The second annual meeting of the Unionist Free-Trade Club was
held on Tuesday afternoon at the Westminster Palace Hotel. The Duke of Devonshire declared that though "Free-trade was for the present safe, the Unionist Party was not by any means at the present moment safe." It had been exposed to a serious internal danger which threatened, if not
its very existence, at all events its influence and power in the country. In the Duke's opinion, the measures which had been presented, and would be presented in future Sessions, by the Government would before very long produce, first, friction and dissension among the majority itself, and subsequently, a strong reaction. But he also held that this tendency would be counteracted and retarded, and not accelerated, by the adoption of Fiscal Reform. In other words, the Duke evidently feels what we have set forth so often in these pages,—viz., that the Conservative and Unionist Party is abrogating its true function of protecting and emphasising sane and moderate views in regard to legislation by the fact that it is unhappily pledged to the extreme, and even revolu- tionary, proposals of the Tariff Reformers.
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