Another Fiscal Campaign
THE Leader of the Opposition is delivering himself of a series of speeches, admirable in tone as usual, though confined to the obvious as soon as he approaches his main theme, Protection. Some of his followers are, as they should be—following. On the other side, Mr. Lloyd George is taking as usual by far the most astute course in leading a " raging, tearing " Free Trade campaign which is likely to do the Liberal Party more good than any tactics that he has been pursuing of late. He will arouse enthusiasm among his hearers, though in bold print his rhetoric is not the profound reasoning of a convinced Free Trader. It was so when he used to arouse enthusiasm a quarter of a century ago : then we looked for the real unanswerable case for Free Trade in the speeches of Mr. Asquith, Mr. Harold Cox and the Unionist Free Traders like Lord Hugh Cecil. We suspect that Mr. Cyril Asquith will come to the fore, especially as he can shed the light of humour as well, as of sound thinking over the dismal dialectics of an economic question. The Labour Party inclines to Free Trade : many of the older members were schooled as budding politicians on the right side in the Tariff Reform controversy. The younger and cruder members have, as a body, less firm convictions : and the Party takes a discreetly chosen place in the flank. But the battle is staged in a vigorous summer campaign.
Those who remember the part we took in defeating Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's mistaken conception of Imperialism, and the wrong deductions which made him a Protectionist, may think that when we smell the battle afar off, we should be saying among the trumpets, " Ha, ha ! " On the contrary, alas, so far from feeling stimulated by the joy of battle, we look upon the scene to-day with the deepest despondency. It is dispiriting to find that a question which was so thoroughly threshed out only one generation ago must be tediously explained all over again so soon. Of that, however, we ought not to complain, for why should the newly enfranchised multitudes have bothered with a dispute which seemed to be definitely settled about the time of their birth ? It is, however, fair to blame their would-be leaders for not knowing what is now history. They ought to know that their nostrums have all been tried before and found wanting. When the country was painfully recovering from the Napoleonic Wars it was highly protected and passed through terrible times of material hardship until it found that the remedy was to throw off protection and seek free exchange. Yet some would reverse the process and, though we are mercifully enduring less hardship after the Great War, they would seek now just what intensified the former suffering. Similarly with the Empire, which should be bound with silken ties which never chafe, ties of blood and devotion to a common Throne. Yet some would put on the galling fetters which will either be broken by violence or taken off in repentance. We tried to exploit the American Colonies, and one of the reasons for their disaffection was their resentment at our interfering with their fiscal freedom. When, on the other hand, we vainly thought to bind our colonies to us by Preferential duties, they were spoken of here without affection as millstones round our necks, or as fruit which we would gladly see drop off the parent tree so soon as it was ripe. It has all been tried before, and the same trouble can be seen any day when business relations take the place of family relations. Who does not know of a family in which affectionate feelings have been soured so soon as a disputed will or other business matters assume importance ?
We will not be accused of having advanced no step beyond the days when Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone ushered in the Victorian era of material prosperity by freeing exchange. We are quite aware that some con- ditions have changed since then. Other nations have learned from us to be manufacturers. We have lost inevitably the leadership in the use of steam and machinery. And the most important change of all is that the trade unions have set up the high protection of labour, with less success than the United States (where for various reasons trade unionism is far less rigid) in proving that high wages can increase and occasionally even cheapen production. Those are admitted changes here and abroad. There are others in the Empire partly due to the freedom we have rightly given to the Dominions. An illustration was given at the last Imperial Conference, when, for the first time, a Dominion Premier had the hardihood publicly to announce that he would put the Empire second to his Dominion seeking benefits from the discussions of the Conference. But, for all these changes, the facts remain that tariffs must contract free exchange, and that we need bitterly to expand it, for without external trade we starve. None of these changes averts the danger of the disruption of the Empire through " business " relations. At this very moment " business " has brought asperity where should be sisterly affection, between Canada and New Zealand.
Is our despondency ill-founded when, knowing these dangers, we search vainly in the speeches of the Free Traders for any suggestion of how more revenue is to be raised to meet the last Unionist Government's culpable failure to retrench, and our present governors' new commitments by which they have earned yet worse condemnation ? There lies the menace to our country. Mr. Snowden by his Budget has admitted that the pro- ductivity of direct taxation has passed its zenith, and that money will have to be raised by other means. What are they but a tariff, the most expensive of all devices for finding revenue ? We foresee that our future task will be the cheerless one of acquiescing in a check upon free exchange and of endeavouring to make it as little harmless to the nation as may be,
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