TOPICS OF THE DAY.
UNIONIST POLICY.
WHEN we wrote of the speeches of Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Boner Law at the Albert Hall we expressed the earnest hope that we should be able to leave the fiscal side of the Unionist programme alone during the continuance of the Home Rule crisis. Re- maining convinced Free Traders, and remaining also convinced that by refusing to renew the Referendum pledge the Unionist leaders were running a very great risk of failing to gain the party victory which ought to come to them owing to the unpopularity of the present Government, we felt it our duty to advise those who like ourselves regard the destruction of the Union as a greater disaster even than the destruction of Free Trade, to support the Food Taxation supporters of the Union, and so choose the lesser of two evils. That this is the attitude which must, in the last resort, be adopted by all those who like ourselves regard Home Rule, since it entails the coercion of Ulster and civil war, as national ruin, is a position to which we adhere. To help to bring the ruin of which we have spoken on the country because we are angry with the Tariff Reform extremists, and in fact to choose the greater evil out of pique, is to us unthinkable. If at the next election the choice must be between Home Rule and Food Taxes, we say once more that we choose Food Taxes, and not only as the evil less in degree, but also as an evil which can be rectified and repealed. Home Rule and the blood- shed and hatred which must result from the coercion of Ulster can never be set right. Remember, too, that what we propose to do is not to do evil that good may come. Our decision, when the only courses open to us are both evil, is to let reason rather than temper prevail. Yet many of our correspondents seem to think that in taking up this attitude we have become parties to and apologists for the policy of the Unionist leaders. They write to us as if that policy were our policy, or at any rate as if we were personally responsible for it. Such responsibility we must altogether decline. We must once more point out that we are not the Unionist leaders, and not only are not respon- sible for their decisions, but view their policy with the utmost anxiety, nay, alarm. We have further expressed our strong sense of how terrible a weight of condemnation must fall upon those who have induced the Unionist leaders to adopt their policy in case that policy should lead to the destruction of the Union. In other words we agree with every one of the arguments that have been addressed to us as to the dangers of the decision arrived at, and more- over every word of those arguments can be found in our columns during the last few months. But to admit this does not in the least prove that, given the decision of the Unionist leaders, our determination not to desert the Unionist cause was wrong.
Since, however, our position seems to have been so largely misconceived, let us restate it once more.
We are Unionists, but we are not Tariff Reformers.
The Unionist Party is a Tariff Reform Party as well as a Unionist Party.
But the Unionist Party now remains the only instru- ment by which the Union can be safeguarded and the incalculable evils of Home Rule combated.
The notion that it is somehow possible to save the Union without the Unionist Party, or actually by voting against the Unionist Party and supporting the Home Rule Party and their Nationalist allies, is the merest moon- shine. We may not be able to save the Union, since the Unionist Party has tied Food Taxes round its own neck, but at any rate there is a chance, a possibility, of it being saved by that party. There is no chance, no possibility whatever, of achieving salvation for the Union by voting for Home Rule. By voting for the Union, plus Food Taxes, we may have but a very poor prospect of saving the Union. By voting against the Union and for Home Rule we have no chance at all. (It is surely not necessary to point out that we cannot save the Union by ourselves and single-handed.) No one, we think, will venture to say to us that we ought not to have acquiesced, however unwillingly, in the Albert Hall policy before we had tried to induce the Unionist Party to abandon Feed Taxes, at any rate till the Union was out of danger. They must surely know that there has not been an issue of the Spectator published for the last three or four years which has not in effect attempted to produce that result. But in that attempt we have apparently failed. The Unionist Party, or, at any rate, the official Unionist Party, made up their minds that they could not listen to our pleading, and decided against us. Then, as we have said, we had either to go on supporting the Unionists in spite of that decision, as the best we could do in the circumstances for the Union, or to abandon the cause of the Union out of pique. But that we will never do. The Union to 11E1 is the dominating issue. For it we shall fight even though the men alongside whom we must fight so strangely insist that every man's right hand is to be tied behind his back before he can be allowed to strike a blow for the Union. We do not like the conditions, but we like them a great deal better than voting for Home Rule. As we have just said, the Union dominates. If it is doomed to perish, at any rate we will perish with it, and not give it the coup de grdce. Show us a better way of preserving the Union than voting for the Union and we will embrace it. Till then we stand by the only party which even hopes to defeat Home Rule. But though our duty as Unionists who stand outside the Unionist Party and who cannot even understand how any Unionist can think of putting Tariff Reform on a level with the Union, is clear, we admit that the statement We have just made does not exhaust the subject. We note that a portion of the Tariff Reform party is showing great unwillingness to acquiesce in the decision of the leaders in regard to the abandonment of the Referendum pledge. If we are to judge from the coolness of an important section of the Unionist Press and also from the privately expressed opinions of a great many Tariff Reform members of Parlia- ment, and again from the letters of a large section of our correspondents, we cannot but come to the conclusion that there is a serious difference of opinion in the ranks of the Tariff Reformers. This is an additional source of anxiety. Even a wrong decision unanimously excepted would be better from the point of view of the Union than a decision which, though not openly combated, is not really accepted by the majority of the party. Divided counsels are the worst thing that could happen to the cause of the Union.
