TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ELECTIONS SO FAR. TROUGH the figures of not much more than half the elections are known as we write, the general result is pretty clear. The Liberal vote in the Commons will be enormously reduced, and the Government, including their Irish allies, instead of being able to count upon a majority of something like three hundred and forty, will have a majority which very possibly will not in the end prove to be much above a hundred. They will thus be dependent upon the votes of the Nationalists. This, stated baldly, can hardly be regarded as a very satisfactory result for those who entered upon the appeal to the people with loud and confident declarations that the British democracy was entirely on their side, that the conflict was between the Peers and the people, and that all who refused to accept the Budget as heaven-sent finance, or to venture to think that so important a revolution in our fiscal system should at any rate be submitted to the people for their approval, were guilty of treason to democratic principles. Whatever else the Election has done, it has given a quietus to nonsense of that sort. It has shown once more the soundness of Abraham Lincoln's great principle that though you may fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, you cannot fool all the people all the time. The people have voted as they thought fit, but there has not been the slightest evidence that they have resented the action of the Lords as an insult to them or as any infringement of their rights and liberties. After all, it would t'have been very strange if they had, for, remember, the Lords have lever claimed that they had a right to dictate what the Budget should be, but merely that it was their duty to make sure that the people really wanted the Budget of 1909. No doubt the appeal to Caesar must be regarded as showing that, on the whole, Caesar has said that he wants the Budget ; but no fair-minded man will, we think, be found to declare that the Election shows that Caesar wants it very much, or resents in the least being asked his opinion.
If the Election returns up to date are looked at closely, it will be seen that they are less favourable to the Government than appears at first sight. In the first place, it must be noted that the Government majority will be very largely dependent upon that gross electoral anomaly and injustice, the over- representation of Ireland. Not only has Ireland forty Members too many, but England has forty too few ; and, further, the English under-representation is chiefly to be found in London and the surrounding districts. It cannot be doubted that if electoral justice were done as between England and Ireland, the majority for the Government, if it did not disappear altogether, would be reduced to insignificant proportions. Unless, then, some- thing happens before the conclusion of the polls to alter the present stream of tendency, it will not be too much to say that the Government will hold power owing to the extraordinary system under which we endow the voters of the South of Ireland with about seven or eight times the electoral power conferred upon the London and suburban electorate. Another matter of importance which must be noted in regard to the majority of which the Government organs are now boasting is its composite character. It rests not merely upon a bargain with the Irish group, but also upon one with the Labour group. The Liberal majority will be dependent on at least forty Labour men and more than eighty Nationalists. The mere abstention or non-attendance of the members of these groups will be sufficient to put the Government in a minority. But this translated into Parliamentary terms means that the Government can only be made secure from day to day by the Whips managing to keep the Nationalists and the Labour Members always in a good temper and always willing to come into the Lobby at the call of the Government managers. Does this sound an easily attainable object when we remember the kind of things that the Labour and Nationalist Members respectively say, and no doubt to a very large extent feel, about their Liberal allies ?
What makes the position worse is that in a great many cases the concessions which will please the Labour Members are concessions which will irritate the Irish, and vice-versa. Take, for example, the question of licenses, and indeed temperance reform generally. • The Labour Members are for the most part sincerely interested 'in and pledged to the temperance cause. The very reverse is the case with the Nationalists. A bargain, then, made with one group over the liquor problem is certain to alienate the other. The same may be said in regard to the land clauses. The Nationalists dislike those clauses, and will certainly not be inclined to agree to their extension, whereas that is just what the Labour Members will desire to bargain about when they are being asked to give " loyal," " ungrudging," and self-sacrificing " support to the Liberal Government in the lobbies. There is only one subject that we can think of where in matters of detail.it will be easy to please both the Nationalists and the Labour Members. As was shown in the questions of the foreign horseshoes and the foreign granite, the Labour Members are at heart, though not in name, inclined to Tariff Reform principles. The Nationalists are of course Protectionist to a man. Will the Government, we wonder, make con- cessions here if some question like the Rosyth granite contract comes up ? If they do, what about their bond-fide Free-trade supporters ?
