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loitering in ideas, whereby so many a traveller to Atlantis has lain down with his load. It is as a reformer we have here considered him, a voice crying in the wilderness of trivial work and mean ambition, a voice still hoarse with exhortation, still a little forced from having had to carry over the heads of a crowd.

Greater work than he has done he may yet do; but it must be conceived by a less contentious spirit and wrought in a serener air. He has done for us a deal of much needed preaching; but while it needs but the understanding of what men should not be to equip the Preacher, to the Pardoner must be discovered the deeper mystery of what they are.

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ART. XI. THE UNIONIST PARTY AND THE
SESSION.

1. Parliamentary Debates. February, March, and April, 1905. I T is not good for the country, or the Unionist Party, or even for the Prime Minister himself, that the life of the present Parliament should be further prolonged. It may in all probability be true that a dissolution would put an end to the existing Administration, but it is far better that the Government should meet its fate boldly and at once than that its continuance in office should be at the cost of its reputation with the people, and of its own self-respect.

Mr. Balfour has tried his hardest, recently at all events, to prevent the Fiscal Question becoming the turning-point of political controversy. But he has failed. To pretend that no issue of Free Trade versus Protection is before the 'country,' to urge that House of Commons debates upon Fiscal topics are merely academic,' is to beat the air with assurances that deceive no one. On this all-important subject the Unionist Party, other than that section of it which follows Mr. Chamberlain and Protection, is without leadership. And the natural consequences of weariness, of disintegration, and of despair are the result. The Prime Minister must make up his mind either to support in principle the projects of Mr. Chamberlain (and this, Mr. Chamberlain contends, is his real intention) or to oppose them. The choice, doubtless, is a momentous one; but it has to be made, and till it is made his followers will be drifting hither and thither, whilst many of the best of them, disheartened with the position of affairs, are already turning their backs on political life altogether.

Are we, a second time within the space of a single generation, to see a great Party bring ruin upon itself by adopting as the first plank in its platform' a policy utterly at variance with modern conditions of national prosperity? For nearly twenty years the Liberals have been excluded from power as the direct result of the policy adopted by their great leader in 1886. Mr. Gladstone proposed to build up a new Constitution for the United Kingdom on the theory that, politically, the people of Great Britain and of Ireland were two nations under one Sovereign, and that national authority ought to be divided between British and Irish Parliaments sitting at Westminster and Dublin. In the eyes of a great majority of thinking men the project was

retrograde to the last degree. The whole conditions of our modern life made it impossible of accomplishment. The BS of 1886 and 1893, had they passed, could have brought nothing but the direst confusion, and the general opinion of the peber has long ago ratified the summary rejection of those strange attempts at constitution-building. Even Mr. GÖSTI 3 high character and transcendent abilities could not me his practical-minded countrymen to disregard face STL surrender the government of one of the British Is Mr. Parnell and his friends. But the shock to the tion of his party did not pass away with the defes = Home Rule Bills, or even with the withdrawal of E Estone from public life. Even to-day Liberal prorete 27occasionally clouded by the revival of a fear of the the public that the Liberal Party has no thrown off the millstone which has so long neck. And Protectionists still see their the electorate in urging upon it the own cause is the sole alternative to Eome

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General Election and a new Parliament. The personal rivalry of politicians, the jar of faction, the caucusmongering and wirepulling inseparable from democratic electioneering, may achieve strange results. It is with many a favourite pastime to construct imaginary Ministries of the future. But the strong and abiding good sense of the British people may surely be trusted, whatever may be the composition of Ministries, to prevent either a return to Protection or the accomplishment of Home Rule! And statesmen, if they wish to enjoy more than the most temporary hold of power and office, had better at once lay their account with these firm resolves of the people. A new Government which should attempt to revive the Home Rule of Mr. Gladstone will find its days very quickly numbered. On the other hand, it is hardly possible to conceive a Ministry hardy enough to revive an import duty on corn. Unionism and Free Trade,

instead of being opposed, go together, and no firm and lasting Administration can be constructed which refuses to recognize by its conduct political principles enforced, even more strongly by the actual conditions of our modern national life than by considerations of abstract reasoning.

For the present, however, it is Protection, not Home Rule, that is the imminent danger. The protective taxa- I tion of imports is the basis of Mr. Chamberlain's policy. Without the taxation of corn his plan of Colonial Preference falls to the ground. In his eyes the United Kingdom suffers from the abundance of foreign commerce that is floated (almost all of it in British ships) to our shores. Free Trade, he tells us, has been disastrous to British labour. Free Trade England, he thinks, should renounce her folly and take for her example the protective systems of Germany, of Russia, and of the United States. What we need, according to Mr. Chamberlain is a 'scientific tariff' for imported manufactures, and he has set a Commission' at work to develope in detail the measures of taxation that are required to better the position, apparently by raising the prices, of the home manufacturer. By the means which he recommends, and by these means alone, the commercial and industrial condition of the country can be saved from impending ruin. If in England men are out of employment, it is due to Free Trade; as if there was never any depression elsewhere. If men leave the country for the town, it is due to Free Trade; though both in Germany and in the United States a similar migration is taking place. Above all, Mr. Chamberlain insists that the Empire cannot be held together

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unless, by taxing ourselves, we prevent the foreigner competing on even terms in the British markets with our Colonial fellowsubjects, who do not hesitate themselves to exclude us from their markets in the interest of their own manufacturers!

It is a great testimony to the respect in which Mr. Chamberlain was held, and to the power of his personality, that teaching such as this should have gained a hold upon the intelligence of any large number of his countrymen. The fates as well as the facts have been against him. The publications of the Board of Trade have been to his policy a series of deadly blows. It seems after all that we are better off, much better off (especially our working classes), than others. Moreover, it is shown that we are not declining, but growing steadily. Here and there Mr. Chamberlain has been able to point to depression and lack of employment; but with us the consequences of depression have been almost trifling as compared with those it has brought on other lands. It was the great Steel Trust of the United States which we were warned was to destroy the British iron and steel trade, and which itself in its last report furnishes an extraordinary example of depression. In 1904 that great Trust had to diminish the number of its employés by more than 20,000, and the amount paid in salaries and wages br 20,000,000 dollars, as compared with the preceding year Little wonder that, as a result of two years' controverst Mr. Chamberlain has lost ground. To whom has the ground been lost? Clearly to the Free Traders, who have mos Mr. Chamberlain's policy. Do these include Mr. and the Government?

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VOL. CCL. N., GURPLEI.

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