The Bermondsey election, like every other election held since the
grant of old-age pensions, confirms in a most striking way the prediction which we made when the Pensions Act was forced through Parliament,—that it would ruin the cause of Free-trade. When, however, we raised this protest last year, and declared in addition that an extra sixteen millions of new taxation would be required if the Government not only undertook the burden of non-con- tributory pensions, but in addition reduced the tar on sugar, the Spectator was ridiculed by the Primo Minister and his followers for its poltroonery, and even for "weakening on Free-trade." Yet both predictions have come true. The Government have had to ask for sixteen millions more of permanent yearly taxation, and this without any increase (though such increase has in truth become nwessary) in the matter of national defence. At the same time, the cause of Free-trade, for which we care as much as ever, has received a staggering blow. Once again it has been shown that profligate expenditure is an incentive to Protection, and that in Britain, as in America, a swollen pensions-list is the short cut to a tariff. The truth remains that the policy of free exchange cannot be confined, as the Radicals would like, to exports and imports, but if it is undermined, as we have seen it under- mined in the financial and legislative schemes of the present Government, the whole fabric of Free-trade is destroyed.
