TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POSITION OF THE UNIONIST PARTY.
" VARUS, Varna, give me back my legions!" If we can imagine Lord Salisbury revisiting the world and looking on once more at the political battle, would it not be in this spirit that he would address his nephew and successor ? The cry that rose from the heart of the Roman Emperor when the blundering and folly of a general had sent to ruin the flower of his army shows just such sadness and regret as one might expect from the man who so short a time ago left the • Unionists closely knit and homogeneous, but who would now find them torn and distracted by internal strife. If we had a poet among us capable of carrying on the tradition of Landor's " Imaginary Conversations," we could picture him putting into Lord Salisbury's mouth some such words as these:— 'When I handed over the leadership of the party to you it was still strong and respected, even if the wear and tear of eight years of power had diminished its popu- larity. No one could accuse its subordinate leaders or its rank-and-file of want of loyalty to their chief, or the chief of being incapable of leading, even though he did not find it necessary to proclaim the truism that a leader must lead. There was no whisper that it was the function of the Conservative party to revolutionise the whole fiscal policy of the nation, or that Imperialists, who had hitherto regarded the Empire as founded on duty and the nobler instincts of the race, should declare that this Empire could not be held together except by a 10 per cent. preference in commercial transactions. The Unionist party was treated with respect even where it was not loved, and it was admitted by all who were not blinded by party fanaticism that there was nothing narrow or sordid in its aspirations. What has happened to change all this ? I see the party rent asunder by passions even more violent than those which destroyed the Liberal party when Mr. Gladstone yielded to the fatal temptation to ally himself with the Irish. One section of the Unionists is calling loudly for Protection in its crudest form, and is busy constructing a tariff which is to be forced, if possible, upon-his Majesty's GOverninent. Another section, deter- mined to oppose such madness, has been obliged to act and vote with the Opposition. Meantime the bulk of the party, and the Unionist Government themselves, are huddled to- gether incapable of action, like a flock of timid sheep. Their bleatings indicate at one moment that they are at heart in sympathy with the Protectionists, but the next they assure the Free-traders, with the most abject protestations, that they will take no step in the direction of Protection until they are quite convinced that the Protectionists have won the day, and further, that if the Protectionists cannot win the day, they will remain true to Free-trade. Could any position be more humiliating ? Could a political party have fallen lower ? Can it be wondered at that in these circumstances the Liberals win seats which have never before ' been held by Liberals, and that there is not a Unionist who feels confident that his return to Parliament at the next Election is assured ? And the ruin in the Cabinet is even worse than in the party at large. Outside it stand a group of men once the most respected in the Administration.
• Inside half the great offices of State are filled by politicians so raw and untried that the temporary absence of the Premier from the Commons produces chaos in the debates, . and the plan of the alternate exposition of conflicting views from the Treasury Bench is substituted for a clear and definite pronouncement of policy. So far, indeed, is this system of balanced debate carried that in a fiscal debate of supreme importance the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not allowed to speak lest by doing so he should upset the equilibrium of mystification,—lest, that is, people might attach to his utterances in regard to tariff problems more 'importance than to those of the Irish Secretary, or the Colonial Minister, or Mr. Akers-Douglas. Give me back the Unionist party as I left it, and obliterate for ever this ignoble nightmare, this hideous parody of the Liberal party in 1886.'
If some modern constructor of " Imaginary Conversa- tions" made Lord Salisbury use such words as these, we might criticise the language and the style, but we could not say that the situation was wrongly described or the position exaggerated. Further, we know that at this moment thousands of. loyal Unionists are feeling exactly in the way we have described when they look upon the ruin wrought in the Unionist party by Mr. Chamberlain's madness and Mr. Balfour's weakness. " Why have they wrecked our party ? " is the thought that rose with terrible bitterness in men's minds as they watched the humiliating course of the debate, and saw the twenty- seven Free-trade Unionists driven into the Opposition lobby by men who apparently could not understand that those who are Free-traders, and believe that the whole future of the Empire is bound up with the maintenance of free markets, cannot trade and traffic with Protection.
