THE SLUMP IN " LLOYD-GEORGISM."
THE most impressive lesson to be drawn from the A. Unionist victory at Ipswich is the failure of " Lloyd- Georgian)." That Mr. Masterman was altogether a popular candidate no one, of course, pretends. A Cabinet Minister who has been defeated in his own constituency is not the sort of candidate who is likely to be acclaimed elsewhere. Nevertheless, he was adopted by the local Liberal Party, presumably after balancing all relevant considerations, and until his defeat was announced his Liberal friends professed to believe that victory was certain. The significant facts are that he embodied, more than any other member of the Cabinet, the policy of Mr. Lloyd George, and that be received the special favour of an electioneering speech from that Minister on the very eve of the poll. The Liberal commentators on the result, in their anxiety to prove that the election was not fought on Home Rule, have been compelled to contend that it was fought on the Insurance Act. In so doing they admit that the election is a rebuff to Mr. Lloyd George, for the Insurance Act is the particular measure with which his name is most identified.
In its original conception this measure differed very greatly from what the country has come to know as the policy of "Lloyd-Georgism." It was originally put forward as a scheme for making the poorer classes more self-dependent by compelling them to insure them- selves against sickness, and in certain trades against unemployment. At a very early stage, however, Mr. Lloyd George ceased to lay stress upon the moral purpose embodied in his Bill, and, instead, frankly advocated it as a scheme for giving the working classes 9d. in exchange for 4d. It ceased to be a scheme for self-help, and became a new form of State dole. The history of the Insurance Act since it came into operation has been a pro- gressive tendency to convert State insurance into State charity. A huge new dole to the insurance scheme is incorporated in the Budget of the present year, and it is certain that if Mr. Lloyd George remains at the Exchequer further doles will be forthcdming in order to meet the rapidly growing deficits under this pretended scheme of insurance. That he himself has thrown all scruple to the winds was made clear by his speech at Ipswich. In that speech he expounded even more frankly than on almost any previous occasion the doctrine that it was the business of the State to provide for the poor at the expense of the rich, and this doctrine was deliberately put forward as an inducement to the electors of Ipswich to reword their votes for Mr. Masterman. Their refusal to accept the bait ie the first clearly marked evidence that the mass of the electors have grown tired of the promises of Mr. Lloyd George. That these promises would sooner or later cease to have any electoral value was probable from the outset. Nothing so keenly whets the appetite as the practice of bribery. The free and independent elector who in the old days saw half-crowns flying about quickly began to hold out his hand for more than one, and in the same way the people whom Mr. Lloyd George hoped to tempt by pro- mising 9d. for 4d. soon reached the stage when they expected to have more than 5d. and that free of conditions. State bribery, like private bribery, to be effective, must be clear and without complications, otherwise the persons who are accepting the bribe grow dissatisfied.' Mr. Lloyd George, ignoring this tendency of human nature, has thought that he could wrap up his electoral bribes in a cloak of so-called social legislation, and in his latest Budget he has carried this process so far that, though the bribe is there, the ordinary observer only sees the cloak. None of the elaborate proposals put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer during the last two years has really caught on with the public. The land campaign has proved a complete frost, in spite of a very skilfully engineered Press and platform agitation to make it popular. This is probably to a large extent because most of the voters live in towns and take very little interest in the problems of rural districts. In the same way, the talk of taxing land values, which might at one time have proved popular as an element in a campaign against the Dukes; has lost its attractiveness because the Land Value Duties of 1909, which were going to bit the Dukes, have proved more injurious to small property owners than to the owners of broad acres. Finally, the series of doles promised to local authorities under the pretence of assisting the rate- payer have only created bewilderment. The thoughtful ratepayer suspects that these doles will stimulate local expenditure rather than relieve rates, and the mass of the electors who do not pay rates directly are indifferent to the whole subject.
