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 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS
 
 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. 
 
 F. E. SMITH, K.C., M.P. 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
 
 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1913
 
 TO 
 
 M. E. S.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Most, though not all, of the essays contained in this 
 volume have already appeared in various magazines. 
 My thanks are due to the Editors of The Oxford and 
 Cambridge Review (in which the majority appeared). 
 The Nineteenth Century, The Fortnightly, and TJie 
 National Review, for leave to reproduce articles which 
 they respectively published, and to the Editor of The 
 Times for permission to reprint the letter contained 
 in the Appendix. Papers written under these circum- 
 stances are necessarily fugitive, but these are collected 
 in the hope that they have not yet exhausted their 
 short space of life. 
 
 Mr Maurice Woods has given me much assistance 
 in preparing the book for the press, and Mr Cyril 
 Potter has been good enough to draw up the Index. 
 
 R E. SMITH.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 1. THE FUTURE OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY . i 
 
 2. STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM . . 20 
 
 3. NATIONAL SERVICE 47 
 
 4. LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY .... 64 
 
 5. HOME RULE 81 
 
 6. THE POSITION OF ULSTER . . . .115 
 
 7. THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND THE PRINCIPLE 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT 126 
 
 8. WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT . . . .156 
 
 9. TARIFF REFORM . . . . . . 181 
 
 10. TARIFF REFORM AND OTHER MATTERS ' . .205 
 
 11. LICENSING POLICY ...... 216 
 
 12. INDUSTRIAL UNREST 234 
 
 13. THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION . . 259 
 
 14. THE PARLIAMENT ACT IN RELATION TO DE- 
 
 MOCRACY 281 
 
 15. PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY . . . .296 
 APPENDIX: THE UNIONIST HOUSING BILL. . 307 
 INDEX 313
 
 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 I 
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 PARTY 
 
 The successful fusion of the two wings of the Unionist 
 army has now been accomplished. The importance of 
 this proceeding lies in matters of ritual rather than in 
 those of doctrine. For ten years there has been no 
 vital difference of opinion between Liberal Unionists 
 and Conservatives, but none the less two separate 
 organisations have existed side by side. Certain con- 
 stituencies have been preserved for Liberal Unionist 
 activity and two completely separate staffs have devoted 
 themselves to organisation in the constituencies. This 
 process was costly, inconvenient, and productive of 
 overlapping. It is even reported that one enterprising 
 candidate at the last election, under circumstances not 
 fully made clear, obtained the whole of his electioneer- 
 ing expenses from each war chest. ^ On every ground 
 it is certain that greater efficiency will be secured by 
 the change. Many persons, however, would have re- 
 gretted a little the disappearance, if it were destined to 
 disappear, of the term " Conservative " in the official 
 
 ^ It is, perhaps, unfortunate that this gentleman Avas not elected. 
 
 1 1
 
 2 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 party label, and we may therefore congratulate our- 
 selves on its retention. Not that I should have 
 objected personally, if a party — hereafter united in 
 form as well as in substance — had been described by the 
 single word " Unionist." I do not share the common 
 objection to this description. It is sometimes said that 
 the Home Rule controversy will one day be settled, 
 and that it will tlien be a little absurd that one of the 
 great parties in the State should be distinguished by a 
 title derived from an exhausted controversy. But this 
 fear is surely based upon a view too narrow. The term 
 "Unionist" had its origin no doubt in the Irish con- 
 troversy, but it has derived a more permanent and 
 world-wide significance from the great campaign which 
 Mr Chamberlain, the true founder of the Liberal 
 Unionist Party, inaugurated in the cause of Imperial 
 Unity. As long as the Tariff victory has still to be 
 won, as long as, having been won, it must be main- 
 tained, the term " Unionist " will possess a vital and 
 living appropriateness to the only party which has 
 devoted itself to the prosecution of these ideas. But 
 none the less it would, I tliink, have been a misfortune 
 if " Conservative " had been laid aside, because it 
 embodies what has been in the past, and must remain 
 in the future, a powerful, and perhaps even a dominant, 
 element in the counsels of the constitutional party. It 
 never was true to say that the Conservative Party con- 
 sisted only of men who were in the main satisfied in the 
 political field with things as they were ; it never was 
 true and it never will be, as long as we live under 
 democratic government. But it is indisputably true 
 that the views of men who contemplate every consider- 
 able change with instinctive aversion, liave greatly 
 influenced Conservative policy in every generation, have 
 not infrequently exercised a decisive control over it,
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 3 
 
 and must always be most attentively and respectfully 
 considered when decisions of party policy are recorded. 
 This circumstance is reflected clearly and appropriately 
 in the word " Conservative." No sensible Unionist will 
 regard it with any feeling but that of satisfaction. We 
 live in a country which has a long and illustrious 
 history ; the accumulated experience of centuries 
 teaches us many lessons, conspicuous among them the 
 lesson that it is easier to destroy than to construct, and 
 that it is infinitely more dangerous. Whether our 
 present system be ideally satisfactory or not, we under- 
 stand it, and in the main we are cognisant of its dis- 
 advantages, whereas none of us can confidently predict 
 what will be the effect of change. We may conjecture, 
 we may even prophesy ; all politicians do, but none of 
 us can be sure. A strong section of public opinion will, 
 therefore, always support the school of thought which 
 insists ever more strenuously on exacting the uttermost 
 onus of proof from those who rashly assail institutions 
 which, however faulty, have in the main responded to 
 our national necessities. And this view is sane, reason- 
 able, and deserving of encouragement. An embryonic, 
 unsettled or inconsiderable State may make experiments 
 without incurring the charge of extreme rashness, just 
 as a deeply embarrassed business man may attempt to 
 retrieve his fortunes by a hazardous speculation. An 
 old and highly civilised country will do well to remember 
 the eloquence, and imbibe the spirit of Burke. The 
 description " Conservative " was a happy and constant 
 reminder of these familiar truths. But the term was in 
 any case bound to survive whether officially recognised 
 or not. You may establish a censorship of plays, but it 
 is infinitely more difficult to establish a censorship over 
 our daily vocabulary. Millions of Englishmen have 
 always called themselves Conservatives, and it may be
 
 4 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 doubted whether an Act of Parliament, much less a 
 Party resolution, could end an incorrigible habit. 
 
 But the formal consummation of a fusion, which has 
 long been substantially complete, affords a convenient 
 moment for speculation upon the future of this powerful 
 political party. What is to be its policy in the strange 
 and uncharted political seas over which we are drifting ? 
 Will it play a part comparable to its illustrious past ? 
 Will it often again dominate the political world in the 
 sense that it will form strong Governments to maintain 
 and spread its own traditions, or is it destined after one 
 or more periods of office to become stereotyped in the 
 shape of a permanent, even though a powerful, opposition, 
 moulding the policy of its opponents by its parliamentary 
 cohesion and strength, but never, or only at rare intervals 
 of reaction, sufficiently numerous to command the support 
 of parliamentary majorities ? Ten years ago these ques- 
 tions would have seemed superfluous and even ludicrous. 
 Few politicians to-day will dismiss them as merely 
 pessimistic. They certainly merit inquiry. Ten years 
 ago there were only two parties in the State. ^ The 
 vicissitudes of politics made it certain that, within a 
 period not unduly prolonged, the activities of the Govern- 
 ment in power would produce hostility, to be followed 
 by reaction, and lead in the sequel to decline and defeat. 
 An agreeable alternation of office and opposition was the 
 destiny of the great political parties. The situation 
 to-day is wholly different. The personal incompetence 
 of the Labour Members, and their entire lack of touch 
 with the great industrial movement in the country, 
 will blind only superficial people to the sinister possi- 
 bilities which underlie the surface of modern politics. 
 New and deep-seated movements, imperfectly under- 
 
 ' Tin; Irish exception was apj)arc'nt ratlu-r than real, and does not 
 affect the argument.
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 5 
 
 stood, hardly diagnosed at all, are rapidly introducing 
 incalculable elements into English politics. Armed 
 with what equipment, inspired by what coherent and 
 considered policy does the Conservative Party face the 
 convulsions with which it will assuredly be confronted ? 
 We may attempt to answer this question by laying down 
 a series of indisputable propositions, and then proceeding 
 to examine others more doubtful, but hardly less insist- 
 ent in their claim for consideration. It is abundantly 
 clear that there exist in the Conservative Party quite 
 distinct schools of political thought. The tasks of 
 opposition promote consolidation ; for all of us are 
 united in distrusting and detesting the schemes of the 
 present Government. It is in power and not in opposi- 
 tion that domestic political differences assume a serious 
 and public aspect. I am satisfied that the points upon 
 which all Unionists agree greatly outnumber and wholly 
 exceed in importance the points on which they disagree. 
 The obvious and fundamental points can be quite shortly 
 dismissed. 
 
 The Conservative Party always has been, and always 
 will be, distinguished by a resolute insistence upon the 
 most complete preparations for national defence. No 
 one could belong to the Conservative Party who, even 
 in this age of appalling competitive expenditure, is un- 
 prepared to err upon the right side, who fails to recognise 
 that, great as our expenditure is and must continue to 
 be, it is an inconsiderable insurance premium in relation 
 to the immensity of the interests thereby secured. We 
 may justly feel pride that no temptation to embarrass 
 the Government even in these years of bitter political 
 controversy has ever deflected the Unionist Party from 
 the only road of honour and patriotism. We have 
 opposed the Government when we believed their prepara- 
 tions to be inadequate ; we have protected them against
 
 6 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 their own unpatriotic supporters whenever they have 
 duly recognised the national necessities. We shall con- 
 tinue to take this course, and in doing so we shall enjoy 
 the support of a large and stable section of public opinion. 
 We shall have behind us those who very rightly treat 
 national defence as the first of all questions, and who 
 will naturally support a party, unanimous, patriotic, and 
 unembarrassed by dependence upon the votes of those 
 who sincerely believe to-day that the German Navy 
 is the product of English Chauvinism. The problems of 
 military defence, though a little more difficult, find the 
 Conservative Party almost equally united in essentials. 
 For my own part, I have always advocated compulsory 
 national training. I am satisfied that it will be ultimately 
 accepted by the nation as necessary, and I have never 
 hesitated in a large democratic constituency to make my 
 views clear. But it would be folly to ignore the practical 
 difficulties which many of our own friends put forward 
 in opposition to its immediate adoption by the party 
 as an object of proximate policy. The people of these 
 islands are not fundamentally unpatriotic, but they have 
 been chloroformed into security by politicians of both 
 parties: they have been taught to believe that the strength 
 of our Navy discharges us from those civic responsibilities 
 which are ungrudgingly recognised by almost every 
 free democracy in the world. It would, I think, have 
 been possible to have established a judicious system of 
 compulsory service amongst selected persons at the time 
 of the South African War. It would be infinitely more 
 difficult to-day, and the object of those who vehemently 
 believe in its necessity will be defeated and not forwarded 
 by a premature attempt to force such proposals down the 
 throat of an unconvinced electorate. 'J'he pressing need 
 of the moment is for conversion, and a deep responsibility 
 lies with the Conservative Party the overwhelming
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 7 
 
 majority of whose members in my judgment is con- 
 vinced that national military training would develop 
 our manhood, and immeasurably augment our national 
 security — to re-enforce the efforts which Lord Roberts, 
 with splendid persistency and courage, is constantly 
 making to convince his countrymen of our military 
 necessities. 
 
 The next great subject upon which there is no real 
 difference of opinion in the Conservative Party to-day 
 is the relationship between Great Britain and the self- 
 governing Colonies. We are committed as a party to 
 the policy of Tariff Reform, and to the principal object 
 of Tariff Reform, the development in the best interests 
 of all of the component parts of the Empire. Opinion 
 .has consolidated within the party more rapidly and 
 more completely upon this than upon any subject which 
 has given rise to deep-seated domestic controversy 
 within recent history. So far as I know the only two 
 members of the Unionist Party in the House of 
 Commons who entertain any serious doubt as to the 
 policy of the party, are Lord Hugh Cecil and Lord 
 Robert Cecil. They are two of its most brilliant 
 members, and I hardly know two Conservative members 
 who have greater claims upon the friendly consideration 
 and sympathy of their fellow Conservatives. It is, 
 therefore, important to notice, and it is almost in- 
 sulting even to point out, that they yield to no member 
 of the party in their devotion to the Empire and in 
 their appreciation of our Imperial responsibilities, and 
 they have both made it clear that while they are dis- 
 trustful as to the consequences of some part of our 
 Tariff proposals, these differences count for nothing 
 with them when weighed in the balance with the supreme 
 importance of a restoration of Unionist Government, 
 and a reversion to saner and more reputable policy.
 
 8 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 There are other subjects upon which so complete a 
 degree of unanimity exists among Unionists that it is 
 almost superfluous even to enumerate them. The party 
 is lineally descended from the older party which, through 
 many vicissitudes of politics and dynasties, redeemed an 
 outlook upon affairs, otherwise often narrow and bigoted, 
 by constant loyalty to the monarchy. It is not neces- 
 sary, and certainly it is not desirable, to charge any 
 great party in the State with lukewarmness towards 
 the institution of monarchy, but it is very necessary 
 to point out that no party can degrade the prerogative, 
 as the Government did in the veto crisis, without grave 
 jeopardy to the whole monarchical institution. It is 
 probable that on a further but cognate subject sub- 
 stantial unanimity exists in the Conservative Party. 
 A complete reform of the Second Chamber is now 
 inevitable. It must and will be a condition of this 
 reform that the decisions of the reformed Chamber shall 
 not be liable to be submerged by a nominal exercise 
 of the prerogative under the advice of an unprincipled 
 Government. There was much to be said for the 
 existence of such a prerogative in the days when, if 
 exercised at all, it would have been exercised by the 
 Sovereign upon an independent initiative. No argument 
 whatever can be adduced in its support when it merely 
 records the decrees of a Coalition Government living 
 from hand to mouth. This is not the place to attempt 
 a detailed forecast of the Unionist policy for the reform 
 of the Second Chamber. It is possible that the con- 
 stitution, if reformed under a Unionist Government, 
 will present little more resemblance to the proposals of 
 Lord Lansdowne than even to the provisions of the 
 Parliament Act; but it may be confidently predicted 
 tliat for the future any such revolutionary exercise of 
 the prerogative as was effected in the crisis of August
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 9 
 
 1911 will be rendered impossible. No great difference 
 of opinion should arise, or is likely to arise, in the 
 Conservative Party when called upon to present a 
 scheme for the reform of the Second Chamber. We 
 are all agreed upon what is essential, even though there 
 is room for almost infinite variety of opinion as to the 
 steps which may be necessary to secure the common 
 object. What is essential is that we should be afforded 
 the security of a strong, independent and impartial 
 Second Chamber, possessing that confidence in its own 
 inherent strength which is the condition precedent 
 of stability and security. It is a great mistake to 
 suppose that the absurdly partisan constitution of the 
 House of Lords has been a source of strength to the 
 Unionist Party : it has been a source of weakness. It 
 has. no doubt, enabled the Unionist Party when in 
 opposition to delay, and sometimes even to defeat, 
 purely partisan measures, which lacked the support of 
 a stable majority in the constituencies. This faculty 
 ought to exist in an efficient Second Chamber. It 
 existed in the House of Lords until August 10, 1911, 
 but it only existed when a Liberal Government was in 
 office. A control so lopsided in its exercise was im- 
 possible to maintain, and was doomed to succumb 
 when seriously challenged in a popular quarrel. It is 
 essential that Conservatives should clearly realise that 
 it is far less important to maintain a partisan Second 
 Chamber than an efficient Second Chamber. It is, for 
 instance, probably more important, to take a concrete 
 illustration (though both were important), that we 
 should possess a Second Chamber able to resist the 
 Trades Disputes Act than a Second Chamber able to 
 resist Mr Birrell's Education Bill. To put the same 
 proposition in a different way, only a very superficial 
 observer, however strong his Conservative prejudices,
 
 10 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 can be satisfied with a Second Chamber which is only 
 able to oppose Liberal measures so long as Liberal 
 measures are obviously unpopular. INlany measures 
 highly expedient may be unpopular for the moment 
 just as measures highly inexpedient may be popular 
 for the moment. The desirable Second Chamber must 
 not merely have the power to interpose delay in the Con- 
 servative interest, when an opportunity presents itself 
 of striking a blow at the Liberal Government : it must 
 possess the power, whatever the complexion of the 
 Government of the day, of interposing a period of delay 
 and even the obligation of an appeal to the people when 
 new and unconsidered proposals are threatened by 
 either party. If this decision seems harsh to those 
 who in the past have inclined to the view that the 
 Second Chamber must necessarily be Conservative, 
 the answer is, I think, clear and decisive. Rash and 
 ill-considered changes in nine cases out of ten are pro- 
 posed by our opponents and not by ourselves. Stability 
 and security are and ought to be the principal objects 
 of the Unionist Party. A Second Chamber which 
 insures those primary objects would be cheaply bought 
 at the price of a Second Chamber which occasionally 
 embarrassed a Conservative Government by delaying 
 and, in a rare instance, by defeating Conservative pro- 
 posals. The three objects which require to be con- 
 stantly borne in mind in the reconstitution of the 
 Second Chamber are Security, Stability, and Imparti- 
 ality between the parties. If the conditions involved 
 in these words are provided, nothing else matters. I 
 myself should contemplate the establishment of an 
 elective Second Chamber with grave feelings of appre- 
 hension, and I am satisfied that the institution of such 
 a body would shift the wliole centre of gravity in our 
 constitution ; certainly it would gravely and perhaps
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 11 
 
 permanently impair the authority of the House of 
 Commons, but I would far rather vote to-morrow for 
 an elective Second Chamber, facing boldly the risk of 
 constitutional deadlock, and the consequent conflicts 
 of jurisdiction, than I would vote for a Second 
 Chamber which had not behind it the moral force 
 strong enough, however much it disapproved it, to 
 reject the Trades Disputes Act. 
 
 The relation of the Unionist Party to the Church is 
 even simpler, and it throws its roots at least as deeply 
 into the history and tradition of the party. I am not 
 myself a Churchman, but I realise as profoundly as any 
 member of the Church the importance of associating 
 religion with the State, and I am unaware of any com- 
 petitive school of religious thought which can at the 
 present time put forward plausible claims to usurp the 
 position of the Church of England. Still less need we 
 argue (for upon this we are all agreed) the importance 
 of protecting the endowments of that Church. The 
 obligation of doing so is as important (neither more 
 so nor less), as that of preserving the endowments 
 of every Nonconformist community. Only bores now- 
 adays dogmatise upon religious subjects, but every 
 sensible person agrees that it is a primary duty of sound 
 statesmanship to encourage every variety of religion 
 which bases itself upon the ethical precepts of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. The dogmas of a particular 
 sect may be right or they may be wrong. All the sects 
 alike are warring against indifference and materialism, 
 and politicians, who are not indifferent to the value of 
 a lofty ethical standard in every department of human 
 life, will welcome the co-operation of every Christian 
 sect, and will therefore welcome also the increased 
 influence which the benefactions of pious persons offer 
 to different Churches in the form of endowments. He
 
 12 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 will not trouble to ask whether the endowments 
 are given to Churclies or Chapels : he will recognise 
 that they were destined to purposes at once pious 
 and public, and he will dismiss as sacrilegious and 
 impolitic any proposal to divert them to secular 
 purposes. 
 
 The next point of unity which will receive general 
 assent in Conservative doctrine is that which insists 
 upon the solidarity of the nation as a whole. No truth 
 is more familiar, and none in contemporary politics 
 more frequently forgotten, than that which insists upon 
 the interdependence of the various classes which go 
 to form our national life. The inculcation for party 
 purposes of class hatred is one of the greatest crimes 
 of which any party or any politician can be capable. 
 It is the Parricide of politics. There always has existed 
 in every human society, and there always will exist, 
 great disparity of fortune, a disparity correspondent in 
 the main, at least in the first or the second generation, 
 with the disparity of human ability and human character. 
 No society, civilised or uncivilised, has ever completely 
 redressed the inequalities produced by differences of 
 capacity and temperament. It is always easy under 
 these circumstances for mischievous and unscrupulous 
 persons to preach the doctrines of discontent. Nor 
 within limits is it altogether undesirable that persons 
 should be discontented. The very quality of ambition 
 presupposes the existence of discontent with things as 
 they are ; Conservative policy, however, requires that 
 while every class, and every individual in tliat class, 
 should be encouraged by every means to improve the 
 conditions of their existence in the community, no class 
 should be encouraged to suppose that tliat improvement 
 can be jjermancntly effected by rancorous liatred and 
 jealousy of those otlier classes, wliose co-operation and
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 13 
 
 sustained vigour are the first condition of any general 
 improvement. 
 
 There has ah-eady been enumerated so large a number 
 of fundamental points upon which there is complete 
 unity of view in all sections of the party, as to justify 
 Conservative views in a citizen who differed from the 
 Conservative party on every other political subject. 
 A man cannot form a party for himself, and he must, 
 therefore, either repudiate the civic obligation altogether 
 or unite himself with, and help to influence the policy 
 of, the party which as an organised instrument is pre- 
 pared to give effect to those objects of national policy 
 which seem to him to be paramount in importance. 
 Probably no independent person ever agreed with the 
 whole policy of any party, but every thoughtful citizen, 
 however independent, is prepared to sacrifice the less 
 important for the more important. 
 
 With these observations 1 approach the subject, or a 
 number of subjects, on which undoubtedly there is con- 
 siderable difference of opinion in the Unionist Party. 
 A large and powerful section in its ranks points to the 
 unrest which always follows upon a considerable period 
 of Radical Government, and sees in the general weari- 
 ness of so much ill-conceived activity the most auspicious 
 promise of Unionist success at the polls. They point 
 to the Conservative reaction which followed the pro- 
 digious activities of the most restless Government which 
 even Mr Gladstone ever controlled ; and they claim 
 that a harassed and bewildered electorate, which has 
 hardly had time to grasp the outlines of one complex 
 legislative enactment before it finds itself in the throes 
 of another, equally controversial and equally difficult to 
 comprehend, stands in need primarily of repose and will 
 support any party able to guarantee a period of tran- 
 quillity. What is wanted, it is said, is more administra-
 
 14 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 tion and less legislation, fewer grandiose programmes 
 and fewer Autumn Sessions. It is indeed evident that 
 a large measure of truth underlies these Adews. The 
 activities of the Liberal Party since 1906 have been 
 feverish, incoherent, and often extremely mischievous 
 in their consequences. JNIany powerful interests have 
 been harassed and injured. Staleness envelops the 
 whole field of politics, manifesting itself most evidently 
 in the House of Commons itself, but penetrating into 
 the humblest political club in the constituencies. It is, 
 under these circumstances, not surprising that many 
 Conservatives should contemplate with disquiet the 
 prospect that the Conservative Party may undertake 
 ambitious programmes competitive, as they apprehend, 
 with the legislative megalomania of our opponents. 
 The constitution of the Unionist Party in the House 
 of Commons to-day makes it certain that such appre- 
 hensions will be felt, and makes it essential that they 
 shall be accorded full and generous consideration in the 
 counsels of the party. The fortunes of Conservatism 
 were partially redeemed at the Budget Election by the 
 splendid loyalty of the county constituencies of the 
 south, and the party in the House of Commons re- 
 ceived an invaluable recruitment in the persons of many 
 new members, repiesentative of the traditional connec- 
 tion of the party with the agricultural interest. Such 
 members think, and rightly think, that the victories 
 they have won in the crisis where every victory counted, 
 give them, and the interests which they specially repre- 
 sent, a pecuhar claim to consideration when pohcy is 
 determined. Tliey point to the poverty of the agri- 
 cultural labourer, to his strange detachment from the 
 (juarrels whicli play so large a part in industrial constit- 
 uencies, and they insist that his pathetic indigence shall 
 not be further charged with the burdens of ambitious
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 15 
 
 schemes in the direction of social reform. They put 
 forward a claim both strong and irresistible. It would 
 be a wrong, and an irreparable wrong, to place further 
 burdens upon a class whose economic progress has 
 been slower and more disappointing than that of any 
 other class in the community ; but the point of 
 view underlying this contention is different from, 
 and, I think, more reasonable than, the one which the 
 avowed ideal is that the Conservative Party should do 
 nothing, should look for office (whenever it can gain it 
 upon these terms), on a policy of negation and inactivity. 
 Of this view, my friend Sir Frederick Banbury is, I 
 think, at once the most capable and the most sincere 
 advocate in the House of Commons, where his presence 
 and his great common sense supply an invaluable cor- 
 rective to sloppy and ill-considered proposals, from 
 wliichever party they emanate. But it would be folly 
 to ignore the plain and evident fact that a large and, I 
 think, growing section of the party finds itself in acute 
 disagreement with these views in their extreme form. 
 Indeed, to accept them is to tear out from the history 
 of Conservative policy every page which records the 
 statecraft of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Randolph 
 Churchill. This younger school of Conservative 
 thought lays stress upon the undoubted fact that the 
 party will never conquer a majority adequate to its 
 purposes until it re-establishes itself in the confidence 
 of the great industrial centres. It believes that such a 
 conquest is possible and may be proximate, and that 
 it may be combined with the due consideration for those 
 agricultural interests to which we owe so much, and to 
 the demands of which on their merits we are so deeply 
 committed. It is pointed out that we are living in a 
 period of incalculable industrial unrest, to the develop- 
 ment of which no prudent person is prepared to
 
 16 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 assign limits, and the ultimate consequences of which 
 may easily, if it is neither controlled nor directed, sub- 
 merge the very landmarks of our civilisation. The 
 growing discontent of the working-classes cannot be 
 dismissed with a few punitive recommendations. 
 Agitators have aided to foment it, but their efforts 
 would have been less successful unless reinforced by a 
 genuine and passionate sense of dissatisfaction. The 
 truth is, and it may as well be boldly faced, that the 
 working-classes are not satisfied with their share of the 
 joint product of capital and labour. Their belief in a 
 future state of existence in which the distribution of 
 happiness will be more equal is vague, precarious, and 
 is certainly not becoming more definite. They are no 
 longer prepared to acquiesce in conditions of existence 
 in this life which they think unfair, on the vague chance 
 that the balance may be redressed hereafter. The 
 disastrous spread of ostentatious luxury on every side 
 has united with the controversial necessities of Mr 
 Lloyd George to focus the feelings of discontent into a 
 dangerous head. Motor cars have manufactured more 
 Socialists than all the eloquence of Mr Keir Hardie and 
 Mr Lansbury ; and although in many well-paid trades 
 the attitude of labour is unreasonable and grasping, the 
 wrongs under which many poor persons labour are so cruel 
 and so undeniable that it is astounding that any school 
 of political thought should conceive a policy of inactivity 
 to be possible. I sliould like to inscribe on the walls of 
 every Conservative club, and particularly of tliose clubs 
 to which the wealthier members of the party belong, 
 these words from Mr Booth's Life and Labour of the 
 People : " The result of all our inquiries makes it reason- 
 ably sure that one-third of the population are on or just 
 above the line of poverty or are below it, having at most 
 an income which, one time with another, averages 21.v. or
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 17 
 
 225. for a small family (or up to '25s. or 26.5. for one of 
 larger size), and in many cases falling much below this 
 level." Mr Booth shows that in London alone 354,444 
 men, women, and children live in chronic want on less 
 than 186'. per week per family, while 938,293 persons 
 subsist on less than 21.9. a family. 
 
 Mr Rowntree's investigations showed that these in- 
 credible conditions existed in an almost exactly similar 
 degree in the city of York. He says : " It was found 
 that families comprising 20,302 persons, equal to 43*4 
 per cent, of the wage-earning class, and to 27*84 per cent, 
 of the total population, were living in poverty." And 
 Mr Booth's conviction has been recorded : " 1 have long 
 thought that other cities, if similarly tested, would show 
 a percentage of poverty not differing greatly from that 
 existing in London." 
 
 I entertain no doubt that Tariff Reform would con- 
 siderably alleviate these evils, but I have never believed 
 that it will end them. W^hich party in the State stands 
 to lose most by their continuance ? Is it not evident 
 that the party, to whom stability and content are vital, 
 is far more deeply concerned to restore happier con- 
 ditions than the party which lives upon discontent and 
 the promulgation of class hatred ? A contented pro- 
 letariat should be one of the first objects of enlightened 
 Conservative policy. Every intelligent autocracy has 
 grasped this elementary political truth. Napoleon, the 
 greatest and most practical social reformer who has 
 ever lived in France, left it on record that he would 
 rather lose soldiers on the battlefield than citizens in 
 industrial disturbance. And it is very necessary to 
 remember that no appeal is possible to those great 
 ideals of patriotism which the Imperial Party must 
 always make, if the persons to whom they are addressed 
 are living lives empty of amenity and void of hope.
 
 18 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 What politician is so bold as to dare talk of the Empire 
 to men who cannot nourish their families, at the price 
 gladly rendered of a life of grinding toil, and who 
 know that its certain conclusion, when they have become 
 the wastage of the industrial scrap-heap, is a lonely and 
 dishonourable death in a workhouse ? 
 
 But I should be told that these conditions, though 
 shocking to every humane person, are unavoidable and 
 are at any rate beyond the reach of legislation, and it 
 may be that insistence will be made upon the doctrine 
 of the survival of the fittest. In the infancy of civilisa- 
 tion there is much to be said for this doctrine. It played 
 a part, for instance, in the pre-English history of India 
 not altogether unsalutary, and it has often solved with 
 simplicity, if not without cruelty, the problems of over- 
 population and excessive poverty ; but it may be dis- 
 missed with the observation that it has never survived 
 contact, and never will survive contact, with either 
 Christianity or civilisation. To the slightly distinguish- 
 able point of view that legislation can do nothing, I offer 
 the reply that legislation when rightly conceived and 
 adequately considered has already done much, and it 
 would be strange, indeed, if we had exhausted its 
 resources. But the further argument remains that 
 legislation is costly, that the nation is already overtaxed, 
 and that further burdens will diminish the productive 
 efficiency of the country, and be a dangerous source of 
 weakness in the event of international complication. 
 The arguments underlying this view are too strong to be 
 lightly waved aside. Tlie national expenditure to-day 
 has reached a total which is disquieting to persons of very 
 different schools of thought, and the wild-cat finance of 
 the Insurance Act has involved tlic country in an ultimate 
 contingent liabiHty, out of all proportion to any benefits 
 which are likely to follow from the Act. But a con-
 
 FUTURE OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY 19 
 
 demnation of insufficiently considered expenditure does 
 not involve a condemnation of all expenditure, and I 
 would invite those who think they can arrest the prog'ress 
 of social reform by the warning-post of retrenchment, to 
 consider whether they seriously believe that the last 
 word has been said on the contributions of the rich to 
 the necessities of the poor. To take a specific illustra- 
 tion, do they think that our existing slums will be 
 tolerated for long or that they will be removed 
 without public contribution ? The question, then, to 
 which constructive Conservative statesmanship should 
 be directed is not whether further reforms will be 
 necessary, but how can these reforms be effected with 
 the least mischief to our public and private finance ; 
 and the question which requires scientific treatment in 
 relation to the great staple industries of the country is : 
 What is the point at which taxation so hampers English 
 capital in the field of International competition as to 
 impair production and diminish employment ? 
 
 No statesman who understands his business will ever 
 push taxation beyond that point ; but taxation is unlikely 
 in the future to make a less exacting demand, and it is 
 even more likely that future Chancellors, realising that 
 the owners of agricultural land are among the most 
 deserving and public spirited, as they are certainly in the 
 main among the least wealthy, of our better class popula- 
 tion, will look more to the contributions of that luxurious 
 class living entirely for pleasure w^hich was treated with 
 comparative indulgence by the Budget of 1910.
 
 II 
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 
 
 Almost the most pressing of our problems to-day is 
 that which is vaguely described as the problem of 
 Social Reform. It grows indeed more pressing as the 
 failure of the Lloyd -Georgian method grows more 
 manifest, and as the time approaches nearer when 
 a Unionist Administration may find itself responsible 
 for the condition of the people. The need for legis- 
 lation affecting internal conditions of national life will 
 not, as some short-sighted optimists aver, pass with the 
 passing of the Government. The evils of which the 
 recent Labour troubles have been the outward sign are 
 too deep-rooted in our Industrial, Political, and Fiscal 
 system to be excised so easily. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer and his friends did not make all the trouble ; 
 they simply made the most of what they could find. 
 Limehouse blew the embers of discontent to a flame, 
 but the fire will go on crackling long after the bellows 
 are broken. It is time, then, that the Unionist Party 
 made up its mind what are the precise questions which 
 are likely to confront it in office, and what policy a 
 general application of its principles to these questions 
 will produce. 
 
 In the first j)lace, let us clear our minds by asking 
 what exactly the term Social Reform means. It is 
 
 20
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 21 
 
 clearly a somewhat loose expression, and in many ways 
 Disraeli's phrase, " The Condition of the People," ex- 
 presses the concept aimed at far better ; but this last 
 is too long and too little adapted for constant use in 
 writing or speaking. One may reach one's definition 
 best by a process of exclusion. Social Reform is not 
 a question of Defence, or Foreign Policy ; nor is it a 
 Constitutional matter like Home Rule, or Welsh Dis- 
 establishment, or the House of Lords, or the Franchise ; 
 nor is it a question affecting directly the oversea 
 dominions of the Crown. With the Fiscal question 
 and with the Licensing and Education controversy it is 
 no doubt intimately bound up, but yet not so intimately 
 that all three cannot be (and indeed they often are) 
 discussed from a different standpoint to that of the 
 Social Reformer. What, then, is left for Social Reform 
 in the field of Affairs ? and the answer is the residue. 
 That residue of internal affairs which does not fall 
 under any of the foregoing heads may be fairly claimed, 
 I think, by the Social Reformer as his own especial 
 sphere. Within that sphere are found such questions 
 as Food Prices, Wages, Rents, Land Tenure, Housing 
 Accommodation, Health Conditions, Local and Imperial 
 Taxation, Industrial Legislation, Emigration, Technical 
 Education, and Poor Law. Food Prices, Wages, and 
 Emigration form, no doubt, an integral part of the Fiscal 
 and Imperial problem, just as Technical Education and 
 Poor Law Reform are closely bound up with our Educa- 
 tional system regarded apart from the religious con- 
 troversy. The strands of national life are so closely 
 interwoven that they cannot be separated in actuality, 
 though they can be divided for convenience of discussion. 
 It will always be easy to show that the destruction of 
 the Constitution might have, by carrying Home Rule 
 with it, a marked influence on the social condition of
 
 22 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Ulster, or that to discuss Trade Union Legislation, with- 
 out taking note of that political fact the parliamentary 
 Labour Party and its Socialist tenets, is an absurdity. 
 All these and similar points may be conceded to the 
 special pleader, but the concession will not blur the 
 broad distinction which does exist, in fact, between 
 external and internal affairs, and between social and 
 economic as opposed to political or religious phenomena. 
 As Social Science is that body of thought which deals 
 directly with the facts of the condition of the people, 
 so Social Reform is legislation which endeavours to 
 improve the conditions of the inhabitants of these 
 islands in health, wealth, happiness, and efficiency. Re- 
 formers of all parties would, no doubt, accept this 
 definition, and I shall be asked : How does the Unionist 
 method differ from that of the Benthamite on the one 
 hand, or the Socialist on the other ? This is a most 
 pertinent question — so pertinent, indeed, that if it 
 cannot be answered satisfactorily cadit qucestio and 
 Toryism is put at once out of court as an instrument 
 of Social Reform. But a further conclusion follows : 
 If there is to be no room in domestic legislation for 
 anyone who is not a Whig or philosophic Liberal of 
 the lai.ssez-fah'e school, or a Radical or Socialist of the 
 new school, Toryism has no standing as a political force 
 at all. For otherwise since domestic questions of this 
 kind are always with us in some form or another, save 
 when overshadowed by some great national crisis, this 
 school of political thought would be condemned to 
 almost perpetual impotence. No party, or at least no 
 party which ever expects to be in office, can iiave no 
 policy in social questions. Only three courses are open 
 to it : it may back the Individualist-Whigs, or it may 
 back the Radical-Socialists — or it may put forward an 
 iiulcpendent policy of its own. If it followed the first
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 23 
 
 course, as some of its friends have suggested to it at 
 one time or another, it would certainly have a policy ; 
 but that policy would no more be " a Conservative 
 on(2 " than if it pursued the second path and adopted 
 the principles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
 Mr Ramsay Macdonald. It is to my mind an almost 
 ludicrous paradox to suggest to the political heirs of 
 Canning and Disraeli that the economic and political 
 principles of Austin, Bentham, the two Mills, Bright, 
 and Cobden, who captured the Whig Party in the early 
 'forties, and. using those ideas and that party as an 
 instrument smashed the Conservative cause and the 
 country gentleman to pieces, can be the foundations of 
 Tory policy. The party may, of course, build on those 
 foundations if it likes, but not, surely, in the name 
 either of Conservatism or Toryism ! The second course 
 is clearly inadmissible, for if it were adopted it would 
 not result in a Conservative policy of Social Reform, 
 but, on the contrary, in something even more unlike 
 it than Liberal Individualism. There remains, then, 
 the third alternative — the Independent Conservative 
 programme. 
 
 But here comes the original question : Is there such 
 a third principle ? and, if so, what is it ? One very 
 simple answer might be made : there must be or have 
 been, or else Toryism would never have existed, for no 
 party could have retained any semblance of consistency 
 or unity for nearly a hundred years if it had acknow- 
 ledged, on social questions, no line which readily dis- 
 tinguished it from its opponents, and on which the 
 majority of its adherents were not more or less agreed. 
 But to the justification of my thesis by history and 
 fact I will come back later. The principle has certainly 
 existed, and the next question is one of definition. 
 Once again, let us begin by the process of exclusion.
 
