WHY UNIONISTS SHOULD REMAIN LIBERAL. T rill Warden of Merton, in
the striking speech which he delivered at the Unionist meeting at Oxford on Wednes- day, urged not only that Liberal Unionists should show strict fidelity to the Conservatives in the alliance which they have formed with them for the purpose of maintaining the Legis- lative Union between Great Britain and Ireland, but that they should remain Liberal Unionists, and not merge themselves in the Conservative Party. He gave as his reason, in the first place, that we cannot quite forget the very ambiguous rela- tions which existed in 1885 between the Conservatives and the Parnellites, relations which might obviously make it safer for us to stand exclusively on our own ground ; next, that the tendency of some of the Conservatives to toy with Fair-trade, —in other words, with Protection,—may well be a motive for holding aloof, at least till all danger of that surrender is past ; and, lastly, that it is eminently desirable to keep alive in the memory of the people the great services rendered to the people by the party to which Lord Hartington and our other leaders have always belonged,—a party to the policy of which they have never for an instant failed to give their hearty support. These are good reasons for taking care to ear-mark, as we may say, the Liberal origin of our Unionism. We do not want to be responsible in any sense for the intrigues of 1885; we do not want to be confounded with the advocates of a retaliatory tariff ; we do want the people to remember that we belong to a party which has never grudged the people new liberties, and which opposes the Home-rule movement now because it believes that Home-rule will ruin Ireland, injure England, and gravely enfeeble the power of the Empire.
But it may be said, and with a good deal of truth, that though these objections may be substantial enough for the present, they are objections the force of which every year must tend to attenuate. Now, that is just what we want to con- sider. We would fain hope that it is so. We are quite sure that, at least in some directions, this must prove to be the case. But in what directions ? And where, if anywhere, is there a probability that the ultimate aims of the Conservative Party may diverge from the ultimate aims of the Liberal Unionists ? We admit with pleasure that with a thoroughly popular franchise both in the counties and in the boroughs, the Conservatives can no longer remain what they were before 1885, and still less what they were before 1867. They cannot any longer rank themselves with the abettors of privilege,—with the capitalists whenever the capitalists are disposed to be hard on the artisans, with the landowners whenever the landowners are disposed to be hard on the farmers, with the farmers whenever the farmers are disposed to be hard on the labourers. All Conservative tendencies of this kind are disappearing rapidly enough, and will, before many years are over, have disappeared completely. What element in the Tory tradition will, then, still be likely to hold its own with the Conservatives, and to die hard, if it dies at all? We should reply,—Any element which depends not on anti-popular bias, but on imper- fect intellectual apprehension,—any element which is capable of presentation under the disguise of popular fallacies, any element in the Tory tradition which has found its way to the democratic sympathies of other lands. Now, of such as these, the various devices for so manipulating tariffs as to give an apparent stimulus to special trades and industries, are the most obvious and important examples. There is hardly a democratic country in the world which has not embraced the theory of Protection in some form or other, and hence we infer that, under some plausible fallacy or other, Protection is not un- likely, sooner or later, to captivate a section,—the least culti- vated section,—of the British public. We agree that for some time to come we may only too reasonably apprehend that the danger of a Protectionist type of Conservatism, —and, we suspect, almost as much of a Protectionist type of Liberalism,—will tend to increase rather than to decrease. We see no reason, indeed, why it should not become a much more serious danger to the Liberals than to the Conservatives, excepting only that the antecedents of the former party dis- courage it, while the antecedents of the latter party favour it. But then, we may set against this the greater self-will of the Radical Party, which always inclines them to believe that what the people wish, the people can get, even though the thing desired be quite beyond the reach of administrative or legis- lative measures. If they think that wages ought to be higher, they will get it into their heads that it only takes a little popular legislation to make them higher ; and though there are many cases in which it would be quite as reason- able to suppose that by bringing in a Bill to make the sun shine on all popular holidays, that desirable result could be achieved, yet for a time at least the people will believe pleasant things, and may insist on a good many of their representatives voting for some ill-considered scheme for raising their wages. • The danger is somewhat more imminent for the Conservatives than for the Liberals, only because the Conservatives have been accustomed to sympathise with Protection, while the Liberals have been accustomed to consider it part of the creed of their foes. But within a very short time it will be a danger threatening both parties alike. Still, just for the same reason for which it is likely that the Liberal Party will be much earlier invaded by Socialist heresies than the Conservative Party, it is likely that the Conservative Party will be invaded by Protectionist heresies much earlier than the Liberal Party. Indeed, in Mr. Howard Vincent's active hands the danger has already shown itself ; just as in Mr. Conybeare's active hands the danger of the Liberal Party has already shown itself. There is, then, this good in the disposition of the Liberal Unionists to keep their separate position in the world, that they will thereby incur no risk of being identified with the budding Protectionism of the least intelligent section of the Conservative Party.
Again, we think it quite possible that the Conservative tradition may connect the Conservatives with a dangerous activity in relation to religious movements, especially if, as seems probable, the Liberal Party should identify itself more and more with the cry against Establishments and the confisca- tion of religious endowments. In that case, the popular party which favours religion,—and there is always a popular party which favours religion,—might very probably be spurred on into aggressive measures of the opposite kind, measures foster- ing and encouraging Church and denominational endowments as zealously as the opposite party might attack them ; and if so, there would certainly be a real need for a Liberal Party hold- ing aloof from both movements, and discouraging both,— discouraging the assault on the Church and every interference with voluntary denominational efforts to train up children in definite creeds, on the one hand, and discouraging the propagandism of the reactionary Churches, on the other hand, as an encroachment on true liberty. When we consider how violent some of the zealots of Disestablishment are becoming, and how much statesmen of even Sir George Trevelyan's mark seem to be disposed to stimulate that violence, we must expect a reactionary current to sat in on the other side ; and if it should, there would be need of a calm Liberal Unionist Party to hold the balance between the two.
While we expect, then, the new democracy to detach from Conservatism its most anti-popular tendencies, we see quite enough of danger in the traditions of Conservatism in connec- tion with prepossessions that might very easily be thrown into a popular form, to hold, with Mr. Brodrick, that the Liberal Unionists have a work to do in the political world which they certainly could not do as well if they were merged in the party of their Unionist allies.
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