It must be patent to all those Conservatives who are
not desirous of being led by the nose by an alien leader that they must soon make up their minds as to whether there is to be a Conservative party in the future, or whether they are content to allow their party to be submerged into one to be formed by Mr. Chamberlain and his satellites.
—I am, Sir, 8cc., A DISGUSTED CONSERVATIVE.
MR. BALFOUR AND INDUSTRIAL MEGALOMANIA.
[To THE EDITOR OW' TRIP "SPROTATOR.1 SIR,—In dealing last week with Mr. Balfour's Newcastle speech you put your finger on the one passage which appears to have significance for those really anxious to get fresh light on the Prime Minister's "own special" Protective policy. I refer, of course, to the passage in which he describes what appears to him the trend of modern industrial enterprise,—viz., towards "those great industrial aggregations" requiring "larger masses of capital to be concentrated on great staples of industry working with every modern appliance and with a very narrow margin of profit." Such a passage, occurring as it does in what is evidently a very carefully prepared manifesto, will not, I hope, be allowed to pass lightly as a mere " illus- tration" (like that unfortunate "Bradford" instance in the first edition of his pamphlet on "Insular Free-Trade"), for it seems to throw quite a flood of light on the real subject-matter of his thought on the Fiscal question. To what can the reference be if not to the gigantic Trusts and Combines of Amerids. and Germany ? And does Mr. Balfour really desire to facilitate their development and see their questionable methods in operation in this country ? If not, why the reference ? And if so, can it be brought about by that mild, intermittent, Birmingham-cum-water, resumption-of-freedom policy with which the Prime Minister has generally been credited P He can hardly think so himself, for, if we turn to his Sheffield speech of October 1st, 1903, we find the Trust system described as a development under that very policy of Pro- tection which he professes to disclaim. Since that time Mr. Balfour has surely •been acquiring "convictions." --He then said :—" The phenomena [of the Trust system] are so new that I scarce dare venture to prophesy what de- velopment it is likely to take, whether it is going to extend into a great national danger, or whether it is going to be limited to the evil which I fear it has already inflicted." Now, however, we have it that "that is the form in which I think anybody who studies what is now going on in the great industrial countries of the world—that is the direction in which industry is moving." It should be noted that in the earlier speech his policy was set forth as a "palliative" of the mischiefs threatened us by -the foreign Trust systems ; now it would seem designed to protect the infancy and facilitate the growth of similar systems considered as inevitable in this country. Absit omen ! Yet it is little wonder that the Prime Minister now considers his policy "has been rather unfortunately called 'Retaliation.'"
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