Whether Mr. Chamberlain will succeed in getting the tariff question
to move by the aid of the old-age, pensions engine remains to. be seen. Personally, we do not believe he will. For ourselves, we are by no means averse to old-age pensions, and 'would welcome any well-thought-out plan for their establishment. If, however, old-age pensions are to be coupled with Protection, we and those who think like us will be obliged to oppose the scheme, not on its own demerits, but because of the company in which we find it.. But this fact will, of course, not escape the earnest advocates of old-age pensions. They do not want to bring unpopularity upon their proposal by ticketing it with a Protectionist label. From the electoral point of view it may seem at first sight a very shrewd stroke of policy to join the two issues of old-age pensions and preferential duties ; but unless we are mistaken, the un- natural union will prove in the end a great source of embar- rassment to its author. Pecuniary solatiums offered to the electors seldom succeed. When Mr. Gladstone in 1874 offered the complete abolition of the Income-tax to the middle-class electors many electioneering experts calculated that he must sweep the country.' Instead, he was hopelessly beaten, the middle-class Income-tax payers refusing entirely to take the bribe. 111 the same way, if this pensions bribe is offered to
the working man (which we greatly doubt, however, since it is quite possible that the Zollverein issue will be dead before the next General Election), we do not believe that it will affect him at all. The working man, like every other kind of Englishman, always suspects anything offered in the form of a bribe to be a sham.
