TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE STATESMAN AS PROPHET.
PROPHETS, like other experts, grow to love the exercise of their function. The more they have prophesied in the past the more disposed they are to prophesy in the present. The fact that their predictions have gone unfulfilled does not seem to disturb them. Possibly they count on the short memories of those who listen to them. Possibly they argue that the fulfilment is only delayed, and that they will yet be proved right as to the substance of what they foretold, though they may have been too positive as to the exact date of its accom- plishment. Possibly they follow St. Paul's rule, and forget those things that are behind in stretching forward to those that are before. It is to this last class that Mr. Chamberlain belongs. The things that he has spoken he puts away as done with. He is wholly taken up with the things that are included in the letter he is writing to-day or the speech he is preparing for to-morrow. That he has not quite kept the promises he has made in the past does not prevent him from making as many more as the occa- sion seems to call for. It is strange that this love of prophesying should be so persistent, because, apart from the question of Mr. Chamberlain's own excursions into this region, the uncertainty of political prediction is necessarily very great. After all, it is only the opinion of the prophet as to the course that events will take in certain circumstances, either actual or imaginary. He describes, for example, what the results of Free-trade, under which we are living, or of Protection, under which we are exhorted to live, will be ten or twenty or fifty years hence. There is an obvious source of inaccuracy in this de- scription in the fact that it will almost inevitably be coloured by its author's wishes. If he is a Free-trader, he will be disposed to keep in the background the diffi- culties which attend it, as they attend in greater or less degree every system under the sun. If he is a Pro- tectionist, he will have a keen sense of those difficulties that Free-trade is heir to, while he will see none of the difficulties that belong to Protection. Even if by some wonderful chance the prophet is quite free from any un- conscious bias of this kind, the uncertainty of human affairs has to be taken into account. Great natural processes will not be subjected to laws of our making. They will develop on lines of their own. This is true even if all new forces be exclnded from the calculation. Even of those with which we suppose ourselves familiar we know very little, and that little relates to the ordinary laws of their working, not to the many and startling exceptions. What has been found true of a small nation may not be true of a great one. What may be true of a nation in its decline may not be true of a young and growing com- munity. History is strewn with the wrecks of unfulfilled prophecies, and yet the succession of the prophets is main- tained. Mr. Chamberlain has again and again insisted on Cobden's ill success in this capacity. Does it never occur to him that by the middle of the century he himself may have taken Cobden's place as an example of a statesman's failure to calculate with the necessary precision the results of his own measures ?
Mr. Chamberlain's latest appearance in his now favourite character is in a letter to the Melbourne Age. According to the telegraphic summary, which is all that we have seen, he has predicted that the Liberals will win the next General Election, that their reign will be short, and that when it is over Preferential duties will be adopted by a nation at last convinced of its error in holding out against them so long. As a consequence• of this the Australian waste lands will be filled, the progress of manufactures will be unchecked, and the wages of the British workman will be on a level with those paid in America. Here are half-a-dozen prophecies, and only one of them making even the slightest approach to certainty. We agree with Mr. Chamberlain that the Liberals will in all probability win the next Election, and thus accomplish prediction No. 1. But when we come to prediction No. 2 we seem to see more than one consideration which Mr. Chamberlain has overlooked. He assumes that the Liberals have learned nothing. But when a party has been ten years, out of office this is not an assumption which it is at all safe to trust to. It is quite certain that in the construction of the next Liberal Cabinet many new names will come to the front. The Government will to a very unusual extent be a Government of untried men, of men whose political reputation is still to make, or, if made, has still to be tested. They may, of course, be guilty of all the blunders which Mr. Chamberlain expects of them. But they may draw wisdom from the very circumstance that they are expected to show themselves fools, and in that case the short term of power which Mr. Chamber- lain concedes to them may be greatly lengthened. At all events, they will have the advantage of having a divided party in front of them. A defeat which each section of the Unionists will attribute . to the folly. or obstinacy of the other will not tend to make, the Unionist Opposition very formidable. Let us concede No. 2, however, and imagine a Liberal Government come and gone,—is it so certain that it will at once be followed by a Protectionist Government ? Mav not the nation look back with regret to the days when Unionism was strong and harmonious ? May it not be inclined to try whether it is not possible to exorcise the evil spirit which has brought in disunion and weakness in place of strength and unity, and to organise once more a Government of Con- servatives who shall be as convinced Free-traders as the Liberals themselves ? We hazard no prediction of our own ; we merely indicate a possibility the realisation of which would falsify Mr. Chamberlain's reading of the future.
This is the first group of Mr. Chamberlain's predictions. The second group assumes that the first group has been fulfilled. A Protectionist Government is in office, and we are living in a paradise of Preferential duties. The first consequence will be the realisation of prediction No. 4. The waste lands of Australia will be filled by a thriving population. Mr. Chamberlain does not say how this is to be brought about ; but we may suppose that it will be by the great demand for labour which must spring up when Australia supplies the United Kingdom with what we now get from foreign countries. The lands that are now lying uncultivated will then be wanted to meet the demands of the English market, and under this effective stimulus the Australians will conquer their present dislike to imported labour and welcome labourers from all quarters. But if prediction No. '4 is thus gloriously justified, what is to become of another forecast of Mr. Chamberlain's which, though not included in this letter, has been uttered only very lately ? At Welbeck he painted in glowing colours the future of the agricultural labourer at home. Preferential duties were to benefit him in two ways,— by the higher wages that would come to him from the returning prosperity of the farmer, and by the cheapening of certain imported articles of food, especially tea, sugar, and tobacco, which will be made possible by the duties levied on corn and raw materials coming from abroad. But if the waste lands of Australia are utilised for supplying these indispensable raw materials, why should we suppose that the importation of them into this country from abroad will go on unchanged ? The English labourer may conceivably get into his own hands the industry which is now in the hands of foreigners. The Australian may conceivably get into his own hands the industry which is now in the hands of foreigners. But it is not possible that both should get it. Consequently, it is inevitable that either the pre- diction spoken at Welbeck, or the prediction written in the Age newspaper, must remain unfulfilled. Mr. Chamber- lain is apparently under the impression that when he is Prime Minister importation from abroad will go on as before. The goods will come in in the same quantities, and will pay the same duties. The only difference will be that they will remain unsold. No doubt if this should prove to be the case, and the foreigner should appreciate this new variety of " dumping," Mr. Chamberlain's seemingly contradictory prophecies might both come true. The foreigner would pay duty on his unsold goods, while the Colonist would send us the same goods free of duty and sell them. But even Mr. Chamberlain's fancy can hardly soar so high as this, and until it does he will have to break his promise to the labourer either in Australia or in England. It will be soon enough to examine pre- dictions 5 and 6 when he has explained how he gets over the inconsistency that seems to invalidate No. 4.
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