 24 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 The advocate of a Tory social programme is in the 
 position of an army which is being fired into both on 
 the front and on the flank. The fiercest assault comes 
 from the Socialists and their Radical allies, who, judging 
 from the experiences of the past, feel fairly confident 
 of defeating the extreme Individualist in a hand-to- 
 hand encounter, but regard with a mixture of anger 
 and alarm the intervention in the dispute of a third 
 party with its own solution of those social difficulties 
 out of the existence of whicli the Radical-Socialists are 
 making their political living. Nor, when one considers 
 what defeats the Radicalism of certain epochs has 
 suffered at the hands of men like Disraeli, Lord Ran- 
 dolph Churchill, and Mr Chamberlain, can their violent 
 antagonism be regarded as anything but natural? They 
 perceive the greatest danger to their own prospects, 
 and are prompt to meet it. So much for the frontal 
 assault ; the flank one comes from a very different 
 quarter. There exist on both sides, in politics, though 
 I think in diminishing numbers, some individuals to 
 whom the doctrines of the early- and middle- nineteenth- 
 century philosophers are still true, and who think that 
 when the State has supplied an army and a navy, and 
 a police force and a Constitution, it has come to the 
 hmits assigned by nature. Of this view the late 
 Auberon Herbert was the most famous and perliaps 
 the most extreme exponent. Tliis theory, which, in- 
 vented by Liberalism, was in the hey-day of its popu- 
 hirity supported chiefly by Liberals, has, in its decline, 
 found in a modified form more disciples among the 
 Conservative ranks. The Liberal origin of their theory 
 has brought these Conservatives into a sharp conflict 
 of ideas with the modern exponents of the old State 
 Torvism. It accounted for the resistance to the Tariff' 
 Reform propaganda which so nearly split the party in
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 25 
 
 1904, and for the existing reluctance, in certain quarters, 
 to face the danger of existing social evils with any 
 solution other than a policy of blank inaction. This 
 dwindhng band of extreme Individualists consists of 
 men of the highest character, for they cling to ideas 
 which are admittedly not popular, and which, to the 
 modern as to the old Tory, are simply not true. If 
 they will admit the first fact, they are sometimes 
 less ready to admit the second. The consequence is 
 that in front the Tory Social Reformer is attacked 
 with the old Radical accusation that all he cares about 
 is the Millionaire, the Duke, and the Landlord, and 
 that he has no intention of carrying his reforms into 
 effect ; and, on the flank, with the side - shots of 
 his friend, who explains that he really means busi- 
 ness, but is doing it with the intention of outbidding 
 the Chancellor by betraying Conservative principles for 
 votes. Of Radical accusations no one takes much 
 account, but I think we have some right to appeal to 
 our friends with whom we are in cordial co-operation 
 and agreement over three - quarters of the field of 
 politics to give our motives some credit, and to consider 
 that we may, possibly, have some real reason for the 
 faith that is in us. Even if one were insincere, it is a 
 little hard to be accused of two mutually destructive 
 forms of insincerity. These, then, are the twofold 
 critics of State Toryism in social affairs. If we pursue 
 the method of exclusion by seeing where we differ from 
 both, we shall, I think, be close upon the definition of 
 the practical Conservative policy of Social Reform. 
 
 The main differences can be put in a sentence. The 
 laissez-faire Conservative or Whig wishes the State to 
 touch nothing : the Socialist, and in a lesser degree the 
 Radical-Socialist, wishes the State to touch everything 
 and to touch it in the wrong way. The modern Con-
 
 26 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 servative,like the old Tory, wants the State to touch some 
 things but to touch them in the right way. The extreme 
 Individuahst argument has been so utterly exploded 
 philosophically, and so completely disregarded by nearly 
 all those who in the last fifty years have had the practical 
 administration of affairs, that it is difficult to treat it 
 with the respect which its venerable antiquity and the 
 substratum of real truth it contains should no doubt 
 command for it. Nor do I wish to suggest that the 
 Conservative- Whig or Whig-Conservative really holds 
 it to be true in the fullest sense. But the trouble 
 about the whole doctrine is that if you do not hold it 
 true in that fullest sense, and in an even fuller one than 
 even its authors did, you cannot hold it true at all. It 
 was, indeed, a queer compound of Rousseau, Bentham, 
 and Darwin — the last named imperfectly digested. 
 The " natural man " of the French Revolution, the 
 philosophic Liberal, and the survivor of the struggle 
 for existence met and embraced. They agreed on a 
 great number of subjects. That the natural man was 
 the perfect one, and that to give his nature free play 
 Established Churches ought to be abolished entirely 
 and Central Governments abolished as far as practicable ; 
 that all restrictions on free competition must vanish ; 
 that nationality was, on the whole, a superstition ; 
 that out of this free state of competition tlie fittest 
 natural man would survive, and that his survival must 
 conduce to the greatest good of the greatest number 
 because he would be more intelligent and thrifty and 
 hard-working than his rivals, and so would do more 
 work and {)roduce a larger economic output. Finally, 
 that any (Government assistance to those wlio went to 
 the wall ill the course of the struggle was keeping alive 
 the unfit at the expense of the Ht, and so limiting the 
 prcxhictive powers of the fit and discouraging them
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 27 
 
 from exercising their full powers. It is impossible to-day 
 to believe that such a farrago of nonsense was ever 
 believed in by men of culture and intelligence. It 
 was, of course, always perfectly clear that the state of 
 civilisation which enabled men of character and ability 
 to make more money and to develop industry more 
 quickly than their competitors was due to the fact that 
 the process of civilisation had been carried out in 
 defiance of every one of their fundamental doctrines. 
 Who, after all, is the natural man ? and who is the 
 fittest survivor ? As Mr Balfour pointed out the other 
 day — and it was, indeed, all that Darwin ever said — 
 the fittest man is the man who survives, and there, as 
 Dr Johnson used to say, is an end of it. What type he 
 is will depend on the circumstances of the age. The 
 natural man who survived in the Stone Age was the man 
 who was best with the flint club, and if Benthamism had 
 been the prevailing and only creed in that day, civilisation 
 would probably have remained in that epoch. Indeed, 
 according to the whole theory, the nineteenth-century 
 garrotter had the greatest grievance against his more 
 wealthy but less-powerful victim, who was using " the 
 authority" of the police to prevent the "natural survivor" 
 taking his life and succeeding to his money. Similarly, 
 a combination of individuals to maintain an army or a 
 navy was utterly opposed to the whole creed of 
 Victorian individualism ; for if the Germans or the 
 French were the better people, no objection could 
 logically be raised to their survival in the struggle. 
 The only answer could be that the invader would be 
 unfair enough to rely on that combination of in- 
 dividuals known as a fleet or an army, and would 
 thereby overwhelm the resistance of individuals. And 
 in that answer lies the whole condemnation of the indi- 
 vidualistic theory — for it claims that what pays is right,
 
 28 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 and must admit that combination may pay better than 
 isolated competition. It is, in fact, as much on this 
 capacity for combination and self-sacrifice for the 
 common end that civilisation has been built, as on the 
 other qualities of energy and self-help which are existent 
 in the human race. 
 
 Through the period of the tribal development, through 
 the city state, through the ages of the kingdom and of 
 the Empire, all those factors which, in the organisation 
 of Church and State and in the enforcement of order, 
 have represented the social instincts of a people, have 
 done at least as much for progress as the instinct of 
 self-advancement and the trampling down of weaker 
 brethren. And if this is true in three-quarters of the 
 sphere of Government, is there any prior reason to 
 suppose that it is not true in the other quarter — the 
 sphere of Social Science ? The Individualists, indeed, 
 are out of court unless they are ready either to advocate 
 social anarchy and individual club law, or to come 
 down off their theoretic pinnacle, and to admit that 
 the State may be, under proper provocation, as justified 
 in interfering in internal social conditions as in external 
 defensive precautions. With such an admission I would 
 for the moment be content before discussing what the 
 practicable forms of State intervention are, or how far 
 State intervention can benefit the community as a 
 whole. Tlie ground will be cleared by the admission 
 that combination for social purposes may be as neces- 
 sary to a community for social purposes as it is for 
 military ones. 
 
 Let me now turn to the other side of the shield, and 
 consider tlic doctrines of the principal opponents of 
 Toryism. If their name is legion, their varieties of 
 doctrine are almost as numerous. They may, how- 
 ever, for the purposes of the argument, be divided
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 29 
 
 into two main groups : the thoroughgoing academic 
 SociaHst, and the Radical or Labour man who will 
 grasp or swallow just so much of the whole Socialist 
 doctrine as happens to suit his immediate political 
 purposes. Into one or other of these groups, or into 
 some half-way house between them, nearly every 
 Socialist or Radical-Socialist falls. The purest milk 
 of the word will be found among those Fabians who 
 desire, by a gradual extension of administrative function, 
 to graft the doctrines of the Platonic Republic on the 
 English social system. You begin with gas and water, 
 and end with the perfect State. This view, though 
 productive of several valuable administrative reforms, 
 has the defect of being both impracticable and absurd. 
 The Fabian conception of the future British State has 
 the same relation to reality that a pile of clouds has to 
 a line of cliffs. Like the Republic, it is a vast theoretic 
 dream, but though the dream will never be tested, the 
 theory has already been riddled with the fire of criticism. 
 Plato himself supplies the best comment on it in his 
 final admission that his whole system would collapse 
 through lack of some kind of inherent vitality and 
 driving power. The living forces of mankind would 
 either march through the elaborate paper system, or, if 
 the system were too strong, both alike would atrophy or 
 perish. The Socialist has rushed to one extreme and 
 the Individualist to the other. The first has built his 
 State on an imaginary man, who, like the bee or the 
 ant, possesses nothing but the faculty of organisation ; 
 the other on an equally vain imagination — a being 
 possessed of nothing but the instinct for self-advance- 
 ment and self-preservation. The vice of Individualism 
 is that it would hamstring man's power for co-ordinate 
 advance and joint sacrifice ; the vice of Socialism is 
 that it would cut the other motor-muscle of character.
 
 30 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the desire for the struggle, and for the reward the 
 struggle brings. It is impossible to tamper with the 
 principle of private property, and with the principle of 
 the family and hereditary succession which depends 
 on it. Both the extremes are indeed so utterly unten- 
 able that criticism of them must partake of the nature 
 of platitude. 
 
 Neither of them, indeed, would have secured such a 
 wide and fcir-reaching vogue but for certain extraneous 
 facts which had nothing to do with the persuasiveness, 
 or. indeed, the truth of the theories themselves. The 
 theories were invented by what Napoleon used to call, 
 contemptuously, "' the ideologues " : they only became 
 popular when bits of them happened to be of use to 
 practical men. Thus, parts of philosophic Liberalism 
 suited the interests of the rising manufacturing class. 
 These wanted universal Free Trade to maintain their 
 ascendency in the markets of the world : and behold, 
 they were told that tariff barriers were wrong. They 
 wanted cheap labour, and they were informed that 
 factory legislation was uneconomic. They wanted to 
 break the influence of the country party and to cheapen 
 labour by cheapening food, and they were told that 
 protection was invented by the Devil himself. But 
 they did want an army and nav^y and a police to 
 protect them from the French or the Chartists, so the 
 logical fulfilment of the creed was allowed to drop out 
 of view. Similarly, the theory of Socialism has been 
 the product of the pundits, and only where its destruc- 
 tive side has been of value to certain types of politician 
 has it emerged into prominence. But I must pass over 
 the Radical- Socialist doctrine for the moment, and pass 
 on to the next phase of the argument : the definition of 
 the Tory attitude towards Social Reform. 
 
 Enough has been said, 1 hope, on the negative
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 31 
 
 instances given to show what Tory principles cannot 
 be. They cannot be based either on philosophic 
 Liberalism or on its antithesis. Socialism. Tory 
 principle must be based in this sphere as it is in others, 
 first, on the unity of the State, which Individualism 
 denies, and second, on the conception of the continuity 
 and stability of the State, which Socialism would 
 destroy. In the third place, Toryism must regard 
 the people of these islands not as if they were " built 
 like the angels with hammer and chisel and pen" to 
 suit a preconceived doctrine, but as they actually are — 
 men animated by those mingled motives of enterprise 
 and self-interest, patriotism and self-sacrifice, daring 
 and prudence, which have inspired citizens and con- 
 structed commonwealths from the dawn of history. 
 
 The conception of unity is at the bottom of the 
 Tory attitude of mind. It is nothing but the instinct 
 of patriotism, the sense that the nation is a single 
 unit, and not a haphazard collection of conflicting 
 individuals ; and that the unit must, at any cost, 
 be strengthened and preserved. Toryism therefore 
 turned, in the civil wars, to the symbol of a dynasty 
 as the embodiment in the crown of the idea of 
 national unity, to the symbol of the Church as embody- 
 ing the spiritual life of the nation when the Stuarts 
 proved themselves impossible ; and the party constantly 
 thereafter found in Church and State its rallying cry 
 and watchword. Similarly, in the defence of the 
 integrity of his Majesty's dominions, whether fi'om 
 external attack or internal disintegration, the key-note 
 of the Tory Party has always been that of union. 
 Whether, then, we are strengthening our military and 
 naval defences, resisting Home Rule, or reaching 
 forward to a greater measure of Imperial consolida- 
 tion, we are supporting the principle that unity is
 
 32 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 strength, and that the State is best profited by the 
 greatest community of interest between the greatest 
 number of its members. It is only necessary to apply 
 this conception to the social problems which face us to 
 find ourselves on firm ground. All we have to ask 
 ourselves, in general, is whether a policy of class hatred 
 and antagonism (and such antagonism and hatred may 
 be engendered by either side) will profit the State, and, 
 in particular, whether any given proposal of Social 
 Reform will or will not redound to the general advan- 
 tage of the community. 
 
 I think I shall obtain from everyone, except 
 from a few admitted partisans, a formal assent to 
 the proposition that class union is better than class 
 hatred. But something more than a formal assent is 
 required to a cardinal doctrine of Tory principle — the 
 spirit of the assent must be carried into practice in the 
 sphere of domestic legislation. I will illustrate my 
 meaning by an instance. When the Unionist Housing 
 Bill was introduced this year into the House of 
 Commons, it was at once assumed, without much 
 preliminary examination, by the meaner type of 
 critic, that // must be an attempt to benefit not the 
 occupier, but the owner, not only because it was a Tory 
 measure, but because the two interests were apparently 
 irreconcilable. This type of mind is so steeped in class 
 venom, and in the belief that life and politics can be 
 nothing but a disintegrating struggle between greedy 
 chisses in this country, that it does not beheve in 
 the possibihty of a patriotic housing policy designed 
 to benefit the whole community. That is the class- 
 hatred mind - it is the type of mind one may be 
 Ibrgiven for praying never to possess. But let us look 
 at the reverse of the picture. Suppose anyone had 
 risen up from the Opposition benches (not that anyone
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 33 
 
 did) to declare that any Housing Bill which succeeded 
 in benefiting the occupier must of necessity damage the 
 landlord, and that for that reason the Unionist Party 
 ought to be opposed to the Bill, would he not have 
 been in eadem injiistitia with the Radical land-taxer as 
 a begetter of class hatred and as an opponent of the 
 Tory principles of class union and the doctrine of the 
 common national interest ? Needless to say, it is pre- 
 cisely for statements of this kind that the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer and his friends look out with the 
 greatest eagerness, for they can be at once quoted as 
 a proof that the Opposition themselves agree to the 
 Radical doctrine that the condition of the working 
 classes can only be improved by the methods of the 
 class vendetta. This view is a thoroughly false one, 
 and its application, in practice, could only lead to the 
 joint ruin of all classes alike. The Radical-Socialist does, 
 in this matter, after his kind, but it ill becomes those 
 who believe in the doctrine of national unity to give 
 currency to the fallacies of their opponents by declaring 
 every Social Reform a blow to property or a form of 
 Socialism without troubling to examine it in detail. 
 
 If the spirit in which the Opposition approached the 
 Unionist Housing Bill were applied to the whole field 
 of Social Reform, and it were admitted that there is 
 no hopeless antagonism between class interests which 
 cannot be reconciled under a higher national unity, 
 the fundamental Unionist principle of Social Reform 
 would have been admitted, and we should be free to 
 consider every measure upon its merits. 
 
 But what are to be the merits and demerits of Social 
 Reform measures, as viewed from the Unionist stand- 
 point, and in what scale are they to be weighed ? I say 
 that they must be weighed in exactly the same balance 
 as we have weighed the issues between Free Trade and
 
 34 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Tariff Reform, and that there is only one test either of 
 a Tariff* or a Social measure : *• Does it or does it not 
 add to the total productive efficiency and prosperity of 
 the whole people ? " If it does so add, it is justified by 
 the national and patriotic doctrines of the party ; if it 
 does not so add, it must be whistled down the wind, 
 thouofh it were the most attractive lure for votes that 
 even the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ever 
 conceived. 
 
 And here I must resume my controversy with the 
 older Individualists at the point where I abandoned it 
 for the moment. I had been pointing out, that to say 
 that a society might rightly and profitably be organised 
 for purposes of military defence and police protection, 
 and not for Tariff, industrial and social purposes, was 
 not, on a priori grounds, a tenable position unless some 
 special reason could be given for this particular attitude 
 towards internal problems. As a matter of fact, I do 
 not think any such case for a distinction has ever been 
 made, because philosophic Liberalism was essentially 
 cosmopolitan, and did not trouble itself about national 
 interests or national defences — while its practical prophets 
 took the army and the police for granted. We are there- 
 fore left, from the Unionist standpoint, with nothing but 
 the problem of deciding whether, as a matter of fact, 
 laissez-faire in social matters or an active social policy 
 is of the greatest advantage to the nation. 
 
 The first contention of the Individualist school is, of 
 course, that a policy of laissez-j'aire leads to the elimina- 
 tion of the unfit and the growth of a sounder and more 
 vigorous population. One can only ask, does it ? An 
 examination of our great industrial centres and of the 
 relative l)irth-rate of the more successful and the less 
 successful classes would satisfy any medical authority 
 that if present-day Britain is to be the test of the
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 35 
 
 Spencerian doctrines, something is wrong with the 
 sage's view. Of course it is possible to reply that the 
 unfit have not been allowed to die off, but this very 
 reply forces one to realise the effects of the half-hearted 
 application of the Individualist doctrine in home as in 
 foreign affairs. People have not been compelled to die 
 of starvation, legally, since Tudor times, and by custom 
 and practice were not for ages before those times. Is 
 our policy to be the starvation of the unfit ? If not, all 
 that laissez-faire leads to is the multiplication of the dregs 
 of society, whose increasing numbers have to be sup- 
 ported by the wage- earning and profit-earning members 
 of the community. In other words, the nation pays for 
 these dregs in its workhouses, its prisons, its infirmaries, 
 its lunatic asylums, its sanatoria, its hospitals, its 
 police courts, its industrial schools, its outdoor relief. 
 It pays too, in extreme reckoning, for its obsolete 
 Poor Law system, its low, casual-labour wages, its 
 sweated industries, its bad housing and sanitary condi- 
 tions, its deficient educational method, and its general 
 lack of power to provide a coherent arrangement of 
 social regulations. If one added up the total amount 
 of local and Imperial expenditure which goes to the 
 objects and institutions mentioned, and could imagine 
 the nation freed of two-thirds of these burdens by a 
 policy of Social Reform undertaken twenty years ago, 
 I do not think that the exchequer would have shown a 
 deficit on the transaction, while the nation would have 
 shown an incomparable gain in health, efficiency, and 
 political content. Whether this be so or not, one is 
 entitled to ask whether, if this contention be proved 
 true either in the general case or in any particular pro- 
 posal for social amelioration, any patriotic party could 
 refuse to undertake a course of policy which would in 
 the long run relieve the burden of rates and taxes and
 
 36 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 stimulate the productive efficiency of our people? If 
 the answer be in the negative, as I think it must, any 
 particular scheme for Poor Law, Housing, or Health, or 
 Wages Reform, which the Unionist Party may put for- 
 ward, must stand on its own merits, and be judged by 
 this test. But let us not listen to the plea that all such 
 proposals are, in their essence, Socialistic or Radical. On 
 the contrary, any successful proposal of this kind which 
 can stand the test proposed is the antithesis of Socialism 
 and the destruction of Radicalism. It builds up the race 
 and consolidates the country, while it destroys the social 
 garbage on which the carrion crows of politics feed. 
 
 In striking this profit and loss account, it is, of course, 
 impossible to calculate it correctly over a single year. 
 The nation, in expending money on Social Reform, is in 
 the position of a big firm which scraps old machinery 
 and lays down new plant in the expectation that the 
 original capital outlay will be repaid with profit in the 
 ultimate event. A generation may elapse before the full 
 return comes in. Further, it would be folly to spend a 
 penny more on schemes which simply ameliorate the lot 
 of the unfortunate without preventing in any way the 
 recurrence of the same evils on an even greater scale. 
 Any real social policy must be at once diagnostic, prog- 
 nostic, and curative. It must draw a rigid distinction 
 between the cases which are already hopeless, and in 
 which nothing can be done but to segregate those who 
 will do harm to society, and the cases which are by 
 no means hopeless, and in which individuals can still be 
 rescued from the abyss and set upon their legs again. 
 For instance, the whole defect of our existing Poor Law 
 system is that it fails to make this absolutely essential 
 distinction. It lunij)s together the just and tlie unjust, 
 and places in a single category the honest unemployed 
 workman and the hopeless vagrant. The only question
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 37 
 
 asked is : *' Can you support yourself? " There is a 
 further question, which ought to be asked, but is not : 
 " Are you willing and able to support yourself if the 
 opportunity is offered you ? " The Poor Law system 
 has been based on the idea that though a man may not 
 starve, the application for relief implies in itself that he 
 belongs to the class of the unfit, and that nothing can 
 alter the fact or redeem the man's character. The 
 whole contention is precisely on all fours with the Free 
 Trade argument that nothing can revive or support an 
 industry which appears to be failing under the stress of 
 competition. Such industries, if a tariff or an influx 
 of capital gives them an opportunity, can frequently 
 retrieve their positions in tlie most startling manner. 
 Similarly, individuals are not necessarily hopeless simply 
 because they fall upon evil days. A little State capital 
 may well be better invested in training men to new 
 trades or in finding them employment rather than in 
 paying for them, on and off, as more or less permanent 
 paupers and the fathers of paupers to the end of their 
 days. 
 
 It is, indeed, in the point of view that the Unionist 
 Party has reached by its study of Tariff Reform problems 
 that the greatest hope for the future of Social Reform 
 is to be found. The theory of dynamic as opposed to 
 static efficiency, on which all the protective systems of 
 the world are based, and based successfully in the realm 
 of practice, may now be applied to internal as well 
 as to external problems, and the lessons learnt from 
 industry may be applied to the men who work them. 
 
 I will elaborate the comparison in somewhat greater 
 detail. In the 'seventies, it could have been proved 
 conclusively that the manufacture of most goods sold 
 in Germany could have been undertaken more cheaply 
 in Great Britain than within the German Empire.
 
 38 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 According, then, to our Individualist and Free Trade 
 friends, Prince Bismarck ought to have come to the 
 conchision that German industries were from " natural 
 causes " unfit as compared to their British rivals ; that 
 they could never hope to hold their own in the struggle 
 for existence, and that it would be cheaper to buy in 
 the British market. That great statesman, who was 
 never deceived eitlier by the ideologues of Individualism 
 or the ideologues of Socialism, saw very clearly that 
 though this might be the case for the moment it need 
 not be the case in all perpetuity, but that to give way 
 for the moment was to give way for ever. English 
 goods might beat German goods for the given year, 
 but granted a tariff and the encouragement of State-aid, 
 German goods might be beating British in under a 
 quarter of a century. The static comparison was 
 against the German Empire, but the dynamic impulse 
 given to German industry by the tariff' of 1878 has 
 carried her right to the front, and the result of the 
 policy has been of enormous profit to the German 
 exchequer. 
 
 What is true of the industry is roughly true of the 
 individual. Some industries are hopeless and must be 
 abandoned, and their refuse paid for by the State. Some 
 individuals are hopeless and must become a charge on 
 the nation, and a charge which can offer no return. 
 But in the majority of cases neither industry nor 
 individual is hopeless if both have a fair start and a 
 reasonable stimulus of hope. If, indeed, the static 
 test of fitness were adopted, and any man who on a 
 given day could not discharge his liabilities was relegated 
 to the workhouse, or to private charity as a liopeless 
 case, liow many of us would be paying rates and taxes 
 to-(hiy ? 'I'lic trutli of tlic matter is tliat as much is 
 achieved by judicious assistance at critical moments as
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 39 
 
 by the pressure of immediate necessity. The fear of 
 absolute poverty may make a man work, but absolute 
 poverty itself destroys all desire for initiative. In a 
 word, the policy of laissez-faire in social matters is the 
 policy of burdening the rates and taxes to the highest 
 extent; the policy of savoir-faire in social matters is 
 to give the greatest possible mass of citizens the 
 opportunity of showing their initiative powers and 
 I contributing to the national exchequer. But such a 
 result will never be achieved by statesmen who think 
 that Social Reform is wrong — any more than it will 
 be achieved by politicians who think that class war 
 is right. 
 
 So when the balance of the national accounts has to 
 be struck let all these considerations have their due 
 weight. Let us purge ourselves at once of ancient 
 fallacies, and of the modern perversions of political 
 truth with which the demagogues tickle the mob. 
 
 I have endeavoured to outline very briefly the con- 
 ditions of the first test which must be applied to the 
 policies of Unionist Social Reform. There is no space for 
 a detailed examination of those projects which have 
 been put forward, or will be put forward, by the Com- 
 mittee of which I am chairman to deal with Housing 
 and Poor Law, Local and Imperial Taxation, or Industrial 
 Unrest, Emigration, and Technical Education. I am 
 concerned for the moment with the principles, and not 
 the practice, to which those principles must be applied as 
 tests. If the first test is the advantage of the common- 
 wealth, the second test is the continuity of policy and 
 the stability of the State. Changes in social policy 
 must proceed by degrees in order to avoid those sudden 
 disturbances which have gone far to counterbalance 
 the advantages of even the most beneficent of reforms. 
 The doctrine of Toryism is to work on the basis of
 
 40 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 existing institutions — to link the past with the present 
 and the present with the future in an unbroken sequence 
 of development. No Tory Social Reform will prosper, 
 and none, I venture to say, will be proposed, which 
 does not fulfil this condition. It is for this reason, 
 among many others which have been indicated, that 
 Tory Social Reform can never have any common ground 
 with the proposals of the Radical or Socialist Party. 
 The policy of Radicalism is to smash whatever exists, 
 while the theory of Socialism is to tear up by the roots 
 the whole fabric of a secular society. The Tory policy 
 is to conserve what is sound in the past, and to build 
 upon that foundation a better political and social edifice 
 for the future. 
 
 But it is time to turn back again for a moment on 
 the track of the previous argument. I left out the 
 discussion of the Radical-Socialist programme, which 
 steals from the genuine Socialists any items of their 
 propaganda which may be immediately useful to 
 Radicalism, until the principles of Unionist social 
 policy had been placed in clear outline before the 
 reader. The reasons for such a postponement of the 
 subject are obvious. The chief ground of accusation 
 against the Unionist social programme has been that 
 it is a feeble and insincere imitation of J\lr Lloyd 
 George's methods and principles, and that it possessed 
 no vital quality of its own in the realm of history or of 
 fact. The impartial observer will now be in a position 
 to judge of the validity of these accusations. 
 
 What, then, is the main feature of the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer's policy ? An incitement to class 
 hatred. Is that a feature of the policy of Unionist 
 Social Reform ? A disregard of the conceptions of 
 national honour and national interest as exempHfied in 
 his pro- Boer campaign. Is such a course compatible
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 41 
 
 with the Tory principles which have been laid down ? 
 A sublime assurance in promising the millennium on 
 the basis of a half-thought-out Bill rushed through the 
 House of Commons under the closure and the gag. Is 
 that the bait offered by the serious students of social 
 affairs ? Promises to bribe the electorate not for the 
 permanent national good, but out of a mixture of 
 charity to be given to the weak and blackmail to be 
 exacted from the rich. Is that the impression that the 
 Unionist policy outlined could convey to any sane 
 man ? Both in method and in principle we differ from 
 Mr Lloyd George by the whole width of the heavens, 
 and if any impartial individual will compare Limehouse 
 or Newcastle with this essay 1 would be prepared to 
 abide by his verdict. 
 
 Nor is one without fortifications from the examples 
 of the past. 
 
 The great names in the Tory history of the last 
 hundred years have been associated with the doctrine 
 of national unity, and with its application to the internal 
 condition of the people. Disraeli, in his youth, laid 
 down the principles on which the England of his time 
 ought to have been based, and his comparative failure 
 to convince his contemporaries or to overbear his 
 philosophic opponents left his country the richer by 
 a supreme instance of political genius and the poorer 
 by its slums, its wasted physique, and its industrial 
 unrest and class hatred. If a Providence could have 
 made Disraeli a dictator in the early 'thirties, there 
 would have been no social problem to-day. That great 
 man desired to build up the new industrial State on 
 the principles and practice which had animated the 
 older rural and urban dispensations — on the community 
 of interest between master and man, between capitalist 
 and employee, between guild and guild, betM^een agri-
 
 42 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 cultural laboiu'er and town workman. What was best 
 in the feudal conception of the past was to be applied 
 to the new progressive forces of the nineteenth century, 
 and the aristocracy of industry was to follow in the 
 tradition of the aristocracy of feudalism and make itself 
 the guardian, and not the exploiter, of its new retainers. 
 Like the masque in the Tempest, the whole vision, or 
 most of it, vanished "with a heavy sound." The " Whig 
 dogs " had the best of it under the inspiration of 
 their Radical supporters. Half the Conservative Party 
 broke away, with Sir Robert Peel, to represent the new 
 powerful manufacturing class : rural England was ruined 
 in order to create the social abominations of the nine- 
 teenth-century industrial era. When Disraeli, after a 
 quarter of a century of unceasing Parliamentary labour, 
 brought the real Tory Party back to office once more, 
 the time had passed with the energies of the man. 
 " The altar of Mammon," to adopt his own phrase, had 
 in the interval " burnt with a triple flare " ; the new 
 system had been created by the Manchester school, and 
 the Tory democracy had only just begun to raise its 
 head again under the stimulus of the Reform Bill of 
 1867. 
 
 But where Disraeli sowed. Lord Randolph Churchill 
 reaped, though he was, as Lord Rosebery has told us, 
 not overprone to acknowledge his obligation to his 
 more illustrious predecessor. Churchill indeed built, 
 without knowing it, a somewhat airy edifice on the 
 sohd foundations which Disraeli had laid down. Dis- 
 raeli had always believed, rightly enough, that the 
 democracy of Kngland is essentially Tory if you do not 
 go out of your way to force it to be anything else. 
 Fortified by this belief, he assisted its enfranchisement 
 in 1S(;7, and was rewarded by his great victory of 1874. 
 Lord Randolph went down to the urban electorate
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 43 
 
 which had been given him, and overthrew Gladstonian 
 Liberalism in what was supposed to be its chosen 
 stronghold. His success in the attempt was due to his 
 appeal to interests which were, in their essence, national 
 ones, and in his belief that the working classes would 
 stand by the Crown, the Union, and the Constitution 
 so long as these institutions were not allowed to be 
 made instruments for the assertion or oppression of 
 class interests. He proved, by his success, the practical 
 reality of his views, but he was destined, by a malign 
 fate, to hand on the torch which he had received from 
 a greater predecessor to a greater successor. 
 
 Mr Chamberlain came, at the price of the Premier- 
 ship, into the Unionist fold by one of those crises which 
 bring out the essentials of a man's political convictions. 
 No one could deny that in 1885 he was a democrat, 
 any more than it could be denied in 1912. It was 
 urged in the 'eighties, as, indeed, it was urged in the 
 'nineties, that he was a Radical in the sense that he was 
 one without particular respect for political convictions 
 which did not satisfy his own intellect. But he was a 
 great Tory democrat. He stood for the working classes 
 in so far as their interests were compatible with the 
 Tory conception of the State, and he stood for the 
 constitution of the State in so far as that constitution 
 was not used as a class weapon but as a method of 
 national advancement. He helped the working classes 
 in order to advance the State. He was a victim neither 
 of the rabies of class hatred, which has infected Mr 
 Lloyd George and his friends, nor of the static view 
 of Conservatism, which maintains that whatever is 
 must be best, and that all attempts to alter it must 
 be banned as forms of Socialism. While he remained 
 in the Unionist Cabinet, that Cabinet retained the 
 confidence of the country. When he left it, that
 
 44 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Cabinet dwindled in prestige, and the party which 
 had supported it became an enfeebled Opposition. But 
 all these three statesmen had one thing in common if 
 they had many points of practical difference. Disraeli 
 indeed shone in intellect ; Lord Randolph in democratic 
 oratory ; Mr Chamberlain in hard common sense joined 
 to parliamentary powers hardly inferior to Disraeli's, 
 and democratic power as great as Randolph Churchill's. 
 But they all believed in the nation, and in the people as 
 the nation — nor could they conceive of Toryism as a 
 form of class interest, but only as an embodiment of 
 that national unity which binds class to class, or king- 
 dom to kingdom ; which makes unity out of difference, 
 and an Imperial whole out of bodies separated by the 
 width of the world. One may follow, however humbly, 
 in their footsteps, and say that a policy of union or of 
 empire which leaves Social Reform and class unity out 
 of account is built upon sand, and not upon the solid 
 rock of political reality. 
 
 I have said that the essence of Tory Social Reform is 
 the study of the real aptitudes of the people. It is, 
 precisely, here that Individualism and Socialism fail 
 alike. Humanity is composed neither of men struggling 
 to arrive at all costs nor of men ready to sacrifice any- 
 thing and everything to a common end. Nor, to put 
 the matter in a more concrete form, does the race 
 consist entirely of individuals ready to gamble their 
 chances on the wheel of fortune, and to risk all in order 
 to better their conditions and position. On the con- 
 trary, most individuals tread in the accustomed paths, 
 and demand of life that it shall give them security and 
 prosperity in the state in which it has pleased (iod to 
 call them. A member of a great business firm once 
 Lold MIC that in the first flush of his youth he devised a 
 scheme by whicii his office-boy could rise to the control
 
 STATE TORYISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 45 
 
 of the greatest of his departments. The scheme was 
 not, on the whole, a success. He found that, with 
 certain exceptions in individual cases, what the worker 
 really wanted was a good living wage and a pension in 
 old age rather than the possibility of a dazzling career 
 for which he was generally unsuited. The two views 
 of life are not incompatible from the political standpoint. 
 It is possible to devise a scheme by which nine men out 
 of ten can get the security they want and the tenth 
 man the opportunity he desires. But this can certainly 
 not be attained by the doctrinaires of the Individualist 
 or Socialist creeds. It can only be attained by a party 
 which is ready to deal with facts as it finds them, and 
 to construct its social programme not on the air of 
 wordy doctrine, but on the facts of life as they are. 
 Security of tenure in all classes of life where such tenure 
 is not a national evil : that is the doctrine of Toryism. 
 Opportunity for talent to develop its own potentialities 
 and the resources of the nation where such a develop- 
 ment is to the advantage of the State : that is the 
 doctrine of Toryism. Security to those who need it, 
 opportunity to those who desire it, on what better 
 foundation can the state of the future be built ? " Sani- 
 tas sanitatum — omnia sanitas,'' said Disraeli, in his 
 hackneyed epigram — and we can best carry out the 
 spirit of his words by looking at the needs of the 
 people as they really are, and not as they are con- 
 ceived to be by the ideologues of either extreme 
 school of thought. We have to deal with men, 
 not with ideas ; with the urgent necessities of the 
 democracy of to-day, not with the theories of the past 
 or bubble hopes of the future. In all things we stand 
 midway between conflicting extremes. We are not 
 for the classes or the masses, for their interests are one. 
 We are not for Individualism or Socialism, for neither
 
 46 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 is founded on fact. We stand for the State and for 
 the unity which, whether in the form of kingdom or 
 empire or class sohdarity, the State alone can bring. 
 Above all stands the State, and in that phrase lies the 
 essence of Toryism. Our ancestors left it to us, and 
 not the least potent method of preserving it is to link 
 the conception of State Toryism with the practice of 
 Social Reform.
 
 Ill 
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 
 
 The question of universal service must in the course of 
 the next decade occupy a far more prominent position 
 in practical politics than belongs to it at the present 
 moment. Just as the Fair Trade agitation of 1884 and 
 the wave of Imperialism which synchronised with Mr 
 Chamberlain's tenure of the Colonial office foreshadowed 
 the great Fiscal controversy of to-day, so events have 
 long been in train which must make defence a primary 
 political issue. And with the question of defence as a 
 whole the issue of National Service is bound up in- 
 evitably. It is impossible to consider the function or 
 composition of any part of his Majesty's forces without 
 deciding whether the basis of Home Defence is to be 
 voluntary enlistment or universal service. The country 
 then will be wise to think the question over calmly in 
 times of comparative quiet, and to make up its mind 
 before sudden external pressure or the forcing of the 
 political issue removes it from the sphere of contempla- 
 tion into that of urgency and passion. 
 
 The arguments for and against compulsory service 
 are of a far too complex and vital nature to allow of a 
 decision being reached in an offhand and haphazard 
 manner. There is, however, one set of arguments 
 and one set of persons which must be put aside from 
 
 47
 
 48 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 discussion, if that discussion is to have any value. That 
 curious school of thought, far more dominant at all 
 times in British politics than it is the custom to allow, 
 which believes that the social, economic, and military 
 weakness of Great Britain is proportionate to the 
 advance of the cause of righteousness upon earth, is 
 clearly beyond the reach of this particular argument. 
 For if you prove to them that the compulsory system is 
 in favour of national greatness, they will be against you 
 on that count ; while if you contend that the voluntary 
 method is the real source of national strength, the extent 
 of their conviction will indicate the volume of their 
 resistance. The pure pacificist is then out of court : 
 one must plead to that great majority of the nation, 
 which however much it may be misled on occasion, 
 really believes that it is the duty of race to protect the 
 heritage bequeathed to it by the past and to hand it 
 down intact to the generations who will come after. 
 
 I have said that the question of defence is likely to 
 become increasingly urgent. Does any one who has 
 studied the more recent developments of foreign affairs 
 believe that the time is ripe for abandoning the policy of 
 armed preparation in exchange for the idea of a limitation 
 of armaments ? From the early 'nineties to 1912, from 
 the Chino-Japanese War to the struggle between Italy 
 and Turkey, the long list of wars goes on with hardly a 
 break, and far beyond the number of the actual collisions 
 extends the list of conflicts, like the Franco-German 
 struggle over Morocco, avoided because the armaments 
 of either side were too strong and too efficient to give a 
 certainty of victory to either, or of diplomatic triumphs 
 won and war averted only because one side or another 
 possessed too great a preponderance in armament to 
 make resistance l)y tlie weaker nation wortli the while. 
 
 By a curious but not irrelevant stroke of irony the
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 49 
 
 shriller become the cries of the pacificists the louder 
 grows the roll of the war drums. Peace, in a word, 
 consists in being strong. Weaken your defences suffici- 
 ently and you will have war or humiliation upon you in 
 a stride. The business, then, of a nation is to be strong 
 enough to repel all comers with loss : the very existence 
 of that strength is a sufficient guarantee that it will not 
 have to be exercised. 
 
 The nation then will have to consider whether our 
 existing system is adequate to the needs of the Empire, 
 and if not, whether a system of universal service for 
 Home Defence would remedy existing defects. To 
 state the problem in this way is to state it in a purely 
 military form : it is to clear out of the way for a 
 moment all those other social, economic, and political 
 questions which are bound up with the conception of a 
 change from the voluntary to the compulsory principle. 
 One must think about the shell before one thinks about 
 the kernel. If no change is necessary from the military 
 point of view, no change is likely to be effiscted for 
 other reasons : if the change is necessitated by military 
 causes, the other issues must be treated as subsidiary 
 advantages or disadvantages. In a word, men will train 
 themselves in arms to defend their country by arms: they 
 will not so train themselves to improve their physique or 
 to increase the industrial efficiency of the nation. 
 
