THE NEED FOR A CONSERVATIVE PARTY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Last August you were good enough to insert a letter of mine on the need for a Conservative Party, and I venture to again address you on the same subject. Eight months have elapsed, and a General Election has taken place, and what do we find P The Radical elements in the Conservative Party have been scotched but not killed. Mr. Balfour's promise of the Referendum on Tariff Reform (which he will never with- draw) has reassured a very considerable section of those more stable elements of the Conservative Party which Mr. Chamber- lain's sudden change of policy had alarmed. Had Mr. Balfour's promise of the Referendum on Tariff Reform come a month sooner than it did, I doubt very much if Mr. Asquith dare have appealed to the country, and if he had we should probably have won four seats out of six in Manchester, and given a lead to the whole nation which, judging from all previous precedents, would have been followed. The Radicals can only succeed while the Conservative Party is disunited. It is most unfor- tunate that at the present crisis the leaders of the Con- servative Party in Lancashire should be allowing the Radical element in the Party to bring into prominence the great apple of discord which prevents all Conservatives from acting together. I mean the demonstration in favour of "Pre- ference," arranged for Saturday, May 20th, at Belle Vue. This Radical element has had all its own way for nine years ; result, Sccialist legislation and the prospect of wrecking the Constitution. It is really time that the real Conservatives asserted themselves, and that Mr. Balfour should make it clear that every person of Conservative tendencies in our party and the Liberal party is welcome, whatever his views on the Fiscal Question may be, and that he should re-assert that if and when a Tariff is formed, every voter shall see it, and vote on that, and that alone, at a Referendum. Let every moderate man speak out and insist on the policy of the Con- servative Party in the future being really Conservative. Let the country feel that there would be a prcspect of a rest from legislation if the Unionists come in, and then the tenure of office of this Government will be surprisingly short. Our Budget has gone up from £140,000,000 to 1181,000,000, and will soon be £200,000,000 if this Govern- ment remains in power. The business people of the country are beginning to see that taxes and extra officials bid fair to cripple the country and destroy personal freedom. Let them be assured that it is perfectly safe to work and vote for the Unionist Party without committing oneself to a tariff which no one has seen, and the Unionists will soon have as good a majority as in 1886 or 1900. All Conservatives in Manchester who are Conservatives first and Tariff Reformers afterwards, now, at last, recognize that the choice for them is this : Shall I give prominence to Tariff Reform and keep the Radicals in power, or shall I give prominence to the Referendum pro- mised by Mr. Balfour on Tariff Reform and try to get the Radicals out P Let this Tariff Reform demonstration at Belle Vue be the last instance of emphasizing Unionist
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