TARIFF REFORM METHODS IN THE BORDER BURGHS.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Sin,—It may interest your readers to know something of what is going on here in the Border Burghs. Owing to the great depression in the Scotch tweed industry, the Border Burghs are supposed to be ripe for the arguments of the Tariff Reformers. The Tariff Reform League has evidently deter- mined to rush the constituency, and its emissaries are declaiming in every street. It is safe to say that these orators are of a type hitherto unknown on Unionist platforms. They all affect the Socialist "wear." When their names appear on posters the bourgeois "Mr." is dispensed with and "William" gets a democratic twist by being changed to "Will." But most extraordinary of all is the language of these "decoy ducks" of Tariff Reform. The other night I stopped on the edge of a crowd of working men, many of them, I should say, out of work. Addressing them from a lorry stood an orator of rough exterior, whose accent sug- gested Tipperary rather than Roxburghshire. Behind him stood a dignified gentleman of military aspect who held his hat. At first as I listened I thought I had come upon one of the Independent Labour meetings. The vocabulary was certainly that of Mr. Keir Hardie, and the references to the luxurious rich would certainly have found favour with a crowd of " hunger-marchers." But when the orator went on to pro- pound Tariff Reform as the cure for all the hardships of the working classes, I at last understood where I was. Tariff Reform was going to remove the economio burdens to the proper shoulders, it was only going to tax luxuries, it was going to make the rich pay for the poor. "In fact, gentle- men," bawled the orator, "Tariff Reform means that the taxes are going to be taken off the working classes and put on to the swells !" This last was delivered with an amount of democratic unction that ought to have raised a deafening cheer, but the crowd of Border artisans made no response. I looked at the dignified gentleman holding the hat, but he was gazing with well-bred restraint over the heads of the audience. The whole scene, as a piece of contemptible, cynical humbug, would have been difficult to match. This sort of thing is now a feature of every by-election, and it has come in with the Tariff Reform League. It needs no prophet to foresee the fate of the Unionist Party if, with such methods, it should even win a General Election. —.1 am, Sir, Ste.,
ONLOOKER.
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