Quite apart from this question, however, there is considerable danger of concessions either to the Labour Members or to the Nationalists being resented by the moderate section of the Liberals which still exists. In the last Parliament the moderate Liberals felt themselves so absolutely crushed by the weight of the huge party majority that they made little or no effort to assert themselves. It will be a very different matter when a group of them, say forty strong, may quite easily be able to turn the fate of a division. The Whips can no longer snap their fingers at the Whig-minded Liberals when they ask whether all the concessions are to go to the Labour Members, and whether they are never to have their political feelings considered. Such speculations as we have just been indulging in, however, will perhaps come more appro- priately at the close than in the middle of the Election. It is sufficient to-day to note that it is certain, as far as anything can be certain in the political world, that the present Government are not likely in the new Parliament to find themselves in anything like the position of authority and power which they exercised in the last.
We cannot help being somewhat amused by the attempt that has been made during the last few days to induce Unionists and other non-Socialistic Free-traders to vote for the Government on the ground that, since it is now certain that the Government will retain office, it is better for the country that they should have a large rather than a small majority. Those who care for the cause of Free- trade, it is urged, ought to help a Government whose mission it is to act as trustees for the safeguarding of that great principle ! We sincerely trust that no Unionist Free-traders will be taken in by talk of this kind. As Sir Robert Giffen has pointed out in his striking letter to the Times which we notice elsewhere, Unionist Free-traders are not likely to be caught twice by this device. • In 1906 we did our very best to return the Liberals to power because we were innocent enough to believe that they would, whilst Free-trade was in peril, sink the more partisan part of their political programme and act as trustees for the principle of free exchange. We did not conceive it possible that power obtained on the cry of Free-trade would be used for carrying out Socialistic schemes involving an absolute negation of the principles of free exchange, schemes for piling up a huge burden upon the tax- payer, and, finally, for promoting fiscal changes entirely opposed to the spirit of Free-trade. No sooner, however, had the Liberal Government got well into the saddle with the help of the Unionist and other moderate Free-traders than they proceeded with the most cynical indifference to use their triumph for purely party purposes.
The notion that they were in any sense in a fiduciary position as regards Free-trade was scouted in fact, if not in words. When, for example, the Spectator ventured to protest against this monstrous betrayal, we were coolly told by the Westminster Gazette and other Liberal organs that it was necessary to make Free-trade popular with the electors by joining it on to a Radical programme, and, in effect, that the Free-trade pill could not be swallowed without a good deal of Socialist jam. Look at the practical result,—we will not inquire into the question of principle involved. Can anybody venture to say that the policy of making Free-trade popular by mixing it with Socialism has really answered? It has reduced the Free-trade majority almost to zero, for we refuse to count the Irish as Free-traders. So much for making Free-trade principles popular. Unionist Free-traders, then, if •they are wise, will remember the proverb " Once bitten, twice shy." Their votes are being solicited in order.to main- tain the great principle of Free-trade. If those votes are given to the Liberals, how will they be used? In the first place, they will be used to bring about, if possible, the destruction of the Second Chamber. There is no exaggera- tion here. Mr. Asquith on Wednesday night, in answer to a question, replied that he did not propose to reform the House of Lords, but merely to abolish its veto. But if that is not abolition of the Second Chamber, and the setting up of an omnipotent House of Commons, language has no meaning. Next, their votes, nominally given for Free-trade, will, the moment the House of Lords has become a phantom assembly, be used to establish an Irish Legislature and an Irish Executive and to destroy the Union,—action, it must be remembered, which will neces- sarily involve the ruthless coercion of Belfast and the North. Again, the votes so insidiously asked for in the interests of Free-trade will be used to further Socialistic legislation of a kind which, though nominally for the benefit of the poor, will be likely to lead not only to their moral but to their material degradation. Though as yet they do not touch the question of exports and imports, the Socialistic projects of the Government are distinctly Protectionist in spirit. Finally, the votes solicited for Free-trade are only too likely to be used to carry out a policy in regard to national defence which is fraught with intense danger to this country because it does not recognise that there is only one way of meeting Germany's competition with .us for the supremacy of the sea. That way is so greatly to outbuild and out-organise our rivals, and to show so strong a determination in this respect, that German aspirations will be chilled by the sense of the certainty of failure, rather than stimulated as now by the belief that if we are only pressed a little more we shall give up in despair. Free-traders we remain, but we say now, as we said at the beginning of the Election, that Unionist Free- traders should throw the whole of their political weight and influence against the present Government, and in favour of their opponents. To trust to the belief that votes given for the present Government will be used to secure Free-trade, and not rather to carry out a Jacobin and semi-Socialist policy, is the greatest and most dangerous of delusions.
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