THE FUTURE POLICY OF THE UNIONIST PARTY.
DIIRING the week two important attempts have been made to give a new direction to the policy of the Unionists, and to stamp the party with a special set of political characteristics. These two attempts consist of the New Year's Message contributed by Mr. Austen Chamberlain to the pages of the Outlook of January 5th, and the long and evidently inspired leading article in the Standard of the same day. Mr. Austen Chamber. lain begins by asking whether we have done anything to "retrieve our position, to lay the foundations of future success, to rebuild the city which the earth- quake of last January laid in ruins at our feet." That is certainly a question with which we are in the fullest sympathy. We also agree with Mr. Austen Chamberlain that "from 1896 to 1900 or later" the Unionist Government possessed and deserved the confidence of the British people. We can also go with him when he says that from 1903 onwards the members of that Government " appeared to the onlooker to have exhausted their mission and put an end to their own usefulness." " They ceased to guide events and seemed rather to wait upon them, and their tardy resignation name too late to avert any of the mischief caused by the, paralysing hesitations of the previous two years." It was/or the very reasons thus so poignantly set forth that we did not cease from the break-up of the Cabinet in log_ to urge that Mr. Balfour's Administration had lost its right to govern the country, and that the sooner it appealed to the people the better. It must be noted, however, that Mr. Austen Chamberlain is a very recent convert to this view, for in 1903 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and held that office till the very last moment.
We can go with Mr. Chamberlain yet another step, and agree heartily with him when he tells us that until we resume the policy which inspired our Administration from 1895 to 1900, and give to it its natural development, we shall strive in vain to reverse the verdict of January, 1906. Nothing could possibly be sounder or more in accordance with our own views than this proposition. The period from 1895 to 1900 was the period when the Unionist Party bad the incomparable advantage of being governed by one of the ablest and wisest of modern statesmen, the late Lord Salisbury. In foreign, in colonial,' and in home affairs his Administration may justly be said to have made the minimum of mistakes and to have achieved the maximum of success. Though pursuing an Imperial policy at once prudent and sympathetic as regards the Colonies, the Government refused entirely to encourage any schemes for a hasty or injudicious tightening of the bonds that unite the Empire. They preferred to rely upon loyalty to the Crown and to common social and political ideals for keeping the Empire together rather than upon, proposals which would infringe at once the fiscal- independence of the Mother-country and of the daughter-nations. Again, Lord Salisbury refused abso- lutely to tamper with the policy of Free-trade at home, or to admit that the wealth of the nation could be increased by taxation and the restriction of exchanges. The policy of Free-trade was as fully admitted and as fully carried out during Lord Salisbury's Premiership as at any time in our history. When dealing in a public speech with the complaints as to the depression of agriculture, Lord Salisbury pointed out that this depression was due to a double cause,—bad seasons and low prices. "But," he added, " the former cause we could not alter if we would, the latter we would not if we could." That characteristic epigram was typical of the way in which the Government treated the Fiscal question. No sort of encouragement was given to any of the fallacies or para- doxes of Protection, and members of the Government, like Mr. Chaplin, who were understood to be Protectionist at heart never ventured in Parliament or in the country to press their views on fiscal problems. On other home questions Lord Salisbury's Government were perfectly sound. Though fully accepting, and rightly accepting, the democratic basis of the Constitution, they showed no desire to enter upon the path of Socialistic legislation. The unwise policy in regard to the treatment of the unemployed prevailed at the Local Government Board after, and not before, Lord Salisbury's resignation of the Premiership. Again, though Mr. Chamberlain may have aired his schemes as to old-age pensions,. no official endorsement was given to them by Lord Salisbury, nor did they obtain his sanction in any respect.
It is when Mr. Austen Chamberlain proceeds to sketch what is to be the development of Unionist policy that we at last find ourselves in strong opposition to his views. Yet even here it is rather to his practical interpretation of policy than to his abstract statements that we object. We heartily agree that the Unionist Party is nothing if it be net "national and Imperial," provided that he means by this that it is the duty of the Unionist Party to keep the nation strong at home and abroad, and to neutralise any disintegrating forces that may threaten the unity of the United Kingdom on the one hand or of the Empire on the other. We agree, too, when he states that this is only half the mission of the Unionist Party, and that it also should place before it the ideal of social reform. It is when we come to the definition of social reform that we part compa.ny with Mr. Austen Chamberlain. When he sketches that policy in outline the result is something which, in our belief, is absolutely subversive of true Unionism and true Conservatism. With him social reform means, in the first place, a vast expenditure on
objects which, though they are dubbed non-Socialistic, are in reality the purest Socialism ; and next, the impo- sition of a Protective tariff in order to supply the necessary funds. This double policy he believes to be the natural and logical development of the policy of 1895. " Since," he continues, " the famous meeting at Lansdowne House, it is the accepted policy of the party and its leader,—the first constructive work of the next Unionist Government. Just in proportion as we hold fast to it and champion it will be our success in the battle which lies before us. But there must be an end of doubt and hesitation, of reticences and reserves." In other words, the policy of the Unionist Party as proclaimed by Mr. Austen Chamberlain is to empty the Treasury by schemes for housing, feeding of school-children, and endowing the whole population with old-age pensions on the one hand, and to fill it on the other by a Protective policy. The great goddess Taxation, if we only invoke her aid sufficiently. and make sufficient offerings at her shrine, will scatter peace and plenty through a land where the State wilt provide , for all,—will house the workman, feed the children, and give bounteous doles to every aged man and woman.
