LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
WANTED: A SENSE OF PROPORTION,
TTO maEpITOZ3 OY nia"Simi-LA.1,ml Saar—A new Session of Parliament will shortly be com- mencing, and it will be one fraught with matters of the deepest gravity. In what frame of mind will the Opposition gather for a struggle which should leave the Government powerless for evil P There seems to be only one thing lacking, and which has been lacking in the Opposition some years now, and that is a sense of proportion.
When the House of Lords threw out the 1909 Budget nineteen out of twenty Conservative candidates in the General Election of January 1910, instead of exposing the hollowness of the Budget, shouted " Tariff Reform!" Again, in the December
1910 General Election, when the Constitution was in danger, "Tariff Reform" was the principal theme.
It is true that Mr. Balfour's promise of the Referendum on Tariff Reform resulted in the transfer of many thousands of votes at this election, but the votes were unluckily distributed and the actual gain of seats was nil. Mr. Balfour's pronounce- ment came too late to have the effect it would have had if it had been made, say, one month earlier. Some Conservatives say that with Mr. Balfour's resignation of the leadership the promise of a Referendum on Tariff Reform lapses, and are again behaving as though Tariff Reform was the cure for a broken Constitution, Horne Rule, Church Disestabliahment, Socialistic legislation, and all the other ills that a Radical- ridden country is heir to. They have no sense of proportion and resemble a cheap-jack selling some patent cure-all or Dickens's character, Mr. Dick, in "David Copperfield," who always brought the conversation round to King Charles's head.
If Tariff Reformers had a sense of proportion they would recognize that only by the return of a Conservative Goveen- ment to power can they ever hope to see tariff schedules framed. It they have such implicit faith in the practicability of such schedules they ought not to be afraid of the voters seeing those schedules and being allowed to say Yes or No to them, "Tariff Reform" may be good or it may be bad—no one knows, for no one has seen the schedule of the tariff. What is known, however, is that many influential Conservatives and moderate Liberals would throw themselves with the utmost vigour into the fighting line against this Government if they could only be assured that Mr. Balfour's promise to his party and the country of a Referendum =Tariff Reform is a pledge which still holds good.
The problem is not a difficult one Tariff Reform plus a Radical Government, or A. Referendum on Tariff Reform plus a Conservative Government.
The problem should be easy to solve for those Conservatives who have any sense of proportion.
The supreme test of party loyalty has been the question as to whether a candidate would or would not pledge himself to vote for a tariff, a tariff which no one has ever seen. Such a pledge seems absurd and unreasonable. If it were frankly abandoned in favour of a Referendum, then Tariff Reformer and Free Trader could work wholeheartedly shoulder to shoulder, and hundreds of Liberal employers of labour in Lancashire and Cheshire would be only too delighted to assist in ousting this Government from offiee.—I am, Sir, &o.,
The Waterhouse, E. L. OLIVER. Bollington, Macclesfield,
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