It is alleged by a great many people that in the decision announced at the Albert Hall the will which prevailed was not that of the majority of the party, but only of a minority. It is clearly most difficult for us as Free Trade Unionists to express an opinion on a point of this kind. What we wanted to do, and what we hoped to be able to do, was loyally to abide by the decision of the Unionist Party as a whole, whatever that decision was, how- ever greatly it might hurt our own political feelings and views, and however doubtful we might be as to its ultimate wisdom. We wanted a united voice from the Unionist Party. If, how- ever, as many of our correspondents allege, the Albert Hall decision has in reality spread dismay throughoutlarge sections of the Tariff Reform party and has only given satisfaction to a comparatively small, though very active and powerful, body of extremists, the situation is indeed anxious. Of one thing, however, we are sure. It would be perfectly futile for us as Unionist Free Traders to attempt to alter the decision that has been come to by the leaders and to urge on them its reconsideration. Such arguments coining from us would be bound to seem tainted—tainted, that is, by our Free Trade views. Though they would be honestly given on the ground of strategy alone, and solely in order to win the battle for the Union, we should be certain to be con- sidered as either consciously or unconsciously striking a secret blow for Free Trade. We must therefore maintain the attitude which we took up a fortnight ago. We are bound to acquiesce in whatever is the final decision of the Unionist Tariff Reform Party, for not only will we never vote for or support Home Rule, but we will vote for and actively support any man who will vote against Home Rule, whatever be his views on other subjects. The issue of the hour is the Union.
Assuming, however, that it is true that a large body of Tariff Reformers, nay, the majority of the party, really mistrust the decision announced at the Albert Hall and believe that it means defeat, or, at any rate, a failure to win enough seats to destroy the Home Rule Bill at the next election, then it seems to us that though we ourselves cannot move, an imperative duty is placed upon the moderate Tariff Reformers. If they believe what they say, they should ask for a reconsideration of the. Albert Hall declaration of policy. They should demand such reconsideration, not in order to keep their own seats, but in order to save the Union. To put the thing in a more concrete shape, if the majority of the party feel that they cannot win unless the Referendum pledge is renewed, they ought to make that view clear to their leaders. They have a right to insist that the will of the party shall be the will of the majority of the party, and not the will of a minority. By the party, remember, we mean the Tariff Reform Party and not any abstraction. In that case it is not, perhaps, for us to suggest a specific course of action. We must say, however, that if we were Tariff Reformers and had the right of audience, and if we believed that the majority of the party were dissatisfied with the declaration of policy at the Albert Hall as likely to put the Union in jeopardy, we should ask, with all due respect to our leaders, that a party meeting should be held and the whole question reconsidered in the light of the reception which it had obtained in the Unionist Party as a whole. For any large section of the Unionist Party to go into action with a sense that they are already beaten appears to us absolute madness, and we cannot believe that if they were once convinced of this even the Tariff Reform extremists would insist upon their pound of flesh. That they would break up the party rather than acquiesce in the will of the majority is a view which wo will not believe for a moment. They could not be guilty of such treason to the Union. Of course, if the extremists are in the majority, then there is no more to be said. The moderates must in that case acquiesce. All that they have a right to ask is that it shall be ascertained beyond doubt what is the will of the majority, not of all Unionists, remember, but only of the orthodox Unionists, i.e., the Tariff Reform Unionists.
We have only one more word to say. If the moderate Tariff Reformers who hold the views which we have just expressed have not the courage to take any action, but merely content themselves with grumbling at the Spectator because it insists on facing the facts, we have nothing more to say except that great battles were never won by men who have not the courage of their opinions—the coutage either to insist on reconsideration or to submit and acquiesce. At any rate, we have the courage of ours. We will state our intentions once more. We shall, as Unionists who stand outside the Unionist Party and are not Tariff Reformers, endorse and support the official policy of the Unionist Party, whatever that policy is finally decided to be. The fact that we have not been allowed to shape that policy will not affect us. We shall support it because it will be the only instrument available to us for saving the Union. It is for those Tariff Reformers within the official Unionist Party who hold that the present policy is not a winning policy to get it altered. If they can do so they will unquestionably have struck a mighty blow for the Union, and will also, we believe, have made the victory of their party certain.
Let all Tariff Reformers remember this. If we fight under the Albert Hall policy there is at the best only a sporting chance of winning. If the Food Taxes are not made an essential part of Unionist policy for the present, victory, and victory on a tremendous scale, is absolutely certain. The Government is detested. They have only one winning card, and that is the cry against Food Taxes. Deprive them of that and they are absolutely beaten. If, however, the moderate Tariff Reformers think it is too much to ask the extremists to go back entirely to Mr. Balfour's pledge of submitting the whole Tariff Reform policy to the Referendum, why not ask them to accept the com- promise so often suggested in these columns, that is, a Referendum pledge which is only to apply to Food Taxes ? That will be enough to secure a victory—nay, a landslide. Nevertheless if we can only have, we will not say half a loaf, but a crumb, we shall prefer it to no bread. For ourselves we want to set the Tariff Reformers an example in self-sacrifice in the matter of the Union. We shall not set it by saying that unless our views are adopted we shall support Home Rule.
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