Our ideal of social reform—an ideal which we believe is far more in consonance with the traditions of the Unionist Party and far more likely to benefit the nation—is exactly the opposite of Mr. Austen Chamberlain's. We believe that large social reforms are needed, but in the direction, not of State aid and State pauperisation, but of encouraging individual action and strengthening the thews and sinews of the nation. Instead of debilitating the country by adopting the substance, if not the name, of Socialism, we would brace it by getting rid of a great deal of the legislation which now impairs individual effort and weakens the powers of the people. Instead of extending the operation of the Poor Law, we would once again bring it within the sane and narrow limits so wisely prescribed in 1834. Instead of calling an unem- ployed class into existence, and in effect letting it be known that men who do not care to make the painful effort to find work and keep it will be relievel by the State, and of announcing that no man need trouble to 'provide for his old age or regard it as part of the duty of the family to provide for those of its members who have ceased to be capable of doing active work, we would make it clear that it is the prime duty of the State to encourage self-help in the individual and to prevent the destruction of the family, still the most efficient of all forms of insurance. Again, in our scheme of social reform we would alter those injustices of local taxation which now press so unfairly upon one industry, the industry of agriculture, and single it out for bearing a burden which is not endured locally by other forms of property. By all means let us have social reform, for plenty of such reform is needed; but let it be in a shape which will build up character and conserve property instead of producing waste on the one hand and demoralisation on the other. Again, let .us maintain to the full our policy of Free-trade at home and abroad by refusing to allow either tax-collectors, combinations of capitalists, or Trade- Unions to forbid men to exchange freely their labour and its products. Mr. Austen Chamberlain tells us that Tariff Reform will provide, " without robbery or jobbery," the necessary financial basis for further social reforms. He must know singularly little of the history of Protection in other countries if he thinks that its special characteristics are the absence of robbery and jobbery.
Before we end we must say a word as to the leading article in -last Saturday's Standard, Mentioned by us at the beginning of this article. In the main, the article runs on the lines of Mr. Austen Chamberlain's letter, though it is somewhat more specific. For example, while talking loudly of opposition to Socialism, the Standard gives the following list of Socialistic projects which it thinks should be adopted by the Unionist Party
The abolition of injurious employment for women, the right nurture and protection of children, the readjustment of taxation and the protection of labour, the establishment of compulsory labour colonies, the institution of a complete system of emigration within the EMpire, the granting of old age pensions these are the measures which must constitute the domestic policy of the Conservative party. At the same time, the full recognition of the Imperial ideal enforces the arrangement of reciprocity within the Empire and the maintenance of the Services at the absolute standard of national security. Nor can these things be
accomplished without the due representation in the councils of the Empire of the rulers of the self-governing Colonies. In the initiation and the execution of such a policy resides scope for the highest qualities, and opportunity for all noble ambition. To Lord Milner belongsthe praise of having, first and alone among British statesmen, publicly and explicitly placed before the country the vital issues of the hour, and of having expounded, without hesitancy and without qualification, the principles which we have always consistently advocated, and which we shall continue to advocate."
We cannot on the present occasion criticise these points in detail. We must note, however, the suggestion that Lord Milner is to be the leader of the new Socialistic Unionist Party, and the curious fact that Mr. Balfour's name is not mentioned throughout the course of the article. That is, in furnishing a new policy for the Unionist Party, the present leader of the party is absolutely ignored. Mr. Balfour, no doubt, has no one but himself to blame for the kind of treatment he thus receives. As we ventured to suggest to him last week, nothing can possibly come of his attempt to execute a straddle between Free-trade and Protection, and Socialism and Individualism. If he is to remain the leader of the Unionist Party, he must define his Unionism. Otherwise he will end by being repudiated alike by the Tariff Reformers and the Unionist Free-traders. If he is wise, he will define it in the Conservative rather than the Socialistic sense. It is, in our opinion, certain that no good can come of any attempt on the part of the Unionists to improve their position by parodying the formulae of the Radicals. Their business is not to out-Herod Herod in the field of Socialism, but to rally the conservative forces of the country, which are still as strong as ever. In doing this, there is no need for the Unionist Party to be undemocratic. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the British democracy is at heart Socialistic. In truth, the proportion of anti-Socialist members of the working class is very large, and we do not doubt that, when reinforced by the anti-Socialists in the other classes of society, they will constitute a very large majority of the nation. The result of the last General Election comes, not to contradict, but to support this view. The last General Election was, in fact, a plebiscite for or against Protection. But Protection is in reality a form of Socialism. In our belief, when the British people condemned Protection at the polls this time last year, they showed that at heart they were anti-Socialist. If at the next General Election they are asked to approve or disapprove of the Socialistic legislation of the present Government, they will, we believe, desire to condemn it. But this condemnation they will not be able to give if the Unionist Party in its fatuity of impotence has abandoned resistance to Socialism. There is nothing that the nation wants so much at the present moment as a lead against Socialism. Unless it has lost all sense of its own interests, that lead will be given by the Unionist Party. For Unionist Socialists the country has no use.
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