As a result of these successive failures, Mr. Lloyd George's star has lately been waning. Possibly he will make some now cast, and try to recover his popularity by some cruder scheme of electoral bribery. In the meantime his performances only create distrust and suspicion, and, if he succeeds in discovering some more potent appeal to the cupidity of the electors, it is quite possible that they may fail to respond with any enthusiasm because they are already convinced that the bribes he offers with the nation's money are offered for his own benefit. A politician of the type of Mr. Lloyd George creates, in fact, in the minds of many electors, much the same impression that is created on a racecourse by a. cheapjack who is offering some pretended boon to anyone who will patronize his pitch. This failure of the policy of bribery is one of the most encouraging of recent political developments. Let us add quite frankly that it contains a very valuable lesson for that section of the Unionist Party—we hope a small one— which imagines thatthe best way to fight "Lloyd-Georgism" is by trying to outbid Mr. Lloyd George. On these lines, which Mr. Boner Law has more than once explicitly and emphatically condemned, disaster is inevitable. Mr. Lloyd George is much too shrewd an electioneerer to allow him- self to be outbidden at his own game, and the electors are equally much too shrewd to imagine that the Unionist Party could ever go as far in the direction of plundering the rich in order to bribe the poor as Radicals and Socialists are at a pinch prepared to go. It is the business of the Unionist Party to insist on a higher standard of public morality, not to compete on the lower plane.
In this connexion, one of the most important immediate issues is the question of payment of Members. Through- out the country Unionists who are not Members of Parliament, and have no desire for that honour, have been deeply distressed at the failure of the Unionist Party to make clear its attitude with regard to the payment of Members. It is generally understood that the party is resolved that payment shall be dropped when it returns Ito power, but no emphatic public proclamation of this resolve has yet been made. Possibly in this matter, as in others, is section of the party thinks that it is possible to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and on this account is pressing the leaders to postpone a definite decision. In our judgment, this is an entire mistake. There are few recent political events which have so much disgusted the mass of the English people as the action of the members of the House of Commons in voting salaries to themselves. The common-sense Englishman sees that this was in effect a breach of trust. Members of Parliament were elected to administer national funds for national purposes, and they have, without any warrant from the people who sent them to Parliament, plunged their own hands into the public till. An announcement that this act of dishonesty—for it is little less—will cease as soon as the Unionists are returned to power will be hailed with delight, not only by practically every Unionist, but also by an enormous number of Liberals. The particular excuse which was put forward for payment of Members—namely, the legal inability of Trade Unions to pay their own representatives in Parlia- ment—has been swept away by the Trade Union Act of 1913. There is, therefore, nothing left in, the pretence that payment of Members is necessary in order to enable poor men to sit in Parliament. Indeed, from the point of 'View of the Labour Member the abolition of public pay- ment would probably be a real pecuniary gain. Many Labour Members have found that, now that they draw their salaries from the national Exchequer instead of from Trade Union funds, they are marked down for charitable appeals which previously were never directed to them, but which under present conditions they cannot safely ignore. As for the argument that payment of Members is necessary in order to secure the independence of the Labour Party from Trade Union control, the answer is that this control is exercised through the caucus rather than through the purse, and that, as a matter of fact, it is now proposed by the Labour caucuses that every Labour Member should be compelled to pay his salary into the Trade Union funds and to receive a portion of it back as payment from his Union. There is, in fact, no argument in favour of payment of Members that will safely hold water, and the Unionist Party could do no greater service to their country than by announcing at the earliest possible date their intention to get rid of this corrupting influence on national politics. In the meantime, all those who care for honest government can draw encouragement from the setback which " Lloyd- Georgism " has received. It is regrettably true, as Professor Dicey points out in the introduction to the second edition, just issued, of his Law and Public Opinion in England (Macmillan and Co., 10s. 6d. net), that the general tendency of legislation in the present century is in the direction of Collectivism, with the resulting lose of indi- vidual liberty and diminution of the spirit of independence ; but the tendency has, happily, not yet gone so far as to render resistance hopeless.
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