 The military problem, therefore, stands first, nor 
 fortunately is there any need of a prolonged discussion 
 of the general needs of the Empire. His Majesty's 
 Ministers have themselves accepted in action certain 
 broad principles which can be made to limit the area of 
 discussion. What is desired is as follows, though how 
 far that desire has been fulfilled is a matter of acute con- 
 troversy. (1) A Navy strong enough to protect these 
 shores from anything but an accidental invasion. (2) A
 
 50 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 second line of military defence strong enough to defeat 
 any invading force which might slip through our naval 
 defences. (3) An expeditionary force which could be 
 despatched on the outbreak of war to any part of the 
 Empire or of Europe where a British Army was 
 urgently needed. (4) A Navy sufficient to secure the 
 landing and safeguard the communications of any such 
 expeditionary force, whether its objective be the Indian 
 Empire, the mouths of the Scheldt, the Canadian or 
 South African frontier. The functions of the Navy 
 and the Army alike thus dovetail into a dual conception 
 of strategy. 
 
 Firstly, the expeditionary force must sail unless a 
 vital strategical position is to be lost, and the Navy 
 must see that it can go. Secondly, the Navy must try 
 and protect our shores, but in case of accident our 
 shores must protect themselves against any invading 
 force which can be landed during a temporary loss of 
 command of the sea at a specific point and for a specific 
 period. That this is the general conception underlying 
 the arrangements of the Government and their expert 
 advisers will not as a matter of fact be denied. To 
 deny it would indeed be to make the whole of their 
 military arrangements unjustifiable and ridiculous. If 
 the regular Army and the whole Navy are to be 
 tethered to our shores we abandon the Empire and our 
 position in Europe at a stroke. If the Regular Army 
 is to be so tethered, why the expeditionary force ? If 
 the whole Navy is to be concentrated and can be con- 
 centrated successfully and without accident on the 
 defence of these shores against invasion, why create 
 a Territorial Army which would never have anyone 
 to fight ? Finally, if the country is not likely to be 
 denuded of its regular forces by an expedition, why is 
 it necessary to attempt to raise 312,000 Territorials to
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 51 
 
 supplement the resistance of the British regular to an 
 invading army which cannot, according to official calcu- 
 lations, be estimated at more than 70,000 men ? There 
 can be no answer to these questions except the admission 
 that there exists no scheme of Imperial defence at all 
 in the minds of his Majesty's advisers — an assertion I 
 have no intention of making. It is not necessary then 
 to call further official witnesses — though such could 
 easily be summoned. One may assume that the general 
 conception of Imperial strategy is of the kind that has 
 been outlined. 
 
 For the purpose of the present argument it is not 
 necessary to inquire whether this general idea is right. 
 To do so would be to stray into broad and fallible topics 
 of Imperial and foreign policy. The point is that if this 
 conception is a right one it cannot be adequately carried 
 out under a voluntary system of Home Defence. 
 
 If the official scheme is accepted one must assume, 
 I imagine, certain vital facts. In the first place, as in 
 the South African War on the evidence of the Report 
 of the Royal Commission, a struggle with any great 
 foreign Power would a fortiori mean an utter denudation 
 of this country of all the regular forces — and possibly 
 an urgent demand for drafts from the auxiliary forces 
 to keep the expeditionary forces up to war strength and 
 to make good wastage. 
 
 Clearly, then, it is useless in the light of our South 
 African experiences, or indeed, in the light of reason, 
 to imagine that there will remain in this country long 
 after a declaration of war any large organised body of 
 regular troops trained to act together in the field. What 
 Regulars were left would be nothing but small units 
 which, owing to insufficient training or for other reasons, 
 could not be placed immediately in the firing-line with 
 those larger units of which they were a part. Such
 
 52 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 small forces scattered about the various depots in the 
 country without a joint organisation or any habit of 
 acting together do not constitute a military force at all. 
 They are left behind in the first instance because their 
 physique and their training would not allow them to take 
 the field on the spot, and their value for Home Defence 
 would be practically nil. In any case, if it became 
 necessary to use them for Home Defence, the mere fact 
 of so using them would spell the cutting off the supply of 
 reinforcements to the Army in the field, "^'our expedi- 
 tionary force would be bled to death, while no sufficient 
 energy could be infused into it. The same argument 
 applies in a lesser degi'ee to the case of the Special 
 Reserve. Anyone who can remember the state of our 
 Home Defence force from the latter part of 1900 till 
 the close of the campaign, will be satisfied that a 
 modern war of the slightest magnitude would exhaust 
 the whole energies and more than the whole energies of 
 the Regular forces of the Crown. One is thus left 
 with the Territorial Army as the only large force ad- 
 mittedly organised for the purposes of Home Defence. 
 Indeed, if there were any other intention in the minds 
 of Ministers, there could hardly be such intense anxiety 
 on tlieir part about the shortage of men in that Army, 
 or for the improvement of their training conditions. 
 
 For if it be contemplated in our general scheme of 
 Imperial strategy to leave a large body of organised 
 Regulars in these islands, and if, as the authorities tell 
 us, tlie official outside figure for a possible invading army 
 is 70, 000 men, tiie Territorial ^Vrmy would be almost a 
 superfluity. Fifty thousand Regulars fighting in their 
 own country would not require a great deal of additional 
 assistance in deahng with invaders. \V^e are, therefore, 
 driven back on the conclusion that the official conception 
 of to-day is that the wliole burden of Home Defence
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 53 
 
 would in certain contingencies rest on our auxiliary 
 forces. This is in its essence a very serious proposition. 
 For, however long it might take in practice to get the 
 expeditionary force away, it is clear that that force 
 would be of very little service if it were not entirely 
 clear of this country in the course of a very few weeks. 
 In other words, a situation on the Indian frontier, or in 
 the Far East, or on the mouth of the Scheldt, could not 
 possibly be one which would allow of the leisurely 
 transportation of our forces. It might be said of all 
 those places what the American said of a gun : If they 
 want an army at all, they will want one mighty bad. 
 But this fact brings us to the weakest point in the 
 whole of the official point of view : the Territorial forces 
 are to be embodied at the moment that war breaks out, 
 and they are then to undergo a period of six months' 
 training. What they are to do at the end of the six 
 months, or what real military value could be placed on the 
 service of troops who have not yet completed a training, 
 which is apparently considered essential to their effici- 
 ency, is difficult to understand. The country is at any 
 rate to be left for a period which is bound to run into 
 months, deprived of its regular defenders, and dependent 
 on a force which, on the hypothesis of Ministers them- 
 selves, is only partially trained. No one with any sense 
 of responsibility could contemplate the prospect of such 
 a state of affairs without the very deepest anxiety. 
 
 Nor is it any use for the official apologists to harp 
 any more on the string so often tuned up in the past 
 by the extreme blue water school. That particular 
 view of national existence has passed into the limbo of 
 abandoned theories, and there are very few now so poor 
 in their knowledge of modern military and naval 
 problems as to do it reverence. Among those Ministers 
 certainly could not number themselves. On their own
 
 54 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 showing, the Territorial Army is there to meet an 
 invasion, and if there were no possibiHty of invasion 
 there could be no reason for the existence of that army. 
 The Territorials, indeed, would then be simply playing 
 at soldiers with the secure knowledge that they would 
 never be called upon to take the field. 
 
 The impossibility of an invasion having thus been 
 abandoned, the Government fall back on the excuse 
 "that it would be such a little one." Indeed, with a 
 really miraculous foresight they can fix the limits of the 
 invading numbers down to a single rifle. We may be 
 invaded, but the invaders are not to be allowed to bring 
 more than 70.000 men ! How such a view can be pro- 
 pounded seriously by any responsible authority passes 
 the wit of man to conceive. While we do not know 
 who the invader is to be, whether he is to be a single 
 Power, or the forces of a coalition, from what port he 
 is to sail, or what the shipping strength of that port 
 may be at the date of the outbreak of war, what the 
 naval resources of the enemy will be, or what the 
 resources and disposition of our own fleet — while 
 all these facts on which alone the numbers can be 
 estimated, remain in a mist of utter uncertainty, we can 
 be told the number of rifles which the invading force is 
 to carry ! It is difficult to have patience with a pro- 
 position which would be ludicrous if it were not 
 monstrous. Is the Government really prepared to 
 stake the safety of these islands on a theory as nebulous 
 as has ever been conceived ? As a matter of fact, this 
 oflicial number is not accepted by such authorities as 
 the Times military correspondent, who is now so much 
 in favour with the I^iberal Party. The military corre- 
 spondent of the Times places our potential invaders 
 as high as 1.50,000. Tliis is more tlian double the 
 official ligure.
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 55 
 
 When the doctors differ it is open to the layman to 
 make his choice. But the main conclusion that the 
 layman will reach here is that none of the doctors has 
 given any conclusive proof that his diagnosis of the 
 risk is the correct one. We cannot be content to stake 
 our safety on the chance that the lesser estimate may 
 be the correct one : we must have a far more adequate 
 margin of security against a possible miscalculation in 
 a case where the factors are wholly uncertain and 
 largely unknown. 
 
 But let us assume for the moment that the estimate 
 of 70,000 invaders is correct. The official argument 
 put forward in the House of Commons last summer 
 during the debates on the Army Estimates was that 
 such an invading force would be promptly and easily 
 overwhelmed by a Territorial Army of 280,000 odd 
 men. But the blow would be sudden, the Terri- 
 torials have garrison and defence work to do, and they 
 must possess an extraordinarily competent organisation 
 for concentration and transport, if they are not to be 
 mopped up in detail before they can be used in mass. 
 But granting, for the sake of argument, the limited 
 number of the invading army, and efficient mobilisa- 
 tion arrangements for concentrating the Territorials at 
 the decisive point, how far would such a voluntary 
 army be capable of meeting a lesser number, say, of the 
 flower of the German Army ? The question is easier 
 to ask than to answer. Nor is it much use talkino- 
 
 o 
 
 about the Army of the Loire or the Boers. One might 
 just as well discuss the conduct of the Portuguese and 
 Spanish levies in the Peninsular War. The military 
 conditions and the relative efficiency of the conflicting 
 forces differ so much from each other and from the 
 conditions of the problem the nation is considering here 
 and to-day, that historical evidence is practically inad-
 
 56 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 missible. And on the merits of the problem itself 
 wliat final verdict can there be ? The buoyant 
 optimism of Colonel Seely and his military inspectors 
 is met by the persistent pessimism of such authorities 
 as Lord Roberts. The relation between training and 
 numbers must in any given case remain an almost 
 insoluble riddle. All that can be said is that any 
 Government which is content to base our safety on the 
 view that it has read the riddle correctly, is taking on 
 itself a very heavy responsibility. 
 
 But where many things are doubtful one thing is clear. 
 To pin your faith on being able in the long run to over- 
 whelm a smaller highly trained force by a larger and 
 partially trained army is the most wasteful of all military 
 expedients. It is wasteful of life and it is wasteful 
 of security — as Mr Mark Sykes said in the debate on 
 Army Estimates : " I cannot think of any general or 
 of any strategist since Thermopylae who has relied upon 
 crushing a smaller and an effective force with masses of 
 inferior material."^ It means that even in the event of 
 success you will have a terrible butcher's bill to pay, for 
 you are staking on one side more lives to counteract 
 greater efficiency on the other. Further, since the 
 struggle must be a prolonged one, you inflict by its 
 prolongation untold misery on the invaded country, and 
 every day that the invasion lasts the difficulty of sus- 
 taining the social and economic fabric on which the 
 final victory over the whole field of operations depends 
 will become greater. 
 
 It appears to me, then, to be clear beyond cavil that 
 while it may be impossible to estimate with any 
 accuracy what the numbers of an invading force might 
 be, and therefore impossible to come to a definite con- 
 clusion as to whether the Territorial Army could or 
 
 I <)j/i(ial Drhalrs, Marrli I-, If) I 'J, col. I !■ !•.
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 57 
 
 could not deal with it effectively, it none the less 
 remains true that the method is wasteful, and that the 
 Government are depending on a very narrow margin of 
 security. They are, in a word, depending on things 
 turning out as they hope, not on their turning out as they 
 quite possibly might, and the responsibility, as I have 
 said before, is a heavy one. So heavy indeed is it that 
 it seems incredible that any responsible Cabinet would 
 not do everything it could to stimulate any movement 
 of popular opinion in the country which tended to 
 give a larger and more effective Home Defence Force. 
 Ministries, after all, cannot move too far in front of 
 popular opinion. It might be impossible for the 
 present Government to introduce a Bill for national 
 service. But it is one thing to decline to introduce 
 such a measure ; it is a totally different thing persist- 
 ently to disparage the efforts of those who are trying to 
 persuade the electorate to agree to a step which would 
 indisputably buttress up a very weak spot in our 
 military arrangements. One imagines that the differ- 
 ence between the attitude of the Liberal and Unionist 
 Parties — or for that matter of Liberal and Unionist 
 Governments — would be precisely this ; that while 
 Liberals and Liberal Ministries, out of terror of the 
 more extreme " peace at any price " people on their 
 own side who prefer the country to run an unnecessary 
 military danger, pour cold water on the National 
 Service movement. Unionists will endeavour to en- 
 courage that movement in every way. If the people 
 are not ripe for national service no JVIinistry could force 
 it on them unless the national urgency was so great 
 that all ordinary considerations of Parliamentary 
 Government and Party politics had to be swept away 
 in the national interests. But what Unionists would 
 do is this. They would give the movement every
 
 58 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 assistance, and, following the Australian precedent, 
 they would endeavour to familiarise people with the 
 ideas and the facts of military training by extending 
 that training upwards from the schools. 
 
 I have assumed in the last paragraph that some 
 kind of National Service Army is the force needed to 
 mask the weak point in our present defective arrange- 
 ments. It is, indeed, difficult to see what other kind 
 of force could meet the precise need. We do not want 
 to incur the expense of adding one hundred thousand 
 men to our existing forces in order that they may 
 permanently be tethered to these shores. Nor, indeed, 
 if that were a possible solution, would it be a final one, 
 because if things were going badly with our expedition- 
 ary forces, the temptation to throw this army into the 
 scale and to risk fleet protection keeping the enemy 
 out would become irresistible and overwhelming. The 
 old system of the JNlilitia ballot is clearly a very cum- 
 brous, unjust, and uneconomic method of dealing with 
 the problem. It appears to me that the general pro- 
 posals of the National Service League, which are based 
 roughly on the systems already in existence in Switzer- 
 land and Norway, at the present moment hold the field. 
 
 AN^hat, then, are the proposals of the advocates of 
 National Service ? Briefly, they come to this, that all 
 able-bodied youths between the ages of eighteen and 
 twenty-one years should be liable for four months' 
 continuous training for one year, and for the three 
 years following to a fortnight's training in camp. 
 After that period they would pass into a reserve to 
 be called up, on occasions of national necessity, up till 
 the age of thirty. This proposal gives us an effective 
 force of 1.50, 000 recruits undergoing training every year, 
 and 405,000 of (irst, second, and third year men, while 
 the reserve, more or less equivalent, cccteris pa7ibus.
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 59 
 
 to the foreign landwehr would consist of some 600,000 
 or 700,000 men. We could be sure, in other words, 
 that, apart from recruits, there would be over 400,000 
 men with training at least as efficient as that of the 
 present Special Reserve. This gives us an increase of 
 something slightly under 100,000 men on the supposed 
 establishment of the Territorials, and from some 120,000 
 to 125,000 increase on the actual establishment of the 
 Territorial force. But, above all, the men would have 
 received a training vastly better than that which can 
 be given under the existing arrangements. I do not 
 propose to discuss whether such a Home Defence force, 
 with the garrison and local defence work which would 
 fall upon it, would or would not be adequate to deal 
 with any situation which was likely to arise. All one 
 can say is that it would be infinitely more adequate for 
 purposes of Home Defence than the Territorial Army 
 can ever be. The carrying into effect of such a proposal 
 would, in other words, infinitely diminish the margin of 
 risk and infinitely increase the margin of security. Nor, 
 if such a system took root in the national life, would 
 there be any difficulty in extending the period of fort- 
 nightly training to meet the necessities of the situation. 
 The first difficulty which has to be dealt with is the 
 question of cost. There have been a variety of esti- 
 mates made of the expense of such a scheme. In 
 November 1908, both Lord Crewe and Lord Haldane 
 in the House of Lords gave an estimate of the addi- 
 tional cost as £20,000,000 a year. It was obvious to 
 everyone at that time that such a figure was a ridicu- 
 lous overstatement, and within nine months the AVar 
 Office published a memorandum — July 8, 1909 — re- 
 ducing the extra charge to £7,820,000. It is rather 
 difficult to take seriously any Department which can 
 deduce from the same premises two such startlingiy
 
 60 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 divergent figures within such a short space of" time. 
 The National Service League estimates, of which several 
 have been made, all place the total cost at just under 
 £4.000.000 a year. At the same time, the annual 
 expense on 270,000 or 280,000 Territorials might be 
 taken roughly to approximate to about five millions. 
 On looking at these three sets of figures, namely, the 
 War Ofhce estimate of 1909. the cost of the Territorial 
 Army, and the estimate of the National Service League 
 as to the cost of their own proposals, it is perfectly 
 clear that there is not a sufficient divergence in the 
 figures to make the question of expenditure a paramount 
 issue. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that the 
 lowest estimate is out by £2,000,000, and the highest 
 estimate is out by rather less, one gets the result that 
 the provision of an army with some real claim to 
 training might cost a million more than an army 
 trained under the existing system. 
 
 It is impossible, indeed, to lay too much stress on the 
 importance of proposals for four months' consecutive 
 and initial training. Anyone who has had any ex- 
 perience as a \'olunteer or Territorial * Officer knows 
 perfectly well the difference between the work done in 
 the second week of a camp from the work done in the 
 first week. The ratio of improvement might be placed 
 at something like three to one. It is, in fact, only by a 
 long course of preliminary training that a soldier can 
 really be made. Once he has foimd his feet, and 
 ac(juired the habits and aptitudes of military discipline, 
 a comparatively short period of annual training will 
 brush up his knowledge and keep him in a quite fair 
 state of efficiency. \\'hen he rejoins the ranks, so to 
 speak, on nH)l)ilisation, he will in a week or two be as 
 good a man as the day on whicli lie finished his original 
 training, it is on this fundamental truth, after all, that
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 61 
 
 the German Armies which finally overthrew Napoleon, 
 and the German Armies which triumphed at Koniggratz 
 and Sedan, were built up. One might give a man ten 
 years' training of one month a year and produce nothing 
 like the effect which could be produced by a far shorter 
 total period of initial work and of temporary renewals. 
 This fact has really been recognised from the beginning 
 by the military authorities, when they insisted on 
 Volunteer officers doing a inonth's training in barracks. 
 It would be impossible to officer any voluntary force 
 even as well — or as badly — as it is officered to-day, if 
 the commissioned ranks were expected to pick up their 
 whole experience in weekly drills or in a fortnight's 
 camp. 
 
 The second great objection which has been brought 
 against any such scheme — an objection which, if it were 
 true, would be a most serious one — is that it would 
 interfere with, burden, and dislocate industry. The 
 figures obtainable from Norway and Sweden do not give 
 much support to those who attack compulsory training 
 on industrial grounds. The average number of men 
 who were taken away from their industrial employment 
 in Switzerland during their recruits' training is well 
 under 3 per cent. In many cases it is nearer 1 per cent., 
 and the number removed during the subsequent 
 fortnightly training would, of course, be considerably 
 less. Nor is it necessary that the whole trainings 
 should take place at precisely the same time of year. 
 In this way, there would be no great difficulty in fitting 
 in training periods so as to reduce the number of men 
 absent under arms to a percentage so small as to be 
 practically unfelt. It seems, on the face of it, rather 
 ridiculous to suppose that industries could not adapt 
 themselves to so small a change when a country like 
 Germany does not find its industrial life seriously
 
 62 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 affected by vastly longer terms of service with the 
 colours. 
 
 Most of the objections that have been stated appear 
 on the surface so trivial when the magnitude of the 
 issue at stake is considered, that one is slightly 
 suspicious of their sincerity. Trivial difficulties are 
 generally advanced by people w'ho object to a particular 
 course from very strong feelings which they are not 
 quite ready to avow. The real objection to national 
 service will, I believe, be found in a kind of prejudice or 
 sentiment or conviction, by whatever term one may 
 care to describe it, which holds that the duty of defend- 
 ing one's country is an unwarranted burden. Here 
 again we come to one of the by-products of the 
 JNIanchester school epoch of thought and politics. 
 While it is perfectly true, as Colonel Hickson has 
 pointed out in an excellent monograph, that from the 
 earliest days of English history the idea of the National 
 Militia has been a practically permanent one in the 
 mind of Englishmen, and in the structure of society, all 
 that remains of that principle now is the power to apply 
 the Militia ballot. The truth is that a profound gulf 
 separates the England of to-day from the England of 
 1815 ; that at the very moment the exhaustion of the 
 Continent made the possibility of invasion remote for 
 nearly fifty years, a new industrial and social system was 
 being built upon a foundation of thought frankly selfish 
 and unpatriotic in its very essence. The old national 
 Army was based to a great extent on the country 
 districts. The new aristocracy of industry cared little 
 about national interests and less about national duties, 
 and while tlie manufacturer rejected such doctrines, it 
 was rather hard to expect that liis employees would 
 embrace them in his despite. In consequence the philo- 
 sophy of politics on which the old military idea was
 
 NATIONAL SERVICE 63 
 
 founded vanished apparently, and maybe for ever, from 
 among the new democracy of our great towns. It is not 
 perhaps that the new democracy is any more unpatriotic 
 than the old. It is that this particular form of national 
 service is to them a rather startling phenomenon. It is 
 a new idea, and of new ideas, like most other people, 
 they are naturally suspicious. Yet at the same time, 
 their whole-hearted assent to any scheme of universal 
 service must be secured if that scheme is ever to be 
 created, and certainly if it is ever to endure. It would 
 be futile to deny that a vast amount of work of a purely 
 propagandist character remains to be done in the great 
 towns before the problem will be ripe for its material 
 solution. It is on this particular class that the whole 
 energy of the propaganda should be concentrated. 
 
 The gradual pressure of the world forces round us, 
 the lead which has been given us by the oversea 
 Dominions, are, however, slowly but surely having their 
 inevitable effect, and we may, I think, look forward to 
 a time in the not far distant future when a political 
 party may, with more or less general assent, find itself 
 in a position to cement with a system of national 
 training a very bad fissure in the dyke of Imperial 
 defence.
 
 IV 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 
 
 On 22nd October Lord Roberts delivered a memorable 
 address to the citizens of Manchester. The subject 
 of his observations was so vital, his treatment of them 
 so arresting, and the torrent of criticism by which he 
 has been since assailed so virulent, that it is worth while 
 to attempt a short examination of his position and of 
 the views put forward by his critics. It is hardly 
 necessary to insist that I^ord Roberts speaks upon 
 military problems with a degree of authority which 
 can be claimed on behalf of no living soldier. So long 
 ago as 1851 he became a Second Lieutenant in the 
 Bengal Artillery : he served throughout the Indian 
 Mutiny, he commanded the Kuram Field Force in 
 1878, the Cabul Field Force in 1879, and the Cabul- 
 Kandahar Field Force in 1880. The autumn of 1880 
 saw him in control of the operations in Southern 
 Afghanistan, in 1885 he had become Conuuander-in- 
 Chief in Madras, eight years later he was Commander- 
 in-Chief in India, and after an interval of two years he 
 became Commander of the Forces in Ireland. Me has 
 taken part in more tlian tliirty engagements, large and 
 small, was mentioned in the course of his career some 
 thirty times in despatches, and in 1 902 received the thanks 
 of both Houses of I'arliament for his incomparable 
 
 64
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 65 
 
 services to the Empire during the South African war. 
 It is not pretended that any soldier, however distin- 
 guished, who puts forward his view of the requirements 
 of national defence should be protected from reasonable 
 criticism, but the claim is put forward that a soldier 
 with such a record should be listened to with respect 
 by his fellow-countrymen, and that he should not be 
 exposed to malignant misrepresentation at the hands of 
 those to whom his opinions happen to be embarrassing 
 or inconvenient. The height of insolence is surely 
 reached when Under-Secretaries, who have never done 
 anything for the country, and are never likely to, 
 attempt to advertise themselves by attacks upon him, 
 which are founded upon gross perversions of his actual 
 words. Nor have these attacks been made only by 
 insignificant people. The contemptuous complacency 
 of Lord Haldane's references to Lord Roberts at the 
 Eighty Club on 29th November has been justly and 
 generally ridiculed. Lord Haldane then said, what 
 everyone of course knows, that in the preparations of 
 strategic plans all the great departments, " the Colonial 
 Office, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Board of 
 Trade, and the Post Office," must take some part. 
 Then he went on ; " Lord Roberts is one of the most 
 distinguished leaders of troops in the field whom we 
 possess. But it is one thing to lead troops in the field 
 and another to be a strategist. Until a man is a strategist 
 he cannot fashion plans and organisations for the defence 
 of the country. What I miss in the Lord Roberts of 
 to-day is just that understanding of the point of view 
 of the seaman and of the statesman which is absolutely 
 vital if we are to make a proper military organisation. 
 The fundamental principle is the command of the sea." 
 So we come to this, that to have led victorious armies, 
 organised great campaigns, and been Commander-in-
 
 66 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Chief of India gives a man less authority on the subject 
 of miUtary strategy than to have sat at the Board of 
 Trade or the Post Office. I cannot do better than 
 quote what Lord Rosebery said about these attacks on 
 Lord Roberts. " I beheve," he said, " that history 
 when it comes to sum up this time will regard it as 
 one of the astonishing facts in our record and generation 
 that we should turn a heedless and inattentive ear to 
 the warnings, full of weight and full of experience, of 
 the greatest soldier we are privileged to possess." Nor 
 is it only that Lord Haldane is contemptuous of Lord 
 Roberts' authority ; he misunderstands and misrepre- 
 sents his arguments. So far are Lord Roberts and the 
 National Service League from forgetting that " the 
 fundamental principle of our strategy is command 
 of the sea," that they make it the corner-stone of their 
 policy. It is more than that, it is the whole object of 
 their policy. They desire national service not because 
 they ignore the fleet, but precisely because they desire 
 the fleet to be supreme. In his reply to Lord Haldane's 
 speech, Lord Roberts pointed out that " command of 
 the sea," as Lord Haldane used it, is a misleading 
 phrase. The fundamental principle of our strategy is 
 " command of the seas." That command I^ord Haldane 
 and his fellow strategists of the departments, by con- 
 centrating the fleet in home waters, have already lost 
 for us. They have narrowed the principle to command 
 of the North Sea and the English Channel and the 
 coasts of Great Britain. Until we have an army 
 sufficiently strong to make an invasion of our shores 
 impossible, the fleet will not be free to regain our 
 command of the seas. That is the policy of Lord 
 Roberts and liis understanding of the fundamental 
 principle of our strategy. 
 
 It is necessary, in view of the misapprehension which
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 67 
 
 exists, to ask what exactly Lord Roberts said on the 
 subject of Germany and how far his observations render 
 him Hable to the censure, or are deserving of the 
 gratitude, of his fellow-countrymen. The following 
 passage from his address contains all that is material 
 in the present connection : 
 
 *' Gentlemen, I am, I trust, doing no wrong to 
 the memory of these statesmen, Cobden and 
 Bright, when I point out that in the very years — 
 nay, in the very months — that they were cherish- 
 ing these illusions of peace and universal disarma- 
 ment — in those very months the mightiest and 
 most disciplined force that this earth has ever 
 contained was silently being drilled in that wide 
 region from the Rhine to the Elbe and the Oder, 
 and from the North Sea to the Bavarian frontier, 
 until, the right hour having struck, that army 
 disclosed itself, in all its prodigious and crushing 
 mass, and in all its unmatched capacity for 
 destruction and war. And amid those auspicious 
 dreams of peace, for what was that army being 
 trained ? Koniggratz, Metz, St Privat, and Sedan 
 are the answer. Nor did that army pause until, 
 upon the ruins of the empire of the third Napoleon 
 — upon the ruins, I may say, of France, unprepared 
 in peace and in war, scattered and dismayed — it 
 had reared a new empire, the empire of William I., 
 of Frederick I., and of William IT., for whose per- 
 sonal character, noble and imaginative patriotism, 
 and capacities as a ruler I yield to no man in my 
 admiration. Such, gentlemen, was history's ironic 
 comment upon John Bright's and Richard Cobden's 
 eloquently urged policy. No words of mine can 
 increase the crushing weight of Destiny's criticism.
 
 68 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, at the present day, now in 
 the year 1912, just as in 1866 and just as in 1870, 
 war will take place the instant the German forces 
 by land and sea are, by their superiority at every 
 point, as certain of victory as anything in human 
 calculation can be made certain. ' Germany strikes 
 when Germany's hour has struck.' That is the 
 time-honoured policy of her Foreign Office. That 
 was the policy relentlessly pursued by Bismarck 
 and Moltke in 1866 and 1870 ; it has been her 
 policy decade by decade since that date ; it is her 
 policy at the present hour. And it is an excellent 
 policy. It is, or should be, the policy of every 
 nation prepared to play a great part in history. 
 In the case of Germany, consider one of the results. 
 Under that policy Germany has, within the last 
 ten years, sprung, as at a bound, from one of the 
 weakest of Naval Powers to the greatest Naval 
 Power, save one, upon this globe. But yesterday, 
 so to speak, the British Fleets did not feel the 
 furrow of a German war-keel on the wide seas. 
 To-day, every British warship, and every British 
 merchant vessel, thrills in all her iron nerves to 
 that mighty presence. Just as in 1866, by the 
 massing of her armies towards this frontier, or 
 towards that frontier, Prussia controlled the action 
 of Austria ; so Germany constrains the action of 
 Great Britain at the present day. Do you wish 
 for proofs ? I point to the gradual displacement 
 of the l^ritisli Fleets before the German menace. 
 I point to the JNIediterranean, bereft of British 
 battleships, and to the gradual narrowing, year by 
 year, of our oTice far-Hung battle line. Tlie fact is, 
 we have lost connnand of every sea but one — the 
 North Sea — and our supremacy over that sea is
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 69 
 
 now a matter of dispute. In other words, whereas 
 your forefathers traded as of right on every sea, 
 you now only trade by the sufferance of other 
 Powers. 
 
 " We may stand still. Germany always ad- 
 vances, and the direction of her advance, the line 
 along which she is moving, is now most manifest. 
 It is towards that consummation which I have 
 described — a complete supremacy by land and sea. 
 She has built a mighty fleet ; but, as if nothing 
 were done so long as anything stands between her 
 and her goal, still she presses on — here establishing 
 a new Heligoland — for every available island in 
 the North Sea has now been strongly fortified — 
 there encircling Holland in a network of new 
 canals, and deepening old river beds for the swifter 
 transport of the munitions of war, whether to her 
 Army or her Navy. 
 
 " Contrasted with our own apathy or puerile 
 and spasmodic efforts, how impressive is this 
 magnificent and unresting energy ! It has the 
 mark of true greatness ; it extorts admiration 
 even from those against whom it is directed." 
 
 Such is the passage which has principally excited the 
 indignation of men who are never happy except when 
 they are blinding themselves to the real facts of life. 
 Is there a single statement of fact in this masterly 
 historical summary which is marked by inexactitude ? 
 It is notorious that there is none. But it is then com- 
 plained that such a treatment of the subject is irritating 
 and provocative to Germany. The observation if true 
 would be irrelevant, but is it true ? Is there anything 
 in this part of the speech which Germans can properly 
 resent ? I affirm, on the contrary, that there is not one
 
 70 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 statement of which an inteUigent and patriotic German 
 would not admit the truth with pride and satisfaction. 
 And observe the tribute which Lord Roberts pays to 
 this virile and resolute nation : " Contrasted with our 
 own apathy or puerile and spasmodic efforts, how 
 impressive is this magnificent and unresting energy ! 
 It has the mark of true greatness." Why should any 
 German resent the warning of Lord Roberts ? He 
 does not impute to the German nation any policy 
 which was not our policy in the centuries in which 
 we first conquered and then consolidated our own 
 Empire. Confronted first by Spain in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, and then, in the centuries that followed, 
 by France, we rose to Imperial greatness by carrying 
 out the very principles which Lord Roberts notes as 
 existent in modern Germany. Who are we that we 
 should invite Germany to acquiesce in the principles of 
 " Uti Possidetis " at a moment when we possess com- 
 paratively everything and they possess comparatively 
 nothing ? It is a law as old as the world's history that 
 those who hold valuable possessions coveted by others 
 will hold them so long as, and no longer than, they are 
 able to protect them by the strong arm. The unifica- 
 tion of Germany was finally effected at a late stage in 
 the history of the world. Until that unification became 
 a fact, Germany was unable to compete in that great 
 struggle for maritime efficiency, the fruits of which to 
 Enghuid were our world-wide Empire. Is it pretended 
 that we can reasonably say to Germany, "All this we won 
 while you were still in swaddling-clothes, but in the days 
 of your adult vigour, and whatever be your strength in 
 relation to ours, the rules of law and of morality forbid 
 aTi appeal by you to the weapons with which in old days 
 we con(juered wliat to-day wc hold " ? 
 
 it is then pretended by those wlio know as little of
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 71 
 
 international law as they do of any other law, that Lord 
 Roberts has imputed to the German nation an intention 
 to act in violation of the accepted principles of inter- 
 national law. This charge, recklessly and ignorantly 
 advanced, makes it necessary to call attention to some of 
 the more elementary fallacies which pass current amongst 
 ill-informed people as to the nature of that loose body of 
 rules which is compendiously described as " international 
 law." Professors and pedants, naturally willing to ex- 
 aggerate the importance of the science to which they 
 devote themselves, are accustomed to speak of inter- 
 national law as if it bore some real analogy to what is 
 technically known as municipal law, but which may 
 more conveniently be described as the domestic law of 
 an individual community. There is no such analogy. 
 The term " law " when applied to international law is 
 merely metaphorical, as metaphorical as its use in 
 the phrases '"law of refraction" or "law of gravity." 
 It was long since pointed out that when the expression 
 " law of gravity " is employed all that is meant is that 
 objects do, in fact, gravitate. If the term " law " be 
 analysed it is evident that, while other elements enter 
 into the conception, far the most characteristic and indis- 
 pensable is the element of coerciveness : in other words, 
 the conception of " law " postulates the existence of 
 some superior competent to enforce its observation by 
 whatever instruments may be adequate for that purpose. 
 The proposition here is stated simply and untechnically 
 and without recourse to the Austinian refinement of 
 analysis, which, however unanswerable, might be criti- 
 cised as over-subtle for our present purpose. If a man 
 breaks a law in a civilised community he comes at once 
 into collision with a superior authority competent, in the 
 first place, to decide that he has broken a law, and com- 
 petent, in the second place, to punish him for his breach
 
 72 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 or to exact from him such redress as may under the 
 circumstances be proper. In the forum of nations no 
 such Habilities are to be apprehended by the wrong-doer. 
 One rule of international law which may be stated in 
 three lines is sufficient to refute the claim of three 
 thousand volumes that international practice is entitled 
 to the appellation of " law." It is conceded, even by 
 the theorists, that any nation is entitled to go to war, 
 whenever it chooses, if a national interest is threatened, 
 and it is conceded, too, that every nation, as an indis- 
 pensable element in its independence, is entitled to be 
 the sole judge of whether or not a particular set of 
 circumstances is of such a character as to threaten its 
 vital interests. It follows from these admissions, which 
 are sometimes thinly veiled in the immense volumes 
 of theoretic writers, but which have been openly avowed 
 by diplomatists and men of action for centuries, that 
 any nation which is prepared to go to war to enforce its 
 views can treat with contempt the academic admonitions 
 of text-books. It is an entirely irrelevant criticism to 
 reply that a nation wantonly, and for the purposes of 
 self-interest, provoking a war will justly incur the 
 censure of the civilised world. It often similarly 
 happens that the strict exercise of a legal right is con- 
 trary to well-understood ethical standards. It follows 
 from these considerations that Lord Roberts was 
 absolutely justified from the point of view of inter- 
 national law in his retrospect of Germany's past, and in 
 his anticipation of Germany's future, and it is very 
 necessary to remember that under modern practice the 
 nation which is ready for war, and is prepared at a 
 convenient moment to stake everytliing upon the hazard 
 of war, has an enormous advantage o\'er the nation 
 wliich docs not contemplate and is desirous of avoiding 
 war. For many generations the older writers on inter-
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 73 
 
 national law insisted that war must be preceded by a 
 formal declaration, but even as early as the days of 
 Grotius it was recognised that by the laws of nations 
 hostilities might properly be commenced immediately 
 on the declaration of war. The necessity of a declara- 
 tion even if, contrary to the better modern view, it were 
 maintained would, therefore, afford no security what- 
 ever to the Power against whom it was directed. The 
 message conveying the declaration may properly be 
 followed by the mobilisation of the whole army of the 
 declarant Power. The resolution of the second Hague 
 Conference on 7th September 1907 strongly confirms 
 this view. It is true that at a full sitting the following 
 regulations were adopted : — 
 
 "(1) The contracting powers recognise that 
 hostilities between them ought not to commence 
 without a preceding and unequivocal notice, which 
 shall have the form either of a declaration of war 
 expressing its motives, or of an ultimatum with a 
 conditional declaration of war. (2) The state of 
 war must be notified without delay to the neutral 
 powers, and will produce no effect with relation to 
 them until their receipt of a notification which may 
 even be made b}?- telegraph. It is, however, under- 
 stood that neutral powers will not be able to plead 
 the absence of a notification, if it is established in 
 no doubtful manner that in fact they knew of the 
 state of war. " 
 
 The illusory character of this regulation is sufficiently 
 illustrated by the fact that the subscribing parties 
 pointedly declined to contract that they would not 
 commence hostilities against one another otherwise than 
 under the circumstances indicated, and merely recognised
 
 74 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 " that hostilities ought not to be otherwise commenced." 
 The comment made by Professor Westlake upon the re- 
 sultant practice is both lucid and conclusive : " Nothing 
 can more clearly show the impossibility of insisting on 
 an interval of notice between a declaration of war and a 
 commencement of hostilities under it, than the fact that 
 the very moderate proposal of a twenty-four hours' 
 interval made by the delegation of the Netherlands 
 was not accepted. The Conference has, therefore, 
 rather confirmed than weakened the necessity that, 
 in order not to be taken unprepared, every nation 
 must rely on its own vigilance and on no formal rule." 
 
