Liberal H esitations
TREquestion of 'whether the thirty odd Liberals headed by Sir Herbert Samuel should sit on the Government or the Opposition side of the House of Commons is not in itself a matter of great moment —least of all to the Government with its 500 seats. But that is not to say that the decision the Independent Liberals may ultimately take is a matter of general indifference. Liberalism has had a great past in the comparatively recent history of this country, and so long as it seems possible that it may have any future at all the fortunes of those who claim at the moment to represent it are a proper object of public interest. The title of Sir Herbert Samuel's following to the name of Liberal unadorned cannot reasonably be challenged, even though behind the Wee Free group there is a Weer Free handful of Lloyd George kinsmen claiming that they alone are touched by the authentic fire. The Simon Liberals are increasingly merged in an over- whelmingly Conservative administration, and it would be hard to discover from the speeches of any of them how they differ from Mr. Baldwin or Lord Hailsham.
The Samuel Liberals leave no room for any illusions regarding their position. All such arc scattered to the winds by Sir Herbert Samuel's speech at the Hotel Metropole on Monday. The Liberal leader has moved far since the day when he accepted office under the National Government, and no small distance since his resignation on the fiscal issue, and (at the moment) on that alone. His attack on the Government now extends to every item in its programme, and Monday's speech differed in no visible particular from the typical broadside of an ordinary Opposition leader against the administration of the day. Its author assailed Ministers equally for their lack of a policy in general and for the perversity of their particular policies when- they had any. He condemned their failure to face the economic situation and their failure to tackle unemployment ; he condemned their Ottawa agreements, he condemned their disarmament policy, he condemned their Man- churian policy, he appealed to them to turn from high Protection to Free Trade—at any rate to a 10 per cent. maximum—and, as anticlimax, began to wonder whether the party would not soon have to think about crossing the floor.
What the Liberals ultimately decide about that is primarily, as has been said, their own concern. But one aspect of the question is of wider import. An able and critical Opposition in the House of Commons has always been an essential condition of the satisfactory working of the English parliamentary system. No one can pretend that the Labour Party constitutes such a factor in the present House, and while it would be absurd to suggest that Liberals who were in the main at one with the Government should cross the floor merely to furnish an apparent access of strength to the Opposition, it is obviously rational that a party which thinks the Government more wrong than right, and more inefficient than efficient, should go to that quarter of the House to which such sentiments would naturally take it. The rights of Parliament are being seriously endangered to-day by the growing power of the Executive, and an apathetic and uncritical House is in itself an incentive to further encroachments. A vigilant Opposition can do much there. Liberal doctrines, moreover, need still, likethe Conservative and Labour gospels, to be expounded in the House of Commons. Whether the Liberal group of to-day is a competent exponent of them is perhaps an open question. It certainly will not be so long ns it sits behind the Government and attacks it.
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