THE SELECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES.
[TO TIM EDITOR OF TIES "SeROTA.TOR.") was just on the point of writing a letter to you on this subject when my eye caught your very able and well-reasoned article and the letter signed "Constitutionalist" in your issue of October 10th. I consider you have done a great service to the Unionist Party in drawing attention to this matter. As one who has had great experience of political affairs in every shape and form, and one who has had the pleasure of doing a lot of work for the party in the way of speaking, writing, and canvassing, I can bear testimony to the absolute accuracy of every word you say. The invariable rule of the party is to accept as candidates men who can pay their election expenses, and if returned to Parliament spend money ad lib. in their constituency. The suitability and fitness of such candidates for a Parliamentary career are absolutely immaterial from the party point of view. It is such men who are welcomed by the party, and not men of ability who do not happen to be blessed with this world's goods. What has been the result of the adoption of these tactics, assuming for the sake of argument that they are defensible ? Take Scotland, for example. The Unionist Party have sustained four consecutive crushing defeats at the by-elections there. In Montrose Burghs not only the Liberal but the Labour candidate annihilated the Unionist candidate. At Kincardineshire, Dundee, and Stirling Burghs the efforts of the Unionist candidates were of no avail. Mr. Winston Churchill, the rejected of North- West Manchester, had no difficulty, a few days after his defeat there, in being returned for Dundee. Can it be said in all honesty that a suitable candidate—one with a serious chance of success—was put up against him at Dundee P Why, those who know anything of the facts know that the candidate there had not the remotest chance of being returned. It was the bounden duty of the party to choose for that constituency a strong and able candidate, and if that had been done Mr. Churchill most certainly would not have been returned. But the Unionist Party elected to have as its champion a rich local man, with the result that we all know. The only Unionist candidate who could really hold his own was the candidate at Stirling Burghs, but his chances of winning that seat were ruined, as the party had sustained three heavy defeats in Scotland just immediately before the polling at Stirling, and that constituency went the way of the others. That young and able candidates are to be obtained by the Unionist Party is beyond question if the party will only invite them to stand, and relieve them, as the party funds can well afford to do, of the expenses of theiecandidature. It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that seats were lost by the party at the last General Election simply and solely owing to the inefficiency of the candidates put forward. Is this in the interests of the party ? Is it not high time that this principle of selecting merely men of wealth to contest seats for the Unionist Party was stamped out, as being one fraught with the greatest danger to its fortunes and to its future P If your able leading article has this desirable effect, which I trust it will have, the thanks of the party are merely
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