JESUITRY IN POLITICS.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—The complaints of Lord Salisbury, on which you comment in your issue of July 30th, are not confined to the Tories. Most of the Liberal Unionists of my acquaintance indulge in them too. And no wonder. First, as regards the Tithe Act. According to your article, landlords are not a penny the poorer by the Act, for the tenant who has contracted to pay the tithe is bound for the term of his lease to pay the same amount to the landlord in the shape of additional rent. Before the Act, however, the tenant was bound to pay the tithe to the titheowner, and yet, I believe, there was some loss. The legal right to money is not exactly equivalent to the pay- ment of money. But this is not the worst. Just reflect for a moment on the sheer madness of compelling landlords, more particularly Nonconformist landlords, to incur the hatred of their tenants, in their new capacity of bum-bailiffs, and to get in Church rents once or twice a year at their own expense in ad- dition to their own risk. Almost everywhere in the country the Act is regarded as the distinct violation of the old compromise, in the interests of one party to it alone, and that the wrong party. Whatever Churchmen may think, it has undoubtedly sounded the death-knell of the Establishment in Wales. And whatever statesmen may think, it m ty possibly lead to the disintegration of the United Kingdom. Then, again, as regards the Land-Purchase Act (Ireland), the Free Education Act, and the Small Holdings Act. Well knowing these measures to be highly obnoxious, not only to all the Con- servatives who had constantly denounced them, but also to- all the Liberal Unionists who were in open revolt against the Sequahs of politics, Lord Salisbury's Government, under the influence of Mr. Chamberlain, at once proceeded to pass them, without believing in them themselves, in the vain hope of dishing their opponents. Could anything be either more unwise or more immoral ? When you contend as you do, that the Conservative pot is not so black as the Radical kettle, self- respecting electors fail to follow you. In their humble judgment, the line of demarcation between parties should be between the bad and the good, and not between the bad and the very bad. And give them all the world, they will not touch pitch. Apologists of the Government may ask me, what could Lord Salisbury do P Seeing that he was placed in power to maintain the Union, instead of utilising his hybrid majority to advance sectional interests in questionable ways, he might, for example, have constituted equal electoral districts, have introduced the Referendum, and have withdrawn the excep- tional privileges of illiterate voters. He has fallen, if I may say so, through forgetfulness of Polonius's memorable warning:— " This above all : to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."
[Our correspondent is ignorant of the facts of politics. Nothing is more certain than that the Tory supporters of the Government, especially those representing the counties, pressed the Free Education Bill and the Small Holdings Bill most eagerly on the Government.—En. Spectator.]
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