 Enough has been said, it is hoped, to show that the 
 existence of a Power upon the other side of the German 
 Ocean reasonably desirous of expansion, equipped with 
 strength, adequate when exercised at the psychological 
 moment, to secure expansion, and able without any 
 breach of international usage to select that moment, 
 must be a source of constant anxiety to the Power at 
 whose expense alone that expansion is possible. Nearly 
 all the great antagonisms of history have arisen from 
 similar circumstances. Such conflicts were anterior to 
 the dawn of civilisation and to the spread of Christi- 
 anity, but neither civilisation nor Christianity has 
 availed to abate in the slightest degree the elemental 
 passions and ambitions of humanity. Abuse of 
 Germany for doing what we ourselves did, and for 
 cherishing ambitions which every powerful nation at 
 evoy stage of the world's history has entertained, is 
 childisli, irrelevant, and futile. History laughs at such 
 criticisms. Lord Roberts made no such mistake. 
 With penetrating instinct he stated his admiration of 
 (ierman temper and German discipline. Kvery virile 
 citizen of any nationality, and, indeed, every person 
 whose judgment is not debauched by a sentimentalism
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 75 
 
 wholly out of contact with facts, will echo Lord Roberts' 
 tribute. Abuse, disapproval, and pious exhortations are 
 all utterly useless. Only one thing is useful. This 
 country, if it means to survive, must develop its prepara- 
 tions upon the same scale and in the same spirit as does 
 the great nation whose ambitions and development we 
 are examining. The fundamental menace by which we 
 are confronted is that the nation which has at its disposal 
 the mightiest military instrument in the world, and 
 probably the mightiest military instrument which has 
 ever in history been swiftly available at the bidding 
 of a single Power, is rapidly completing a Navy com- 
 parable to ours in strength, distinguishable from ours 
 in strength only by meticulous calculations, and so 
 disposed strategically as to paralyse that far-flung dis- 
 tribution of the British Navy over the oceans of the 
 world which is required by the defensive necessities 
 of a scattered Empire. We are asked to believe that 
 the British Navy will not be conquered. We hope 
 this is true ; we believe it is true ; but the pages of 
 history and the dark records of national failure are full 
 of this easy optimism. The prospects, on the existing 
 ratio of strength and on the ratio which will exist in 
 the next three years, are at least disputable, if we 
 suppose, as would assuredly be the case, that a moment 
 were selected for the attack when there was some 
 momentary dissipation of our strength from northern 
 waters. These considerations supply an overwhelming 
 reason for substituting the Two-to-one standard for the 
 Two- Power standard. But it may reasonably be urged 
 that the supposition of the complete defeat of the Navy 
 carries the advocates of national service too far. It 
 may be contended that, if the Navy is annihilated, no 
 perfection of national service could save the United 
 Kingdom from swift starvation, and that if we are to
 
 76 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 be starved into surrender it matters little "whether we 
 undergo starvation with or without military training. 
 This observation is, as far as it goes, well founded, but 
 the reply is twofold. The advocates of national service 
 are advocates of a Navy which, humanly speaking, is 
 invincible : they sweep away any proposals which 
 render necessary a nice calculation of heads or of 
 Dreadnoughts. The superiority with which alone they 
 would be content is a superiority which rises superior 
 to argumentative enumeration. If this ideal be attained 
 the hypothesis of conquest may be rejected, but there 
 remain risks and contingencies of overwhelming gravity 
 if the nation is untrained in arms, but negligible, or 
 almost negligible, if the nation is so trained. The Fleet 
 may be temporarily absent, it may be decoyed from 
 home waters by stratagem, or it may be diverted into 
 very distant waters by international complications 
 which may themselves suggest opportunity to a vigilant 
 enemy. Every day the swift progress of mechanical 
 invention diminishes the practical difficulties of a 
 " snap " invasion. Such an invasion would have no 
 terrors for, and would never be directed against, a 
 nation whose manhood had been trained to bear arms 
 in self-defence. Circumstances are conceivable in which 
 it might, under existing conditions, succeed against a 
 nation whose men are unable to defend its women, if 
 the initial difficulties of conveyance and debarkation 
 were surmounted. It may be replied that these 
 difficulties are very great, and that it is extremely 
 improbable that they will be surmounted. Both these 
 statements are true ; but what great country, unless 
 suffering from blindness or madness, will stake its 
 future upon im{)robabilities ? V\'e require the most 
 absolute security and we do not possess it. 
 
 From another point of view the argument is even
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 77 
 
 more overwhelming. Let us exclude for a moment, as 
 many competent critics do, the possibility of invasion. 
 Let us assume that v^^hatever other merits national 
 service may possess, it cannot reasonably be supported 
 by the apprehension of invasion : there would still 
 remain many reasons why we ought to adopt it and 
 ought to adopt it at once. In the present position of 
 European politics it is almost universally recognised by 
 men of all parties that we in this country cannot stand 
 by and see France crushed. On at least two occasions 
 in the last five years a position has developed from 
 which the consequence above adverted to might easily 
 have emerged. Many arguments might plausibly be 
 advanced with the object of showing that if the country 
 as a whole is convinced of the necessity of maintaining 
 the national integrity of France we should be well 
 advised to substitute a formal and public alliance for 
 a private entente of undiscoverable commitments. But 
 this subject is too long for examination here, and the 
 position must be argued in reference to existing facts. 
 On the two occasions to which reference has been 
 made this country was on the verge of a European war. 
 On at least one of them a nation wholly unprepared 
 for such a contingency might have found itself, with 
 hardly a day's warning, once again engaged in military 
 operations upon a European battlefield. Much has 
 been said in praise of the efficiency and organisa- 
 tion of our Expeditionary Force. No Englishman 
 will consent to disparage either the valour of our 
 soldiers or the training and devotion of our officers, 
 but no student of military history who is familiar with 
 the wastage of modern war, and who recollects the 
 lessons of South Africa and the Manchurian battlefields, 
 will contemplate without horror the engagement of 
 English troops amid the vast armies of Europe, knowing
 
 78 UT\UONIST POLICY 
 
 that it means the employment of soldiers who cannot 
 be replaced amid an enemy capable of almost indefinite 
 replacement. At this point military and political con- 
 siderations are inextricably involved. Either we must 
 make up our minds that we will not take part in a 
 European war under any circumstances, or we must 
 have national service ; but we cannot make up our 
 minds on the first of these points unless we are prepared 
 to do what our ancestors to their eternal glory refused 
 to do in the days of Napoleon, acquiesce in the hege- 
 mony of Europe by one titanic Power. Ill-natured 
 critics, who never even troubled to read Lord Roberts' 
 speech, have accused him of making an attack upon 
 the Territorial Force. I^ord Roberts went out of his 
 way to recognise the zeal and intelligence of the patriotic 
 men who compose the Force, but he stated what every 
 competent critic knows to be the literal truth when he 
 alleged that it was a failure in discipline, a failure in 
 numbers, a failure in equipment, and a failure in energy. 
 It always will be a failure as long as the period during 
 which it undergoes military training and discipline is 
 insufficient to make soldiers of any men, however 
 willing and zealous they may be. If these observations 
 are well founded it follows that we cannot look to the 
 Territorial Force as it is, or as under existing conditions 
 it can be made, to supplement the numerical deficiencies 
 of the regular Army. Once again, then, it may be simply 
 stated that we shall be forced to abdicate our position in 
 Europe and ultimately our position as a great world- 
 Empire, unless the citizens of this country are prepared 
 to take upon themselves the burdens which are cheer- 
 fully borne by the manhood of every other great coimtry 
 in the world. Surely the present moment supplies 
 us with an object-lesson of unmatched clearness upon 
 the material and moral rewards given to nations, how-
 
 LORD ROBERTS AND GERMANY 79 
 
 ever small, who are prepared to equip themselves to 
 fight their own battles. The Balkan States consist of 
 small communities, the largest of them hardly exceeding 
 in numbers a populous English county. After centuries 
 of oppression they have won a glorious independence 
 and wrenched from rapine and oppression, amid the 
 applause of Europe, a vast tract to Christianity and 
 civilisation. Have these causes lost, it may be asked, 
 or have they gained on the balance by the readiness of 
 the citizens of these States to undergo national service ? 
 Can anyone doubt that these causes would gain equally 
 by an accession of defensive military strength to a 
 country unprovocative as we are unprovocative, and 
 passionately desirous of peace as we are desirous of 
 peace ? 
 
 It is sometimes stated that the Conservative Party 
 is antagonistic to Germany. Indeed, I recently met a 
 very influential German who was convinced that the 
 Unionist Party if returned to power would manu- 
 facture a pretext for going to war with Germany. 
 No more profound misapprehension ever existed. 
 The Unionist Party would regard such a war as 
 the same crime against civilisation which it would 
 seem to the general mass of English citizens. There 
 is hardly any sacrifice which we would not make to 
 avoid such a war, and it is because we are certain 
 that the way to avoid it is to be strong that we 
 recommend to our countrymen the sacrifices involved 
 in national service. 
 
 We realise, it is true, that no Government can in 
 such a matter move in advance of public opinion 
 without defeating its own objects, but deep responsi- 
 bility rests upon every Englishman who is convinced 
 by the arguments in favour of national service to take 
 part, according to the measure of his powers and his
 
 80 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 opportunities, in that education of his fellow-citizens 
 which, and which alone, can preserve the Empire from 
 destruction and its citizens from that contempt with 
 which virile nations have through the ages branded 
 those who are unable to protect their Home, their 
 Faith, and their Fatherland.
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 
 
 Any man to whom the original Home Rule struggle of 
 the middle 'eighties is a historic memory rather than a 
 crisis in which he himself played a part must regard 
 with curious feelings the introduction of an actual 
 Home Rule Bill into the House of Commons. The 
 very possibility of such a measure passing into law will 
 burst on the present generation of Unionists and non- 
 party men as a whole with something of the shock of a 
 nightmare come true. It is as though one suddenly 
 found oneself face to face in real life with some pre- 
 historic monster out of a picture-book. It is, of course, 
 perfectly true that those whose business it is to study 
 political developments and to expound their tendencies 
 either by speech or writing to the electorate, have long 
 foreseen and prophesied this final culmination of the 
 Coalition conspiracy against the Constitution. We 
 have known all along as a matter of political reason 
 that every move in the Liberal game, since the election 
 of 1910 cost Liberalism its independent majority, has 
 been dictated by the Redmondite determination to try 
 and slip Home Rule through without a general election 
 on the clearly cut issue — Union versus Separatism. 
 But it is one thing to suspect a design : it is 
 
 another to get other people to believe it. It is 
 
 81 6
 
 82 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 for this reason that at the last two general elections 
 the plain and persistent warnings of the Unionist 
 leaders that a Coalition victory meant Home Rule, 
 w^ithout an appeal to the people, fell, on the whole, 
 on deaf ears. A vast electorate lives naturally enough 
 less by the calculations of pure reason than by 
 the inspiration of a lively faith, and to the present 
 generation of electors Home Rule had become a chose 
 ju^ee, a book of controversy finally closed by two 
 successive judgments of the nation, and by a large 
 measure of consent between the two great political 
 parties. Nor, indeed, was such a view unnatural in the 
 light of historical experience. The Liberal Party which 
 followed Russell, Palmerston, and Gladstone up to 
 1885, held the same views on the government of 
 Ireland as the Conservative Party which followed 
 Liverpool, Peel, and Disraeli. Again, from the fall of 
 Parnell in 1890 to the general election of 1892, English 
 and Scotch opinion was so consistently hostile as to 
 make Unionist feeling one of passive rather than active 
 resistance to JMr Gladstone's proposals. There was a 
 faint flicker of interest again when the Lords threw 
 out the second Home Rule Bill, and then with Mr 
 Gladstone's retirement and Lord Rosebery's accession 
 to power the plan was put in tlie Liberal lumber-room, 
 and both parties ceased even to think of it, until, as in 
 1885 and 1892, a Liberal Ministry found itself once 
 more, after flfteen years, dependent on Nationalist 
 votes. In a word, the British public has been interested 
 in the Home Rule issue as was the Emperor Gallienus 
 in politics — by spasms. It has been excited only during 
 those few of tlie last liundred years when there lias been 
 a Bill before the Legislature, and there has seemed 
 some chance of that Bill being driven through. For 
 the rest of the time, English public opinion has
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 83 
 
 always been against the Repeal of the Union : so much 
 against it, indeed, that it has refused as a rule to believe 
 that any party would be sufficiently insane to put a 
 Home Rule Bill before the electorate, or so wicked as 
 to pass one without electoral consent. 
 
 Unionists, therefore, had no need to be disheartened 
 at their failure to convince the people of the reality of 
 the danger at the last general election. The Bill has 
 been produced now : the murder is out : and there is 
 not much doubt what the verdict will be. The danger 
 is no longer the apathy of the electorate : it is that 
 owing to their apathy and scepticism in the past the 
 electors may find themselves outwitted by the 
 present holders of power. The country sold its birth- 
 right of a free constitution : it may get in exchange 
 a mess of Irish pottage thrust down its unwilling throat. 
 For reasons which I will state later on, I do not think 
 this final catastrophe can overtake the nation, but many 
 bitter waters will have to be traversed before all the 
 proximate effects of the Parliament Bill can be 
 undone. The majority of men have lived so long 
 in peace and contentment under the eegis of the 
 constitution that it will require the fierce struggles of 
 the next two years to convince them that the constitu- 
 tion was not merely an ancient symbol and a venerable 
 name, but a living organism, the destruction of which 
 by partisans is bringing the country to the verge of 
 civil war. 
 
 At last, then, we have the Bill. After all these 
 appointments of secret Commissions, after all the 
 running to and fro between Dublin and Downing 
 Street, and all the efforts to stretch the maximum 
 which any British party dare offer to meet the minimum 
 which any Nationalist leader dare accept, the bargain 
 has been concluded. The battle raged over custom
 
 84 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 and excise up till the last moment, when Ministers 
 threw over the recommendations of their own Select 
 Committee. According to the official view, voters at 
 the last general election must have been endowed with 
 a power of prevision so miraculous as to be positively 
 prophetic. Fifteen months ago they knew and ap- 
 proved of a Bill the terms of which were not known to 
 Ministers a month before that Bill was introduced. 
 Nor is that all. In the Bill as it was originally 
 drafted it was proposed to set up a nominated 
 Senate in Ireland. As the Bill now stands the Senate 
 is to be chosen on the system of proportional repre- 
 sentation. This very important change was made by 
 the Government when the Bill was in Committee. 
 Yet the discussion on the clause dealing with the 
 composition of the Senate had already begun before 
 the Government amendment was produced, and the 
 Committee was actually expected to debate amend- 
 ments on the Government's proposals before it even 
 knew what the Government proposed. It did not 
 know, because until the last moment the Government 
 did not know itself So we have the entertaining 
 doctrine that long before a Bill has been drafted the 
 people can divine not only what it will be when it is 
 introduced, but what it will be after it has been 
 amended. This is indeed a new application of the 
 doctrine of " trusting the people." You trust the 
 people to know what you are going to do before you 
 know it yourself —and tlien you take elaborate pre- 
 cautions not to consult them after you do know, for 
 fear they may have misinterpreted your intentions. 
 We have heard lately of the new style : this evidently 
 is tlie New Democracy ! 
 
 But yet, whatever the democracy may have thought 
 about a Home Rule Bill, in so far as it thouglit of it
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 85 
 
 at all, one can be confident that it never contemplated 
 the production of such a complicated form of separatist 
 lunacy as the Bill which has just passed the House 
 of Commons. There was about Mr Gladstone's pro- 
 posals, if we accept the absurd " in-and-out " clause for 
 Nationalists, a certain wide and clear sweep, something 
 of a bold if desperate attempt to reach a finality of 
 relationship between the two countries even at the cost 
 of unpopularity in England or dissatisfaction in Ireland. 
 When facing an insuperable diflficulty, Mr Gladstone 
 at least faced it like a man. With all his emotional 
 wrongheadedness and tactical ingenuity, he had fire and 
 enthusiasm and courage. His successors are by com- 
 parison petty men — and, because they are themselves 
 petty, their plan is full of petty devices for dodging the 
 unavoidable, concealing what can never be hid, and 
 plastering over the rocks of stony and inexorable fact 
 with pious words and phrases. The best (or worst) 
 example of these devices is the proposal that Ireland 
 while having a Parliament of her own should still be 
 able to send forty-two members to the British House 
 of Commons with full rights to join in debates, vote in 
 divisions, and draw a salary. This is in itself sufficient 
 to condemn the Bill as an unworkable measure. It is 
 the fourth proposal that a Radical Government has 
 made to settle this question. The other three are total 
 exclusion of Irish members, inclusion in full numbers 
 for all debates, and inclusion only for those debates in 
 which they are directly interested — the " in-and-out " 
 clause. These three schemes have had very unhappy 
 histories. Each of them in turn has been riddled with 
 criticisms first from one side of the House then from 
 the other. Each by universal consent stands con- 
 demned. There are damning arguments against all 
 three, and these arguments have been forcibly and
 
 86 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 tersely summarised by Lord INIorley, a member of the 
 present Ministry. In his hfe of Mr Gladstone he wrote : 
 *' Each of the three courses is open to one simple but 
 very direct objection. Exclusion, along Avith the ex- 
 clusion of revenue from Ireland by the Parliament at 
 Westminster, is taxation without representation. In- 
 clusion for all purposes is to allow the Irish to meddle in 
 our affairs while we are no longer to meddle with their 
 affairs. Inclusion for a limited purpose still leaves them 
 invested with the power of turning out the British 
 Gov^ernment by voting against it on an Imperial question. 
 Each plan, therefore, ends in a paradox. There is a 
 fourth paradox, namely that whenever the British sup- 
 porters of the Government did not suffice to build up a 
 decisive majority, then the Irish vote, descending to one 
 or other scale of the Parliamentary balance, might decide 
 who shall be our rulers." This last argument, that as 
 long as Irish members are admitted to our debates they 
 will be able to control the fate of British Governments, 
 is an unanswered and unanswerable argument. It at 
 once condemns the proposal in the present Bill. For 
 that proposal is simply the old inclusion - for - all - 
 purposes clause in a milder form. Theoretically it is 
 as unsound ; in practice it is only less dangerous, 
 because, since the numbers of the Irish will be 
 diminished, the occasions on which they will hold the 
 balance between the English parties may be fewer. It 
 is for this feeble virtue that the Prime Minister 
 attempts to reconmiend a proposal which on its real 
 merits he dare not defend. In his speech in Connnittee 
 on the clause he had every opportunity of dealing with 
 this main argument against the clause. The argument 
 was used. The Prime Minister replied to the speaker 
 who liad used it. In the middle of his own speech it 
 was pointed out to liim that the argument had been
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 87 
 
 used. But he still refused to mention it. He is 
 content to remain on the ground which he took up in 
 his first reading speech : that so small a number of 
 Nationalists remaining in the British Parliament will 
 rarely if ever affect a division. Let us see if this is 
 true. Let us take the Prime Minister's own calcula- 
 tion that out of the forty-two Irish members thirty- 
 four will be Nationalists, so that that party will have a 
 majority of twenty-six. On at least twenty occasions 
 since 1831 critical divisions have taken place in the 
 House in which the majorities were so small that those 
 twenty-six votes would have held the balance. Within 
 this present year alone there have been no fewer than 
 twelve divisions in which the same thing would have 
 happened. So that with only forty-two Irish members 
 in the British House of Commons, it is apparent that 
 the Nationalist party will still be able, not only to 
 settle matters which are of purely British concern, but, 
 in Lord Morley's words, " to decide who shall be our 
 rulers." 
 
 Then there are the " safeguards ! " In the control 
 of the police, in finance, in customs and excise, in the 
 relations between the Irish and the British Parliament, 
 infinite ingenuity has been expended in disguising the 
 naked realities of the situation. The only possible 
 result of these devices would be that even if you deceived 
 the British electorate you would do so at the cost of 
 setting up such a perpetual friction between the two 
 countries as would lead either to complete independence 
 or to a forcible resumption of Union by the predominant 
 partner. It is difficult enough to set up a Hungary in 
 the United Kingdom, but if you are going to attempt 
 it you had better attempt it boldly. As it is. Ministers 
 seem to have tried to solve the difficulties of the situa- 
 tion by a twofold and disingenuous course. By the
 
 88 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 establishment of an Irish Parliament with an Executive 
 responsible to it they propose to set up a new sovereign 
 power in Ireland — and so presumably to satisfy the 
 Nationalists — the men who believe that Ireland is a 
 separate nation. By the creation of a vast number of 
 legislative safeguards designed to circumscribe the free 
 action of the Irish Parliament they hope to conciliate 
 the hostile opinion of the rest of Great Britain and to 
 persuade the electorate that no change of any real 
 importance has been made. Never was there a more 
 fatal attempt to secure an immoral compromise. To 
 secure the Nationalist support, the Cabinet give to the 
 inajority in Ireland executive control, or an executive 
 capable of exercising complete control : to secure British 
 acquiescence they then propose to check the free opera- 
 tion of that Irish executive by a series of restrictions 
 and by an elaborate process of appeals which would 
 bring the Irish and the Imperial Parliament, and the 
 Irish and the Imperial Executive, into the most violent 
 collision before the new system had been established a 
 twelvemonth. 
 
 It is worth while quoting the Prime Minister's own 
 words in moving the first reading of the Bill : " We go 
 on to provide, in order that the Irish Parliament may 
 not transcend its constitutional limits, two additional 
 safeguards. In the first place, there is the veto of the 
 Lord- Lieutenant under the seventh clause of the Bill, 
 which provides that he shall give or withhold his con- 
 sent to l^ills passed by the two Houses of the Irish 
 Parliament subject to two limitations— namely, that he 
 shall comply with any instructions given by his Majesty 
 — that means the Imperial Executive in this country" 
 (a tactful reminder of recent constitutional history) "in 
 respect of any such 15ill, ;ind next he shall, if so directed 
 by his Majesty ' (that again refers to the Imperial Ex-
 
 THE HOME RULE BllA. 89 
 
 ecutive). " postpone giving the assent of his Majesty to 
 any such Bill for any such period as his Majesty " (that 
 is the Executive) *' may direct. So we resei've com- 
 pletely unimpaired the supremacy and the ^responsibility 
 of the Executive here and the power of vetoing or post- 
 poning any legislation which the Irish Parliament may 
 pass." 
 
 Do we ? Let me quote another passage from the 
 Prime Minister's speech — an observation about the 
 powers of the Irish ParHament squeezed in among 
 pages of talk about the reservation of powers denied 
 to it. " The Bill therefore proceeds in its first and 
 second clauses to declare that after the appointed day 
 there shall be in Ireland an Iiish Parliament consisting 
 of his Majesty the King and two Houses, viz., the Irish 
 Senate and the Irish House of Commons. What are 
 the legislative powei^s of that Parliament ? It is to 
 have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good 
 government of Ireland.'' Then follow the limitations — 
 religion, the reserved services, the Army and Navy, and 
 all the rest. I will leave these aside, for it is in the 
 essence of the principle of safeguards that the root of 
 the whole matter lies. 
 
 As the situation stands under the quotations given, 
 any of the measures of an Irish Parliament with an 
 Executive responsible to it might be vetoed by the 
 Imperial Executive and the Imperial Parliament. But 
 this is not the end of the matter. Apparently a new 
 High Court such as exists in the United States is to 
 decide whether any legislative act of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment is or is not within the powers conferred on it by 
 the proposed Bill. " If any question arises," says the 
 Prime Minister, " as to the validity of an Irish Act, 
 as to whether it is or is not within the powers conferred 
 by this statute, it will be settled, if it arises in the course
 
 90 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 of ordinary litigation which involves any such problem, 
 first by the Irish Court of Appeal, and on appeal from 
 it by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and 
 next — even though the matter does not arise in the 
 course of litigation — at the instance of the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant or the Secretary of State here by a special 
 reference to the Judicial Committee, which will deter- 
 mine the point even before the Act has come into 
 operation." 
 
 If anyone will place these three extracts side by 
 side he will arrive at certain conclusions. In the first 
 place, the new Irish Parliament is to have a free hand 
 in Ireland subject to reserved questions. In the second 
 place, there is to be an absolute Imperial veto on all 
 Irish legislation. In the third place, the Irish Govern- 
 ment is not to have a free hand in Ireland, nor the 
 Imperial Parliament an absolute right of veto. On 
 the contrary, the delimitation of legislatixe or corrective 
 powers under the Bill is to be left to a legal authority 
 — the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. A 
 system more likely to lead to persistent friction between 
 the two countries it would be impossible to conceive. 
 The union of hearts is apparently to be abolished : the 
 substitute is to be that feeling of brotherhood habitually 
 found among clients who are fighting each other per- 
 sistently in the courts of justice. Further, it appears 
 from the Prime Minister's speech that a legal point 
 cannot be raised by a private citizen on appeal against 
 the action of the Irish Executive unless the Irish 
 Secretary or Lord-Lieutenant as Imperial representative 
 consents to raise a case against his own principals in 
 Ireland. On the other hand, these officials can always 
 appeal to a legal tribunal to invalidate, in the interests 
 of the Imperial Executive which they represent, the 
 actions of the Irisli Parliament. Such a clumsy,
 
 THE HOME RULE BH.L 91 
 
 botched-up scheme is inevitable, of course, in any 
 attempt to set up two diverse parliamentary authorities 
 — while claiming that one is independent and that the 
 other is supreme. The scheme would not survive six 
 months of legal and legislative practice : it would 
 collapse under the weight of its own ineptitude. 
 
 The reasons of that collapse are sufficiently obvious 
 and are inherent in the scheme of relations sug- 
 gested between the Irish and the Imperial Parlia- 
 ments. Every judicial decision would become a 
 subject of electoral agitation and of political conten- 
 tion between the two powers and the two electorates 
 affected. If the case went against the Irish contention 
 the Irish Executive would in four cases out of five be 
 able to make the judicial decision inoperative simply by 
 refusing to employ the ordinary resources of civilisation 
 to enforce it. In the remaining cases the Imperial 
 Government would be obliged through the powers and 
 services it proposes to retain, to embark on a policy 
 repugnant to the sentiment of the Irish Government. 
 What would be the result ? The Irish Ministry would 
 resign — no alternative Ministry could be formed — the 
 internal administration of Ireland would become im- 
 possible except by the repeal of the Home Rule Bill, 
 by the enforcement of a crown colony system of govern- 
 ment, or by an utter abdication of power on the part of 
 the Imperial Government. 
 
 All these objections apply to the very conception of 
 safeguards. What is the use of the veto of the Lord- 
 Lieutenant if the effect of his veto is to deprive him of 
 the services of a majority in the Irish Parliament ? If 
 the Irish Government bring in a measure for the 
 Establishment of Catholicism against the terms of the 
 Bill, and the Lord-Lieutenant vetoes it, and the Im- 
 perial Executive vetoes it, and the Imperial Parlia-
 
 92 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 ment decides against it, and the Judicial Committee of 
 the Privy Council declares it illegal, what does that 
 help the United Kingdom and the Protestants of 
 Ireland, if the Government of Ireland cannot be carried 
 on unless all these powers and principalities accept the 
 decision of the National majority ? No Imperial Parlia- 
 ment could allow the whole Irish state to deliquesce in 
 default of a Government into its constituent elements 
 — nor could it in effect carry on without a civil war 
 the administration of the reserved services under con- 
 ditions which meant that there was no Irish Parliament. 
 The Imperial Parliament would be in a worse position 
 than a Stuart monarch trying to govern by the simple 
 expedient of never summoning a parliament. Such a 
 conception is reactionary and impossible. What it 
 means is, that if you once establish an Irish Parliament 
 with an executive responsible to it, you have parted 
 with all real control over Ireland short of a repeal of 
 the proposed Bill or a reconquest by arms. The safe- 
 cfuards — the veto and the rest — are worth less than the 
 paper they are written on ; because they can never be 
 enforced if the Irish Ministry of the day threatens to 
 resififn, and so to leave the unfortunate Lord-Lieutenant 
 without an alternative INlinistry. Ireland must, in a 
 word, as the history of five centuries has proved, either 
 be left as an independent nation owing nothing but a 
 vague allegiance to the Crown, or it must remain an 
 integral part of the United Kingdom. In the latter 
 case its citizens must possess, as they possess to-day, 
 the rights that the inhabitants of England. Scotland, 
 and Wales possess, and neither less nor more. 
 
 For these reasons, and for other hardly less apparent, 
 the safeguards are worthless. Nor are we alone in 
 this view. It is shared by the Prime Minister. Let 
 us see liow tiie mind of tlie Government has changed,
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 93 
 
 from those earlier declarations that everything would 
 be done to protect Ulster from the dangers which 
 she feared, to the later declaration of the Prime 
 Minister that the safeguards in the Bill are worth- 
 less. The change has been as rapid as it is com- 
 plete. In a speech at Bristol, Mr Birrell said, 
 " Safeguards have been inserted in the Bill, but 
 we are met with the reply, ' Your safeguards are 
 of no use,' to which 1 will say, ' Then name your 
 own safeguards.' . . . Let the other side produce 
 safeguards if they have them." This was said on 18th 
 October. Four days later an opportunity was given to 
 the House to test the sincerity of Mr Birrell's offer. In 
 an amendment to Clause 3, Mr Astor proposed to insert 
 words which would prevent the Irish Parliament from 
 making any law " whereby any person may be deprived 
 of life, liberty, or property without due process of law 
 in accordance with settled principles and precedents, or 
 may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or 
 whereby private property may be taken without just 
 compensation." These words state the simple and 
 elementary rights of every citizen, and are to be found 
 in the Bill of 1893 as they appear in the amendment. 
 No one would dare to deny those rights, nor, I should 
 have thought, would any Government refuse to protect 
 them. But this Government has refused. It rejected 
 the amendment, and its reasons (as given) were two. 
 It was objected by the Prime Minister, firstly, that 
 such phrases as " settled principles," " equal protection 
 of the laws, ' and "just compensation " were too ambig- 
 uous for the Courts to be left to decide. It is amazing 
 that any man, more amazing still that any lawyer, 
 should use such an argument. Mr Asquith must be 
 perfectly well aware that the Courts are continually 
 called upon to interpret such phrases ; and even if he
 
 94 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 has forgotten his own experience at the Bar, he cannot 
 have forgotten that the Government in which he was 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer passed a Workmen's 
 Compensation Act which imposes on the Courts the 
 almost daily duty of deciding what "just compensation " 
 is. The second argument was even more contemptible. 
 The Prime ^linister objected that the amendment 
 " enthroned the judiciary as the ultimate tribunal of 
 appeal." It did nothing of the sort, because the Prime 
 Minister had already done this himself when he gave 
 the Irish Court of Appeal the right to decide on the 
 validity of an Irish Act. ^ 
 
 Thus in four days the position had become clearer. 
 In another seven days the circle was complete. On 
 29th October, Clause 7 was under discussion in Com- 
 mittee, and on that clause the Prime Minister delivered 
 an amazing speech. He confessed himself to be a 
 " credulous optimist," openly abandoned Mr Birrell's 
 pretence that the Government were anxious to give to 
 the minority the safeguards that it desired, and with a 
 frankness never before equalled, applied to politics the 
 doctrine of the blind eye. " If you accept my hy- 
 pothesis," he said, " the question of the actual working 
 of the veto becomes comparatively simple. //* / accept 
 jjoiir hypothesis, I agree that the veto {of the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant) is absolutely worthless.'' This second hypothesis 
 is the hypothesis accepted by all Unionists, that the 
 Ulster fears of injustice, ill-usage, and oppression under 
 a Nationalist Government, are well foimded. The 
 veto of the Lord- Lieutenant is one of the safeguards 
 for the protection of the Protestant minority. It is to 
 this absurdity then that we have come. Safeguards 
 
 * No Nationalist members took part in the debate on Mr Astor's 
 amendment, but it is worthy of notice that they were ojiposcd to it 
 when it stood as a chiuse in the Bill of 1893.
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 95 
 
 are offered to allay the fear of the minority, but 
 it is at the same time admitted that if the fears are 
 realised the safeguards will be worthless. This is 
 indeed a paper constitution. The whole elaborate 
 structure of " safeguards " has been raised on the 
 assumption that it will not be required. If this 
 assumption is false, then, for the reasons that I 
 have given, the Irisli constitution will at once wear 
 itself to pieces. 
 
 As Norway and Sweden, Austria and Hungary, have 
 proved beyond cavil, you cannot have a dual sovereignty, 
 however carefully disguised, based on separate national 
 ideas, without perpetual friction, leading in the long 
 run to complete separation. And if you are prepared 
 to contemplate separation, you had better have separa- 
 tion first and not last. You had better have separation 
 as the result of mutual consent than as the ultimate 
 fruit of mutual irritation and conflict. The Govern- 
 ment Bill gives unity in name, separation in essence, 
 and the perverted ingenuity of its ridiculous safeguards 
 even ensures that legal separation will result from a 
 bitter and protracted conflict which will leave the two 
 populations under separate governments animated by 
 the odium of sentiments which these long struggles 
 must inevitably bring in their train. This Bill is de- 
 signed to lose Ireland without conciliating her, and to 
 break up the Empire in order to establish an inveterate 
 enemy on one flank. When Mr Asquith talks about 
 Ireland as a nation he gives his whole case away. If 
 Ireland is a nation apart, she must have her separate 
 government, and Imperial safeguards are to her a mere 
 futile insult : if she is not a nation apart, why should 
 her inhabitants not be content to share the equal rights 
 enjoyed by the citizens of the United Kingdom ? Be- 
 tween separation and Union there is no middle course.
 
 96 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 But if anyone replies to me that Irish Home Rulers 
 will accept this Bill as a final settlement, and will not 
 be irritated by the futile restrictions placed on the Irish 
 Parliament by the provisions of the Bill, I can only 
 answer that tliey know little of Ireland, less of Irish 
 history, and less still of political human nature. Who 
 will be the more popular member of the Irish National- 
 ist Parliament or the more popular candidate in the 
 constituencies out of Ulster — the man who by speech 
 and vote defends the integrity of the Imperial safeguards 
 whether in constitutional or financial matters, or the 
 man who declares that every such safeguard is an insult 
 to Irish Nationality and should be abolished or ignored ? 
 To ask the question is to answer it. Was Butt with 
 his constitutional methods a match for Parnell when 
 the Fenians discovered that under his leadership " Parlia- 
 mentarianism was becoming respectable " ? The ex- 
 tremists have always had the best of it in Ireland except 
 in so far as the ameliorative measures of British states- 
 manship and British credit have under the Union begun 
 to establish a really sound social and economic condi- 
 tion of affairs. But Mr Dillon told us on the first 
 reading of the Bill that in his opinion it was only 
 the No Rent Campaign which produced the Unionist 
 scheme of Land Purchase. It is in this spirit that the 
 Irish leaders approach the Ireland of the future. They 
 will and they must, if they are not to be turned out, as 
 Butt was turned out, agitate and obstruct until the last 
 shreds of Imperial control have disappeared for ever. 
 Like the Laljour members in recent years, they nuist 
 either take the extreme course or give way and make 
 place for those who will. 
 
 I have dealt at length witli the (juestion of Constitu- 
 tional safeguards because they are of the very substance 
 and essence of the Bill. The considerations which
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 97 
 
 make those safeguards inoperative apply to all those 
 checks on financial or religious legislation which 
 are proposed by the Government. The greater 
 objections cover the less. In all cases you will 
 have friction leading to separation, and no control 
 short of the determination of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment to do what it did in the case of Grattan's 
 Parliament, and force Ireland once more back into 
 the Union. 
 
 The customs and excise proposals appear to be of 
 such a complicated nature that even Mr Samuel, who 
 is supposed to be the Government expert in these 
 matters, has been unable to explain them to the 
 House. The whole arrangement, after the Govern- 
 ment- rejected the separatist suggestions of their 
 Financial Committee, were in a state of what Governor 
 Pitt called " hellish confusion." Two facts alone, as 
 Mr Balfour has pointed out, have emerged with any 
 clearness from the general welter. In the first place, 
 two separate customs rates will be set up in the two 
 countries. In the second place, the whole of our 
 international arrangements under the most favoured 
 nation clause will be placed in jeopardy. 
 
 As an example of the difficulties and contra- 
 dictions in which the financial clauses have involved 
 the Government let us take Clause 16. This clause 
 contains very important provisions ; it defines the 
 trade relations between England and Ireland when 
 the customs and excise duties of the two countries 
 on any article are dissimilar ; but it was passed in 
 Committee under the guillotine without a word of 
 discussion. I choose it for this reason, and because 
 it well illustrates the double contradiction in which 
 the Government is entangled. It professedly believes 
 in Federalism, but it ignores all federalist theory and 
 
 7
 
 98 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 experience by setting up customs within the federated 
 states ; it is professedly a Free Trade Government, 
 but it gives protection to Ireland. This is the not 
 unnatural result of drawing up its Bill in colla- 
 boration with men who are both separatists and 
 protectionists. 
 
 By Clause 16, sub-section A, it is provided that if 
 Ireland sends a dutiable article to England, duty shall 
 be charged as if the article came from a foreign 
 country ; but if the article, say tobacco, has come 
 from abroad but been manufactured in Ireland, it will 
 not pay the full English duty, but a duty equal to the 
 drawback, if that drawback is less than the duty, which 
 English manufacturers are allowed when they export 
 their manufactured tobacco. Let us see how this will 
 work. A manufacturer to-day pays a duty of 3s. 8d. 
 a pound on raw tobacco leaf; but on exporting the 
 tobacco made up into, say, cigarettes, he receives a 
 drawback of 4s. Id. a pound. The extra fivepence is 
 given him to cover the loss of tobacco in manufacture 
 and the cost in which the regulations imposed on 
 manufacture have involved him. But the customs 
 duty on manufactured tobacco is 5s. 8d. a pound. 
 Under sub-section A of Clause 16 the Irish tobacco 
 manufacturer will pay on sending his cigarettes 
 into England not the full duty of 5s. 8d. which 
 is imposed on foreign cigarettes, but a duty equal 
 to the drawback allowed to English manufacturers 
 when they export, that is 4s. Id. So that he 
 will receive on each pound of cigarettes a prefer- 
 ence of Is. 7d. in 5s. 8d., which is a preference of 
 nearly 28 per cent. 
 
 I could multiply examples of the protective nature of 
 the customs arrangements, of tlie dilliculties they will 
 cause, and the friction they will engender. But this
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 99 
 
 example is sufficient. It is of greater importance 
 to consider the larger financial arrangements between 
 the two countries. England, Scotland, and Wales are 
 to pay something between six and seven millions a year 
 for the privilege of giving Ireland a separate Parliament. 
 Half a million is to be given as a direct subsidy to the 
 cause of separatism. A million and a half represents 
 the present Irish deficit, while the rest of the sum is to 
 be made up by the increasing cost of Land Purchase, 
 Old Age Pensions and Insurance, and by relieving 
 Ireland of all share in the payment of the National 
 Debt and military forces of the Empire. This last 
 proposal is enough to make Mr Gladstone turn in his 
 grave. The Prime Minister, indeed, had the decency 
 to conceal these figures in so far as concealment was 
 possible. He knew he was advancing a proposal which 
 would be resented deeply by the tax-payers of the 
 United Kingdom and accordingly he slurred the whole 
 question over. But the figures are now established, 
 and they cannot be disputed. England and Scotland 
 are to pay in order that the Nationalists may have a 
 Parliament which England and Scotland do not want, 
 and which the Nationalists want, but will not pay 
 for. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, 
 one might as well charge a man for the expense of 
 hanging him. To finance separatism out of Unionist 
 money is the final effort of Ministerial humour. 
 The only answer to this objection so far advanced 
 by Liberals is that their own legislation has already 
 made Ireland the debtor of England. England under 
 the Union has given Ireland social benefits she could 
 not have afforded under the separatist system. If 
 Liberals have always been, as they tell us. Home 
 Rulers, they might have thought of this before they 
 spent the money.
 
