THE DEPUTATION TO LORD SALISBURY. rr HERE could be no
better illustration of the remark- '. able change which has passed over the face of English politics than was aftorded by the deputation of working men which, at the end of last week, waited on Lord Salisbury to urge objections to the compulsory clause of the Employers' Liability Bill. It is not so long since it seemed only in accordance with the natural fitness of things that oppressed minorities or minorities in danger of oppression, all in short who desired an enlarge- ment of their liberties, or the safeguarding of the liberties they had already attained, should apply to the Liberal Party and the Liberal leaders for protection and assistance. But the Liberal Party is far past the stage at which it troubled itself with offices of this thankless kind. It has developed a new and higher policy, and aspires to create nations and effect beneficent revolutions in the social order with the aid of the Parliamentary draughtsman; and in the pursuit of these high ends it cannot afford to pause through any weak consideration for the rights and liberties of minorities. It is not many months since a body of Irieh Unionists, who had come to protest against the Bill subjecting them to the domination of an ignorant and hostile populace, were refused an audience with the Prime Minister. In that case it was possible for any Liberal who retained some lingering respect for the old traditions to pretend that what these Irish Unionists feared was not infringement of their liberties, but a blow to their ascendency. No such excuse can be offered in the present instance. The members of various provident and insur- ance societies connected with the London and North- Western Railway and other great trading companies, and numbering more than 100,000 skilled workmen took alarm at the action of the Liberal majority in the workmen, of Commons in denying them freedom of contract in the matter of employers' liability. They applied to Lord Kimberley, as leader of the House of Lords, to receive a deputation which should present their views, and urge the intervention of the Lords in their favour. Lord Kimberley refused to accede to the request, and the deputation then applied to Lord Salisbury, who at once granted an interview. Can the delightful irony of this situation anywhere be matched ? The representatives of 100,000 British workmen are denied even admittance to the audience-hall of the party which has so long posed as the natural champion of the working man ; and turning in their distress to the leader of the Tory Party, they beg that he will use his influence with the House of Lords to induce it to protect them from the tyranny of the Liberal Party in the popular Chamber. A generation ago no development could have seemed more wildly improbable ; yet that is what the new " Liberalism " has brought us to in this year of grace, 1893.
The deputation gave a number of interesting concrete illustrations of the advantages of the present system which it is proposed to supersede. They produced instances in which compensation had been granted from the accident funds, maintained chiefly by the contributions of employers where no legal liability could attach either under the present Act or the amending Bill ; and Lord Salisbury, in his reply, admirably summarised the arguments in favour of leaving the existing agreements undisturbed. But we are not at present so much concerned with the merits or demerits of contracting-out, which we have already sufficiently discussed, as with the incidental light which this controversy is throwing on the changed attitude of parties. One new fact, indeed, of some importance was disclosed in the course of the statement to Lord Salisbury. It would appear that instead of .tending to increase the number of accidents by diminishing the sense of responsibility in employers, these insurance agreements operate in quite the opposite direction, by making it the interest of the whole body of organised workmen to exercise a constant supervision. Defects in machinery or tools are at once reported to the committee which administers the insurance fund, and with this committee rests the responsibility of making them good. Thus the one plausible argument advanced by the opponents of Mr. McLaren's amendment is found to have no substantial basis, and the " Liberals" who voted against that amendment are reduced either to the plea that, in order to prevent those " bogus " contracts which are the abuses of the free system, freedom of contract must in this matter be abolished altogether, or to a plain confession that the genuine and highly- beneficial agreements already in existence are to be sacrificed to the jealousy of the trades-unions. It is not pretended that the privileges which the members of the insurance societies enjoy involve in the remotest degree either hardship or expense to their less highly favoured fellow- workmen. The desire to strike a. blow at the societies is only another illustration of the levelling and restrictive policy which is so characteristic of all recent Radicalism. Liberty tends inevitably to inequality, and inequality is the one thing the Radicals will not endure. As they can- not secure equality by raising all to the level of the highest, they would fain secure it by passing a steam-roller over the face of society, and depressing all to the level of the lowest, or at least by binding society in restrictive chains, and substituting for free and natural development, development according to their own peculiar notions of the fitness of things. It used to be the function of the Liberal Party to remove every fetter that interfered with the spontaneous variety of natural growth, and above all, to emancipate the classes, which, being low in the social scale, were weak, from the leading-strings and repressive influence of those above. But the classes which were weak have become strong, and the Liberal Party in their hands seems destined to become the engine of a tyranny even greater than that with which it formerly wrestled. Its principles and policy are more and more dictated, not by minorities struggling to obtain the justice which is their right, lotit, by domineering caucuses, which speak in the name of majorities, and demand, not justice for themselves, but the enforcement of their own ideas of justice at the expense of others. The consequence is that„,as in the case of the deputation to Lord Salisbury, the victims turn to the opposite party for protection, and there is a continual process of deser- tion among the more intelligent and independent voters to the camp of the Conservatives.
And that process is not likely to be stayed while parties are in their present condition. Since the Liberals ceased to occupy themselves with their proper work, the abolition of restrictions, and adopted a " constructive " programme, their national policy has degenerated into a movement of disintegration, and their social policy into an irritating and meddlesome tyranny. By the former they have made Liberalism an impossibility for a genera- tion among the educated classes in Great Britain and the entire Protestant community in Ireland. By the latter they are gradually estranging the pick of the work- men as well. This contracting-out business will cost them at least 50,000 votes if the House of Lords does not intervene to save them, and in any case the vote in the Commons is not likely to increase the popularity of the Liberal name. At every step in the passage of the New- castle Programme some important minority is sure to encounter grounds of offence, and. to go over to the other Bide; and the margin for waste in the Government majority is not a large one. The all-important question, then, is in what direction those who are repelled by the excesses of Liberalism are drifting ; what is the character of the party which opens its arms to receive them ? If we had to choose between the reactionary policy to which Liberal. ism is now, we fear, hopelessly committed, and Toryism of the old cynical and restrictive type, our plight would be evil indeed. But fortunately, while one party has been retrograding the other has been moving in the reverse direction. Lord Salisbury's speech to the deputa- tion of workmen was as significant of the changed temper of Toryism as the vote of the House of Commons was of the changed temper of Liberalism. He restated with great moderation the case that had just been presented to him in favour of contracting-out, and he allowed the workmen to see that his sympathies were with them, and that some attempt would be made when the Bill came before the House of Lords to procure for them the con- cession they desired. But at the same time be earnestly disclaimed all intention of making use of the mistake of the Government as a weapon for destroying the Bill as a whole. The control of the Liberal Uniouists, the enlarged constituency, the force of public opinion, and the changes in the internal constitution of the party arising from its absorption of the middle classes and the bulk of the urban population generally, have transformed the Toryism of the past into this more moderate and wiser Conservatism of today. Toryism driven from its ancient entrenchments of privilege and restriction, and with no hope of regaining them, is now well content to defend liberty and justice against the attacks of a, false Liberalism, and. the strength of our free system of government is again revealed. When one party lapses for a moment from its high traditions, the other never fails to rise to the responsibility thereby imposed upon it.
Previous page
