" BUDDYISM " AND " LEFT-CENTRE."
AN analysis, as thoughtful as it is amusing, of the " social transformation " of Scottish Liberalism is contributed by Dr. William Wallace to the current number of the National Review. It is particularly well worth reading at the present moment, not only because of the close reasoning with which its author supports his theory of the tendencies of purely Scottish politics, but because it suggests a question which must be answered rightly by the Unionist Party before it can sit again on the Speaker's right. It may take more than one General Election to answer it. Dr. Wallace is mainly concerned with an examination of the causes which gave Liberalism in Scotland its great victory in 1906, following on its defeat of 1900, when the " first-class railway carriage between Edinburgh and London," once considered sufficient for the needs of Scottish Conservatism, would have had to be enlarged to accommodate thirty-nine Members. In that victory he sees " not so much a political as a social trans- formation," and he believes that is true of every victory of Liberalism in Scotland since the Reform Act. Whenever such a victory " has been tested by time, it has proved to be the emergence of a social stratum rather than the triumph of a set of political principles, ideas, or prejudices." The resuscitation, then, of Scottish Liberalism two years ago is chiefly remarkable as a fresh stage on the road of social change.
Dr. Wallace goes further back than the Reform Act to begin his argument, for he starts with the Edinburgh. Review, which was founded before the nineteenth century was two years old. But he discerns a growing difference between two sorts of Whiggism which marked the early years of the Edinburgh,—the " ideal " Whiggism of Jeffrey, and the more solid commercialism of Macaulay. Jeffrey had too much ambition to be the Voltaire of Scotland to be followed far by his countrymen, who might have accepted what Sir Henry Craik has called his " dapper criticism," but could not put up with a Voltaireanism which to their minds connoted freethinking less than intolerable irreverence. Macaulayan Whiggism was likely to go, and did go, further. A man with a European literary reputation who could put such money into his pocket as Macaulay had for his "History" could hardly fail to appeal to the imagination of con- stituents who combined a liking for good talk with a determination to succeed in business. But Macaulay's Whiggism, too, foundered on a question of Churches. He was too little a Protestant to challenge—indeed, he was latitudinarian enough to advocate—State endowment of the Irish Roman Catholic College of Maynooth ; and his defeat at the General Election of 1847 is taken by Dr. Wallace as one of the great turning-points of Scottish Whiggism. Macaulay's successor also represented in a rather different degree " mercantile Whiggism " ; but the opposing forces were gathering ground, and culminated in the defeat of the Macaulayan Whig, and the election in his stead of a Member for Edinburgh who was able to retire of his own accord as late as 1881. This was Mr. Duncan Maclaren, " designated in public meetings ' the Member for Scotland' and in club smoking-rooms `the King of the Buddies.' The application," writes Dr. Wallace, " of both designations to the same man—and a man of unquestionable industry, persistency, and, within limits, of patriotism—is the first public recog- nition of the revolution in Scottish Liberalism which was completed at the late General Election." And how does Dr. Wallace define a " Buddy " ? (The spelling is, of course, vulgarised from " bodie.") "As used in the larger cities, it is applied good-naturedly and not dis- respectfully to a man who is not necessarily deficient in capacity or even in character, who is indeed as a rule somewhat noisily energetic and public-spirited, but who looks at everything, and especially every political question, from the standpoint of his sect, his class, his trade, or his crotchet, who seldom thinks nationally or. Imperially but almost always provincially, if not parochially." Such a spirit would be certainly far removed from the wide purview of Jeffrey or Macaulay. But Dr. Wallace traces an even further development of it, culminating in yet another breakage by which Buddyism split itself back into a mild kind of Jeffreyism and a more pronounced form of Buddyism than before. There were wealthy leaders of Buddyism, and there were also Buddies who were " just Buddies." The latter began to resent the grandeur of the former, his carriage-and-pair, and his power to head sub- scription-lists; and the resentment, asking for its oppor- tunity in a great national crisis, found it in 1886. What was left of Jeffreyan and Macaulayan Whiggism stood. apart in Liberal Unionism ; and those of the original " Buddies " who followed Gladstone in 1886 comprised what Dr. Wallace calls " lower-grade middle-classism." The original followers of Mr. Maclaren, the most " sub- stantial " men, became Unionists ; some of them, even, came out from the " Buddies " so far as to become Church- men. " Sub-middle-classism was defeated in 1886 and in 1900. How is it that it gained its victory in 1906 ?
Mainly, Dr. Wallace believes, for purely commercial and class interests. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, although he belongs by birth to Glasgow mercantilism " of the ' merchant prince' variety," appeals in other ways to the desires of " sub-middle-classism." He seems, " like his master, Mr. Gladstone, to have been born with a dislike of the landed interest." He will introduce something drastic in the way of taxation of land values, perhaps, which will enable villas to be erected more cheaply at Pollokshields ; he has raised the cry " Down with the landlords !" and therefore, possibly, he may be able to do something against the capitalist, with his syndicate or his hosts of shops, the Buddy being, " as a rule, a grocer or a draper." Therefore Buddyism was all on the side of the Liberal Party at the General Election ; and at that Election discovered what is to be its future foe. As to that Dr. Wallace has no doubts at all. The enemy is Labour. It will be a war of classes. "Buddyism would like to patronise Labour Labour declines to be patronised. Buddyism finds its undoubted moral strength in its church life. Labour is ceasing even to go to church." Above all, Labour threatens Buddyisin as an economic force. Co-operation working with Trade- Unionism and Socialism, and competing against the com- mercial life of individuals, means the beginning of a life-and-death struggle. And that struggle, Dr. Wallace concludes, will end by every force which has in turns animated and transformed Whiggism in Scotland being enlisted on the side of economic conservatism. The individual instinct, always strong in Buddyism, will eventually carry it into the ranks of the quieter, older army from which it has perpetually been separating itself, and separating itself again.
To what main event, then, are we carried ? To the same phenomenon which periodically reasserts itself in the history of British politics,—the returning of the majority to the standpoint and the outlook of the safest kind of Liberal- Conservatism ; the refuge in the permanent wisdom of the " Left-Centre." The British people, as a people, remains permanently Left-Centre, and will perpetually return to that position,—a fact which those politicians forget who imagine that because the electorate has refused firmly to join in a wild-goose chase one day, it will be the more likely to turn out on the next by being told that the same goose is as wild as ever. If in Scotland, according to Dr. Wallace, the last Government went out on Protection and Chinese labour combined with dislike of landlordism, in England dislike of landlordism has not yet been brought forward as a cogent reason for the Unionist ruin. Intense dislike of the other two were plain enough, and it was Left-Centre dislike. Against the Left-Centre in Scotland, as Dr. Wallace thinks, will be led, at the next Election, the combined forces of Socialism. And against the English Left-Centre ? The forces of Socialism, no doubt; but also, unless the threats of the Protectionists are empty, the van will be led by the trumpeters of Tariff Reform. It would be a strange spectacle—indeed, it would be unnatural—if in that case Tariff Reformers and Socialists were to hesitate to join hands. That they are in many senses ready to do so is one of the signs of modern politics which is becoming increasingly plainer.
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