MR. BALFOUR AT THE ALBERT HALL 1V1 R. BALFOUR'S address at
the Albert Hall yesterday week will not be numbered among his successes. He began by doing his best to estrange the sympathies of many who would naturally support his Government with- out much regard to politics. He made what can only be described as a strongly anti-Macedonian speech. The Foreign Secretary, when he spoke the day before, had at least mourned over the present condition of that unhappy country. He protested his inability to help the Macedonians, but he did not deny that they needed aid, or that he would gladly give it them if he could. The Prime Minister approaches the question from the point of view of the Holy Alliance. In his eyes the prominent factor in the situation is the existence of certain revolutionary leaders " who would rather see a genuine reform fail, if it does not go their whole length, than see it succeed." The object of his Majesty's Government is not to play into the hands of these nefarious characters. They are anxious to see the lot of the subject populations of the Porte ameliorated—just as we are all anxious to see the lot of the poor ameliorated, without having an idea how it is to be done—but they are not going to allow them- selves " to be a cat's-paw of any revolutionary in- trigues." It would be difficult to imagine a more complete failure to take in the facts of the case than is shown in these cynical observations. Whatever " revo- lutionary intrigues " there are in Macedonia are the creation of the Turkish Government. Revolution there stands for the desire to enjoy the first rudiments of decent government. The Macedonians do not ask for good govern- ment , they would be content with a simply negative administration,—an administration which should neither murder men nor outrage women and children. Hitherto this has been denied them, and the fact that it is denied them makes insurrection not a luxury, but a duty. What is refused them is what all European and some Asiatic Govern- ments give their subjects, and the only consideration that can stand between the Macedonians and armed revolt is the chance which has lately been held out to them that some of the Great Powers will interfere on their behalf. That chance his now come to nothing. The Austro-Russian reforms have for some time past resolved themselves into the creation of a gendarmerie commanded and officered by Europeans, and even this modest proposal has now been practically aban- doned. The Porte has substituted for the proposed force one commanded and officered by Turks, and limited European intervention to the appointment of twenty-four Inspectors, who are to assist the Ambassadors and Consuls in providing material for Blue-books. By assenting to this preposterous watering down of the original scheme Mr. Balfour and his Government have in fact, though not in intention, done a great deal to further insurrection. The revolutionary leaders have shown wonderful patience for many months past. Clear as it seemed to many of us that the Austro-Russian scheme wanted all the elements of success, the Macedonian chiefs were willing to wait to see whether anything would come of it. It is probable that the assumption of this attitude on their part was made easier by the hope that, if the dual scheme did fail, Great Britain would do as _Lord Lansdowne at one time talked of doing, and take action on her own account. That hope has been killed by Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords, and buried by Mr. Balfour at the Albert Hall. There is nothing now left to the Macedonians in the way of protection against Turkish oppression but such help as their own arms and their own weapons can give them. If there be such irreconcilable revolutionists in Macedonia as Mr. Balfour supposes, he will have made their hearts glad by his assurance that their countrymen have nothing to expect from Great Britain.
The Prime Minister next defined the true attitude of an Imperialist towards the Colonies. The admission of Chinese labour into the Transvaal has been the subject of a singularly united remonstrance from the other Colonies. But the Government have found themselves unable to pay the slightest attention to these representa- tions, because in doing so they would have criticised the action of our fellow-countrymen in the Transvaal. " These men are like ourselves, with British traditions, British hatred of outrage and cruelty, British love of freedom," and only an " arrogant and insolent critic " would suggest that we have a right to hold ourselves their superiors " on any of these great branches of public morality. In other words, a single Crown Colony may, through the mouth of its Governor chosen in Downing Street and of a nominated Council, peremptorily call upon the Imperial Government to fall foul of all the great self-governing communities which make up the British Empire. We, say these last, are altogether opposed to the importation of Chinese labour into the Transvaal. This, replies Mr.
Balfour, is a branch of public morality, and we cannot pay any regard to your objections without being convicted of arrogance and insolence. Perhaps the Colonies might reply that the West Indian planters were equally sharers in British hatred of oppression and British love of freedom. Yet the possession of these noble traditions did not prevent them from owning slaves, and occasionally from flogging them to death. No small community composed for the most part of men keenly interested in a single industry can be allowed to enjoy that exemption from censure which Mr.
Balfour claims on behalf of the Transvaal. The attitude of the Government on the question of Chinese labour has been that of men who prefer risking the goodwill of the. Colonies as a whole to refusing the demand of a single class urged with the insistence natural to men who are in a hurry to increase the profits of an over-capitalised and tem- porarily embarrassed industry. This deliberate preference of a part, and that a small and newly acquired part, to the whole is a bad augury for the Imperial character of Mr. Balfour's Colonial policy. Disliking the conditions under which the Chinese are to be imported into the Transvaal— and we will not do him the injustice of doubting that be did dislike them in the first instance—he might have used the universal drift of Colonial opinion as a reason for refusing his consent to the mine-owners' demand. If every Colony in turn is to have its private interest con- sulted in this way, the Imperial Government will be laying up for themselves a large store of trouble in their relations with the Empire as a whole. Opportunities of doing this will be created in every direction under a system of Preferential duties. Each separate Colony will naturally have its own object to serve, and will resent seeing the interests of any other Colony preferred to its own. Mr. Balfour is of opinion that the Opposition " have convinced some, at all events, of our Colonists that justice is to be obtained only from one party in the State, and that they must look for their rights to Great Britain only when she is represented by the Unionist party." That Mr. Balfour should wish the Colonists to take this view is quite con- sistent with his high sense of the paramount importance of a party victory ; but he certainly underrates the un- popularity which will overtake the Protectionist party when they come to apply Preferential duties on the plan of measuring the importance of the claimant by his impor- tunity and giving most to him who cries the loudest. We can imagine no surer way of putting an end to the good relations which happily exist between Great Britain and her daughter-States than a fiscal system which should make the latter lose or gain by every turn ofs the party wheel in England.
To prate about Imperialism, and then to defy the public opinion of the Empire almost on the first occasion when it became articulate, is a strange way of uniting the Empire. There are many things in the attitude of the Liberal party towards the Empire which we cordially dislike and mean to oppose to the uttermost, but common honesty forces us to protest against the present Government taunting their opponents with disregarding the feelings of the Colonies. Australia and New Zealand through their Ministers, and' Canada through her organs of public opinion, implored the Government to .wait till the grant of self-government- before the question of the introduction of the indentured' Chinaman into South Africa was finally decided. These expressions of Imperial opinion were, however, dismissed' with complete indifference, if not, indeed, with contempt. Yet now Mr. Balfour has the hardihood to call all who will not agree with him in disregarding the wishes of the Empire bad Imperialists ! Unless we are very much mistaken, the free nations of the Empire are beginning to tire of Mr. Balfour's claim to a monopoly of Imperial patriotism for himself and his colleagues.
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