UNIONIST POLICY.
POLITICAL leaders get plenty of destructive criticism from their followers but not much that is con-. structive. Their ,mistakes are proclaimed with stunning iteration by people who are wise after the event, but. very little attempt is ever made in advance to sug., gest what they ought to do. This want of constructive criticism is partly due, we may suppose, to the innate modesty of the critics, partly to a paucity of imagination, and partly also to the influence of " the line of least resistance." It is always easier to be negative than positive. Lastly, and most important of all, the critics do not care to take the responsibility of positive suggestion for fear of causing disagreement with their views. It is obviously much easier to get agreement as to what ought not to be done than as to what ought to be done. This prudence or timidity is usually concealed by an assertion of the maxim that only those who have the responsibility of action can direct its course in detail. In spite, however, of these potent arguments for not being positive or committing oneself to any distinct line of action, we mean, greatly daring, to make the attempt of sketching out the course we would lay for the ship of the Unionist Party were we responsible for its navigation. We must, however, preface this sketch by saying that we intend to leave out all reference to the thorny problem of Tariff Reform. That is a matter which for obvious reasons we cannot touch. There is, however, plenty to be said about Unionist policy without embarking upon that troubled sea, with all its cross currents and tempestuous winds.
Mr. Dooley once began an article, " If I were General Buller, Hinnissey, which thank Heavens I'm not," and then proceeded to sketch a system of strategy for that com- mander. We can assure our readers that we approach our present subject in a similarly chastened spirit. The first thing that anyone who puts himself in the position chosen by the present writer ought to remember is not to be afraid of being accused of having, after all, nothing but a negative programme. For after all, the greatest social and political policy ever given to the world was almost a purely negative policy—the policy of the Ten Commandments. Especially does it behove a Unionist at the present day to remember the virtues of " thou shalt not." We have clearly been having an overdose of "thou shalt." But though a Unionist leader must not be afraid of the accusation of not being constructive enough, he in reality will find plenty of positive suggestions ready to his hand. Though he will not meddle with the Union, will not disestablish the Church, will not plunder the possessors of a particular form of property, and will not attempt to place one section of the community in a position of privilege and above the ordinary law of the land, and thus create a class which is none the less a noblesse because its hands are horny, he must in many directions propose construction. Let us take first the case of the Constitution. The present Government, by cutting through arches here and buttresses there, have left it a tottering ruin. A great deal of new construction is essential here. If the present writer could have his will he would not attempt directly to repeal the Parliament Act. He would repair the damage by the introduction of the Referendum or poll of the electors. He would place a veto over doubtful legislation in the hands of the people rather than in some newly created Second Chamber. Whenever there was an absolute conflict between the Lords and Commons he would let the appeal be to the master of both Houses. The Parliament Act would not be called into operation, because if the Lords could not agree with the Commons they would have the power to add a Referendum clause to any Bill. The Commons, however, should have the following privilege. An Act referred should be put to the country in the form suggested by the Commons and not in that suggested by the Lords. The Commons would be responsible, that is to say, for the Act which the country would approve or veto on being asked the question, " Is it your wish that an Act entitled so-and-so shall come into operation on the blank day of blank?"
No doubt theoretically, and if we could start the Con- stitution afresh, a Second Chamber like the French or American Senate would be the ideal ; and probably a National Constitutional Convention, if we could have such a thing here, might be able to devise a Second Chamber with a democratic basis which could claim and use powers commensurate with those of the House of Commons. That, however, is in our opinion an impossible ideal. A Second Chamber, if we ever have one, will be constructed not by a National Constitutional Convention, but by the House of Commons, and the House of Commons will never give us a Second Chamber with powers as great as its own. To imagine that it will is not to understand the nature of representative assemblies. They never yield power to another assembly except at the point of the bayonet, and we have no bayonet to present to them. For these reasons we would not attempt to give the House of Lords an elective basis. All we would do would be to insist that no peer should sit in the House of Lords solely by hereditary right. He would only receive his writ of summons to appear in Parliament if besides being the son of his father he had qualified by having done some form of public service—" as set forth in the schedule," &c., &c.Al present when a peer succeeds he is required to send his parents' marriage certificate and his birth certificate to the Lord Chancellor to prove that he is legitimate and the eldest son of his father, and on these papers being verified he receives his writ. We would enact that in addition he must present a certificate showing that he had held one of the offices or done one of the specific pieces of public work set forth in the schedule. Only when this double condition was fulfilled would the writ be issued to him. Thus automatically the so-called " black sheep " and " wastrels " and " noodles " would be excluded. We venture to say that a body thus purged would be as little open to criticism as any deliberative assembly in the world. The personnel, indeed, would be considerably higher than in the House of Commons where no such purge exists. Newly created peers would of course sit, for the issue of the patent to them by the Crown must be taken as a proof that they had performed public services sufficient to render them eligible. A House of Lords formed on this double basis of hereditary right and public service would be an extremely suitable body to act as the trustees for the popular veto. No one dreams of suggesting that the Referendum should be applied to every Act of the Legislature. But if the popular veto is to be applied there must be some body of trustees capable of exercising the function of deciding what measures are of such vital importance that they must be reserved for the approval or disapproval of the people as a whole. The House of Lords would never reserve for a poll of the people measures which were known to be desired by the nation and were therefore certain to be passed at a Referendum.
