TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PERIL OF THE UNIONIST PARTY.
THE Unionist Party is in a very dangerous condition. Its life-blood is being sucked by a Piime Minister who is not a Unionist, and by a Government in which most of the essential and active elements are either not Unionists 3r are so much under the spell worked by the Prime Minister that they must now be counted as Lloyd Geor geites rather than as Unionists. The two greatest offices in the Empire— :hat of Prime Minister and of Viceroy of India—are not held by Unionists but by Liberals. The Secretary of State for India is a Liberal. The Secretary of State for the Colonies i3 a Liberal. So arc the Home Secretary and the Minister of Health, while Lord Curzon and Mr. Bonar Law seem to show so much personal attachment to Mr. Lloyd George that they must be classed—we use the words without any idea of offence—as hyphenated Unionists. Yet the majority upon which the Coalition Government rests is always a Unionist majority. This is the essential fact not only in the Commons but in the Constituencies. In brief, the Unionist Party seems to be fated to toil on in a state which can only be described as one of political serfdom. Clearly this would not matter if the results were good, or, again, if the Unionist Party were in itself so unimportant that it did not much matter whether its blood were sucked dry or whether it were destined, when used up, to be thrown on the political scrap-heap. We believe, however, that the Unionist Party, with all ,fts faults, is one of the greatest powers for good in the country, and that every effort ought to be made to save it from destruction, or from, what is the same thing, being gradually absorbed into an organization which will be rather the clan of a partisan leader than a party in the old sense. We do not want to disparage Mr. Lloyd George. We are quite willing to acknowledge his many and great virtues as a party leader. We are also perfectly ready to express our gratitude for his acts in the past and for his alertness and patriotic vigour. We do feel, however, that if we are to reorganize the country on sound lines and to fight Revolution at an advantage we must do so not by prostration at the feet of a politician, however distinguished, but by reviving a democratic Unionist Party, based on definite principles—a party to which a man can give a life-long and honourable adherence. This means, of course, that Mr. Lloyd George and his followers must be made finally to understand that they have got to become integral members of a homogeneous party—whether called Unionist or by some other name is no great matter. They cannot remain, as now, the independent and fortuitous heads of a casual Coalition.
We are fast approaching the time when the Unionist leaders must plainly declare what the Unionist Party still stands for. Pending such a statement—one' we venture to say, eagerly awaited by the rank and file— we shall endeavour to set forth in outline a short statement of the principles on which the party is founded: 1. The Unionist Party accepts democracy absolutely, and means by democracy the Will of the Majority, and not of a minority masquerading as the People. 2. The Unionist Party is the party of the Empire. Though most willing to develop the Empire on democratic lines, it will not throw the Empire away in a fit of folly, despair, or egoism after the manner in which India is now being dealt with.
3. The Unionist Party is an anti-revolutionary party. This means that it will not pay blackmail to anyone who threatens it in the name of Labour, and that it will not rely upon bribing rather than upon trusting the People. 4. The Unionist Party is in favour of the preservation of personal liberty and private property, and of the develop- ment and conservation of the energy and resources of the nation. This means limiting as far as possible the evils of high taxation, and trusting to private energy rather than to bureaucratic action for the restoration of industry. It does not mean low wages, but it does mean high produc- tion, and, as the result of high production, a higher pur. chasing power for wages. It means the preservation and augmentation of capital as the co-partner but not the tyrant of Labour. Instructed Labour wants not fewer but more millions of capital to compete for the commodity it sells- i.e., man power.
And now to be more specific. At the present moment the danger of the political situation is that he who can secure, however temporarily—be the means what they may—the command of a majority of the House of Commons has the whole of the British Empire and all our lives and liberties at his disposal. That is not a pleasant fact, but a fact it is none the less. Therefore our need is to find a means which may save the House of Commons from itself, and save Ministers and parties, in the heated and heady atmosphere of the political auction-room, from committing themselves to bids which will ruin the nation.
Such a means is to be found in the Poll of the People or Referendum. Here at any rate is a barrier to possible follies or crimes on the part of the people's representatives. The Poll of the People lodges the right of veto over the work of our representatives in hands strong enough to exercise that veto. It is of course possible that the people may vote for foolish things at a Referendum, as at a General Election, but at any rate we know where we are when some great question is submitted to the Poll of the People and decided at that Poll. If a good cause falls, it falls by an authority worthy of giving it the coup de grace, and not, as so often happens in a Representative Assembly, by that ignominious system of parliamentary intrigue known as log-rolling." Groups A, B, C, D, and E each have Bills in which they are so much interested that they care little for any other cause. Each group by itself is in a minority. If, however, they agree to combine, in order to carry their reveral measures, though each may be indifferent to or may actually dislike the measures of the others, they can get their way. Given (1) a Ministry that wants to stay in, and (2) a persis- tent set of Groups, these Bills may successfully pass through Parliament in spite of the fact that they are each and all detested by the majority of the voters. If, as in Switzer- land and most of the States in the United States, it were possible to send these minority Bills to a people's vote, such Bills would never have been introduced into the House of Commons. The fear of a popular veto would have killed them before they were born.
Surely, then, the Unionist Party, before the next General Election, ought to lodge a veto power in the hands of the voters as a whole in the shape of the Poll of the People or Referendum. Lecky, who was not a partisan advocate of the Referendum, but who was a very wise political observer, said of the Referendum : " The tendencies which it most strongly shows are a dislike to a large expenditure, a dislike to centralization, a dislike to violent innovation." Why should the Unionist Party reject such an instrument of political action while it accepts many others so much more likely to be misused ? It will be said, perhaps, that what would be much better than to introduce such a novelty as the Poll of the People would be to endow the Constitution with a sound Second Chamber—a body designed to take the place of the House of Lords now hamstrung by the Parliament Act. We cannot agree. A potent Second Chamber, though it would prove very useful in many ways, does not, in our opinion, afford as good a form of veto as the Referendum. We can conceive circumstances in which bare majorities in both of two equipotent Chambers might get together on a log-rolling basis to pass legislation of which the majority of the people did not approve. Into this matter, however, we need not go. It is quite certain that, do what we will, the House of Commons will never give us a really powerful Second Chamber. The most it will do will be to establish some futile body like that proposed by Lord Grey of Fallodon—a body which, though it looks of equal importance with the House of Commons and seems to have a democratic basis, can easily be swamped under the apparently just but in fact hopelessly disingenuous device of a joint sitting.
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