THE GOVERNMENT AND THE UNIONIST FREE- TRADERS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIB,—Please permit that rare bird, a defeated Liberal candi- date at the last General Election, to comment briefly on your article of November 10th. You complain of the policy of the Government. Your real complaint surely is that at the polls an overwhelming .majority was returned pledged, not merely to resist Protection, but, of course, also to a positive Free- trade policy. No Government or party can live by a negative policy. A British Government must also respect that final Court of political appeal,—a new House of Commons. There can be no doubt that the legislative projects of the present Cabinet, so far from going ahead, lag in the rear of average opinion on the Liberal side of the House. Conservatives and Unionists ought, I think, to be astounded and delighted at the Government's moderation. The " debt" alleged to be due to the Unionist Free-traders cannot override these other considerations. Nor is it, I suggest, clear that there is any debt. Liberals have won before without Conservative or Unionist aid. There were also a score of reasons why at the last Election the fluctuating mass of non-party electors should vote for the.Liberals. This mass it was that chiefly turned the- scale. In many cases, moreover, Unionist Free- trade voters would not, and did not, support Liberal Free- trade candidates. I was one. Lord Hugh Cecil refused to sit on the same platform with me even at a purely Free-trade meeting, and Professor A. V.- Dicey actively supported my political opponent at the Election (Oxford City). That opponent was a member, to the last, of the late Government.
[We are not concerned to defend the action of Lord Hugh Cecil or of Professor Dicey, but we are confident that the vast majority of Unionist Free-traders acted on the lines advocated throughout the contest in these columns, and made the obtaining of an overwhelming victory for Free-trade the dominant factor in their action, and that it was such action that secured the complete character of the defeat of the Protectionists at the polls.—En. Spectator.]
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