 100 UNIONIST POLICY ^^ 
 
 These Imperial doles or remissions to the sub- 
 ordinate Parliament are not only serious in amount but 
 extraordinarily dangerous in principle and effect. Let 
 us examine the failure of Ireland to contribute to the 
 Common Fund for national defence. It is not only an 
 act of separatism of the most glaring character, but the 
 very spirit of disunion which underlies the arrangement 
 must grow by what it feeds on. We tell Ireland in 
 effect that a great foreign war for the defence of the 
 Empire is no concern of hers. The greater part of the 
 expenses would be met again, as they have been met 
 before, not out of current income but out of loans. 
 England and Scotland are asked to pay for the 
 defence of a country because that country desires to 
 indulge in a form of semi-separation from them. The 
 impertinence of the suggestion almost takes away one's 
 breath. Consider the case of the South African AVar. 
 The only way in which the British Exchequer could 
 have obtained, under the Bill, any contribution from 
 Ireland would have been by using the ultimate power 
 of the Imperial Parliamant to levy taxes in Ireland at 
 the very moment when the Nationalist members were 
 cheering I^ord JVIethuen's defeat. A passive- or active- 
 resistance rebellion would spring into being just when 
 Great Britain was concentrating all her efforts on 
 a great struggle for national preservation. Ireland 
 would thus become in the future, as it has so often been 
 in tlie past, the Achilles' heel of the British Empire. 
 But worse even than this would be the moral effect on 
 the whole spirit of Imperial unity for defence. Ireland 
 is to be a kind of kept island, a military parasite left 
 to dream her own dreams apart, while the heat of 
 the international day is borne by the rest of the 
 Impciial Dominions. 
 
 Not less important from another point of view
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 101 
 
 are the "financial arrangements for the reserved 
 services." 
 
 These charges for Land Purchase, Insurance, Old 
 Age Pensions, etc., are practically all of them pro- 
 gressive items of expenditure, and will rise to at least 
 an additional million in the immediate future. The 
 contention is that we should have to face this ex- 
 penditure in any case, since Irish taxation falls 
 short of Irish expenses by about one and a half 
 millions annually. Of course we should : nor should 
 we grudge it so long as the money was being 
 expended on the improvement of the social con- 
 ditions of a part of the United Kingdom. We do, 
 however, grudge it if it is to be given to what 
 the Prime Minister calls "the Irish Nation." If 
 Ireland wants to be a nation in our despite, let it 
 at least be a nation at its own expense and not at 
 ours. I will take a parallel case. Suppose the 
 county of Northumberland suddenly demanded a 
 Parliament — and, indeed, there was once a kingdom 
 of Northumbria, though there has never been one of 
 Ireland apart from the British Crown — and suppose it 
 found that its own local taxation would not pay for its 
 Old Age Pensions because the additional resources 
 were being supplied by the wealthier communities of 
 London, Liverpool, and Birmingham, the contention 
 would apparently be : " London, Liverpool, and 
 Birmingham ought to go on paying because they 
 did not object to paying before." As long as 
 Northumberland is a part of the union of counties 
 which make up the United Kingdom, no one will 
 inquire into its taxable capacity any more than he 
 will ask whether Wiltshire or Kent can pay for its 
 Old Age Pensions. But if Northumberland is to 
 be allowed to separate let it pay the costs of
 
 102 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 separation. If it is richer than its neighbours let it 
 gain : if it is poorer let it lose.^ 
 
 The Irish Nationalists cannot have it both ways : 
 they cannot serve their Nationalist god and pick the 
 pockets of the British Mammon : they cannot combine 
 the romantic delights of separatism with the solid 
 advantages of Union. 
 
 But there is, to my mind, another and an even more 
 serious side to the reserved services subsidy. The 
 necessity for the subsidy proves that British social legis- 
 lation of the last few years has already outstripped the 
 taxable capacity of Ireland. In other words, if the Home 
 Rule Bill of 1893 had been passed, Ireland would not 
 only have been in any case bankrupt but, a fortiori, she 
 would have had no Insurance, no Old Age Pensions, no 
 Land Purchase Act ; and Mr Birrell himself admitted in 
 the course of the Committee debates on the Bill that 
 " for the moment the completion of land purchase is 
 more important than Home Rule itself." The recent 
 social progress of Ireland is due to Imperial credit 
 and Imperial money. The Union alone has made 
 progress possible for the sister island. But now the 
 Union is to be broken : and when the political bond 
 snaps, the financial tie will break with it. Even the 
 Prime Minister does not venture to suggest that 
 England and Scotland shall continue to finance Irish 
 Social Reform under an Irish Parliament. At a time 
 when all parties at Westminster are turning more and 
 more of their thoughts to the improvement of the 
 
 ' I introduced the illustration of Northumbria as a reduciio ad 
 absnrdmn of ihe Home Rule case, little dreaniiiijjf that Mr Churchill 
 would at Dundee attempt to translate this vei-y reduciio ad ub.siirdum 
 into a practical policy. After this it is hardly surprising that the 
 Dundee speech should have been regarded by both parties as a deadly 
 blow aimed at the Government Bill.
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 103 
 
 condition of the people, Ireland is to be thrust out 
 into the wilderness. This point has been illustrated 
 by the report of the Commissioners on Education, 
 half of whom are Catholics and half Protestants. 
 These gentlemen point out that while, quite apart 
 from new departures, the increase in expenditure on 
 Education becomes automatically greater every year, 
 the sum granted to this reserved service is a fixed one. 
 The Education system in Ireland will therefore not 
 only remain unprogressive, but it must inevitably fall 
 into decay unless the Irish Parliament comes to the 
 financial rescue. Of such help the Commissioners 
 have no hope, for poverty and more pressing claims 
 will forbid further assistance. And what is true of 
 Education is true of all other measures of reform. 
 We are asked to inflict a grave injustice on the 
 people of Ireland in order that we may establish 
 an industrial Poland on our flank. The conditions 
 and wages of the two countries, instead of being 
 gradually assimilated as they have been under the 
 last twenty years of Unionist Government, are to be 
 violently separated. The richer country is to advance : 
 the poorer country is to be stereotyped in poverty, and 
 in the long run the effects of this amazing policy will 
 recoil on England with an economic rebound. Our 
 own conditions will be depressed in turn by the 
 competition, whether in goods or labour, of the more 
 reactionary country. Under complete separation we 
 might at least protect ourselves by a tariff: under the 
 Bill we cannot even do that. The two countries are 
 to have a common fiscal policy, but not a common 
 industrial policy — they are to have the same tariff but 
 different Factory Acts and different wages : they are to 
 be neither bond nor free, but to bear the double curses 
 both of bondage and freedom.
 
 104 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Anyone who reads the debate which took place on 
 a Unionist amendment to reserve factory legislation 
 and other cognate subjects to the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment will realise how the temper of the Opposition 
 has been tried by the Home Rule debates. He 
 will see that it is possible for all the arguments to 
 be on one side. He will understand what it means 
 to plead before a court whose decision is already 
 taken. Speech after speech was made by Unionists and 
 remained unanswered. The Nationalists were silent ; 
 the only speech of any substance from the Liberal 
 benches was in support of the amendment. Mr 
 Ramsay Macdonald was content, like the Prime 
 Minister, to be a " credulous optimist," and put 
 his trust in an Irish Labour party which does not at 
 present exist. The Solicitor-General, who spoke for 
 the Cabinet, found his "governing" argument in the 
 reflection that if the Irish Parliament could be induced 
 to quarrel about labour legislation it might forget to 
 quarrel about religion. It is with such levity as this 
 that the Government, sitting under the silent ranks of 
 the Nationalists, has dismissed all argument. 
 
 So far, I have used arguments which would be 
 equally true and applicable to the Bill if there was not 
 a soul in Ireland who was not both a Roman Catholic 
 and a Nationalist. But every objection to the Bill is 
 intensified ten times by the fact that Ireland is not 
 peopled by a homogeneous race. When the Prime 
 Minister talked about the Irish Nation, a Unionist 
 member asked liim pertinently "whicli Nation" he 
 meant. Tacitus riglitly differentiated between the two 
 factors, geographical and moral, wliich enter into the 
 conception of nationality, when he spoke of peoples 
 being separated *' l)y mountains and fear." The Irish 
 Channel which separates Kngland from Ireland is a
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 105 
 
 small boundary compared to the gulf which separates 
 men in Ireland who live almost side by side. Potent 
 as is the influence of geography in moulding the destiny 
 and character of nations, it is as nothing to the in- 
 fluence of history, race, and religion, while the con- 
 sciousness of these factors is to-day kept perpetually 
 alive by the influence of cheap printing and free litera- 
 ture. Ulster then, as even Ministerialists are uneasily 
 aware in their hearts, dominates the whole Home Rule 
 situation. Every pitfall in the Bill will become not only 
 a menace but a reality, because the Irish Parliament 
 will be attempting to govern not one race but two. 
 Every argument used by Home Rulers for giving 
 self-government to one Irish Nation and for freeing 
 it from Imperial control can be used with equal validity 
 to prove that the inhabitants of north-eastern Ulster 
 should be allowed to retain the form of government 
 which pleases and suits them best. No consistent man 
 can say in one breath, " Within the area of the United 
 Kingdom the majority of Irishmen want Home Rule, 
 and, therefore, they must have it," and in the next 
 breath, " Within the area of Ireland the majority in 
 the six districts of Ulster want to remain under the 
 Imperial Parliament, but, nevertheless, they shall not 
 so remain." 
 
 That the Liberal Party should take up such an 
 attitude is a curious indication of that perverted 
 tendency which has dominated Liberalism, the in- 
 tense desire to be the friend of everybody who is 
 your country's enemy. This party might have been 
 created to prove the truth of the cynic's conclusion 
 "that patriotism does not pay." The Ministerialist 
 attitude appears to be that every minority in the 
 Empire shall have what it wants so long as it does 
 not persist in being loyal. For the crime of loyalty
 
 106 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 no punishment can be too severe — not even that of 
 being handed over to the mercies of hereditary enemies. 
 I have said that the provisions of the Home Rule 
 Bill would be unworkable, even if Ireland had no 
 Protestant within her borders. The existence of the 
 loyal minority makes the machinery of the Bill im- 
 possible. Let us take the case of the movement of 
 troops to Belfast to enable INIr Churchill to speak 
 there. The step was presumably necessary, or the 
 Executive would not have taken it. But what 
 would be the position under the Home Rule Bill if 
 Mr Redmond was announced to speak at the Ulster 
 Hall and Sir Edward Carson in some Nationalist 
 stronghold in the South ? Theoretically the Lord- 
 Lieutenant could move troops to both places : in 
 practice he could only do so with the consent of the 
 Irish Parliament. For if the Lord- Lieutenant took a 
 single step against the advice and wishes of Mr 
 Redmond and his friends, the latter could permanently 
 deprive Ireland of a Parliamentary Government. What 
 then would happen? If the Executive gave way, Mr 
 Redmond would make his speech from behind the 
 shelter of Imperial bayonets while Sir Edward Carson 
 was left to shift for himself. If the Lord- Lieutenant 
 stood firm, he would have to try and govern Ireland by 
 absolutist methods with a fraction of the machinery 
 necessary for absolutism which exists to-day, and with 
 thirty Irish members at Westminster declaiming against 
 this invasion of their sovereignty rights. Wt shall be 
 back in '85 without the powers the Imperial Govern- 
 ment then possessed. We shall have made a chaos 
 and called it Home Rule. It is indeed an ironical 
 commentary on Liberal principles that Ministers pro- 
 pose to inaugurate self-government by coercing Ulster 
 with Imperial bayonets, and to leave for fair treat-
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 107 
 
 ment and public order only one guarantee — a recourse 
 to an inefficient absolutism from which even the Stuarts 
 would have recoiled. There remains only one way 
 out of the dilemma, and that is to declare that Mr 
 Redmond would not be so wicked or so unfeeling as 
 to oppress the Protestant minority. 
 
 Under the Home Rule Bill, Mr Redmond's inclina- 
 tions, or the inclinations of those behind him, are the 
 things which count. The guarantees are paper, the 
 checks are shams : England will have made a Catholic 
 and Nationalist majority supreme at Dublin, and she 
 will have left herself no real power to protect the loyal 
 minority. Is it to be wondered at that the minority 
 does not like the prospect ? Is it strange that Unionists 
 in Great Britain are prepared to go to any lengths 
 rather than see their fellow-citizens subjected to a 
 tyranny no less cruel and deadly because it will be 
 organised under the forms of Parliamentary Govern- 
 ment ? And what after all are the motives of the 
 Nationalists in insisting on the inclusion of Ulster ? 
 Partly, no doubt, a desire to taste once again after years 
 of equality the pleasures of ascendency. But apart 
 from this motive stands the undeniable fact that a 
 Home Rule Ireland without Ulster would be a financial 
 impossibility. In custom duties Belfast contributes to 
 the revenue more than two-thirds the total amount 
 of the Irish customs. It is the old story ; everybody 
 is to pay for Home Rule except the people who want 
 it : every interest is to be sacrificed except the interest 
 of Catholic domination. 
 
 How, then, are we to fight this intolerable measure ? 
 AVe have discussed it in the House under circum- 
 stances which have convinced us of the impotence 
 of debate. To the majority of clauses time only for 
 the most perfunctory discussion has been given, and to
 
 108 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 many time for no discussion at all. Clause 2, the most 
 important clause of the Bill, for it contains the list of 
 subjects with which the Irish Parliament shall have no 
 power to deal, was passed after only a sixth part of it 
 had been considered, and only eleven out of one hundred 
 and seventy separate amendments had been debated. 
 On one evening no fewer than six financial clauses were 
 passed without debate. It is a very fair estimate to 
 say that not more than one-sixth of this Bill, which 
 is to set up a new constitution in Ireland, and to 
 modify profoundly the constitution of Great Britain, 
 has been discussed by the House of Commons. The 
 Government has been indifferent to criticism, forgetful 
 of courtesy, deaf to protest, contemptuous of the 
 rights of debate and the customs of the House. It 
 has done its best to break the patience and rouse the 
 anger of the Opposition. It has been reckless of every- 
 thing but its desire to pass the Bill this session, so that 
 ultimately it may become law before another election. 
 What other means can we take to defeat it ? We have 
 still two years during which discussion in the country 
 may perhaps succeed where discussion in the House 
 has failed. And if that fails too, Ulster is prepared 
 to resist the Irish Government first by a refusal to 
 recognise it, and then, if necessary, by force. She 
 stands upon the elementary right of all free men to 
 be governed, except under compulsion of arms, only 
 by those whom they may choose. This is her deter- 
 mination, and the Unionist leaders are pledged to 
 iier support. The pledge has not been liglitly given, 
 and if tlie time and need should come it will be fulfilled. 
 On the plains of Ulster there lives a race, hard and 
 dour if you like, but impassioned and determined ; not 
 to be moved by oratory and not to be cowed by arms. 
 And behind this power is drawn up rank behind rank
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 109 
 
 the whole force of British Unionism, determined 
 that at any cost this betrayal of their friends and 
 country shall never deface the Statute Book. " Vote 
 it as you please. There is a company of poor men 
 that will spend all their blood before they see it 
 settled so." 
 
 The temperament of Liberalism has struck an 
 obstacle of the strength of which it had no con- 
 ception. For long it continued blind. Then only 
 with reluctance did it see, and it used every endeavour 
 of indifference, ridicule, and misrepresentation against 
 the determination of Ulster. But now as the im- 
 placable character of Ulster's resistance has begun 
 to penetrate the Liberal mind, the chorus of derision 
 with which the earlier statement of intention made 
 by the North was greeted in the Ministerial press 
 has sunk to a few rather tremulous voices. Mr 
 Churchill, indeed, proved the chosen instrument for 
 effecting the change. His unlucky attempt to hold 
 a meeting in the Ulster Hall was the first proof of 
 Protestant determination which struck home to the 
 English and Scotch imagination, and he seems to have 
 returned from his visit imbued with a sense of the 
 gra\dty of the situation. When the Blenheim declara- 
 tion and its endorsement in the House of Commons 
 showed beyond all doubt that the whole Unionist 
 Party meant to stand by Ulster, his alarm found 
 vent in some remarkable public letters breathing 
 alternately the spirit of menace and cajolery. The 
 Unionist leaders were exhorted to abandon the North 
 to its fate in the interests of constitutional moderation 
 and propriety ! The appeal reminds us of Lord Salisbury's 
 famous essay on Lord John Russell's Foreign policy : 
 '' Fresh from the bombardment of Viagosima he extols 
 the virtues of Christian moderation." Why should we
 
 110 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 be moderate with Mr Churchill and his friends ? We 
 have seen in the period during which Ministers still 
 possessed some power to hurt, our principles and our 
 country subjected to every humiliation and outrage 
 which the mind of political partisanship could con- 
 ceive. We have seen an ancient constitution dismem- 
 bered, an illustrious monarchy dragged in the dust, 
 Parliamentary and executive power prostituted to the 
 pursuit of political class vendettas, and the resources 
 of chicanery exhausted to give Ministers sufficient 
 years of office to pass this Bill behind the backs of 
 the people. And then Mr Churchill talks to us of 
 the risk of upsetting the boat " by struggling for the 
 tiller " ! Mr Churchill and his friends should have 
 thought of all this before they determined to buy 
 office from Mr Redmond at the price of the 
 constitution. 
 
 Failing, however, the readiness of the Opposition 
 leaders to oblige with a display of those Christian 
 virtues with which the present Cabinet has been so 
 plentifully endowed, they were to make acquaintance 
 ^vith a felon's cell or to march en masse to Tower 
 Hill to an execution which would no doubt be con- 
 ducted in a true spirit of Constitutional harmony. I 
 do not know whether the writer intended to be taken 
 seriously, but if the political methods of the seventeenth 
 century are to be invoked by the party of progress, 
 that party and its leaders may be reminded that 
 Ministers too have, in other days, been impeached. 
 
 To these lengthy letters, Mr Bonar Law made 
 brief reply. The position of the Unionist Party was 
 precisely as stated at Blenheim and in the House 
 of Commons : if the Government chose to try and 
 coerce Ulster, on their heads would rest the blame for 
 civil war. At this, the First Lord of the Admiralty
 
 THE HOME RULE BH^L 111 
 
 seems to have made up his mind that the party had 
 better save what they could and leave the Home Rule 
 ship before she struck the reef and took all hands down 
 with her. The Dundee speech with its litter of sub- 
 ordinate Parliaments conceded the greater part of the 
 Unionist contention and struck consternation into the 
 Coalition ranks. It was promptly and universally 
 repudiated ; but the white flag had been exposed, and 
 voice after voice has now been raised on the Liberal 
 side, pleading for a Referendum or a General Election 
 before the Bill passed, for a full discussion in the 
 Commons, or for some kind of compromise with the 
 Protestant North. Mr Redmond, however, is inexor- 
 able, and the Prime Minister's answer to the Covenant 
 and to the Liverpool and Glasgow demonstrations 
 is to declare in Fife that he meant to hold on to 
 the bitter end. So be it ; but no one can say after 
 the signing of the Covenant that Ministers have not 
 been warned. 
 
 The Belfast and Liverpool demonstrations were in- 
 deed the most remarkable that I have ever witnessed. 
 They transcended ordinary political meetings, because 
 behind them loomed the possibility of something sterner 
 than politics. But they have been already too well 
 and too recently described for me to attempt the task. 
 Amongst the shouting of those vast multitudes both 
 Liberal and Unionist observers 
 
 " have heard afar 
 ancestral voices prophesying war." 
 
 The question of the moral validity of resistance to con- 
 stituted authority has been made the text for many 
 sermons preached by our political opponents of late. 
 These allocutions do not come with any particular 
 grace from their authors. The Liberal Party claims
 
 112 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 descent from the Whigs, however few individual 
 \A^higs it still retains. Is it claimed that Pym and 
 Hampden were wrong in lifting up their hands against 
 the Lord's annointed, or that the present Cabinet 
 would have sent the authors of the Glorious Revolu- 
 tion of 1688 to Tower Hill? Or, to come to more 
 recent times, was IMr Chamberlain wrong in threaten- 
 ing to march 100,000 men from Birmingham to London 
 when the Reform Bill of 1884 was in jeopardy, and 
 was Mr Gladstone culpable in supporting that threat ? 
 " I am sorry to say," said Mr Gladstone, '• that if no 
 instructions had ever been addressed in political crises 
 to the people of this country, except to remember 
 to hate violence and love order and exercise patience, 
 the liberty of this country would never have been 
 attained." At a still more recent date was Mr Lloyd 
 George wrong when he organised a national movement 
 in AVales to resist the provisions of the Education Act 
 of 1902 ? Again, to take the argument a stage further, 
 is everybody who has written or spoken in extenua- 
 tion of any of these movements a traitor who should 
 be visited with the severest penalties of the law ? It 
 is sufficient to state these questions to show that our 
 opponents least of all have the right to represent them- 
 selves as the unbending advocates of passive obedience 
 under all circumstances. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that in these historic 
 instances judgment must depend on the circumstances 
 of the particular case, and it is in this spirit that 
 historians of all schools of thought have pronounced 
 upon those great popular or dynastic movements 
 which have so often changed the complexion of 
 })()litical ad'airs in this country. Much must depend 
 upon the nature of the grievance and on the volume of 
 support which lies behind it : much also must depend
 
 THE HOME RULE BILL 113 
 
 on the character of the authority which claims to 
 exercise the repressive powers of the law. Indeed, it 
 is on this class of fact that the issue itself, not less 
 than the judgment on it, depends. Movements against 
 which no Gov^ernment can stand do not organise them- 
 selves without due cause ; nor need any authority 
 which has real justification, and the confidence of the 
 country behind it, fear that the great bulk of the 
 inhabitants of these islands would withhold support 
 from the maintenance of law and order. The trouble 
 of the Coalition and the Cabinet is that, like the 
 administration of James II., it can stand neither of 
 these tests, and will therefore, like that monarch, prefer 
 abdication to battle. The justice of the Ulster claim 
 is too manifest, the strength of the Ulster movement 
 is too great, and popular sympathy with it here too 
 general, to allow a British army to march on Belfast 
 to subvert the ancient liberties of fellow citizens. 
 But this much I will say, that if the attempt were 
 made it would fail, for the same reasons which defeated 
 the resistance to William III. — the lack of moral 
 authority on the part of the Government, and of 
 popular support on the part of the people. If the 
 men of Ulster are wrong, the authors of the glorious 
 Revolution were wrong also ; but if the Whigs were 
 right, then Ulster is justified by their example. If 
 Ministers desire to shoot Loyalists let them at least 
 ask the electorate whether it will give them permission 
 to do so. If they shoot first, and ask leave afterwards, 
 the blood of the slain will cry out from the dust, 
 and a vengeance will be taken upon them unexampled 
 in modern political history. Their high places will 
 know them no more in this generation. Let them 
 pause and reflect, before it be too late, whether Con- 
 stitutional government is not better than the single-
 
 114 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 chamber despotism of a Cabinet, temporary defeat than 
 pohtical annihihition, and even popular disapproval of 
 policies honestly held, than the vengeance which waits 
 for those who try and carry, by dishonest and violent 
 means, schemes which the nation loathes. The choice 
 between peace or war is in their hands, not in ours, 
 and on their shoulders must the consequences rest.
 
 VI 
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTERS 
 
 I AM here, at your request, to address you on the 
 day which you and your forefathers have been long 
 accustomed to celebrate as the anniversary of the most 
 critical and glorious battle in your history. Two 
 centuries and a quarter ago an Irish Parliament sitting 
 at Dublin menaced the liberty of your ancestors, con- 
 fiscated their property, and proscribed their lives. For 
 twelve months they were left by England, a small but 
 stubborn minority, to work out their own salvation, 
 and offer what resistance their resources afforded to the 
 designs of their hereditary enemies. Their country was 
 laid waste ; their cattle were destroyed ; their families 
 were brutally massacred ; no act of oppression or of 
 brutality was omitted which could try the patience, or 
 excite the resentment, of a high-spirited race. The 
 twelve months which witnessed the siege of Enniskillen, 
 and the investment of Londonderry, the battle of 
 Newtown Butler, and the engagement of the Boyne, 
 taught the world that the Protestants of Ulster were 
 men who confronted death with tranquillity in the twin 
 causes of liberty and religion. That heroic struggle 
 bequeathed to the history of Ireland many memories 
 which will never be forgotten, of Tyrconnel, the 
 
 ^ A speech delivered in Belfast on July 12, 1912. 
 115
 
 116 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 intriguer ; of Lundy, the traitor ; of Walker, who 
 breathed his own spiritual courage into the hearts of 
 dying men ; and, finally, of William, the King, tireless 
 in exertion, indomitable of purpose, whose immortal 
 triumph we commemorate to-day. 
 
 History affords great memories to great nations, and 
 you do well to look to your past alike for inspiration 
 and for hope. Never in the history of Ulster has your 
 annual celebration been more opportune. Never has it 
 been more necessary to recall the lessons of past years 
 than in the crisis which confronts the descendants of 
 those who perished from famine and disease behind the 
 ramparts of Londonderry, or who rendered up their 
 lives in conquering the fords of the Boyne. Those who 
 went before you bequeathed these lessons above all 
 others, that it is the cause that counts and not the 
 consequences ; that brave men look at all times to their 
 own resolution, but most of all when faced by perils in 
 which they can descry no immediate hope. Your 
 position is indeed to-day less desperate than that of 
 your ancestors seemed ; but it is none the less one 
 which demands the same qualities of gravity, resolution, 
 and self-reliance as they exhibited upon so large a 
 stage. 
 
 Let us shortly recall the position in which you find 
 yourselves. You compose a section of the community 
 of which even your opponents have never denied that 
 it is contented, prosperous, law-abiding, and loyal. You 
 have, it is true, avoided the method of calling attention 
 to your grievances which for generations has distin- 
 guished your political opponents : you have maimed no 
 dumb animal ; you have shot no woman ; you have 
 stabbed no Sunday-school child. Your claims, there- ^ 
 fore, upon tlie present Government are obviously small ( 
 in comparison with those of the men who dictate Mr
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTER 117 
 
 Asquith's policy. And yet, as compared with them, 
 you ask very little. You only ask to be allowed to sit, 
 as heretofore, in a Parliament which, amid all the 
 vicissitudes of party politics, has not failed to retain 
 your confidence. You only ask that you may be per- 
 mitted still to enjoy the same rights, and still be bound 
 by the same obligations, which are possessed and dis- 
 charged by every citizen of these islands. A foreigner, 
 ignorant of the inner secrets of our domestic politics, 
 would not and could not believe that any great nation 
 would close its ears to an appeal couched in such 
 language and proceeding from such citizens. Powerful 
 sovereigns have in the past waged bloody wars for the 
 retention of old provinces, or for the conquest of new 
 territory. But history records no instance of a State 
 which has drawn the sword to extrude from its polity, 
 a loyal, an industrious, and a wealthy population. 
 Home Rule, in fact, considered in relation to its 
 present sponsors, is the most brazen paradox of 
 modern politics. 
 
 What is the explanation of that paradox ? It is 
 eloquent in its simple infamy. The Irish Nationalist 
 Party controls eighty votes in the House of Commons. 
 Whenever in the last twenty-five years the Liberal 
 Party has required those votes as the condition of office 
 it has supported Home Rule ; whenever it has been 
 strong enough to retain office without those votes it has 
 repudiated Home Rule. The whole history of Mr 
 Asquith proves that he cares nothing now, and never 
 has cared, on their merits for the proposals which 
 would, as you are satisfied, consummate your ruin. 
 He agreed with Mr Gladstone when Mr Gladstone 
 denounced Home Rule ; he agreed with JNIr Gladstone 
 when Mr Gladstone adopted Home Rule ; he agreed 
 with Lord Rosebery when Lord Rosebery repudiated
 
 118 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Home Rule ; and he repudiated Lord Rosebery when 
 he himself in his turn required the eighty votes which 
 had tempted the ambition, and seduced the conscience, 
 of Mr Gladstone. From first to last you in Ulster 
 have been the pawns in a game played by others ; your 
 case has never been considered on its own merits ; you 
 are the cheap coinage with which Mr Asquith pays Mr 
 Redmond for services rendered. The Government 
 were defeated in the Budget Election. If the repre- 
 sentatives of Ireland had given an honest vote upon 
 proposals admitted by themselves to be disastrous to 
 your country, Mr Asquith and his associates would 
 have perished in the Debate on the Address. The 
 Prime Minister thereupon made a bargain, shameful in 
 its profligacy, with your Nationalist opponents. He 
 undertook that if the Nationalist Party would give him 
 the appearance of victory at the polls by voting for the 
 Budget, he on his part would pay them, price for price, 
 by cheating the constituencies of their right to decide 
 Home Rule. 
 
 The Budget filled one balance of the scale ; Ulster 
 was flung into the other. But even a bargain so 
 complete in its abandonment failed to supply the con- 
 spirators with absolute security. The House of Lords 
 still remained, able, in the last resort, to appeal to those 
 constituencies which on two previous occasions had 
 destroyed two previous Home Rule Bills. It became, 
 therefore, necessary, to complete their machinations, 
 that the House of I^ords should be destroyed flrstly by 
 a campaign of class-hatred in the constituencies un- 
 exampled in a Christian country, and of which we are 
 still reaping the industrial fruits ; and secondly, by an 
 outrage of incredible vileness upon the Koyal Preroga- 
 tive. They succeeded for the moment in efl'ccting their 
 purpose ; and the same men invite Ulster now, over the
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTER 119 
 
 ruins of an ancient Constitution, to consent in despair 
 to the terms of their own destruction. Such are the 
 facts. The position would be more tolerable if they 
 were openly avowed, but the last element of exaspera- 
 tion, to a nation tired of trickery, is supplied by the 
 hypocrisy with which the true motive is concealed. 
 We are told of the convictions of the Government 
 and, Heaven help us ! of their principles ; we are 
 told of their belief in the reconciling influence of 
 time ; we are invited to believe that the Nationalists 
 are telling the truth to-day, although that belief 
 involves the conclusion that they have been lying for 
 twenty years. 
 
 1 believe that you in Ulster are as weary as I am of 
 the sham, and the folly, and the unreality, of our present 
 Parliamentary discussions. We have spent days, and 
 we shall spend weeks, in discussing with the most 
 minute detail a Bill which you know, and I know, and 
 Mr Asquith knows, will never become operative in 
 Ulster. But our discussions have been varied by at 
 least one vital debate. We discussed for three days 
 whether Ulster should be included in, or excluded from 
 the new constitution. On the part of the Government 
 the discussion was a trap. They professed that if 
 Ulster formally demanded exclusion as the condition of 
 a treaty of peace, such a demand would deserve and 
 receive the consideration of the Government. Yes, but 
 consideration was all that they had to give ; consent 
 was out of their power : for Mr Redmond had openly 
 avowed that he would never accept a measure of Home 
 Rule from the ambit of which the Northern Provinces 
 were excluded. What indeed has Home Rule to oiFer to 
 him and his friends with no one to tax and no one to per- 
 secute ? Even this debate, therefore, lacked reality and 
 honesty, for here, too, the tactical explanation was appar-
 
 120 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 ent. The Government hoped that Ulster would decline 
 the amendment, in order that the Coalition might protest 
 to the constituencies : " We offered Ulster exclusion, 
 and Ulster refused exclusion : where is the grievance of 
 Ulster ? where her justification for armed revolt ? " 
 This plot was frustrated by the vigilance of your leaders, 
 and the Government now openly boast that Ulster, 
 either willingly or unwillingly, shall send representatives 
 to, and be governed by, a Home Rule Parliament. Mr 
 Churchill, indeed, and Sir Edward Grey, have indicated 
 rather than explained a vague alternative policy. They 
 hinted of new schemes which might become necessary 
 if Ulster persisted in her opposition. Yet so con- 
 temptuously did both these JNIinisters treat Ulster 
 that neither of them thought it worth while to come 
 to the House of Commons to explaih his utterances 
 on any one of the three days on which this issue was 
 debated. 
 
 It is convenient, before we anticipate the ultimate 
 situation, to answer shortly a question which is con- 
 tinually asked. You are asked why you distrust the 
 Nationalist Members, and why you are so certain that 
 the establishment of a Home Rule Parliament would 
 be disastrous both to Ulster and the Empire. You 
 answer, that it is because you know these men ; it is 
 because you have studied their history ; it is because 
 you choose rather to believe them over a sustained 
 period, where they had every inducement to speak 
 the truth, than over a limited period in which they 
 had every inducement to deceive ; it is because you 
 know that the spirit of ascendency, of sacerdotalism, 
 and of persecution, is as active and virulent in their 
 ranks as it was active and virulent when your fore- 
 fathers met and drove theirs in rout at the Battle of the 
 Boyne ; it is because you know that they are in their
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTER 121 
 
 hearts inexorably committed to the poUcy of complete 
 separation from England. You do not desire, and you 
 do not intend, to take part under such auspices and 
 with such rulers in an interregnum of limited self- 
 government, which is only valued because it will pre- 
 pare the way for a final severance. Nor are we im- 
 pressed when we hear English Liberals inviting us to 
 reflect upon the influence of conciliation, or the prospect 
 that responsibility will eradicate the inherited passions 
 of so many centuries. To them you make three 
 answers. You tell them first that you live in this 
 country and that they do not. You tell them, further, 
 that you will suffer, not they, you and your wives and 
 children, if you are right and they are wrong ; and you 
 tell them finally, that they and their reassurances are 
 suspect, for they proceed from men who have made 
 themselves partners in the guilty conspiracy of which I 
 have already traced the history. Let the supporters of 
 Welsh Disestablishment recommend their cause, and 
 exhibit their zeal, by personal and not by vicarious 
 sacrifices. Let the Labour Party carry the Osborne 
 Judgment Bill (if they can) upon its merits, and not by 
 throwing in Ulster as a makeweight. For myself, I 
 have no doubt either of the sincerity or of the conclus- 
 iveness of this reply. If I were an Ulster Protestant I 
 would rather be ruled from Constantinople, by the 
 Sultan of Turkey, than by a politician like IVlr Devlin, 
 who, if he were as effective as he is defamatory, or as 
 resourceful as he is malignant, would be a considerable 
 demagogue. Hatred of Ulster breathes in every one of 
 his speeches, a hatred which explains, if it does not 
 excuse, the scandalous inventions with which he recently 
 slandered Mr Clark, a Belfast citizen, who has brought 
 as much honour to Belfast as INIr Devlin has brought 
 malice. The inclusion in an Irish Executive of such a
 
 122 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 man would be a sufficient exposure of its spirit, its 
 character, and its motives. 
 
 What, then, is the poHcy of Ulster ? You have 
 reiterated twice and thrice your solemn warning, that 
 under no circumstances, and under the stress of no 
 combination, will you submit to Home Rule. The 
 Prime Minister is to speak next week in Dublin. I 
 challenge him on behalf of the Unionist Party to declare, 
 if he can and if he knows it, the policy with which the 
 Government will meet your resistance. Let him, how- 
 ever, devote himself to the only assumption which has 
 any correspondence with the facts — the assumption, 
 namely, that you will never submit. We do not desire 
 to be wearied once again with those familiar and sonorous 
 eulogies of the quality of conciliation; still less do we 
 desire the old recital of worthless paper safeguards. 
 We ask a simple question — With what policy is the 
 Government prepared to meet the contingency that 
 Ulster will in fact do what every competent observer 
 knows that Ulster will do ? 1 do not think he will give 
 an answer. I think he will drift, and still drift, till the 
 rapids are reached, till the wrong, and it may be the 
 tragedy, are consummated. Your course, at any rate, 
 is clear, and it becomes you from now henceforth to 
 prepare silently, steadfastly, and constantly for the 
 gravest crisis which has tested the men of your race 
 for more than two centuries. 
 
 Above all, I would most earnestly press upon every 
 man who listens to me the vital necessity of maintain- 
 ing that impression of self-restraint and reserve force 
 which has already so powerfully and so favourably 
 influenced opinion in the English constituencies. Let 
 there be no premature or isolated appeal to force. It 
 is true that you have been provoked by a foul and 
 ferocious attack upon children. But you will not let
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTER 123 
 
 it be truly said that you have retaliated upon Roman 
 Catholic citizens of Belfast, inferior to yourselves in 
 numbers and in organisation. You will not lose ; you 
 will gain immeasurably by the exhibition of a com- 
 posure which is in harmony with the example of your 
 forefathers and your own former practice. And when 
 the hour comes, as it has come to others, when you are 
 called upon to put ev^erything you hold dear to the 
 hazard, you will go forward to face that future, which 
 the inscrutable purpose of the Almighty has in store 
 for you, with the quiet confidence of men who have 
 patiently endured, until endurance became treason to 
 their race. 
 
 You are sometimes asked whether you propose to 
 resist the English Army. I reply that even if this 
 Government had the wickedness (which I do not doubt) 
 it is wholly lacking in the nerve required to give an 
 order, which in my deliberate judgment would shatter 
 for years the civilisation of these islands. An Army 
 which the Nationalist Party has bespattered with coarse 
 and cowardly insults, and whose flag it has outraged, 
 will not be ordered by this or any other Government 
 to fire upon a loyal community which rejoices in the 
 records of their valour and does homage to the colours 
 under which so much glory has been won. If then, as 
 I confidently predict to you, the Army cannot be ordered 
 to drive you from the Empire, the prospect is that you 
 will be cast out from Parliament by the decision of 
 a Parliament which is everywhere repudiated by the 
 constituencies. It may be within their competence 
 (however mad and wicked the act) so to cast you out, 
 but when that is done their right is at least exhausted : 
 they have no claim, either legal or moral, to determine 
 the Government under which you shall live, or to pre- 
 scribe the masters of your new fortunes. It will then
 
 124 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 be for the moonlighters and the cattle-maimers to 
 conquer Ulster themselves, and it will be for you to show 
 whether you are worse men or your enemies better 
 men than the forefathers of you both. But I note with 
 satisfaction that you are preparing yourselves by the 
 practice of exercises, and the submission to discipline, 
 for the struggle which is not unlikely to test your 
 determination. The Nationalists are determined to rule 
 you. You are determined that you will never be ruled 
 by them. A collision of wills so sharp may well defy 
 the resources of a peaceful solution. Should these fail, 
 you will, in my judgment, be entitled to forget the 
 community which has driven you forth, and to combine 
 in opposition to the community which claims your 
 allegiance as the fruit of a corrupt and abominable bar- 
 gain. You will have regained the free discretion of free 
 men. And, I say here, speaking as I believe under our 
 present representative system on behalf of the majority 
 of the English constituencies, that in that dark hour of 
 your trial, should it unhappily come, you will not lack 
 the active support of thousands in England who realise 
 that your liberties are being subverted by revolutionary 
 means, and that those who acquiesce in the conse- 
 quences of revolution to others will in their turn become 
 the victims of revolution. 
 
