-HOW SHILL I VOTE?
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] am an old subscriber to your paper, which I find com- forting, as it tends to condense my own opinions when they become nebulous, and sometimes goes a step further and crystallizes them. Feeling more nebulous than usual, and thinking it not unlikely that there may be many others of your readers who are experiencing similar sensations on the subject, I am writing to ask you how I am to vote at the Parliamentary election, which is said to be impending. I am
a Unionist, a Free Trader (though I would put corresponding duties upon the bounty-fed productions of other countries), and a constitutional democrat. I cannot .bring myself to vote for a party that has allowed itself to be run by a Grand Vizier. The latter functionary is out of place, except where -there is a Sultan who occasionally has him strangled. Moreover, an exuberant and optimistic Celt, with an unusual gift of per- suasive eloquence, wherein he is apt to subordinate what is true to what is agreeable to hie audience, is not the character, with no determined policy, to deal with the problems of a manufacturing country whose trade is dying, though upon that-trade it depends to feed its population.
Facts have to be faced and acted upon, and not only talked about. At present we are being forced, by what I suppose is mostly a Conservative Party, into the ruinous road which would be 'followed -by the so-called Labour Party, and which would end in general chaos, want, and misery to all classes of the community, except a few parasites of the Trotsky and Lenin type. I want to vote for, firstly, a Government that will govern (vide Ireland, India, Egypt, &c.), and, secondly, a Government that will govern according to the wishes of the majority of the electors from whom they receive their man- date, and not be always pandering to contemptible minorities. It will be bad enough for the people of this country if the time ever comes that they allow themselves to be governed by such men as now pose as leaders of Labour (whose one fixed idea-seems to be "palling down" as opposed to "raising up ") without anticipating that catastrophe, and being betrayed into these false courses against the express wish of the majority. Facilis descensus ilverni. For whom, then, do I, and such as think with me, vote at the next election?—I am,
[We shall certainly have to give our advice before long, but the facts upon which -to form a judgment are not yet plain enough. Our correspondent will, we hope, find our first leading article relevant. —ED. Spectator.]
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