That the Unionist party is for the time wrecked there can be no doubt. The word imports no rhetorical exaggera- tion. The party has every mark of ruin written large upon it. To begin with, the Cabinet, owing to the resigna- tions, has lost immensely in weight and personal prestige. Next, the party in the Commons, owing to the conflict between the two sections, Chamberlainite and Free-trade, and to the failure of the Government to take a clear line, is enervated to a degree beyond all Parliamentary precedent. No one knows what the Ministry may say or do next, and it is equally impossible to say whether their followers will follow. But great as is the demoralisation of the party in the House, it is even worse in the country. The Mid- Herts election, following on those of the past three months, shows that the split in the Unionist party has placed the majority of the Unionist seats at the mercy of their opponents. In the country people do not understand such refinements as fighting Free-trade in order to get Free- trade, as unnatural prices, and as exorcising the demon of cheapness in the name of Cobden and Bright, at the same moment that they are paying homage to that demon in the person of the Asiatic labourer. These are heights above the flight of most Englishmen. They only know that the issue now before them is between Free-trade and Protection, and on that issue they vote. But this means voting against the Unionist candidate. The Govern- ment have thought to shelter themselves behind the sophistry that they are not going to be against Free-trade till the voters have pronounced their views on the matter. The voters, being plain men, however, have come to the conclusion that the most effective way of making the Government understand their views in regard to the fiscal question is to reject Ministerial candidates. They realise, in fact, that those who are not in favour of Free-trade are against it.
It is hardly necessary to say that it is no pleasure, but a very real pain, to us to dwell upon 'the ruin of the Unionist party. The disruption was none of our seAring. We were more than content with the Unionist party as it existed only this time last year, and if Mr. Balfour, instead of bending to the storm artificially created by the then Colonial Secretary, had refused sternly to have anything to do with Mr. Chamberlain's projects, the Government would still have had no more loyal supporter than the Spectator. But we shall be told that it is useless to cry over spilt milk, and that at the present moment the only thing to ask is what can be done to retrieve the terrible disaster which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour have brought on the party. We can answer very shortly. First, it is clear that the party can only be reunited again on a Free- trade basis, and that till the party has renounced and condemned Protection the Free-trade Unionists must make open war upon all Protectionists. But it may be said : " This is all very well, but the Free-traders are in a minority in the Unionist party. How, then, can they hope to reconvert it to Free-trade? They must either abandon it and join the party which is for Free-trade, or else abandon their own principles." We do not agree. We still believe that the Unionist party may be saved, though as by fire, from Protection. And this is how we hope and believe the end which we desire so strongly will be achieved. We feel certain that nothing which bodes good for Free-trade can be hoped for from the present Government. The task of government will soon become impossible to them, and power will drop from their feeble hands. Then the country will have to be consulted, and whether the Government wobble and lurch a little more or a little less before the fatal day, the vote at the General Election will be taken on Free- trade and Protection, and on no other issue. The result, in our belief—and .it is a belief which we expressed at the very beginning of the controversy, and before any of the by-elections—will be a crushing defeat for the Unionist party. The Liberals, in short, will be returned by . an overwhelming majority. Then, in our forecast, the Unionists in the country will gradually come to their senses, will realise the way in which they have been deluded by Mr. Chamberlain and his tariff reformers, and will abandon the policy of Protection. They will recognise that this is the only way to reunite the party and to regain the confidence of the country, and, like sensible people, they will take it. In a year after the General Election half the men who are now so madly in favour of Mr. Chamberlain will be rapidly • persuading themselves into thinking that they never really liked his policy, and were always against his rash and excited treatment of the fiscal controversy. Possibly if the first Protectionist rout is not so big as we think it will be, it may take two Elections to accomplish this result ; but we hope and believe that it will be achieved in one. But whether it takes two or ten years, we hold that we shall once more see the fiscal policy of the country firmly secured, because it will be a plank in the programme of both parties. We shall, that is, once more see the policy of Free-trade treated like the question of the Monarchy,—as a matter on which all men are absolutely agreed. That is what we earnestly desire, and that is what we believe can and will be achieved. As it is, however, this happy condition of things can only be obtained through the purgation of the Unionist party in the fires of a General' Election. Therefore we desire a General Election and a sweeping victory for Free-trade as soon as possible.
We are not given to prophecy, but if we were, we should be inclined to add that in a few years' time the general sense of what we have said in this article will be admitted to be true by the great bulk of the Unionist party. It will once more be admitted that the Unionist party is no more a Protectionist party than its rival. In that hope and belief, we refuse to abandon the right to fight against every form of Protection, while remaining Unionists in word and deed.
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