The Times of Friday contains a temperate letter from Mr.
Arthur Elliot protesting against the action of the majority of the Liberal Union Club in passing at ite annual general meeting, by a vote of 72 to 40, a resolution which will have the practical effect of turning an organisation designed for the special purpose of maintaining the Union into one for supporting Protectionist doctrines in the majority of con- stituencies. " To say that in the present condition of affairs the club will support Government candidates without regard to their opinion on the fiscal question [as the resolution says] means that in such cases as Lord Morpeth's, for instance, a club of which the Duke of Devonshire is president should send down an official representative to make speeches on behalf of tariff reform, in direct opposition to the political principles of a large section of the club." We agree with Mr. Elliot that the proper course for the club was to observe a real, and not a sham, neutrality while the fiscal question is the essential issue before the country. Judged from the Unionist standpoint, it would surely have been better to have taken action which would have preserved the integrity of the club than to have adopted a course which can hardly have any other end than its disruption. Mr. Elliot ends his letter with a declaration which we heartily endorse. "The country will not have Home-rule, and it will not have Protec- tion." Politicians may pretend that it will have to choose between these two, but we are certain that when the voters speak they will show that they mean to have neither.
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