The by-election which is taking place in the Basingstoke division
is awakening a good deal of interest. The Free-trade Liberal candidate is Mr. Verney, the Tariff Reform Unionist candidate Mr. Salter. Our advice to Unionist Free-traders is the same as that given by us at the General Election,— to vote for the Free-trade Liberal candidate unless the Unionist candidate will declare himself opposed to what we used to call the Chamberlain policy, but which we must now, we regret to say, call the Chamberlain-Balfour policy, and, further, will pledge himself to do all in his power to defeat that policy. It may be said, perhaps, that this advice is un- necessary after so great a victory for Free-trade. Our answer is that Free-trade will not be absolutely safe unless both parties in the State are willing to accept it, and that the only way to make the Unionist Party accept it is for Unionist Free-traders, while steadily refusing to join the Liberals, to make it clear that there is one way, and only one way, to win them back to voting with their party, and that is the abandon- ment of an anti-Free-trade policy by its leaders.
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