LORD HUGH CECIL'S PLEA FOR TOLERATION.
IN the current issue of the Nineteenth. Century Lord Hugh Cecil describes with great truth and force the position of Unionist Free-traders, and incidentally of many Liberal Free-traders, in view of the present distribution of political forces. That distribution is in one important respect entirely novel. There have been differences of opinion inside parties before now ; but they have not pro- duced. the disorganisation we already see in the Unionist camp, and may see any day in the Liberal 'camp. The Unionist Free-trader—and it is with him that Lord Hugh Cecil is naturally most concerned—is oppressed by a " singular combination of vagueness in the party policy, and rigidity in the claims of party allegiance. This union of vagueness and strictness is unprecedented. Even the history of religion, rich as it is in the enforcement of opinions by menaces, cannot, I think, match the attitude of the zealous inquisitors of Tariff Reform. Persecutors are always harsh and narrow, but never before have they been so unreasonable as to require assent to what has not been precisely formulated." The Tariff Reformers have been fortunate in their name. It is elastic enough to take m every shade of opinion, providetl that it involves the imposition of an unspecified duty on an unspecified article for an unspecified purpose. Mr. Balfour's Birmingham speech has been adopted as the creed of the Tariff Reformers because it admirably embodies this undefined determina- tion to bring about an undefined change. The financial policy of the Unionist leader cannot, says Lord Hugh Cecil, "satisfy either a convinced Free-trader or a con- vinced Protectionist." But then the convinced Protec- tionist does not ask to be satisfied at this stage. So long as Mr. Balfour has broken with Free-trade, the Protec- tionist is content, because he feels sure that whenever the work of Tariff Reform is taken in hand, it must be carried on on Protectionist lines. The party will have to be kept together in some fashion, and the men who know their own. minds and their own wishes will inetitably make their own terms. Whether Mr. Balfour yet sees this we cannot pretend to say, nor will it make much difference to the result. His own conception of a reformed tariff may be very unlike that of the great majority of his party ; but when he finds that this conception is unshared he will have no choice but to keep it to himself. There have been cases in which a leader has held back his poliey until the moment when he is able to impose it upon his followers, but this has only happened when the followers have had no policy of their own. The Conservatives who gave Disraeli his victories knew two things,—that they wanted to turn out their opponents, and that under no other leader could they hope to achieve this. Of what they were going to do when they were in office they were wholly ignorant; consequently they were ready to accept whatever programme was offered them. The Tariff Reformers are in a very different position. They Want to turn out their opponents for a particular purpose, and success will put them in a position to say to Mr. Balfour : "We have placed you in office to make Great Britain once more a Protectionist country, and we will put up with no half-measures." It may be that Mr. Balfour still hopes to give a new direction to the zeal of his party when that party is once more triumphant, but it is hard to see on what foundation such a horoscope can rest. He will be allowed, no doubt, to combine other objects with the re-establishment of Protection, but it will be on the sole condition that Protection is given the foremost place. He Will be free to build as big a Navy as he wishes, or to embark upon any projects of social reform that may take his fancy. All these things will need money, and each new demand for money will require a fresh and wider cast of the Protectionist net. We sincerely hope that we are mistaken in our reading of the future ; but, full of resource as Mr. Balfour is, we can see no way of escape from the toils which for the last few years he has so industriously been weaving for himself.
There is but little chance, therefore, that Lord Hugh Cecil's plea for toleration will gain a hearing. It is a very just plea in itself, and it is urged with groat Moderation. We agree with him that when Mr. Balfour declared Fiscal Reform to be "the first con- structive work of the Unionist Party," he did not mean that Fiscal Reform was "the first object of the Unionist Party." The word " constructive. ' is certainly not redundant. But we do not feel equally sure that Mr. Balfour did not use it with the knowledge that those who heard or read him would treat it as redundant. No doubt it will be open to him hereafter to point to what he actually said in his Valentine's Day letter, and to explain how it is that he has so long allowed the true sense of his words to be missed. But how is this postdated correction likely to be received by those to whorao it will be addressed ? We are quite of Lord Hugh Cecil s mind as regards the degree of importance which Mr.]3elfour. and Conservatives generally assign to Tariff Reform in comparison with the maintenance of the Union or of the House of Lords or of the Established Church. But there is no present probability that these things will be placed in competition. The Tariff :Reformers may have their own opinions on these subjects, and be quite prepared, if circumstances should demand it, to give Protection its true and paramount importance. But there will be no need for them to do anything of the kind. Mr. Balfour will not be expected to signalise his return to power by stealing the clothes of the Liberals in such matters as Disestablishment or a single Chamber or—unless the Irish vote should become unexpectedly important—Home-rule. Consequently the co-operation of the Free-trade Unionists will not seem important enough to be worth purchasing at the price of acquiescence in their fiscal heresy. Indeed, the very word we have just used is evidence in itself of the hopelessness of Lord Hugh Cecil's most reasonable demand. Heresy has never been counted a thing to make terms with, and, as Lord Hugh lass himself said, we have to reckon with an adversary aflame with all the passionate enthusiasm of a conquering faith. If the Tariff Reformers can turn every Free-trader out of the Unionist Party, they certainly will ; and they are so far consistent in doing it that with them Tariff Reform has come to take precedence of every other cause with which the party has been associated in the past. We can but wish that they would go one step further and drop the old names as well as the old principles, since both have ceased to have any but an accidental meaning. If the Tariff Reformers would but call themselves what they really are, there might be some chance that those members of the Opposition to whom the Fiscal question is but one, and that not the most important, of the matters now before the country might reassert their claim to have a voice in the ma.negement of their party. But the Tariff Reformers are wise is their generation. They know that, so long as they go on labelling themselves Unionists or Conservatives, their real superiority to such forgotten distinctions will not be realised by the remainder of the party until it has ceased to matter whether they realise it or not.
Probably, however, Lord Hugh Cecil has no real hope of getting what he asks. The final consolation that he offers to Unionist Free-traders—and, it may be said, to Free- traders of all views—is of more value, though it may be long in coming. He bids us look for it in the reflection "that the good cause is better than the bad," that it " really matters to be right," and that we are right " when we deny that a great revenue can be raised from foreigners ; when we resist as both wasteful and demoralising the manipulation by the State of the springs and courses of commerce ; when we deprecate the folly of seeking to bind the Empire together by a quadrennial squabble between its members over profit and loss, and denounce the injustice of taxing the food of the hungry to add to the wealth of the thriving." Consistent Free-traders may have little present chance of seeing themselves in office or their doctrines accepted, but they may at least cheer themselves witlAhe thought that the great commonplaces of public frugality and individual enterprise have a permanent vitality, and will again emerge from the obscurity which seems now to be coming over them.
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