineffectual isolation. Yet these men are a most valuable and important element, and would have been able, if they had -been attached to, instead of detached from, the Unionist Party to give it stability and a reserve of power.
But though the ship has struck the wreckage we have described, it would be disgraceful to despair. Our business is not to weep over the accident, but to try to point out the remedy—for a remedy there is, if only our leaders will adopt it. But first we must do justice to Mi. Baldwin. The curse has fallen on him, but he has provoked it, not wilfully,. but, as it were, inevitably. He holds certain fiscal views honourably and sincerely, and also very strongly. He sees the terrible spectacle of unemployment, and he believes that the remedy is to be found in Protection. That being so, we frankly and fully admit that he could do nothing but propose what he regards as the essential medicine for so dire a disease. We have no right in these circumstances to ask him to give it up, even if the alternative is, in our opinion, the destruction of the Party.
How, then, can the curse be avoided and the Party saved from disruption ? The thing first to be sought Is a method by which voters can vote for Unionist candi- dates without voting for Protection, i.e., can remain Free Traders without ceasing to be Unionists. Let Mr. Baldwin say that he and his Government will not impose a Protectionist Tariff on this country without referring it to a Poll of the People, without, that is, submitting the Finance Bill embodying the Tariff to the People, just as the first General Swiss Protective Tariff was submitted to the Electors of the Republic. The effect of this would be that the electors would be given a veto over the actual Tariff prepared by Parliament. They could vote freely for Protectionist Unionist candidates, for they would know that they could later vote " Yes " or " No " on the single specific issue of Protection.
The result, whatever it was, would be good, not only for the Party, but also for the Tariff. The danger of Tariff-making is the log-rolling that goes on during the drafting of the Schedules. The groups and interests would not dare to be half so selfish and so grabbing if they knew that their handiwork had got to go before the electors at a Poll.
It will be said, perhaps, that there is no time to prepare a Referendum Bill. This is a delusion. There is a perfectly well worked out, water-tight Bill in existence called Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Bill, and it could be passed, if necessary, in a week. It uses the machinery of a General Election. Under it a writ issues to the Returning Officer in each constituency, ordering him to take a vote, not on the merits of Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, but on the issue, " Is it your will that the Bill entitled, etc., etc., shall be submitted for the King's assent ? ' Those who are in favour of the Bill will put a cross in the column marked 'Yes,' and those against in the column marked ' No.' " There is no reason why a General Election should precede this reference of the Tariff to the electors. To prepare a Tariff would not violate the Bonar Law pledge. The pledge was against action, not preparation or • investigation, and before action there would be the most complete consultation of the electors.
The great, the essential, advantage of not having the General Election first with a possibility of a Poll of the People after would be that the Party would not be in danger of being shaken to pieces by the friction engendered by an ad hoc General Election. We should not be forced to go to the country disunited, and so at a terrible dis- advantage. If the Referendum came first and was in favour of Tariff Reform, millions of electors would, like the present writer, be content to abide by the result. We should feel that the countrk had spoken, and that, though we might not like it, we must bow to the Will of the Majority and loyally give the great experiment a fair chance.
Here lies the benefit we claim for the referring of the Tariff to the country. If it is accepted, the Party is saved and the Tariff given the very best possible chance to succeed.
The Poll of the People may yet save Unionism. Surely Mr. Baldwin will not refuse to consider this way of pre- venting what we are sure he does not desire—the driving out of the Party, with ignominy and disdain,-of all those supporters of his who cannot agree with the abstract proposition that unemployment can be prevented by Protection. We ask this respite, not as a favour to our- selves, but as a life-belt for the Unionist Party.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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