 1 do not underrate the gravity of this statement ; still 
 less do I underrate the responsibility which I under- 
 take in making it. I and my friends have considered 
 the situation deeply. I know not whether agreement 
 would be complete among us upon the rights and duties 
 of Ulster, had a specific appeal been made to the con- 
 stituencies, under circumstances really enabling them 
 to pronounce upon tliis Bill. But on this we are all of 
 us agreed, that the crisis has called into existence one 
 of those supreme issues of conscience amid which tlie
 
 THE POSITION OF ULSTER 125 
 
 ordinary landmarks of permissible resistance to technical 
 law are submerged. We shall not shrink from the con- 
 sequences of this view, not though the whole fabric of 
 the Commonwealth be convulsed, and we shall tread 
 with you the path of your destiny knowing that, whether 
 it leads to freedom or to disaster, it is the only road 
 which does not lead to dishonour.
 
 VII 
 
 CONSERVATISM AND THE PRINCIPLE 
 OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 The General Election of 1906 defeated a Conservative 
 Government, but began a revival of Conservatism. It 
 is a commonplace of the history of ideas that principles 
 which men take for granted and habitually practice in 
 everyday life easily slip out of conscious recognition, 
 and may only regain it when a revolution comes to 
 challenge habit and to force men to re - think the 
 theoretical basis of their conduct. Knowledge, too, is 
 largely a consciousness of differences. Twenty years of 
 a nearly continuous Conservative domination did much 
 prior to 1906 to obliterate from the public mind what 
 a Radical politician was really like, and thereby also to 
 obscure the distinctive features of Conservatism. We 
 have now for some years had a Radical Government in 
 power, and the result undoubtedly is to give many 
 people a much clearer idea than they had before why 
 they are not Radicals and why tliey are Conservatives. 
 There are, moreover, special reasons why the Conserva- 
 tive debacle of 1906 has had a more than usually 
 illuminating effect in this direction, and tlierefore in 
 the following pages I propose to draw freely from the 
 record of the most recent years to illustrate and prove 
 some very old principles of politics. 
 
 126
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 127 
 
 First and foremost, people are beginning to recollect 
 how distinct and essential a thing is the art of govern- 
 ment. The Socialist and I^abour politician may imagine 
 that the whole art of government is simply the science 
 of economics, and that when the laws of supply and 
 demand have been sufficiently investigated the sole 
 function of a Government will be to keep a schedule 
 of prices and wages, life itself being regulated by a 
 series of sliding scales ; a modern Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer may regard the real work of the Treasury, 
 the greatest and most technical of all government de- 
 partments, as being merely the management of political 
 audiences ; a coalition Cabinet may easily confuse 
 governing with continuance in office ; academic and 
 visionary minds tend to assume that the art is complete 
 when a sufficient number of high ideals and progressive 
 theories have been put into words. But the true art 
 of government is much more than any of these things. 
 National defence ; law, justice, police ; the regulation 
 of trade as it is and not merely as it ought to be ; the 
 tremendous issues of business and life which are involved 
 in national finance ; the civil service, and its preservation 
 from corruption and inefficiency ; religion, art, and 
 public morals ; the freedom of thought and speech of 
 individual citizens ; parliamentary institutions ; all these 
 things are the subject matter of the art of government. 
 The practice of the art calls for the exercise in some or 
 other member of the body politic of every quality that 
 belongs to the art of the practical management of men 
 and affairs in the private concerns of life ; but as in 
 political government the men concerned are more 
 numerous, being the whole nation, and the affairs are 
 greater, so the requisite qualities are more indispensable. 
 As, moreover, the government of men in multitudes is 
 more complicated than the government of men singly.
 
 128 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 and needs a mechanism of government which itself 
 creates fresh compUcations, so the rules and traditions 
 drawn from the past experience of governments need 
 to be more carefully observed and more deeply pondered 
 than the rules and traditions of the simpler and more 
 direct problems of private life. Of one thing it is 
 needful to be sure : the art of government is not an 
 easy thing ; it is a splendid art, promising to its suc- 
 cessful professors great achievements and great rewards, 
 but it is also a grave and difficult art, easily capable of 
 perversion to base uses, and when so perverted fruitful 
 of odious and demoralising results. 
 
 Democracy is an attempt to weld civil society into 
 a whole. Unity, harmony, co-operation — these are the 
 characteristic ideals of free government ; faction, class 
 war, disorder, o-rao-t? — these are its characteristic vices. 
 The autocracy of Napoleon, in logic, was a strange 
 child of the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
 which had so lately destroyed the most venerable 
 absolutism in Europe ; in fact, it was quite naturally 
 born of the cohabitation of democracy and faction. 
 It was necessary to crush freedom in order that a nation, 
 no longer stifled by the war of party, might breathe the 
 air and live. The Napoleonic era, in its origin at least, 
 was the re-making of a nation, and the ideal upon 
 which Napoleon fixed his eyes was that of a people 
 at peace within itself; France did not submit to a 
 dictatorship through being blinded by the glamour of 
 mihtary success, but through disgust at the civil war 
 of rival adventurers or rival ideologues. To promote 
 harmony among classes is the first duty of a democratic 
 statesman. In a harmonious state great reforms can 
 mosteasilybe accoinplislicd, privilegescan be surrendered 
 without bitterness, and experiments made with the 
 least risk of disaster.
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 129 
 
 Ten years ago, such observations and historical 
 parallels might have been treated as irrelevant 
 platitudes. To-day I venture to think they have a 
 practical bearing and reality. My present purpose, 
 therefore, is to examine the recent policy of the present 
 Administration, to test it in the light of the true 
 principles of the art of government, and to inquire 
 what lessons the test affords for the guidance of 
 Conservatism in the choice of its own policy in 
 opposition or in office. 
 
 Four policies of first-rate importance have been put 
 into force since the change of Government in 1905, in 
 respect of the several matters of Temperance, Finance, 
 Education, and Parliamentary Government. Each of 
 these policies has been marked by the same spirit of 
 class warfare and faction which, so long as it con- 
 trols Radicalism, will always provide Conservatives with 
 good reasons for being Conservatives. And to-day 
 we are threatened with a fifth and a sixth by which 
 violent civil dissensions are to be provoked in Ireland, 
 and an attempt is to be made by the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer to inoculate the country districts with 
 some new variant of the Gospel of Limehouse. 
 
 No one has ever supposed that a handful of temper- 
 ance reformers, however earnest, could have furnished 
 the influence needed to force a contentious Licensing 
 Bill into the King's Speech and through the House of 
 Commons, as was done in 1908. The real driving 
 power which made that ill-fated measure so prominent 
 in the official programme of the Liberal Party was the 
 determination of the forces of faction to chastise a 
 great trade, the members of which voted against the 
 Liberal Party and supported its opponents. The phrases 
 used in that conflict were of the customary Liberal 
 character : the liquor trade was a criminal organisation ; 
 
 9
 
 130 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 it battened on the degradation of the people; every piibHc- 
 house was a Conservative committee-room ; the nation 
 must master the trade, or the trade would master the 
 nation. Such phrases, scattered with variations from 
 hundreds of platforms in the picturesque atmosphere of 
 political conflict, leave no doubt in the minds of all 
 who look back, upon the true nature of the principle of 
 government at the base of the policy so advocated. It 
 was not the principle of a united nation ; it was the 
 true principle of faction — one part of the nation prosti- 
 tuting the control of government against another part. 
 The recent practice of Radicalism has indeed reversed 
 the imaginary Irishman's saying, and requires that a 
 Government must always be against some one. 
 
 Temperance reform, after all, is a serious and delicate 
 problem of practical statesmanship. The national evil 
 of intemperance is great, but the difficulties of imposing 
 virtue and suppressing vice by Act of Parliament are 
 also great. It would have been easy for the Govern- 
 ment to have approached the problem in a national 
 spirit, seeking no enemy to injure, but appealing to all, 
 in a moderate sense, to help its solution. If what to 
 many of us seemed a false view of the mischief dictated 
 a plan of reform requiring great sacrifices of the brewing 
 industry, those sacrifices might have been asked as 
 sacrifices on behalf of national needs, and not exacted 
 as penalties from a detected criminal, or as spoils of 
 war from a defeated enemy. 
 
 That principles of factious hostility have advantages 
 for the immediate and practical purpose of maintain- 
 ing oneself in office may no doubt be conceded. 
 Nothing inspires a political party so much for a short 
 time as the idea that it is being led against the enemy. 
 It was, therefore, from one point of view, a stroke of 
 genius to appeal direct to party spirit as a means of
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 131 
 
 forcing upon the country an otherwise unpopular hcens- 
 ing reform. The Liberal caucus impressed upon its 
 followers the idea that the Bill was a fight against some 
 one— the enemy of their party ; by an adroit confusion of 
 the two capacities in which every politician is bound to 
 act — the public capacity of the politician as such, in 
 which he is a fair target for the arrows of party warfare, 
 and the private capacity in which, as trader, property- 
 owner, or professional man, his interests should be the 
 impartial concern of all parties — Mr Lloyd George and 
 his friends were able to appeal to all the loyalty and 
 enthusiasm of their followers, as a party, to join in the 
 hue and cry after the men who, as traders, brewed ale, 
 and, as citizens, voted Tory. That these tactics ulti- 
 mately failed, and failed disastrously, so far as licensing 
 was concerned, is a fact upon which I shall make a 
 few comments later. For the present my object is to 
 demonstrate the essential particulars in which recent 
 Radical policy has sinned, and continues to sin, against 
 the first principles of the art of government. 
 
 As a matter of history, I suspect that the earlier 
 attempt of the Ministry to legislate on education was 
 the first step on the downward course. There is no 
 space here to contrast at length the educational views 
 expressed by the leaders of the Liberal Party, before 
 and upon their assumption of office in 1905, with the 
 Bill which political exigencies forced them to introduce, 
 when they met Parliament a few months later. The 
 views for the most part were moderate, and pointed 
 naturally to a solution of the religious controversy 
 which, while not satisfying extremists, would still 
 have passed the House of Lords and so have obviated 
 the first of the disputes between the two Houses. The 
 appointment, in particular, of a moderate and cultivated 
 Nonconformist in the person of Mr Birrell to the
 
 132 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Education Office, with a recent record of public declara- 
 tions on education policy wholly at variance with the 
 views of his extremist allies,^ augured well for the 
 prospects of an educational settlement. But it was 
 not to be. The new tacticians of the Cabinet, we may 
 be sure, pressed the moderate section with some practical 
 questions. Did they realise the temper of the party ? 
 Did they wish to rely upon their foes or their friends ? 
 Did they think that a Bill recognising the equality of 
 all denominations stood the faintest chance from a 
 majority fresh from the polls and pledged to give a 
 preference to political Nonconformity ? That Mr Birrell 
 and his allies in the Cabinet made no satisfactory 
 answer to these questions is shown both by the Bill 
 which that reluctant politician finally recommended to 
 the House of Commons, and by the fact that Mr Lloyd 
 George was permitted in his speech on the second 
 reading to quote Gambetta's famous phrase — Clericalism 
 is the enemy. So the game began ; henceforth each 
 Ijiberal Bill was to be a blow at some one, and legisla- 
 tion became a sort of political witch finding, of which 
 apparently the end is not yet. The Church and her 
 schools in the present case were held up to the odium 
 of Radicals ; the squire and parson were represented as 
 lurking in the last refuges of feudalism, the Church 
 schools, which must be torn down and destroyed before 
 the villages of England could be made really Radical ; 
 the united enthusiasm of the Radical Party was called 
 upon to use educational legislation as a weapon to 
 attack their political opponents and reward their 
 political friends. 
 
 Both of these efforts of faction failed. Tlie Govern- 
 
 1 I refrr in parliciilar to Mr BirrcH's article in tlir hulepcndenl 
 /it'wVw for October 19<''^ in which the principle of "parent's rights" 
 was emphatically advocated.
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 133 
 
 ment made a mistake in the choice of the enemy. The 
 brewing trade and the Denominational schools alike 
 were found to possess too much popular support, and 
 to be too well organised, to be incapable of effective 
 defence. But the Liberal Party learnt very little 
 statesmanship from its failure. Rather, like the 
 Jacobins, their leaders complained that the revolution 
 had not gone far enough, though, unlike the Jacobins, 
 they cast about with some adroitness for a better outlet 
 for the onrush of the stream. I have traced elsewhere ^ 
 the reversal of Liberal policy in the critical months 
 after the failure of the Licensing Bill of 1908. In the 
 immediate connection the importance of the change lay 
 in the more skilful judgment shown in the choice of the 
 enemy to be attacked. It was necessary to find some 
 class unorganised and possessing no great measure of 
 general popularity, at any rate in those districts where 
 most votes are to be found. It was equally necessary to 
 call some forces, wider in their range than the narrow 
 section of temperance reformers or political Noncon- 
 formists, to aid the regular army of partisan Liberalism. 
 The required enemy was found in the landlords ; the 
 required support in the advanced social reformer and 
 his allied hosts, consisting in the main of the predatory 
 classes and the submerged part of the population. 
 
 In the Budget campaign of 1 909 the essential feature 
 of Liberal policy which I am describing reached its full 
 development. The weapon itself, which Liberalism 
 wielded in the war of classes, was simpler and more 
 swiftly grasped by the people than previous ones ; to 
 mulct a foe in damages is one of the earliest instincts 
 of civilised man, and therefore the taxation of political 
 opponents required no elaborate explanation. The 
 chief exponents of the measure supplied by their 
 
 ^ Outlook, May 27, 1911.
 
 134 UNIONIST rOLICY 
 
 rhetoric the broad colour effects needed to make the 
 cold print of the Bill visible from the farthest point of 
 the political horizon. When JMr Lloyd George had 
 described at Limehouse the Duke of Westminster as 
 a blackmailer, and at Cardiff the Marquess of Bute 
 as a robber, and had appealed to all tradesmen, from 
 large milliners to small tailors, to drag from the coffers 
 of their landlords the ill-gotten gains they contained, 
 there could be little doubt how the Budget campaign 
 would develop among the rank and file of the party. 
 Those of us who fought the issue in the country soon 
 found that the platform and pamphlet cries against 
 us had small sound of finance about them, and were 
 the mere reverberating echoes of Mr Lloyd George's 
 denunciation of rich landlords. 
 
 The final stage in the progress of the new tacticians 
 was disclosed in the constitutional policy of the Govern- 
 ment. That an ancient and a partial institution like 
 the House of Lords was fair game for political vendetta 
 I should be the last to deny, and a vigorous campaign 
 directed to its reconstitution on a basis more conform- 
 able to adv^anced democratic theories would have been 
 intelligible. But the actual campaign was not consti- 
 tutional discussion. It degenerated into the hunting 
 of a quarry. Individual peers were vilified for purely 
 personal reasons; the policy of the House of Lords in 
 its actual operation was little analysed or discussed ; 
 the idea put before the country was rather that of a 
 body of rich and privileged persons to be struck at as 
 an enemy. The purely factious side of the issue was, 
 indeed, everywhere obtruded, and every line of the 
 appeals made by Liberal leaders to their followers was 
 frankly based upon the political necessities of the I^iberal 
 Party and its duty to destroy an institution which 
 interfered with the victorious progress of the party.
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 135 
 
 These four examples of the perversion of party 
 government may do something to recall to the national 
 mind one of the elementary principles of the art of 
 government, and so good may yet come out of evil. 
 Even if it be found that the effect of the examples so 
 set in high places is to debauch the public taste, it 
 remains for the Conservative Party to keep its own 
 honour unsullied, and stand firm for the old tradition. 
 Sooner or later, that tradition is bound to come by its 
 own. It is our task to preach to the people in and out 
 of season the absolute need of internal unity ; to establish, 
 as has been pointed out at greater length in the Essay 
 on Social Reform, that social and economic reform can 
 only come as an effort of the nation on behalf of itself, 
 and not as a blow dealt by one part of the nation against 
 another ; to refuse resolutely to profit in our turn by 
 retaliatory measures, for which, after all, politics seldom 
 fail to provide sufficient occasion. We may very likely 
 have to ask people for sacrifices, but we shall do so on 
 the old principle of taxation that a man's property 
 rightfully belongs to him, and that he pays taxes out 
 of it to the State on national grounds ; we shall not tell 
 property-owners that their property is stolen goods, and 
 that anything we leave them after the tax is paid is 
 a generous concession to them ; we shall not seek to 
 stimulate our party hosts by a cry which calls them 
 to menace the private interests of their political oppo- 
 nents, as though to do so were a mere incident of the 
 ordinary function of recording a vote for the party at 
 the polling booth. 
 
 Another function which Conservatives are urgently 
 required to undertake is the defence of the institutions of 
 the country. There is, perhaps, no aspect of Conserva- 
 tism which so faded from conscious recognition during the 
 years of Conservative rule as that ancient principle that
 
 136 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 national institutions should be used and not abused, 
 should be respected and not despised, should be altered 
 only for good cause and as a natural development of 
 the past. Nobody thought about what everyone was 
 then doing. The advent of Radicalism to power has 
 stirred the spirit of old controversies, and roused us all 
 to reahse the constitutional mischief of which factious 
 irresponsibility can be capable. The Parliament Bill 
 itself, though very conspicuous, is not more significant 
 than some other instances of the attack on national 
 institutions. Perhaps the most illuminating of all is 
 the treatment by the Liberal Party of the local 
 authorities. One would have thought that our system 
 of local government, based, as it is, upon very modern 
 democratic theory, and bound up with a great part of 
 fairly recent Liberal policy, would have been regarded 
 as more or less sacrosanct by even the most advanced 
 Liberals. Indeed, in the platform campaign which 
 followed the Education Act of 1902 and in the dis- 
 cussions of the Education Bill of 1906, the inviolability 
 of a local authority was enthroned by Liberals on a 
 serene height far above the claims of practical politics. 
 From those days, when Parliament was told that it must 
 not say " shall " to a local authority, to the present policy 
 of "gingering" local authorities through the coercive 
 discretionary powers of bureaucratic central departments 
 is the farthest of far cries. Nothing, in fact, is more 
 remarkable than the complete reversal of the attitude 
 which before and after 1902 sought to shield local 
 authorities from all kind of central interference, which 
 denounced the abolition of school boards as an outrage 
 upon local liberties, and organised a revolt against the 
 hiw by local authorities in Wales in obedience to a 
 perverted theory of tlie British Constitution. 
 
 The explanation, indeed, is simple. These impeccable
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 municipalities were suddenly found wanting as allies of 
 Liberal legislation. In particular, some hasty and 
 rather ill-considered land legislation, having the laud- 
 able object of increasing the number of people living 
 on the land, was thrust upon the local authorities, 
 and their honest exercise of judgment and discretion in 
 its administration was received by Liberals with ill- 
 disguised resentment. There has followed a policy 
 bristling with inquiries, mandamus, and all the other 
 obsolete apparatus of departmental coercion. With the 
 contradiction of earlier principles involved it is unneces- 
 sary here to deal ; the phenomenon which Conservatives 
 should note and by which they should be warned is the 
 factious irresponsibility which assails a popular system of 
 local government directly it conflicts with party policy. 
 A similar illustration and warning is discernible in 
 the recent treatment of the House of Commons. In 
 eleven years of office Mr Balfour imposed a " guillotine " 
 closure on three Bills, and on each occasion he was 
 denounced with special warmth by the Liberal Opposi- 
 tion, which pledged itself, on its assumption of office, 
 to restore to the House the liberties of debate. Sir 
 H. Campbell-Bannerman stating that the " guillotine " 
 reduced discussion to a farce. Yet in the first three 
 years of the Liberal Cabinet of 1905 eleven Bills were 
 closured by guillotine, while the treatment meted out 
 to the Insurance Bill in its Committee stages became 
 such a public scandal that it has gone far to discredit the 
 whole measure. Here again I do not wish to dwell on 
 the mere inconsistency between pledge and performance ; 
 what finally matters is the fact that as soon as the tradi- 
 tional rights of the national institution, however fully 
 admitted by Liberals, became inconvenient to Liberal 
 Party policy, those rights were ruthlessly set aside : 
 " WE must get our Bills through " ; " the party demands
 
 138 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 that this Bill should be through the Commons by 
 August " ; " Mr Redmond insists that the Insurance 
 Bill should be through by Christmas " — and so forth : 
 the conversations of the tacticians among themselves 
 require no lively imagination. 
 
 Of the supreme instance of the Parliament Bill itself 
 I need say little, as the facts are both fresh and clear, 
 and I have already referred to them. " What the 
 party wants " is the only name for the drama. Mr 
 Arnold Bennett might use the subject to repeat the 
 success of his play, " What the Public Wants." The 
 wholly non-moral newspaper proprietor who, with a 
 pretence of public spirit and moral principle, unblush- 
 ingly seeks the meanest commercial profits, makes a 
 good dramatic parallel to a politician who jerrymanders 
 a constitution for a temporary party object. For 
 any inquiry as to what solution of the constitutional 
 crisis would produce the best constitution for the 
 country, the speeches of ministers may be searched in 
 vain ; even Sir Edward Grey, the " patriot " of the 
 party, vehemently contending for the maintenance of 
 a second chamber, found his strongest argument in the 
 plea that a single chamber policy spells death and 
 damnation for the Liberal Party ; whether it spells 
 salvation or damnation for the comitri/ is a problem 
 which Sir Edward Grey and his party have not troubled 
 to explore. Yet the institution so dealt with is the 
 oldest legislative assembly in the world, bound up with 
 the great events of English history, for centuries 
 honoured and trusted by the nation, and even to-day, 
 in this bitter controversy, supported by at least half 
 of it. 
 
 These instances of disrespect for national institutions 
 are so ol)vious, when the facts are realised, and so 
 utterly out of harmony with Conservative tradition,
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 139 
 
 that there is very little need to dwell upon the bearing 
 they have upon Conservative policy. The party has 
 shown, by its own dealing with the House of Lords 
 question, that it is capable of proposals at once con- 
 ciliatory and impartial. No one can suggest that the 
 drastic reforms of Lord Lansdowne's Bill, whatever their 
 merits or demerits, were conceived in any narrow spirit 
 of party tactics. Indeed, the whole proposals of the 
 Unionist Party, which, though in Opposition, was forced 
 by the peculiarity of the political situation to put forward 
 positive plans as a substitute for those of the Govern- 
 ment, were couched in the true spirit of Conservatism 
 — respect for the past, a desire to retain all that is best 
 in an old institution, a willingness to recognise the 
 changes required by modern sentiment, a determina- 
 tion to legislate for the whole nation and to place 
 national institutions on a firm and permanent basis. 
 
 The direct attack upon national institutions to which 
 I have been alluding is a scandal of a character never 
 likely to escape notice. Local authorities have always 
 been quick to resent interference, parliamentary opposi- 
 tions do not sit quiet under closures, and a historic 
 House of Lords does not succumb without a struggle. 
 A more insidious but equally dangerous form of attack 
 upon institutions is to be found in the perversion of execu- 
 tive powers. Responsible administration is essential to 
 the art of government, and responsible administration 
 involves the strict use of public office and of the powers 
 held by virtue of such office for the public purpose for 
 which alone the office and its powers exist. The days 
 of pecuniary corruption in public departments are over, 
 but the license of party corruption has in these latter 
 days been unbridled. I do not wish to be misunder- 
 stood ; no one doubts that one Government may diffisr 
 from another, and one minister from his predecessor,
 
 140 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 upon questions of administrative policy both in large 
 and small matters ; what, however, is essential is that 
 the public purport and object of the administration 
 should be the same, namely, the due exercise of public 
 powers for the purposes for which they have been given 
 by law or custom to the department or officer con- 
 cerned. 
 
 This, perhaps, needs a little illustration. The pur- 
 poses for which police powers and the right of the 
 Executive to put courts of justice in motion exist are 
 the preservation of public order and the prevention of 
 crime. One Government might well differ from 
 another as to the best method of exercising those 
 powers for those purposes. In Ireland, for instance, 
 while one Government might think that the ordinary 
 process of law was in a particular case sufficient, 
 another might think that the special process permitted 
 by the Crimes Act was necessary. The requisite is 
 that, in either case, the decision should depend on a 
 consideration solely of the object for which the choice 
 of method is given, namely, the prevention of crime 
 and the preservation of order, and not on any extraneous 
 motive such as the gaining of personal popularity or 
 success in some party manoeuvre in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 In the sphere of positive law the distinction is very 
 familiar. A discretion is frequently given by law to 
 some tribunal or officer to be exercised without appeal 
 to superior authority. The High Court will not, in 
 such a case, interfere with the exercise of that discretion, 
 even though the court may think the decision to be 
 a wrong one. Hut if it is shown that the inferior 
 authority has not really exercised its discretion, and 
 has decided the matter not for the purpose of carrying 
 out the law (liowever mistakenly), but for what has
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 141 
 
 been called some " extraneous," " sinister," or " col- 
 lateral " purpose, then the court will interfere and will 
 quash the action of the subordinate body, as not being 
 a bona fide exercise of powers. A simple example of 
 such a case would arise if a local authority, having had 
 personal quarrels with a builder, declined, as sanitary 
 authority, to approve his building plans in order to 
 revenge itself upon him ; such action might purport to 
 be an exercise of the statutory power of a sanitary 
 authority to disapprove plans, but the court would 
 hold, on proper proof of the facts, that it was no real 
 exercise of a discretion which, if really exercised, would 
 not be open to review by the court. 
 
 I have dealt with these principles of public admini- 
 stration at some length, in order that there may be no 
 misunderstanding of the particular criticisms which I 
 wish to pass upon recent cases and the lessons which it 
 is my object to draw from them. " Wait till we get 
 in," and " Much can be done by administration," were 
 familiar utterances prior to 1906, and their meaning, 
 within certain limits, was not open to serious objection. 
 Outside those limits such phrases pointed the way to 
 great scandals of administration, and thither subsequent 
 events have actually led. 
 
 Some of these scandals have been particularly gross. 
 The Board of Education, under the auspices of Mr 
 McKenna, was perhaps the most prolific offender. No 
 less than three judicial acts of the Board, done in 
 colourable pursuance of statutory powers, have been 
 recently quashed or reversed in courts of law, and it 
 may be said with confidence that in each case the Board 
 erred because of the strong bias of its political chief 
 in favour of a certain policy contrary to the policy of 
 the laws it had to administer. Here is the essential 
 point of the scandal ; mere policy which an opponent
 
 142 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 dislikes is no ground relevant to the present discussion 
 for condemning a Minister ; the outrage in such cases 
 lies in the fact that the policy adopted is contrary to 
 the policy of the law under which alone the Minister 
 has any powers at all to exercise ; his action is a mere 
 fraud on his powers, being exercised for the purpose of 
 setting aside and not of carrying out the law. " One 
 thing certainly neither the defendants nor the Board of 
 Education can do, and that is to say that because they 
 do not like the law as it stands they will give directions 
 which will frustrate its objects." These words of one 
 of the strongest and most judicially minded judges who 
 has ever sat in the High Court provoke a feeling of 
 astonishment that such a pronouncement should ever 
 have been necessary. The decision of the Board of 
 Education which led to it was the personal one of Mr 
 McKenna, given in explicit reversal of one previously 
 formed by his permanent advisers and after a direct per- 
 sonal appeal to him by the West Riding County Council 
 for support in its policy of destroying Voluntary Schools 
 in defiance of an Act of Parliament, which preserves them 
 as integral parts of the system of national education.^ 
 
 There is no space here for the full treatment of the 
 notorious Swansea case.^ Here the Board directly 
 repudiated the finding of the eminent and impartial 
 commissioner ^ chosen by themselves to hold the local 
 inquiry ; and this outrage was followed by the more 
 gradual but scarcely less dramatic repudiation of the 
 Board's action by elev^en judges, distributed through 
 various courts, in judgments the majority of which, 
 
 ^ See the report of Wilford *>. the West Ridiiii^ County Council in 
 1908, 1 K.H. J). fiSf). 
 
 2 The Swansea case was nominally a decision by Mr Ilunciman, but 
 the policy had been previously settled by Mr McKenna. 
 
 ^ Now Lord .Justice Hamilton.
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 143 
 
 however phrased, show the clear view of the courts that 
 the Board's decision was given with the same motive 
 as that in the case just mentioned, namely, not that of 
 administering but of frustrating the law. 
 
 To the thoughtless partisan these efforts of the 
 political chiefs of the Board to carry out party policy 
 by means of the perversion of statutory powers are 
 praiseworthy proofs of party loyalty. In point of fact 
 they strike at the root of responsible administration and 
 of the rule of law itself. 
 
 Different but analogous scandals have occurred in 
 other branches of law and administration. The Shepherd 
 of Dartmoor supplies a farcical illustration. The dis- 
 pensing powers over criminals vested in the Home 
 Secretary form as responsible a congeries of functions 
 as those of any Minister in the Cabinet ; the admini- 
 stration of justice is essentially a delicate, judicial, and 
 responsible undertaking, which the experience of ages 
 of civilisation has clothed with tradition, procedure, 
 and elaborate rules, in order to assist or correct the 
 possible infirmities of the individual officer exercising 
 the jurisdiction. Certainly no functions more clearly 
 illustrate the principle before stated, that no extraneous 
 or oblique motive should be allowed range in the 
 executive acts of public officers. A court of quarter 
 sessions had made use of the latest reform of criminal 
 justice, passed by Mr Churchill's immediate predecessor, 
 Mr Gladstone, to convict, after leave obtained from the 
 Public Prosecutor, a criminal with a long record of 
 crime, of the offences, first, of theft, and, secondly, of 
 being an habitual criminal, and had sentenced him to 
 three years' penal servitude for the first offence and to 
 ten years' preventive detention for the second offence. 
 That the sentence was too heavy is a possible view, and 
 its mitigation by JNIr Churchill in the ordinary course
 
 144 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 of his functions might have passed without adverse 
 criticism. What happened, however, was quite outside 
 any ordinary official course : the court that sentenced 
 the prisoner was not consulted ; the Home Secretary and 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited Dartmoor in 
 person, and interviewed the prisoner ; the latter was 
 thereafter released, having served but a few months 
 of his sentence; JMr Lloyd George was then allowed 
 by his colleague to make the incident the subject of 
 some political utterances in the course of a vehement 
 party speech, attacking rich landlords, and appealing to 
 the miseries of the poor : — 
 
 " My friend, the Home Secretary, and I, the 
 other day paid a visit to Dartmoor. On that black, 
 mist-sodden upland I saw an old man of sixty-five, 
 in a convict garb, who had been sentenced to 
 thirteen years' penal servitude because, under the 
 influence of drink, he had broken into a church 
 poor-box and stolen two shillings " (" Shame "). 
 
 The grotesque inaccuracy and irrelevance of these 
 observations merely enhance the scandal of the whole 
 allusion. The sacred fabric of the administration of 
 justice should be free from the sacrilege of Cabinet 
 Ministers who would use it as a buttress for party 
 taunts in political speeches. To control the administra- 
 tion of justice for the purpose of self-advertisement, or 
 of gratifying sentiment, or of winning party and plat- 
 form advantage, is an administrative scandal of the 
 first order, for every such motive is in the clearest 
 sense sinister and extraneous. Certainly neither the 
 previous record nor the subsequent career of the 
 venerable victim of Mr Lloyd George's philanthropy 
 justified that gross abuse of the dispensing power
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 145 
 
 of the Home Office of which the above incident is an 
 instance. 
 
 Not unlike in principle to the case of the Shepherd of 
 Dartmoor was that of the Glamorgan riots. No doubt 
 a Home Secretary is sometimes placed in a difficult 
 position when called upon for military assistance by the 
 civil power. But in the Glamorganshire case the 
 decision to delay the troops, when their prompt arrival 
 would have prevented a deplorable riot, bore clear 
 traces of a determination of the Home Secretary to lose 
 nothing in personal influence or party popularity with a 
 class of voter whose ultimate political destination is still 
 undecided and open to bidders. The wide powers of 
 the Home Office exist to maintain the King's peace at 
 home, and not to strengthen the personal or political 
 influence of the holder of office for the time being. 
 
 A strong contrast to these tactics is presented by 
 the operations of another Government officer also 
 concerned in the administration of justice. Lord 
 Loreburn admirably upheld the principle of official 
 responsibility in appointing magistrates. But, un- 
 fortunately, his policy cannot be counted to his party 
 for righteousness, seeing that the party tolerated the 
 policy only because it could not spare (or was un- 
 able to extrude) Lord Loreburn. The principle that 
 magistrates should be appointed only because they are 
 fit to administer justice was forced by the personal 
 influence of Lord Loreburn upon a party desirous 
 of using the Bench as a cheap means of rewarding 
 Liberal politicians who have done good work as 
 agitators in the constituencies. Every Ministerialist 
 M.P. was overwhelmed in 1906, after ten years' exclu- 
 sion from office, with his followers' hopes of reward, and 
 the social and personal distinction which the letters J. P. 
 
 confer upon nonentities in their own localities seemed 
 
 10
 
 146 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 one of the cheapest means of satisfying them. When a 
 Liberal INI. P., with a loyal and well-organised local 
 following, found that the well-earned reward was denied 
 to some of his most useful supporters by the stiff and 
 puritan principles of Lord Loreburn. the subsequent 
 astonished splutterings of wrath — the deputations and 
 the memorials — are easily intelligible. Had not each 
 Liberal been saying for months, " Wait till we get in," 
 and was the obstinate rectitude of an inopportune 
 precisian to dash their expectations ? The whole in- 
 cident clearly illustrates the distinction between faction 
 and responsible government. 
 
 Quite consistent with these incidents was the action 
 of Mr Churchill when Home Secretary, in voicing the 
 factious sentiments of special sections of his party at 
 the expense of judges and courts of law. Anything 
 more indecent than the covert attack made by him 
 upon our judicial system can hardly be imagined. 
 It was his duty, in his capacity as Minister of 
 Justice, to maintain the respect felt for the courts 
 by all classes, but he went out of his way to en- 
 courage in the working classes of the country a sense 
 of class grievance against the courts. No one suggests 
 that judges never err, or should be wholly immune from 
 criticism. But there are ways and seasons for criticism ; 
 courts of appeal in particular exist for the purpose ; a 
 strong professional spirit supplies another source of 
 correction. An attack made on courts of justice by the 
 Minister of Justice, as a class cry for factious purposes, 
 is alike intolerable and scandalous. 
 
 It is interesting to note in this connection that it has 
 been the consistent policy of the present Cabinet to 
 oust the jurisdiction of courts of law from their legisla- 
 tion and to substitute, as universal arbiters, their own 
 departments. A flagrant attempt in this direction in
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 147 
 
 Mr Lloyd George's Budget was defeated with the aid of 
 some Liberal lawyers, notably Mr Buckmaster. The 
 Trades Union Bill now before Parliament proposes, in 
 deference to the class feeling of militant trades unionists, 
 to deprive the judges of the jurisdiction to determine 
 the legal effect of the Bill upon the great issue between 
 the union and the public, concerning the limits of the 
 political activities of the unions, and to bestow it upon 
 an official occupying an administrative post, removable 
 by the Government at pleasure, subject to no appeal 
 (except, indeed, an appeal by trade unionists), and with 
 no obligation to hear arguments or otherwise to act 
 according to judicial procedure. Other examples might 
 be quoted. The whole policy is reactionary and 
 irresponsible. 
 
 A smaller but equally significant series of outrages 
 upon the art of government has been created by the 
 tendency of the present Cabinet to set aside the rule 
 of ministerial responsibility for departmental acts. In 
 consequence names both of high and low permanent 
 officials are bandied about in the Press and Parlia- 
 ment as the authors and instigators of policies for which 
 Ministers should make themselves wholly responsible. 
 When an irregularity in the income tax collection came 
 to light early in this year the persons who most tried 
 to escape responsibility were the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer and the Secretary to the Treasury. When the 
 accidental publication of a private official memorandum 
 — the famous " Holmes circular " — brought a crowd of 
 Radicals like a hornet's nest round the head of the Pre- 
 sident of the Board of Education, Mr Runciman, instead 
 of admitting his own mistakes, generously admitted 
 mistakes on behalf of almost everyone in his office but 
 himself. There are fifty different reasons why such an 
 attitude is improper ; it is sufficient here to refer to the
 
 148 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 fact that, whereas the Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
 ISIr Runciman are in a position to defend themselves for 
 everything for which they take responsibility, their per- 
 manent officials cannot defend themselves for anything 
 at all. whether assumed by themselves or imputed 
 to them by their Parliamentary chiefs. They must 
 acquiesce or starve. 
 