We come next to the question of social reform. That the condition of the people should, nay must, occupy the attention of the Unionist Party is clear. No one can be content with the present social conditions, or can desire to see them continue. We want a better and fairer distribution of the good things of the world in the material sense, and better conditions of life generally for those who have to earn their daily bread. But such generalizations are easy enough and useless enough. The only question in dispute is how to achieve these things. Here we believe it is that a Unionist leader with courage and prescience has his greatest opportunity. He should point out to the nation that at present it is being treated with quack remedies—with remedies which are either futile or will in reality increase the troubles they profess to cure. The Liberal Party wants to get rid of poverty, but instead of accomplishing this, what it has been doing has been to manufacture paupers. Every one of its so-called remedies rests upon increased taxation. What Parliament has been doing for the last seven years has been to heap up taxation. But you can never tax an individual or a community into prosperity, though you can very easily do the reverse. This we shall discover when, as unfortunately it soon must, the trade reaction comes. You may easily depress people into poverty by a load of taxation which, however much concealed, always falls on the man at the bottom, that is, on the poor man. The social programme of the Unionist Party should be based, then, upon an attempt to relieve men of taxation, to let the poor man keep as much of his earnings as possible in his pocket to deal with as he likes. The Unionist leader of our thought would tell the working people of this country that they are perfectly right in their instinct for making higher wages their chief end. He would go on to point out that higher wages—or higher earnings, to use a more scientific expression—can only be obtained if taxation is kept within bounds. It is no good for a man to have high nominal wagOs if they are filched away by high taxation and high prices. What the working man wants is a free and increasing demand for his labour, the minimum of deduction from the improved wages that will come from such increased demand, and so plentiful a product of labiaiir in all the directions in which he spends his money that the spending power of those wages shall be as high as possible. What he wants, in fact, is abundance and the freest possible range of choice in the spending of his wages. Now in fact, though very likely not in words, what the Liberal Party has been doing of late is to create exactly the opposite conditions. It has not been encouraging the maximum demand for labour, and on the other hand it has been inter- fering with the labourer's power of choice in the spending of his wages. The Liberal ideal is at bottom that of men who imagine that they know better what is good for the working man than be knows himself. The ideal they aim at is a com- fortable, well-housed, and well-fed State serf rather than an independent and free labourer, who chooses how he shall spend his own money and brooks no interference with that choice. Take the case of a labourer in the building trade, who pays for unemployed benefit as well as insur- ance benefit. The deductions, seen and unseen, from his wages, are in truth tremendous. He pays 4d. a week for medical benefit, and 20. for his special un- employment benefit in hard cash. But in truth he also pays the 3d. for medical benefit and the 21d. for unemployment benefit that is paid by the employer. In the last resort this contribution by the employer would have come to him in the form of higher wages. Juggle as we will about outside contributions, men's wages are settled by the higgling of the market and by nothing else. Con- tributions by the employer in respect of employment must in the end limit the demand for labour, and so must depress wages.
When all is said and done, the employers' contributions will be found to come out of the pockets of the workers. It is the same with the State contributions. The chain of circumstance is so elongated that a worker may imagine that what is paid by the State is paid out of some Fortu- natus' purse. In reality it comes out of his own breeches' pocket, though we admit that it is largely averaged. The contribution through taxation, which is chiefly levied in the case of working men on consumables, falls more heavily on the prosperous worker than upon the unprosperous. To balance this, however, the flat rate of insurance is a very bad form of income tax. It makes the man with 15s. a week pay as much as the man with Ms. Economically speak- ing, then, the Government by recent legislation are taking in one way or another something very near ls. from every working man's wages and spending it for him instead of letting him spend it for himself. If you consider him as a foolish and incapable person or a wicked wastrel or a child, unable to manage his own affairs—in fact, a creature in a condition of servitude—this may be a wise and economic act. If, however, he is, as you tell him on the platform, a capable, independent, and intelligent person who is master of his own fate, you are treating him strangely indeed. And this is a truth which, we are convinced, the working man will very soon find out for himself. We suggest, then, that the Unionist leaders should tell the working man plainly that, though the great harm that has been done cannot be undone, they mean for the future to leave as much as possible of the man's wages to fructify in his own pocket, and to be spent by him and not for him. There must be an end of treating him as the parent treats the child who has had a windfall, " I know much better how to spend it for your good than you can. You will only waste it if you spend it for yourself."
Such are the general principles upon which, in our opinion, a Unionist programme should be constructed. On some future occasion we may attempt to apply those prin- ciples in greater detail, especially on the side of taxation. At present all we have space to do is to state the general principles.
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