 The " Holmes incident " naturally suggests another 
 tendency illustrating both irresponsible administration 
 and the temptation to attack national institutions. One 
 of these institutions, peculiarly English in character, is 
 our permanent Civil Service. The phrase " the govern- 
 ing classes," so often used by demagogues as a term of 
 abuse, has a reality which most Radicals, when unin- 
 fluenced by faction, are not unwilling to recognise. It 
 imports a class of men, bred in a certain tradition of 
 duty to country and to national institutions ; bred, too, 
 in a tradition of duty to themselves and their position 
 in life ; having sufficient education and culture to be 
 free from the superstitions of ignorance ; having also a 
 character, partly national and partly acquired by educa- 
 tion, of self-reliance and steadiness, which is sometimes 
 called "the public school type." Such men do not 
 make the best poets, artists, orators, or agitators, but 
 they are ideal governors, officials, and administrators. 
 The Civil Service, the personnel of which, in its higher 
 ranks, is largely recruited from this class, has, as the 
 result of its high qualifications, a tradition and spirit of 
 world-wide reputation. Its efficiency and incorrupti- 
 bility are not less remarkable than the tradition and 
 sense of duty which make it adaptable to the service of 
 all Cabinets, of whatever political complexion. To the 
 loyalty of the officials of one of the departments most 
 active in political afl'airs the IJoard of Education — 
 three successive Radical Presidents have recently given
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 149 
 
 testimony. Nevertheless, a confused cry has lately 
 arisen among extreme partisans for what is called the 
 " democratisation " of the Civil Service. The use of 
 the word " democracy " in this connection is logically 
 meaningless. But the comments of the Liberal Press 
 on the " Holmes incident " show the practical aims of 
 the cry. On the one hand, it is a purely demagogic 
 outburst, seeking (in the name of the principle of giving 
 everyone a chance) the substitution in the higher ranks 
 of the Civil Service of less-educated people for the 
 University honours-men who at present are most suc- 
 cessful in meeting the exacting requirements of the 
 Civil Service Commissioners ; on the other hand, it 
 means that partisan Radicals are to be appointed to the 
 service in order to promote the kind of partisan and 
 irresponsible administration I have been describing. 
 So far has the latter tendency gone that a correspondent 
 to a Liberal newspaper actually quotes John Bright as 
 indirectly approving the American system of spoils to 
 the victors, whereby on every change of President the 
 Civil Service is changed so as to harmonise with the 
 political colour of the President.^ 
 
 The mischief of this tendency hardly needs discus- 
 sion. The proposal is to destroy the best Civil Service 
 in the world, and to make a new one on principles 
 proved to be vicious in other countries. If Radicals 
 appoint Radicals to the service because they want 
 servants who will obey them from personal sympathy 
 with and enthusiasm for their policy, Conservatives will, 
 in self-defence, take care, when they get into office, that 
 a clean sweep is made of officials whose main qualification 
 for office is their dislike of Conservative policy. The 
 result of such an " in and out " policy would certainly be 
 to introduce inefficiency and corruption and to degrade 
 
 1 See The Nation, April 8, I91I.
 
 150 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the service. The notorious Duez, who was lately con- 
 victed in France for embezzling, as official liquidator, the 
 funds of the disestablished French Church, had, we were 
 told, " political guarantees." So have the appointees of 
 Tammany Hall. I say nothing of the orgy of pure 
 jobbery under the pretence of politics which such a 
 change would inaugurate. Our constitution and national 
 ideals require a body of highly-educated civil servants 
 who will do their work from a sense of official duty, a 
 respect for official tradition, and as a return for the 
 salaries they earn, not a body of idealogues, visionaries, 
 place-hunters, or hacks. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have sought to set forth 
 some reminders of Conservative principles. I have 
 made for the purpose a special mention of matters of 
 administration, because such minor though repeated 
 instances of misgovernment are often overlooked. The 
 inference I draw from the record of the last six years 
 is that the Conservative Party has a distinct and urgent 
 mission to re-establish and maintain the art of respon- 
 sible government. It must eradicate departmental 
 hooliganism ; it must punish administrative indecency ; 
 it must restore the authority of respectable tradition 
 to the organs of government. The authors of the 
 present mischief are pursuing the same tactics as some 
 of them did when, in opposition, they slandered British 
 troops during an arduous war, and otherwise aided and 
 comforted the king's enemies. Such tactics are the 
 tactics of anarchy. An anarchist in opposition may 
 occasionally be a necessary evil, but an anarchist in 
 office, wielding as a weapon of sabotage the great and 
 venerable machine of government, and relying upon the 
 respectful obedience of the people to that machine, is a 
 deadly menace to the vital principle of government. 
 
 Such a mission is neither a mere abstraction nor a
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 151 
 
 mere negation. It is rather an essential condition of 
 the success of the most progressive and positive ideas of 
 the Conservative Party. Great and lasting reforms are 
 impossible unless they be based upon the old tradition 
 of the conduct of public affairs and the w^orking of 
 national institutions. 
 
 It is assuredly true that, in the past, the Conservative 
 Party has been open to the reproach of undue caution 
 in making legislative experiments in social reform. Mr 
 Chamberlain's services to the party in inducing a bolder 
 outlook have been incalculable. Conservatives are now 
 willing to make great experiments, but they rightly 
 insist that necessary reforms shall be based upon old 
 principles. They insist that reforms shall be national 
 and not factious — that the benefit of the whole nation 
 and not a blow against some class or interest shall be the 
 sole motive of statesmen. They insist also that reforms 
 shall stand the test of national institutions — that the 
 constituencies shall not be duped by hasty elections, nor 
 Parliament overridden by the tactics of a caucus or 
 a coalition. They recognise equally that sound and 
 responsible administration is essential to the success of 
 any reform. 
 
 It is safe, indeed, to conjecture that one-half of the 
 doubts of the laissez-Jaire school of Cobdenite Radical- 
 ism, which at one time seemed likely to become part 
 of the Tory heritage, were based upon the belief that 
 the machinery of government would be incapable of 
 standing the strain to which advanced reforms in the 
 social sphere would subject it. There was certainly 
 much ground for these doubts ; if the factious theory 
 of the use of executive powers becomes dominant, they 
 will prove wholly well founded. The course of discus- 
 sion upon a modern Bill of progressive aim is tolerably 
 familiar ; the more conservative critics point to possible
 
 152 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 dangers if the principle of the Bill be unduly extended ; 
 its more enthusiastic supporters, in reply, dilate upon 
 the ample safeguards which the Bill contains against 
 abuse. Often the safeguard is found in the discretion- 
 ary powers of supervision entrusted to a government 
 department. In such a case the whole fate of the 
 reform will depend largely upon the sense of responsi- 
 bility of the department's political chief. If he follows 
 the advice of his permanent officials, uses his powers 
 strictly for the purposes the law designs them, and does 
 not merely aim at votes and personal popularity, or 
 even at keeping his office in quiet waters, he will be 
 following the true traditions of government. Two 
 recent Acts — the Act for feeding necessitous school 
 children and the Old Age Pensions Act — both sound 
 in principle, but as regards their details hastily passed 
 into law, depend largely for their operation on depart- 
 mental powers. If these powers be not strictly and 
 responsibly exercised, two Acts, great in their possi- 
 bilities of beneficence, may become engines of national 
 debauchery. The experience of the country in relation 
 to the Insurance Act has tended less to dissipate these 
 doubts than to confirm them. 
 
 It is surprising that these axioms of politics are not 
 more readily accepted by advanced supporters of the 
 Government. Socialist and Labour politicians, who look 
 forward to the general regulation by statute of private 
 life and to a vast extension of bureaucracy as the neces- 
 sary machinery, should be the first to see that their only 
 chance of success lies in the maintenance of a civil 
 service composed of men of the highest education and 
 position in life, with all the tradition, and esprit dc corps 
 of the service to inspire them, directed by a parliament- 
 ary chief full of a deep sense of responsibility to law 
 and tradition, and subject to criticism from the freest
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 153 
 
 exercise of constitutional rights in Parliament and else- 
 where. A corrupt, incompetent, or suspect bureaucracy 
 would ruin a socialistic system in its inception. 
 
 It will be the duty of Conservatives to insist more 
 and more upon these very elementary principles of 
 government, as the indispensable condition of sound 
 poHcy. Nothing, indeed, will more tend to unite 
 the old-fashioned members of the party with the 
 advanced spirits than the giving by the latter to the 
 former of assurances that government itself shall always 
 be responsibly conducted upon traditional principles. 
 
 The chief constructive plank in the Conservative 
 platform to-day — Tariff Reform — is the true type of a 
 national policy. It represents no spirit of antagonism 
 except that of the healthy antagonism of the nation as 
 a whole towards its foreign trade rivals. The most 
 fanatical of tariff reformers has never sought to use a 
 tariff as an engine of destruction against his political 
 opponents. The bankers, representing the most con- 
 servative elements in our commercial system and likely 
 to be the last to appreciate the novelties of tariff 
 reform, have leaned to the free trade side in the con- 
 troversy. Yet a cry of " Down with the bankers," and 
 appeals to the ignorant fanaticism of poor men against 
 a class with a reputation for hoarded wealth have been 
 no part of the propaganda of the Tariff Reform League. 
 Tariff Reformers have consistently put forward their 
 great scheme as one increasing and giving stability to 
 the whole trade of the country, and benefiting employer 
 and employed, middleman, and subsidiary trader alike. 
 It is a scheme the supporters of which seek for no 
 enemy to strike down, no past injury to revenge, no 
 class to rob or to bribe. 
 
 That it will make a strenuous call upon the machinery 
 of government I do not doubt. But, unlike the advanced
 
 154 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 politicians of Radicalism, the Conservative Party is not 
 afraid to trust the democracy with a tariff. Using execu- 
 tive powers with a sense of responsibility, and maintain- 
 ing all the dignity and prestige of the departments of 
 State, Conservatives are ready to face the results upon 
 public administration. 
 
 In other spheres of social reform Conservatism has 
 begun and must continue upon the right principles. An 
 urgent need has arisen for the wider distribution of land 
 ownership. A splendid achievement in Ireland calls us 
 to like efforts in England. The essentials of our policy 
 are clear: we do not pour invective upon large landowners 
 as criminals to be expropriated because they are large ; 
 we encourage small landowners in the national interests 
 and with proper regard to the rights of existing owners 
 of the soil. 
 
 In education, the principle of " parent's rights " has 
 for some time been accepted by Unionists as the true 
 solution of an awkward administrative problem. The 
 policy is essentially consistent with the principles here 
 advocated ; it strikes no blow at Nonconformity ; it 
 gives no privileges to the Church ; it insists on equality 
 and freedom for all. The continued resistance of 
 Radicalism to the principle is as purely factious as the 
 principle itself is national. 
 
 In the development of our local government system 
 will be found the true solution of the difficulties which 
 Liberalism would merely complicate by the subversive 
 policy oF Home Rule. In 1888 in England, and in 
 18D8 in Ireland, two great steps were taken by Conser- 
 vative Governments to establish local government on 
 a firm and responsible popular basis. In 1902 the 
 Education Act carried the process one step farther. 
 There still lies ahead the readjustment of the old but 
 vitally important institutions of the poor law, and a
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT 155 
 
 further extension of the traditional Tory pohcy of 
 Housing Reform to meet the demands of the new age. 
 The line of advance open to us is that of real consti- 
 tutional development, fully in harmony with Con- 
 servative tradition, and supplying the true alternative 
 to the constitutional disruption promised by the Home 
 Rule Bill which Mr Redmond is now forcing on the 
 Cabinet. The principles of responsible government 
 likewise require Conservatism to make a stand against 
 the growth of bureaucracy and to maintain inviolate the 
 authority of courts of justice and the right of individuals 
 to seek before those courts the protection of their rights 
 and liberties. 
 
 There are many other important aspects of national 
 politics — national defence among others — which show 
 the need for the strict application of those principles. 
 What has been said will, however, be sufficient to give 
 the necessary content to the generalisations with which 
 I started. These generalisations I have illustrated by 
 contrast with specific instances of Radical policy which 
 represent to Conservative ideals an essentially vicious 
 theory of government. Such generalisations, and indeed 
 the theory of government itself, if divorced from actual 
 cases, are apt to become empty and meaningless. What 
 I have tried to show by the use of instances is that there 
 is an art of government, that the essence of that art in 
 a modern democratic state is a sense of responsibility to 
 the principle of national unity and to the spirit and 
 tradition of national institutions, and that Conservatism 
 is to-day under a special and urgent duty steadfastly to 
 maintain and practise the art in the face of the factious 
 and disruptive tendencies of its opponents.
 
 VIII 
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Mk Hobhouse has recently made it clear with charac- 
 teristic maladroitness that the different sections which 
 from time to time have composed the Government's 
 majority in the House of Commons are not united for 
 the furtherance of any common political programme ; 
 that each section has in view the accomplishment of a 
 special project, and supports the Government in the 
 hope, often ill founded, that this project will be 
 ultimately achieved with Ministerial assistance. This 
 hope is often so earnest as to induce one section of 
 the Coalition to support measures which are distasteful 
 to it. Thus Mr Redmond, in order to get Home Rule 
 for Ireland, supported the Budget, though of opinion 
 that it was " bad and oppressive and inflicted a cruel 
 additional burden upon the people of Ireland." The 
 licensing clauses of the Budget reconciled Sir Thomas 
 Whittaker to the other clauses of that measure, though 
 he considered that their author, Mr Lloyd George, was 
 " like the devil witli his pitchfork ; whenever he sees 
 a 15ritish industry, he sticks it into it." The allegiance 
 of these different sections is obtained by promises, 
 and maintained by the appointment of dates, or the 
 allocation of a session during wliich their projects are 
 to be executed. 'I'he session of 190G was devoted to 
 
 156
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 157 
 
 an attempted gratification of Dr Clifford's sectarian 
 spite. The session of 1908 was hypothecated for the 
 satisfaction of the teetotal virulence of Sir T. Whittaker 
 and Mr Sherwell. Mr Redmond is promised that 1912 
 will see a separate Parliament established in Dublin. 
 In view of his admitted services in maintaining the 
 Government in office he might well be thought entitled 
 to exclusive use of this session, but he has to share it 
 with the Welsh Radical Members of Parliament, 
 who, in return for their subservient " loyalty " to the 
 Government, have been given the prospect of despoiling 
 the Church in Wales. Not long ago one of their 
 number summed up his colleagues: "Political gifts" (he 
 said) " have in their case produced political nepotism. 
 They have been the recipients of the spoils of victory." 
 In more homely language, " They have either got 
 something or they are expecting something." Now, 
 however, even their chairman, Mr Ellis Griffith, who 
 tries to conceal a nature very timorous and self- 
 distrustful under an appearance of bluster, has agreed 
 "to fall into line and do his duty," because his 
 supporters in the country are viewing with dismay 
 the rapid progress the Church is making in Wales, 
 and realise that, in the words of Alderman Thomas, 
 of Cardiff: " This is the one chance of this generation 
 to secure the passage of a Welsh Disestablishment Bill." 
 
 As long ago as May 1907, Mr Lloyd George wrote to 
 a correspondent : " You ask me whether, if this Parlia- 
 ment runs its normal course, it is the intention of the 
 Government to press a measure for the Disestablish- 
 ment and Disendowment of the Church in Wales 
 through all stages in the House of Commons. To this 
 I can give an unqualified answer in the affirmative." 
 
 No attempt was made until 1909 to fulfil this 
 undertaking. For some time the Government evaded
 
 158 ' UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 its discharge on the ground that it would be inadvisable 
 to introduce the Bill until they were better informed 
 as to the relative strength and condition of the Church 
 and the Nonconformist bodies in Wales. In 1906 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman appointed a Royal 
 Commission to prosecute this inquiry, and gave as 
 his reason for doing so that, ''in his opinion, the 
 omission to appoint a Commission when similar Bills 
 were introduced in 1894 and 1895 was a most un- 
 fortunate one, as the Government of the day were ex- 
 posed to a good deal of embarrassment in the framing 
 and conduct of the measure." He added that the 
 Government " were anxious to obtain the report of 
 the Commission at an early date, as it would be of 
 material assistance." 
 
 The Royal Commission sat until November 1910 
 and heard evidence. In 1909 it became clear from 
 the newspaper reports of its proceedings that the 
 evidence given before it exposed the falsity of the 
 Nonconformist claim to numerical superiority over 
 Churchmen in Wales. It therefore seemed inadvisable 
 that Nonconformists should wait for the report, and 
 they urged the Government to proceed without delay. 
 The Bill was introduced in April of 1909, though 
 Mr Lloyd George had said in 1908 that "there has 
 never been a great question settled in this country 
 but what {sic) they had had an official inquiry into 
 the statements made in regard to it." Mr Asquith 
 sought to justify its introduction, many months before 
 the Commissioners could issue their report, by saying 
 tliat the newspaper reports of their proceedings gave 
 an adequate indication of the character of the report. 
 If that contention were sound, it would have been 
 unnecessary to publish the report. But since then 
 tlie (Tovernment liave published it, not, indeed, in
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 159 
 
 time to enable the electors to study it before the 
 last election, but on the very eve of the polls, after 
 the contest had commenced and when it was impossible 
 to devote adequate time to its consideration. Yet it 
 is contended that at that election the electors gave 
 an unqualified verdict in favour of the Bill. An 
 interesting light is thrown upon the validity of this 
 claim by a study of the election addresses issued 
 during the election. In Wales and Monmouthshire 
 twenty - six supporters of the Government issued 
 election addresses, but only eight mentioned Dis- 
 establishment, while two spoke of "religious equality." 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the Carnarvon 
 Boroughs, issued in lieu of an election address what 
 was called by his admirers " a trumpet-call to the 
 Boroughs," but the note of Welsh Disestablishment 
 was not heard in that blast. Of 210 Government 
 supporters in England who issued election addresses 
 only four mentioned Disestablishment, while six 
 mentioned religious equality or liberty.. 
 
 But the report is now published and available for 
 study. What does it show ? That the Church is the 
 Church of a dwindling minority ? It shows, on the 
 contrary, that it is the largest religious body in the 
 Principality, and that it is progi-essing more rapidly 
 than any other. The figures given in the report do 
 not purport to show the exact number of the adherents 
 of each religious body. A religious census alone would 
 show this. Such a census, though always advocated 
 by Churchmen, and particularly demanded this year 
 in the House of Commons by Lord Hugh Cecil, has 
 always been opposed by Nonconformists, and was 
 refused by the Government. Each clergyman of the 
 Church of England who was asked the question by the 
 Commissioners welcomed the idea of a parliamentary
 
 160 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 religious census, and the Welsh Bishops also expressed 
 their desire for it. But with the exception of a Con- 
 gregational minister and a Baptist minister, who were 
 the first witnesses before the Commission, none of the 
 Nonconformist witnesses approved of it. It should be 
 remembered that before the Irish Church was dis- 
 estabhshed a rehgious census was held. In the absence 
 of the indisputable evidence which such a census would 
 afford, we are thrown back upon the figures given in 
 the report of the Royal Commission, the personnel of 
 which was determined by the present Government 
 in no spirit of favour to the Church. The report 
 contains the numbers of the Church's communicants 
 and of the communicants or members of the different 
 Nonconformist denominations : 
 
 Church Communicants . . . 193,081 
 
 Congregationalist members . . 175,147 
 
 Calvinistic Methodists . . . 170,617 
 
 Baptists 143,835 
 
 Wesleyans ..... 40,811 
 
 Smaller Protestant denominations 19,870 
 
 The Commissioners make the following comments on 
 these figures : " Taking the word 'communicant' from the 
 Nonconformist point of view, it is plain that technically 
 the Nonconformist figures given before the Commis- 
 sion are figures for members and represent the number 
 of persons qualified to be communicants rather than the 
 number of persons who actually communicated in 1905." 
 And " in the Church of England statistical list the term 
 'communicant' indicates that each person on the list 
 had received the Communion at least once within the 
 period of twelve months preceding the compilation of 
 the list. . . . Tlic name and address of each communicant 
 were presented to the Commission." 
 
 The inference is inevitable from tliese passages in
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 161 
 
 the report, that the preponderance of Church com- 
 municants over those of the different Nonconformist 
 bodies is even f^reater than appears from the figures 
 given. Every standard that can be apphed shows 
 that the Church is the largest rehgious body in the 
 PrincipaHty. Take the figures given in the report 
 for Sunday School scholars under fifteen for the year 
 1905. The Church claims 112,698, the Calvinistic 
 Methodists 98,018, the Congregationalists 82,673, the 
 Baptists 77,929, and the Wesleyans 38,100. It is true 
 that the Congregationalists, the Wesleyans, and the 
 Baptists claim more Sunday School members over the 
 age of fifteen than the Church. But it is admittedly 
 not possible to make so fair a comparison in this case 
 as the other, for Nonconformists encourage their 
 members to remain in Sunday Schools beyond an age 
 at w^hich Church cominunicants are accustomed to do 
 so. Many such adult Sunday School scholars are 
 evidently included in the figures already given of 
 Nonconformist members. 
 
 Other figures point to the same conclusion. In 
 1905, 66,888 children w^ere born in Wales, of whom 
 21,948 were baptised in Church. Between 1900 and 
 1908 the births in Wales averaged 65,722 per annum, 
 while the baptisms in Church averaged 21,203, that 
 is to say, nearly one-third of all the children born in 
 Wales were baptised in Church. No Nonconformist 
 denomination can show such a record. During the 
 same period the marriages in Wales averaged 5248 in 
 Church, 4652 in Nonconformist chapels, and 6238 in 
 registry offices, showing that 31*55 per cent, of the 
 marriages were solemnised in Church. 
 
 It is clear, then, that if the Church were disestablished 
 
 no other religious body is qualified by the position it has 
 
 attained, or by the number of adherents it can claim, 
 
 11
 
 162 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 to take its place as the National Church of Wales, 
 however much many of them may desire to do so. In 
 Wales, therefore, religion would cease to enjoy State 
 recognition, though such recognition might survive 
 for a period in England. It is difficult to see how 
 this change will forward the spiritual development of 
 Wales in general, or of the AVelsh Nonconformist 
 bodies in particular. Their condition, as 1 shall have 
 occasion to point out, is not so strong that they can 
 afford to disregard the great growth of materialism in 
 Wales, especially in Glamorganshire. Frequently we 
 hear their own ministers lament the political atmosphere 
 of some of their chapels, and the open political bias of 
 their ministers, one of whom recently presided at a 
 meeting held in his tabernacle for the purpose of 
 enabling the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain 
 the provisions of his Insurance Bill. If W^elsh Non- 
 conformists desire spiritual and not political advantage 
 it would surely be better for them to unite with the 
 strongest religious institution in their country to resist 
 the advancing forces of indifference rather than by 
 crippling it to further the progress of unbelief. That 
 the Church is a growing Church is made very clear by 
 the report of the Commission. It is even more true 
 to say of it to-day what Mr Gladstone said in 1891 : 
 " Undoubtedly the Established Church in Wales is an 
 advancing Church, an active Church, a living Church, 
 and, I hope, very distinctly a rising Church, rising 
 from elevation to elevation." 
 
 A remarkable increase is noted in the number of 
 communicants in each of the four Welsh dioceses. 
 Thus in St David's diocese, between 1880 and 1906, 
 the number of connnunicants increased by 33,002, while 
 the population increased by 27,698 only. On Easter 
 Day 1871 the communicants in St Asaph diocese
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 163 
 
 numbered 7575; on Easter Day 1891, 14,584; and on 
 Easter Day 1906, 24,938. In Bangor diocese in 1885-6, 
 with a population of 226,040, the number of communi- 
 cants was 10,029. By 1904-5 the population had de- 
 creased to 221,366, but the number of communicants 
 had risen to 16,760. In the diocese of LlandafF 
 the number of communicants increased from 33,453 
 in 1891-2 to 58,216 in 1904-5. Similar increases 
 are to be observed in the statistics of baptisms and 
 confirmations. 
 
 The condition of the Nonconformist bodies is not 
 equally healthy. This fact was fully admitted on 15th 
 May in an article in the Westminster Gazette, an organ 
 very favourable to the Free Churches. It was headed : 
 " Church Census " ; " Decline in Free Church Statistics"; 
 " Anglican Increase." 
 
 The conclusion refers to both England and Wales, 
 and is very relevant to the present inquiry. It con- 
 tinues : " Churches, sittings, and ministers are continu- 
 ally being augmented, but the ordinary test of successful 
 religious work shows that there has been a slackening of 
 grip by Nonconformist Churches on the people, which 
 has continued in some cases for the past five years." 
 The writer gives very different evidence upon the con- 
 dition of the Church. " Whilst the Free Churches 
 have suffered losses, in some cases for three or four 
 years, the Established Church has reported increases in 
 communicants and in other directions. . . . Taking the 
 three years (1907-10), there is steady growth in each 
 department." 
 
 The numerical preponderance of the Church over any 
 one Nonconformist denomination is so incontrovertible 
 that advocates of Welsh Disestablishment and Dis- 
 endowment are driven to the device of adding together 
 the numbers of communicants or Sunday School scholars
 
 164 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 found in each different denomination as if they were, 
 for purposes of comparison with the Church, a united 
 body. For this crude method of calculation there is no 
 justification. Fundamental differences exist between 
 them, which make it misleading and even absurd to 
 reckon them as one. To attack and rob the Church 
 they may indeed unite, but otherwise they are separate 
 institutions, with different organisations, ideals, forms 
 of government, and articles of belief. The profession of 
 the doctrine of baptism by immersion marks the Baptists 
 out from all other denominations with the sole exception, 
 I believe, of the Churches of Christ, a small and obscure 
 sect. But though both these sects practise baptism by 
 immersion, they hold different views as to its purport 
 and effect. They differ in polity also. The Calvinistic 
 Methodists and the Wesleyans are " connectional " in 
 their Church polity — that is to say, each individual society 
 or church is a member of one general " connection " 
 which is regarded as the Calvinistic JMethodist Church or 
 the Wesleyan Methodist Church respectively. Baptists 
 and Congregationalists, on the other hand, are congre- 
 gational in polity, their distinctive characteristic being 
 that all the members, and none but the members, of the 
 individual church have a voice in its affairs. It is diffi- 
 cult to see how the Primitive Methodists, who, accord- 
 ing to the report, seceded from the Wesleyans, and 
 who now constitute a separate denomination, can be 
 honestly reckoned part of the same body as the 
 Wesleyans. It is still more difficult to regard the 
 United Methodist Church as being in close comnuinion 
 with tlie other Nonconformist denominations, in view 
 of the fact that it was founded by Act of Parliament 
 as recently as 1907 to unite in one body tlie Bible 
 Christians, the Methodist New Connection, and the 
 United Metliodist Free Churches. The mere applica-
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 165 
 
 tion of the word " united " barely conceals the fact that 
 the body consists of a number of units which have seceded 
 from the principal Methodist denominations. As one 
 Calvinistic Methodist minister said in his evidence before 
 the Commission, union between Nonconformist bodies 
 is not " a question of practical politics at present." 
 When Nonconformists unite for constructive purposes 
 as contrasted with those which are purely predatory, it 
 will be time to regard them as members of a single 
 religious body. 
 
 Mr Asquith, in introducing the Bill of 1909, founded 
 his argument for the Disestablishment of the Church 
 on a comparison between the strength of the Church 
 and that of the aggregated Nonconformist forces. 
 But he regarded (such were his instructions) the test 
 of seating accommodation as most valuable for 
 the purpose of ascertaining the relative numerical 
 strength of the Church and of Nonconformity. He 
 is reported to hav^e said: "Let us go to another, 
 which I think on the whole is a more trustworthy 
 indication of the actual distribution of the popula- 
 tion — that is, the accommodation provided in places 
 of worship." 
 
 This test of seating accommodation has been shown 
 by the report to be utterly worthless, simply because 
 Nonconformists have made provision far in excess of 
 their requirements. They provide sitting accommoda- 
 tion for no less than seventy-four per cent, of the 
 population. The Commissioners say, as to this, that 
 " we are clear that this accommodation is greatly in 
 excess of the number of persons who may reasonably be 
 expected to avail themselves of it." 
 
 But in five counties in Wales Nonconformists are not 
 content with providing accommodation for so large a 
 proportion as seventy-four per cent, of the population,
 
 166 
 
 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 but obligingly provide accommodation which is in excess 
 of the total population. Thus : 
 
 Population. N.C. Accom. per cent. 
 
 50,606 50,775 100-3 
 
 60,240 75,901 126 
 
 126,883 141,912 111-8 
 
 135,328 140,993 104-18 
 
 49,149 62,466 127 
 
 Anglesey . 
 Cardiganshire . 
 Carnarvonshire . 
 Carmarthenshire 
 Merionethshire 
 
 So much for Mr Asquith's " trustworthy indication." 
 He has been deceived by sectarian megalomania. 
 
 Even more ridiculous are the figures of alleged Non- 
 conformist adherents furnished in Sir John Williams' 
 report published with the report of the Commission. 
 Figures showing Nonconformist adherents were supplied 
 to the Commission, but, in the words of the report, 
 " thev were an estimate rather than an accurate figure, 
 and of little or no use for statistics." This remark 
 applies very forcibly to the figures of adherents given 
 by Sir John Williams, as in several instances (anxious 
 to err upon the right side) he claimed more Noncon- 
 formist adherents than there are persons in the parish 
 in question. 
 
 The following are cases in point : 
 
 Llanfair Mathafarn (Anglesey) 
 Aberdaron (Carnarvonshire) 
 Abererch (Carnarvonshire) 
 Neviii (Carnarvonshire) 
 Gwytherin (Denbighshire) 
 Llandoget (Denbighshire) 
 Pentrefoelas (Denbighshire) 
 Ysj)ytty I fan (Denbighshire) 
 Llancadwaladr (Denbighshire) 
 ?ifeneclityd (Denbighshire) 
 (lyHylliog (Denbighsliire) . 
 
 Population 
 
 Alleged 
 N.C. Adherents 
 
 703 
 
 731 
 
 1119 
 
 1179 
 
 1159 
 
 1281 
 
 1755 
 
 1756 
 
 289 
 
 299 
 
 247 
 
 308 
 
 441 
 
 483 
 
 233 
 
 320 
 
 142 
 
 179 
 
 213 
 
 241 
 
 438 
 
 530 
 
 Otlier similar instances could be cited.
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 167 
 
 The excessive accommodation provided by the Non- 
 conformist bodies, and the obvious inflation of their 
 figures in rehition to adherents, throw suspicion upon 
 the accuracy of their other figures deaHng with 
 members and Sunday School scholars. 
 
 The Disestablishment of the Church in Wales would 
 involve the separation of the four Welsh dioceses from 
 the province of Canterbury, of which they have for 
 centuries been a part. As the report says : " Each of 
 the four Welsh dioceses is a constituent unit of the 
 province of Canterbury, and has in all respects the 
 same status in the province as an English diocese." 
 
 Mr Gladstone admitted in this connection, in the 
 House of Commons, on 24th May 1870, that "there is 
 complete ecclesiastical, constitutional, legal, and, I may 
 add — for every practical purpose — historical identity 
 between the Church in Wales and the rest of the 
 Church of England." 
 
 The territory of these dioceses is not exclusively 
 contained within the geographical border-line of Wales. 
 This border-line has never been regarded as a boundary 
 for religious purposes, even by Nonconformists them- 
 selves. The dioceses of Bangor and St David's lie 
 wholly within the confines of Wales, but the diocese 
 of St Asaph has fourteen parishes entirely in England, 
 four parishes partly in Wales and partly in England, 
 while two parishes in the diocese of Llandaff are partly 
 in England and partly in Wales. Eleven parishes in 
 Chester, Lichfield, and Hereford dioceses are wholly in 
 Wales, while thirteen parishes in those dioceses are 
 partly in Wales. Nonconformists have always shared 
 in this respect the eccentricities of ecclesiastical 
 geography. The Nonconformist bodies in Wales, 
 with the exception of the close or strict Baptists, 
 belong to the National Council of Evangelical Free
 
 168 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Churches in England and Wales, and not to a Free 
 Church Council of Wales only. A proposal made a 
 few years ago to establish a separate Free Church 
 Council for Wales did not meet with the approval 
 of the majority of the Welsh Nonconformists, who 
 objected to it on the explicit ground that exclusion 
 from the English Nonconformist organisation would be 
 injurious to Welsh Nonconformity. They appreciate 
 the advantage, which they deny to the Church, of 
 union with England. The Swansea Wesleyan witness 
 before the Commission said that the separation of the 
 AVelsh Wesleyan Methodists from the British Annual 
 Wesleyan Conference " would be injurious to the Welsh 
 Methodists. . . . They get such help from English 
 INIethodists that I think it would be disastrous." 
 
 No Nonconformist denomination is confined to 
 Wales. ]\Iost of the Baptist churches, for instance, 
 are aggregated in county associations. There is a 
 Welsh Baptist Union, but all the county associations 
 are not included in it, while many belong to the Baptist 
 Union of Great Britain and Ireland. The North AVales 
 English Union, the Monmouthshire Union, and the 
 Glamorgan and Carmarthen English Union are not 
 included in the Baptist Union of ^^'^ales. Twenty-five 
 Welsh Baptist churches in England are affiliated to 
 Welsh Baptist associations. Three in London belong 
 to the Glamorgan and Carmarthen Association. 
 
 There are in Wales seventeen Welsh Congregationalist 
 associations. Four Congregational churches in England 
 belong to them. But they do not include all the Congre- 
 gational churches in Wales, one of which belongs to a 
 union in England. There is a Welsh Congregational 
 Union, but some Congregational churches in W^ales 
 belong not to it, but to the Congregational Union 
 of England and Wales. The Calvinistic Methodist
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 169 
 
 denomination has one hundred and seventeen churches 
 in England. Each church or society is subject to a 
 " monthly meeting,' which is " a quasi-corporate body 
 consisting in practice of the minister or ministers of 
 each individual church in a particular district." There 
 are twenty-one such " monthly meetings " in Wales. 
 But they do not include all Calvinistic Methodist 
 churches in Wales, while they include some situated 
 in England. Thus twenty-one Calvinistic Methodist 
 chapels in England are governed by " monthly meet- 
 ings" in Wales; while, on the other hand, nineteen 
 chapels in Denbighshire and fifteen in Flintshire are 
 under the control of the Lancashire Presbytery. The 
 Wesleyan denomination has a strong organisation in 
 Wales under which its societies or churches are divided 
 into four districts, all of which are controlled by the 
 British Annual Wesleyan Conference. But these four 
 districts are not strictly confined to Wales and Mon- 
 mouthshire, as five circuits and one mission in the First 
 North Wales District are situated wholly or partly in 
 England, while part of Monmouth is in the Bristol 
 district and part of Radnor in the Birmingham district. 
 Further, eight circuits situated wholly or partly in 
 Wales are in the Liverpool district. The argument 
 therefore that Wales should be strictly separated from 
 England for religious purposes obtains slight support 
 from a study of the organisation of the different Non- 
 conformist bodies. 
 
 Foiled in their attempt to show that the Church in 
 Wales is a " dwindling minority," its plunderers assert 
 that it is non-national and alien. Even Mr Asquith, 
 in introducting the 1909 Bill, resorted to this argument. 
 He said : " When the Principality of Wales became 
 part and parcel for political purposes of the kingdom 
 of England, contemporaneously or consequentially, the
 
 170 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 ancient Church of Wales was incorporated into or an- 
 nexed to the Church of England. The English Govern- 
 ment succeeded in doing with the Welsh Church what 
 it could never do and never has succeeded in doing 
 with the Welsh people — it denationalised it." 
 
 The historical unsoundness of this statement is 
 sufficiently shown by the fact that for two centuries 
 and a half before AVelsh members were returned to 
 Parliament, the AVelsh chapters and clergy sent 
 proctors to represent them in the Convocation of 
 Canterbury. The statement in the Prime Minister's 
 speech that the English Government " denationalised 
 the Church " is hardly more accurate than that which 
 preceded it. Though expressed in more scholarly 
 language, it does not differ in substance from the 
 hackneyed charge that the Church in Wales is " alien." 
 It is difficult to admit that the Church was denation- 
 alised in the eleventh century if it be true that for 
 years subsequently it numbered the total population of 
 the country among its adherents. It would be not 
 easy to conceive a Church more essentially national. 
 What religion is indigenous in Wales if a Church can 
 be justly branded as alien which has existed in Wales 
 from the earliest times, and far longer than any other 
 religious institution ? It requires some assurance for 
 Nonconformists to call the Church " alien " and " non- 
 national." Their own denominations have existed be- 
 tween one hundred and two hundred years only, have 
 never commanded the support of the wliole NA'elsh 
 nation, and. with tlie possible exception of the VVelsh Cal- 
 vinistic Methodists, had their origin in England and not 
 in Wales. The Church, on the other hand, is, in the 
 words of Mr Hryce, "the legitimate liistorical successor 
 ol" tlic Church of St David," and in tlie words of the 
 I'rime Minister, " existed undoubtedly as a living and
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 171 
 
 a working Christian agency some considerable time 
 before the mission of St Augustine to the Saxons." 
 
 But the arguments in favour of Disestabhshment 
 excite comparatively slight enthusiasm among the " salt 
 of the earth " political Nonconformists. AVhat really 
 interests them is Disendowment. They have been 
 " blooded " by ]Mr Ellis Griffith in the covetous atmo- 
 sphere of Anglesey. Experienced in their own financial 
 instability, they know that lack of funds would cripple 
 the Church and retard its progress as nothing else 
 could. That cupidity supplies their campaign with its 
 sole driving-force is evident alike from their actions and 
 their speeches. When the Welsh Church Bill was 
 introduced in 1893, Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, then 
 member for Tonbridge, moved an amendment to the 
 effect that the Bill should be divided into two Bills — 
 the one to deal with Disestablishment and the other 
 with Disendowment, This proposal proved unaccept- 
 able to the Welsh Radical members of Parliament, who 
 in their eagerness to oppose it were compelled to admit 
 that the Disendowment clauses in the Bill appealed to 
 them far more than those which merely provided for 
 Disestablishment. There was " business " in one and 
 none in the other. Thus Sir George Osborne Morgan, 
 who then sat for East Denbighshire, said that he " did 
 not know of a single Nonconformist in Wales who was 
 in favour of Disestablishment without Disendowment " ; 
 and Mr D. A. Thomas, who represented Merthyr 
 Tydvil, declared that " no Welsh member would enter- 
 tain for a moment the idea of getting Disestablishment 
 without Disendowment." 
 
 More recently, Mr Ellis Griffith, Chairman of the 
 Welsh Parliamentary Party (A7/ desperandum Teucro 
 duce /), admitted in the House of Commons that he had 
 recommended the 1909 Bill on the ground that if the
 
 172 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 funds arising from Disendowment of the Church of 
 England in Anglesey went to supplement old-age 
 pensions for the county, the pensionable age in Anglesey 
 could be reduced from seventy to sixty-five or even 
 sixty. This shabby argument speaks for itself. He 
 did not wholly deny having induced the people of 
 Anglesey, his constituents, to vote for the Bill on the 
 ground that it would produce " bread-and-butter " for 
 them. He denied, it is true, that he originated the 
 phrase " bread-and-butter," and attributed it to " an irre- 
 sponsible person in the audience," but he admitted that 
 immediately after the alleged interruption he " sought 
 to justify the Bill from the material standpoint." 
 
 Is it surprising that the campaign should gain adher- 
 ents among greedy and ignorant persons encouraged by 
 Mr Ellis Griffith to believe that the plunder of the 
 Church will provide them with earlier pensions ? 
 
 I venture to summarise the effect of these Disendow- 
 ment provisions, which, we are asked by Mr Asquith to 
 believe, " are not inspired by any animosity to the 
 Church of England." The churches and parsonages are 
 to be left to the Church — not a very intoxicating conces- 
 sion, seeing that, in the words of the report, " during 
 the last two hundred years nearly all the parish churclies 
 in Wales have been completely rebuilt or considerably 
 restored," and that " in recent years the sums spent on 
 church building and restoration in \A^ales have had to 
 be provided by private donations and by the sub- 
 scriptions of the Church of Enghuid Church Extension 
 and Building Societies. The total amount of voluntary 
 contributions for this purpose for the four Welsh 
 dioceses since 1840, so far as was ascertainable, is given 
 in the diocesan statistics as .t;3,3.'J2,.*J85." 
 
 The total net income from Church endowments in 
 Wales is 4:273,747, of which ^248.987 is derived from
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 173 
 
 parochial endowments and £29,760 from diocesan en- 
 dowments. Of the £243,987 which is derived from 
 parochial endowments, £110,737 comes from tithe, 
 £35,936 from glebe lands, and £97,314 from other 
 sources. The 1909 Bill proposed to take away 
 the whole of these endowments with the exception 
 of £20,584 a year, or Is. 6d. in the pound. In 511 
 of the 983 incumbencies in Wales every penny of 
 endowment would disappear, while 132 other parishes 
 would be left with less than £10 a year each. £17,069 
 now payable in curates' grants would be taken away 
 without any compensation being given to the curates, 
 of whom there are 561 in Wales. INIore than half the 
 income from parochial endowments is derived from en- 
 dowments added since 1703 by the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners and Queen Anne's Bounty. About one-third of 
 this amount is derived from English sources, so that the 
 Bill confiscates to secular uses in Wales not only Welsh 
 ecclesiastical property, but some English ecclesiastical 
 property also. In fact, the disendowment net is spread as 
 wide as possible so as to catch English Church property 
 because it is situate in Wales, and property situate in 
 England because it belongs to the Welsh Church. 
 
 The immediate result of Disendowment would be the 
 amalgamation of parishes. This result has followed in 
 Ireland. Great efforts have been made in Wales of 
 late years to divide up the larger parishes and form new 
 parishes where new centres of population have arisen. 
 This policy has been dictated by the view that it is 
 advisable that the area under the charge of each clergy- 
 man should be as small as is economically possible. 
 The execution of this policy has been made possible 
 only by grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners 
 and by the collection of voluntary subscriptions. \Vhen 
 the endowments conferred by the Ecclesiastical Com-
 
 174 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 missioners are taken away, together with practically all 
 the other endowments the Church possesses, not only 
 will it be impossible to pursue this policy of forming 
 new parishes, but it will be necessary to re-unite those 
 already formed with the parishes from which they were 
 taken. Thus much of the work of the past will be 
 undone. It is difficult to see how this contraction of 
 activity can benefit Nonconformists. The right of 
 every man in a parish, irrespective of creed, to call for 
 the spiritual ministrations of the parish priest will dis- 
 appear. While the Nonconformist minister looks after 
 his own supporters only, the clergyman tends everyone 
 in his parish who desires his ministration ; and it is a 
 matter of common knowledge that many Nonconform- 
 ists avail themselves of his visits. 
 
 What is the pretext for this wholesale spoliation ? Is 
 it that the tithe-payer is to be freed from the burden of 
 paying tithe ? On the contrary, he must pay in the 
 future as in the past, not to the parson, but to the 
 County Council official. That the Bill is designed 
 merely to injure the Church, without relieving anyone, 
 is manifest from the fact that tithe which is paid each 
 year to lay tithe-owners to the amount of £38,968 a 
 year is not touched by the Bill. \A^hile lay tithe must 
 still be paid into the pockets of its owners, ecclesiastical 
 tithe is to be devoted to the provision of public halls, 
 libraries, institutes, and other secular purposes, not 
 because the money is wanted particularly for those 
 purposes, but because it must be given to some purpose 
 when taken from the Church, and because even this 
 Government will not accept the base demagogy of Mr 
 Ellis Griffith's suggestion that Church funds should be 
 used to lower the pensionable age in ^Vnglesey. Under 
 the 1895 Bill, different "objects" were specified, viz., a 
 Welsh library or a Welsh museum. They have been
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 175 
 
 provided for since out of the Imperial Exchequer, and 
 it became necessary to substitute a new destination 
 for the Church's funds. As Mr Balfour pointed out, 
 it is not in order to use them for better purposes that 
 the Government take away the endowments from 
 the Church. They take them away from the Church 
 primarily, and then look round for some decent use 
 to which they may put them. 
 
 Welsh orators in their native land delude their 
 fellow-countrymen into supporting Disendowment by 
 primitive and impudent misrepresentations. They say 
 that the endowments belong not to the Church, but 
 to the State, and that the State can do what it pleases 
 with them. Thus Mr Ellis Griffith is reported in the 
 Wrecchavi Advej^tiser of 30th September to have informed 
 the Welsh National Liberal Council that "the State 
 not only established, but has endowed the Church," and 
 that the tithe rent-charge was " not a spontaneous votive 
 offering of the whole Christian people, but a tax imposed 
 by Imperial authority and enforced by Imperial power." 
 
 That this statement is attributable only to ignorance 
 or a wilful desire to mislead, and that it cannot be ex- 
 cused on the ground of accident, is evident from the 
 fact that he repeated it a few days later at Holyhead. 
 A more astonishing misstatement was never made, even 
 by this loose and inaccurate controversialist. 
 
 As Professor Freeman said : " The tithe can hardly 
 be said to have been granted by the State. The state 
 of the case is rather that the Church preached the 
 payment of tithe as a duty, and that the State gradually 
 came to enforce that duty by legal sanction." And 
 Lord Selborne said : " It is quite certain tithes were 
 never the property of or payable to the State," and "the 
 tithe was never at any time a public fund or revenue." 
 
 That Mr Asquith agrees with Professor Freeman and
 
 176 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Lord Selborne in thinking that tithes were never a tax, 
 but were voluntary in origin, and disclaims Mr Ellis 
 Griffith's theory, is clear from two circumstances. First, 
 he did not use the argument that tithe was a tax when 
 he introduced the 1909 Bill. Secondly, during the 
 debate on the Welsh Church Bill 1895, Sir John Gorst 
 moved to omit the words "since 1703" from the Bill, 
 so that the Church would retain " all private benefac- 
 tions." Mr Asquith refused to accept this amendment 
 on the ground that it would " give to the Disestablished 
 Church the whole of the tithe, since it was an arguable 
 position to take up that, although tithes became a com- 
 pulsory tax after a certain date, they were originally a 
 voluntary obligation, and were given by private persons 
 out of their own resources. If the amendment were 
 adopted it might be open to a Court of Law to say 
 that practically the whole revenue of the present 
 Established Church passed to the representative body 
 of tlie Disestablished Church. In other words, the Bill, 
 instead of disendowing the Church, would re-endow it." 
 The only argument ever presented in justification of 
 the view tliat the Church is not entitled to its endow- 
 ments is that there was such a breach of continuity in 
 tlie corporate existence of the Church at the Reformation 
 as to make it right to sequestrate the property with 
 which the Church was endowed before the Reformation. 
 Hut this argument was emphatically repudiated by the 
 Prime Minister in 1905: "I am not one of those who 
 think, as used to be currently assumed, that the legisla- 
 tion of Henry VIII. transferred the endowments of a 
 national estabhshment from the Church of Rome to the 
 Church of Enghuid. Tliere has been, amid all these 
 changes, a substantial identity and continuity in our 
 national Churcli from earliest history to tlic present 
 time"; and })y Professor Freeman, who says in his book:
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 177 
 
 " The facts of history compel us to assume the absolute 
 identity of the Church of England after the Reformation 
 with the Church of England before the Reformation." 
 
 There is no real difference between tithes and other 
 Church property, except that, while the other property 
 was derived from occasional and voluntary gifts, tithes 
 originated in an obligation which the Church taught 
 was incumbent on all Churchmen. This obligation for 
 many years had no more binding force than the authority 
 and persuasiveness of the Church among its members 
 could confer. Then it became a generally recognised 
 custom, and subsequently was enforced by ecclesiastical 
 law. How little a State-imposed tax was the source 
 of tithe is shown by the fact that until very modern 
 times it was not recoverable in temporal Courts. If, 
 as is sometimes suggested, the tithe was given for the 
 benefit of the poor, it is inconceivable that the poor 
 should have lost their right to receive it, and that no 
 trace of that right should survive at the present time. 
 
 But whatever was the origin of tithes, they have been 
 enjoyed by the Church for centuries, and that circum- 
 stance itself, according to the policy of our law, should 
 constitute a good title to them. Uninterrupted enjoy- 
 ment of land and interests in land for a limited period 
 of time has always been regarded as conferring a good 
 title. But a curious distinction is made by Noncon- 
 formists in the application of this rule to their property 
 and to that of the Church. Long enjoyment by the 
 Church of her endowments is to be a ground for their 
 deprivation and diversion to secular uses. But Non- 
 conformists have not failed to avail themselves of the 
 advantages to be derived from the acquisition of a 
 title to land by prescription or long enjoyment. They 
 have even secured for themselves an Act of Parliament 
 
 — the Dissenters' Chapels Act 1844 — which conferred 
 
 12
 
 178 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 on them a special law of limitation. The circumstances 
 under which this statute became law are interesting in 
 view of the attack now made on the Church's endow- 
 ments. During the seventeenth and the first part of 
 the eighteenth centuries, a number of chapels were 
 built and endowed in England and Ireland by charitable 
 persons, members of the Presbyterian denomination. 
 The founders of these chapels regarded the doctrine of 
 the Holy Trinity as an essential article of their faith, 
 and the trust deeds contained provisions which, while 
 not expressly requiring the profession of Trinitarian 
 doctrine, were held on legal construction to confine the 
 use of the chapels and endowments to Trinitarian Non- 
 conformists. At the time that these trusts were founded 
 Unitarian doctrines were not professed by any religious 
 denomination in this country. But during the eighteenth 
 century Presbyterians in England and Ireland began to 
 secede from Trinitarian teaching, with the result that 
 at the end of the century all those in England and 
 many in Ireland had become Unitarians. They still, 
 however, remained in possession of their chapels and 
 endowments. The question then arose whether they 
 were entitled to them, and it was ultimately decided by 
 the House of Lords that they were not. From the 
 difficulties in which this decision placed them they 
 were rescued by the Dissenters' Chapels Act, which 
 provided that if a congregation of Nonconformists has 
 occupied a chapel and taught in it the same religious 
 doctrines for twenty-five years, it becomes absolutely 
 entitled to it, and to any fund with which it is endowed, 
 even though these doctrines differ fundamentally from 
 tliosc lield by the founders. Now we are confronted 
 with the spectacle of Nonconformists wlio were re- 
 instated by Act of Parliament in the possession of 
 property which tliey liad forfeited by breach of trust
 
 WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT 179 
 
 presuming to question the Church's title to endowments 
 which it has enjoyed for centuries. 
 
 Even on the assumption, which has been repudiated 
 by the Prime Minister, that the Church after the 
 Reformation was not identical with the Church before 
 the Reformation, it cannot be pretended that the 
 divergence between the two is comparable to the 
 difference between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism. 
 
 If the Church were making poor use of its property, 
 there might be some ground for taking it away, not- 
 withstanding its ancient title, but the testimony of 
 opponents makes it clear that the exact contrary is the 
 case. Mr Asquith has told us that, " during the last 
 seventy years at any rate, in the Church of England 
 and Wales there has been opened a new chapter, a 
 new beneficent and fruitful chapter. ... She now, by 
 every means which an enlightened ecclesiastical states- 
 manship and a strong spiritual devotion to the best 
 needs of the Welsh people could dictate, is overtaking, 
 or endeavouring to overtake, the arrears of the past." 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive any circumstances 
 better calculated to establish the title of a Church to its 
 endowments than that it has enjoyed them for centuries, 
 and that it is exhibiting a " strong spiritual devotion to 
 the best needs of the people." 
 
 Another tribute to the Church's work from a less 
 authoritative but still important source may be noticed. 
 Mr Edgar Jones, M.P. for JNIerthyr Tydvil, is reported 
 by the Manchester Cruardian., as recently as 13th Septem- 
 ber 1911, to have told the Welsh Baptist Union that 
 "no one denied that the Church of England on the 
 whole to-day in Wales was making fair use of the 
 money it had. They must not prejudice themselves 
 and blind themselves to obvious truths. The Church 
 to-day made just and active use of the money. "
 
 180 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 The campaign, then, is one to deprive an ancient and 
 not a wealthy Church of moneys well and piously used, 
 and to bestow such moneys upon secular objects. The 
 motives of the campaign are as mean, and petty, and 
 spiteful as its certain consequences. 
 
 It must be remembered too that this claim to rob 
 political opponents by Act of Parliament is made at a 
 moment when the Constitution is in suspense. Welsh 
 Disestablishment has never been the specific issue of an 
 election. Not one voter in a hundred thought of it last 
 December. Yet it will be hustled through a gagged 
 House of Commons at the fag end of a congested session. 
 No Second Chamber can mitigate its sordid malice ; 
 no normal constitutional method can enforce a reference 
 to the constituencies. 
 
 It is much to be hoped that Church laymen alike in 
 England and Wales will look to their own resolution, 
 and to that alone, for a remedy in these menacing 
 circumstances. We are living, as JNlr Balfour truly 
 said, "under revolutionary conditions." Home Rule 
 is the first-fruit of the Revolution ; AVelsh Disestablish- 
 ment is to be its crowning mercy. 
 
 The methods by which Mr Lloyd George and Mr 
 McKenna rose to notoriety are very capable of an 
 application at once analogous, extensiv^e, and infinitely 
 more defensible. Let Churchmen make up their minds 
 to confront desperate opponents with extreme methods 
 of resistance ; let them, in a word, be ranged with those 
 who allow no moral or constitutional validity to the 
 acts of the Gov^ernment until the Second Chamber is 
 restored. This temper and no other makes victory 
 conceivable, and it will (should the worst happen) make 
 success more disastrous than failure to those who are 
 laying hands upon the things which belong to God.
 
 IX 
 
 TARIFF REFORM 
 
 The prospects of the Unionist Party at the next 
 General Election have improved in every month of 
 the past two years. It is now sufficiently clear, on the 
 evidence of the by-elections (and hardly less when we 
 have failed than when we have won), that the Govern- 
 ment is heartily distrusted by the country. The 
 electors now fully realise that the pledges and promises 
 on the strength of which the Government were returned 
 were never even intended for fulfilment. They have 
 consistently refrained from doing what they undertook, 
 and have been most assiduous in the pursuit of large 
 policies upon which the country was never consulted. 
 Their career has been a continuous trail of inconsistency. 
 A scheme of Old Age Pensions on a non-contributory 
 basis was introduced, and commended especially because 
 it was so different from the German scheme. This anti- 
 German recommendation was, however, abandoned in 
 the later scheme of National Insurance whose German 
 origin is acclaimed as its special merit. 
 
 We have also had from the author of the latter 
 measure a " great " Budget. The epithet is at least 
 justified by the gravity of the consequences which it 
 has produced. It has caused that upheaval in the 
 relations of the different social classes, which has been 
 
 181
 
 182 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the real parent of the industrial unrest of the last twelve 
 months ; it has led to a great mass of litigation ; and it 
 has caused an immense expenditure of taxpayer's money 
 for an insignificant return. Whenever the Government 
 are attacked for their failure to economise and to reduce 
 the heavy burden on the taxpayer and on industry, 
 INIr Lloyd George declares the criticism to be an 
 impertinent exhibition of hostility to these measures. 
 He always imagines he has turned the table on the 
 accusers who charge him with increasing instead of 
 diminishing public expenditure and taxation by asking 
 to which of his measures the Unionist Party were 
 opposed. The proper answer is to make the accuser 
 realise he is the accused person and is on his defence. 
 He must show whether he or the Government of 
 which he is a member has effected any economies 
 in those services in which riotous extravagance was 
 freely alleged to exist when they were in opposition. 
 The truth is that there has been no economy, except 
 in the reduction of the Sinking Fund and the con- 
 sequent endangering of the national credit, and that 
 the extravagance of I^iberal administration has been 
 superimposed on the very structure against which 
 the charges of top-heaviness were so freely levelled in 
 former years. 
 
 While criticism has been so far effective that it has 
 brought the Unionist Party to the verge of victory, 
 there are, it must be confessed, some misgivings in the 
 minds of certain people whether the party has a 
 sufficiently determined and coherent policy to keep 
 it in power for any length of time. Unless the party 
 is unanimous in the support of the main items of the 
 Unionist programme, the return to power would be 
 sliortly followed by irretrievable disaster. In past years 
 these doubts and misgivings were mainly associated with
 
 TARIFF REFORM 183 
 
 the comprehensive Unionist policy of Tariff Reform. 
 The nine years which have elapsed since that policy 
 was promulgated by Mr Chamberlain have brought 
 some changes. The leader himself has been laid low 
 by sickness, and is unable to take any further active 
 part in the campaign. In another respect also changes 
 have manifested themselves ; Tariff Reform began as 
 an Imperial policy ; then it gained strength and support 
 from those who saw in it a means for securing and 
 protecting the British market for the British working 
 man ; and, finally, it has swung back to a policy based 
 on a broader conception of Imperial unity embracing not 
 only industrial protection but Imperial consolidation. 
 
 For all these reasons, therefore, we must welcome the 
 declaration made at the Albert Hall on 15th November 
 by Lord Lansdowne and JNIr Bonar Law.^ This declara- 
 tion, elaborated and explained by Mr Bonar Law at 
 Ashton-under-Lyne, defines precisely where the party 
 stands at the present day in relation to the tariff issue. 
 There can be no further opportunity for our opponents 
 to declare that our position on these issues is ambiguous, 
 or for the country to doubt that the returning of the 
 Unionist Government to power means the early intro- 
 duction of a tariff budget. 
 
 It may, however, be in the public interest to remind 
 the country of the precise terms of that declaration, lest 
 we should stand in eadem, injustitia with the present 
 Ministry and lay ourselv^es open to the accusation of 
 smuggling Tariff Reform into operation as Ministers 
 are attempting to smuggle the Home Rule Bill through 
 the rent they have made in the Constitution. 
 
 ^ This passage must be read with the concluding part of the speech 
 which follows. The interposition of a General Election before duties 
 upon food stuffs, if recommended by the Conference, are made effective, 
 obviously leaves the argument upon principle unaffected.
 
 184 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 " We shall be prepared," said Lord Lansdowne, " to 
 give a twofold undertaking, so that there may be no 
 doubt in the minds of the nation as to our meaning and 
 intentions. In the first place, we are ready to undertake 
 that we will specify precisely and exactly the amount and 
 the limits within which we propose to resort to taxation 
 of this kind, and we will undertake that we will not 
 exceed those limits without further authorisation from 
 the people of this country. That is one undertaking. 
 And the other is this. We will undertake that any 
 revenue raised from taxes of this kind shall not be 
 treated as ordinary revenue, but shall be used for the 
 purpose of alleviating other burdens falling upon the 
 shoulders of the working classes, and in that way we are 
 confident we shall be able to make good the assurance 
 given by Mr Balfour that Colonial reciprocity should 
 not involve any increase in living to the working 
 classes." 
 
 Mr Bonar Law identified himself entirely with the 
 programme outlined by Lord Lansdowne. 
 
 " As Lord Lansdowne has told you, we shall not 
 treat any revenue derived from the so-called Food 
 Taxes, whatever they are, which may be imposed for 
 Preference — we shall not treat it as ordinary revenue ; 
 we shall use it to diminish the burdens which in other 
 ways are falling upon the poorer classes of this country. 
 It will not be an additional taxation ; it will be a 
 readjustment of taxation : and owing to this revenue, 
 and owing to the expansion which I am certain will 
 come with this change of system, I say, then, that 
 instead of adding to the cost of living, the adjust- 
 ment which we sliall make will make the burden 
 smaller instead of greater which falls on the working 
 classes." 
 
 The position of the Unionist l*arty is, then, perfectly
 
 TARIFF REFORM 185 
 
 clear. We stand where Mr Chamberlain stood in 1903 
 — we will give the Dominions preference, and we will 
 at the same time diminish rather than increase the 
 thirteen millions of taxation upon food- stuffs which are 
 already imposed upon the people of this country. 
 
 To this declaration will be opposed, no doubt, the old 
 and dishonest cry, " Your food will cost you more." It 
 has, however, become exhausted by repetition, and the 
 facts will tend to emerge in time from the welter of mis- 
 representation. The apprehension, though formidable 
 politically, is baseless that the 2s. preference on foreign 
 wheat would increase the price of the quartern loaf. 
 The study of the returns issued by the Board of 
 Trade in November 1912 proves certain facts con- 
 clusively. 
 
 In the first place, the price of wheat and bread did 
 not drop for thirty years after the repeal of the corn 
 duties. In the second place, the imposition of Sir 
 Michael Hicks Beach's corn duty in April 1902, and its 
 repeal on the 1st July 1903, had obviously not the 
 faintest effect on the tendency of prices, for these 
 remained level during the period of its imposition, and 
 rose abruptly almost immediately after its repeal. In 
 the third place, it is clear that the 2s. per quarter 
 variation in the price of the whole wheat supply (and 
 the argument in relation to a portion is a fortioii) 
 makes no difference whatever in the price of the loaf ; 
 and that while for the last eighteen years the price of 
 a quarter of wheat has varied by 14s. per quarter, yet 
 bread during that period has only varied by one penny 
 on the 4-lb. loaf. 
 
 The dishonesty of the attempt to re-raise from the 
 grave the old misrepresentation that the imposition of 
 2s. duty on the portion of the supply means dearer 
 bread is best shown by an appeal to the Free Traders
 
 186 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 themselves. Sir Alfred Mond (and he is, or ought to 
 be, a very good judge of protection), in a letter to The 
 Morjiing Post, 23rd December 1910, says: — 
 
 " The question when an import duty becomes 
 operative is surely not so mysterious as many con- 
 troversialists imagine. The answer must depend 
 upon the proportion of the untaxed to the taxed 
 supply, of the amount of the internal competition 
 behind the tariff wall, as also upon the amount of 
 profit made by the vendors, and the extent of the 
 demand by intending purchasers." 
 
 The Free Trader, the organ of the Free Trade 
 Union, remarked in February 1908 that: — 
 
 " The normal effect of a duty upon prices cannot 
 be the same where an elastic portion of the supply 
 is produced at home as where the article is entirely 
 of foreign production." 
 
 The Westminster Gazette recently in a leading article, 
 18th September 1911, stated that: — 
 
 "In those years {i.e. years of normal good 
 harvests) the country (France) is independent of 
 outside supplies, and the protective duties are not 
 felt or little felt." 
 
 If, then, as appears from the return, a duty of 2s. per 
 quarter does not affect the price of a quartern loaf, how 
 much less can a 2s. duty increase prices when it is only 
 proposed to levy it on a portion of the whole supply. 
 In view of these admissions no Unionist candidate who 
 faces the question with directness and courage need be 
 alarmed by tlie attempt to exploit our proposals for 
 party purposes. 
 
 Furtlicr, both the actual trend of events and the
 
 TARIFF REFORM 187 
 
 tendency of the preference itself would be to increase 
 continually the proportion of the supply which is 
 exempt from the tax, and to decrease proportionately 
 that part of the supply which will be compelled to pay 
 a 2s. duty. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than 
 the rapidity with which the population and the out- 
 put of the self-governing Dominions has increased in 
 the present generation. Even since Mr Chamberlain 
 launched his campaign the growth has been stupen- 
 dous and has more than justified his prevision. He 
 saw, in what were then termed our colonies, the greatest 
 markets for our output and the strongest potential 
 support of the common burden of Imperial defence. 
 We have seen in the last twelve months what the 
 Overseas Dominions have been able and willing to 
 offer us in the form of battleships, and their contribu- 
 tion has been, and will be still more in the future, 
 a substantial item in the total sum of money voted 
 for the naval defence of the Empire as a whole. But 
 if these are the facts of to-day, what at the present rate 
 of increase will be the future ? 
 
 I am reminded of those well-known passages in 
 which Burke in 1775 prophesied the coming develop- 
 ment of America : — 
 
 " If amid these bright and happy scenes of 
 domestic honour and prosperity, an angel should 
 have drawn aside the curtain, and unfolded the 
 rising glories of the country, and whilst he was 
 gazing with admiration on the commercial grandeur 
 of England, the genius should point out to him 
 the little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the 
 national interest, a small seminal principle rather 
 than a formed body, and should tell him, ' Young 
 man, there is America, which at this day serves
 
 188 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 little more than to amuse you with stories of 
 savage men and uncouth manners : yet shall, before 
 you taste death, show itself equal to the whole of 
 the commerce which now attracts the world.' " 
 
 Never was a prophet more swiftly justified. The 
 population of the American States at the time this 
 speech was made was hardly more than three million, 
 fifteen years later it was nearly four million. In 1830 
 it was thirteen million, in 1880 it was fifty million, and 
 in 1910 it was over ninety-one million. Hardly less 
 rapid in proportion has been the growth in Canada ; 
 and to quote Burke again : — 
 
 " Whether I put the present numbers too high 
 or too low is a matter of little moment. Such is 
 the strength with which population shoots in that 
 part of the world that, state the numbers as high 
 as we will, whilst the dispute continues the ex- 
 aggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any 
 given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst 
 we spend our time in deliberating on the mode 
 of governing 2,000,000, we shall find we have 
 millions more to manage. Your children do not 
 grow faster from infancy to manhood than they 
 spread from families to communities and from 
 villages to nations." 
 
 The question, then, which the electorate have to 
 decide is whether this country will stake out for itself 
 by a system of preference the inuiiense markets which 
 lie before it within the Imperial Dominions in the 
 future, or whether it will allow, by an cHlux of time 
 and by the operation of tliis indifference, other nations, 
 not bound as we are in the commercial shackles of an 
 outworn system, to claim for themselves the birthright
 
 TARIFF REFORM 189 
 
 which actually belongs to us. It is hard to believe 
 that the people of this country have failed to realise 
 the lesson of the recent attempt to establish reciprocity 
 between Canada and the United States. That attempt 
 was, admittedly, not merely a commercial but a political 
 manoeuvre, designed to turn the current of trade and 
 political union from East and West to North and South. 
 The commercial and political chain linking the United 
 Kingdom and Canada, and Canada and Australia, was 
 to be broken. A new relationship, leading by steps 
 from a customs union to a political union, was to be 
 established within the North American continent. 
 The attempt failed ; but if it had succeeded, as most 
 people expected, and as Free Traders desired, what 
 should we have done to discourage a scheme disastrous 
 to the Empire, and costing us perhaps to-day, but 
 certainly in an increasing degree in the future, that 
 very naval and military assistance which is now the 
 most splendid assurance of the future of the Empire ? 
 The answer to the question is that we had done 
 nothing. Had Canada turned away from our out- 
 worn commercial system, discouraged by the barren 
 results of nine years' fiscal agitation in this country, 
 to a country which had something to offer and was 
 prepared to offer it, the blame would have rested on 
 the United Kingdom, not on the Dominion of Canada. 
 Canada has done her best, and it only remains for us 
 to do our part. 
 
 What, on the other hand, hav^e Free Importers to 
 offer ? Can the continuance of the steady increase in 
 the cost of all commodities which marks the present 
 epoch be any cure for a state of affairs which, if one- 
 tenth of what has been said by Free Trade orators 
 from 1903 onwards had been true, would have long ago 
 starved to death more than twenty million of our people.
 
 190 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 and which has, in fact, produced the present situation 
 in our industrial Hfe by making every increase in wages 
 of the last ten years illusory and of no real effect ? 
 Yet this is all that Cobdenism can suggest. What 
 we offer, on the other hand, is the remission of taxation 
 on existing food taxes in so far as they are produced 
 within the Empire, and the devotion of the sum 
 obtained by Imperial preference to the furtherance of 
 our policy of social reform. At the same time, the 
 vigorous development of the total material resources 
 of the Empire would enable us so far to increase the 
 supply of food and raw materials as to check that 
 present rise in prices caused by excess of demand 
 over supply, by which we in this island are principally 
 embarrassed. The conceptions which 1 have indicated 
 in rough outline have attained an ever-increasing hold 
 on the mind and imagination of intelligent men in 
 this country. The rise in food prices, the growth 
 of the Dominions, the American reciprocity move- 
 ment, and the growth of Naval assistance, have 
 all had their effect, and the joint result of all these 
 changes will not be affected by waving once more 
 the tattered banner of the free food agitation. 
 
 The eflfect of all these changes, partly the result of 
 the natural evolution of Tariff Reform, partly also 
 the consequence of legitimate pressure from different 
 sections of supporters, as investigation into their needs 
 and interests became more scientific, has been to con- 
 solidate all sections of Unionist support until it may 
 be said with confidence that there is at tliis moment 
 no other policy before the country which counts among 
 its active supporters more than one-half of the people. 
 It appears wortli wliile, therefore, to examine in greater 
 detail the economic and political changes of the last 
 nine years, in order to demonstrate once again the
 
 TARIFF REFORM 
 
 191 
 
 soundness of the statesmanship which impelled Mr 
 Chamberlain to adopt this policy. 
 
 Great stress was properly laid in the early days of 
 the campaign on the significance of the emigration 
 movement, whether regarded absolutely as a purely 
 British phenomenon or by comparison with an industrial 
 nation like Germany. Assuming the existence of a 
 state of affairs abroad which exercises an attractive 
 influence upon the adventurous spirits of both countries, 
 we should expect in both countries something like equal 
 emigration rates, or at least a similar direction in the 
 dimensions of the movement from those countries. As 
 the following figures show, the very reverse is the 
 case : — 
 
 Emigration from the United Kingdom and Germany. 
 
 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 Germany. 
 
 Amount, 
 
 Per 10,000 of 
 Population, 
 
 Auiount. 
 
 Per 10,000 of 
 Population. 
 
 1902 
 1906 
 1910 
 1911 
 
 101,547 
 
 194,671 
 
 233,709 
 261,808 
 
 24 
 25 
 52 
 58 
 
 32,098 
 31,074 
 25,531 
 
 5 
 4 
 
 These figures show an enormously larger volume of 
 emigration from the United Kingdom than from 
 Germany ; a rapidly increasing rate from the United 
 Kingdom, and a steadily declining rate from Germany. 
 In proportion to the respective populations of the two 
 countries, emigration from the United Kingdom is 
 now from fourteen to fifteen times as heavy as from 
 Germany. From another point of view this pheno- 
 menon is illuminating. The natural increase of popula- 
 tion {i.e. excess of births over deaths) in this country is
 
 192 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 about 420,000 per annum. Our annual loss by emigra- 
 tion is therefore about 62 per cent, of the natural 
 increase. In Germany, on the other hand, the natural 
 increase of population is about 850,000 per annum, 
 and the loss by emigration is little more than 3 per 
 cent, of this increase. The increase of the British 
 population is thus, in consequence of the loss by emigra- 
 tion, reduced to about 150,000 per annum, compared 
 with considerably more than 800,000 per annum in 
 Germany. It is deplorable that all the efforts of 
 science, statesmanship, and administration labouring so 
 incessantly for more than a generation to save the 
 Hves of our people, have been nullified by inability to 
 support the population in our own country. At the 
 same time we cannot ignore the fact that German 
 population is growing at a rate more than five times 
 as large as our own. 
 
 It is not material to the argument of the previous 
 paragraph that at the present time about 80 per cent, 
 of the emigration from the United Kingdom is to 
 countries within the Empire. We are concerned here 
 only to note from the facts set out that there is this 
 enormous drain continuing and growing in volume each 
 year, whereas in Germany it is small and diminishing. 
 It is impossible to attribute this difference to any other 
 cause than that the economic promise of this country is 
 less capalile of satisfying the primary and fundamental 
 needs of her people. 
 
 Nor does this conclusion lack the support of striking 
 statistical facts. It is well known that the iron and 
 steel trades supply the most conclusive index of national 
 production and prosperity. The table given below shows 
 how we stand in this matter in recent years as compared 
 with our principal competitors : —
 
 TARIFF REFORM 
 
 193 
 
 
 World's 
 Exports. 
 
 Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Germany. 
 
 U.S.A. 
 
 Belgium. 
 
 France. 
 
 
 Tons. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1894 
 
 4,046,000 
 
 65-6 
 
 18-6 
 
 2-0 
 
 9-9 
 
 3-8 
 
 1904 
 
 8,576,000 
 
 38-0 
 
 32-3 
 
 13-6 
 
 10-7 
 
 5-3 
 
 1907 
 
 11,60.%000 
 
 44-5 
 
 29-7 
 
 11-2 
 
 9-7 
 
 4-9 
 
 1912 
 
 15,800,000 
 
 32-3 
 
 360 
 
 190 
 
 101 
 
 2-7 
 
 Estimated 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 It will be seen that between 1894 and 1912 our share 
 of the total trade of the world in these trades has sunk 
 from 65 per cent, to 32 per cent. Germany, on the 
 other hand, has risen from 18 per cent, to 36 per 
 cent., or, in other words, has doubled her production. 
 The United States of America, which started with 
 little or nothing, has already secured 19 per cent, of 
 the total trade, while Belgium and France remain 
 almost stationary. The comparison is hardly more 
 to the advantage of this country than that of 
 the emigration figures on which I have already 
 commented. 
 
 Confirmation of this general conclusion is supplied by 
 the unemployment figures for the two countries. The 
 Board of Trade index number of trade-union unemploy- 
 ment in 1911 was 3"0 per cent., as compared with only 
 1*9 per cent, in Germany. In 1910 the British figure 
 was 4"7 per cent., compared with 3*6 per cent, in 1906 
 and 4*0 per cent, in 1902. Some doubts have been 
 thrown on the merit of the Board of Trade figure by 
 Mr Bowley in a paper read before the Royal Statistical 
 Society a few days ago, the effect of whose criticism is 
 to raise the index for 1910 from 4*7 to 52. Assuming, 
 what must be obviously less than the melancholy truth, 
 that this figure, representative of trade-union experience, 
 is typical of the conditions throughout the entire work- 
 ing class — skilled and unskilled, organised and un- 
 
 13
 
 194 
 
 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 organised — there must have been in 1910 about 750,000 
 persons constantly seeking employment. Statesman- 
 ship cannot afford to ignore any longer the inability of 
 this country to provide fully for the needs of this large 
 army of unemployed workmen. Their very existence 
 is a danger to the State. 
 
 While opportunities for employment have dimin- 
 ished, the last five years have shown a decided tendency 
 to increased cost of living. Prices have steadily risen 
 until in May the percentage increase in the cost of 
 food-stufFs was 26 per cent, above the level of 1901-5. 
 The following figures on this point are taken from the 
 Economist of 8th June : — 
 
 Cereals and 
 
 other 
 
 Meat. 
 
 Foods. 
 
 . 100 
 
 100 
 
 . 120 
 
 135| 
 
 . 12U 
 
 135 
 
 124" 
 
 137 
 
 . 123^ 
 
 133 
 
 . 125 
 
 128 
 
 . 126i 
 
 126 
 
 Course of Prices in the United Kingdom. 
 
 Basis (average 1901-1905) 
 End of December 19 1 1 
 
 January 1912 
 
 February „ 
 
 March „ 
 
 April „ 
 
 May „ 
 
 During the present year the staple food-stufFs con- 
 sumed by the people have continued to rise steadily, 
 until last month (June 1912) the average price was 26-|- 
 per cent, higher than the average of the period 1901-5. 
 The other foods (namely, tea, sugar, etc.) have shown a 
 downward tendency ; nevertheless, their price is still 
 higher by 26 per cent, than during the datum period. 
 Nor has there been any compensation for this increase 
 in cost of food-stuffs by any corresponding change in the 
 remuneration of labour. At most the wages earned in 
 1910 showed an advance, according to tlie Board of 
 Trade, of not more than about 3 per cent, over the 
 period 1901-5. Therefore the purchasing power of the
 
 TARIFF REFORM 195 
 
 working classes in this short interval declined by about 
 22 per cent. The official figures of Germany and the 
 United States show that in the same interval wages 
 have, in those countries, more than compensated for 
 the increased cost of living. The general conclusion 
 from the evidence is unmistakable. Even Mr Chiozza 
 Money admitted some time ago that, " At the present 
 time food costs about 15 per cent, more than it did in 
 1899. ... It is to be feared, therefore, that the pro- 
 portion of poverty has increased since 1899, since, 
 although wages have risen, they have not risen as 
 greatly as the cost of living. The rise in money wages 
 since 1899 has been about 6 per cent., which has only 
 covered part of the increase in the cost of living. . . . 
 A very real decrement has been suffered by all classes 
 of wage-earners, which is to say, by the mass of the 
 British people. It is a misfortune which, because it 
 directly affects so many, is a national misfortune." — In 
 Daily News, 22nd March 1911. 
 
 The evidence, therefore, of industrial conditions as 
 reflected in emigration, unemployment, wages, and 
 cost of living proves that this country is becoming an 
 increasingly undesirable place to live in for the work- 
 ing classes. When the condition established by this 
 evidence is contrasted with that of Germany or the 
 United States, two countries in which the economic 
 and industrial position is most nearly comparable with 
 that of our own country, the conclusion is inevitable 
 that the disparity is mainly attributable to the differ- 
 ence of fiscal system. 
 
 Next let us examine the changes in the political 
 organisation of the British Empire which have been 
 instrumental in awakening the nation to a full realisa- 
 tion of the economic and political expediency, and even 
 urgency, of the adoption of an Imperial fiscal system.
 
 196 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 By an Imperial fiscal system is not meant a common 
 system of tariffs throughout the Empire, or even inter- 
 Imperial Free Trade. It is left for an avowedly Free 
 Trade Government to reconcile a common tariff system 
 in the United Kingdom, with differential and possibly 
 discriminating tariffs in and between the various parts. 
 We mean by the expression Imperial fiscal system, 
 only a system in which each of the constituent parts 
 will determine with absolute independence the tariff 
 best suited to its needs, and in which the special 
 interests of the Empire shall be duly safeguarded. 
 
 The first and most significant step in the direction of 
 Imperial commercial unity in the last nine years has 
 been the growth of Preference, not alone with the 
 United Kingdom, but also between the Dominions 
 themselves. In 1903 Canada alone of the Dominions 
 gave a preference to British trade. Since then New 
 Zealand, Australia, and South Africa have established 
 similar preferences in their tariflfs, designed especially 
 to favour and encourage British trade. The advan- 
 tages of these preferential tariffs are being rapidly ex- 
 tended by each of the self-governing Dominions to the 
 others. Further, a beginning has been made with the 
 extension of the same system of special lower tariffs 
 by the Dominions to the Crown Colonies. The active 
 assistance of the home Government was, indeed, given 
 to both Canada and the West Indies in the arrange- 
 ment of terms by which mutual reciprocal preference 
 could be granted by these two portions of the King's 
 dominions to one another. An elaborate system and 
 network of mutual preferences has thus been brought 
 already into existence in and between the diiferent 
 parts of tlie Empire. The system is obviously incom- 
 plete. So long as the United Kingdom stands com- 
 pletely outside this beneficent movement, and refuses
 
 TARIFF REFORM 197 
 
 to respond to those substantial grants of favour the 
 continuance of which can only be assured by our adop- 
 tion of a reciprocal policy, so long will it be impossible 
 to say that the fiscal policy of the Empire is directed 
 to the common benefit of the Empire. 
 
 There is danger in waiting. Other nations, un- 
 hampered by any considerations of fiscal pedantry, are 
 showing extraordinary zeal in attempting to secure 
 what we are making no effort to retain. Arrangements 
 have been concluded by Canada with France, Germany, 
 Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the United States, which 
 are in effect commercial treaties, or contain obligations 
 not less binding than those of such treaties. 
 
 These arrangements have now produced a demand 
 for greater freedom in the negotiation of commercial 
 treaties by the Dominions. The Government, which 
 would readily have acceded to this demand, finds its 
 grant obstructed by a system of commercial treaties 
 concluded throughout a long period of British history. 
 The Foreign Secretary sneered not long ago at the fact 
 that some of these treaties were negotiated and con- 
 cluded during the Commonwealth, but Free Traders 
 have always contended that British trading privileges 
 abroad are rendered secure by the maintenance of these 
 treaties intact. A large number of these treaties were 
 concluded at a time when all foreign relations, even 
 those affecting the commercial interests of the Colonies, 
 were settled by the Home Government. There are 
 said to be no fewer than forty-four commercial treaties 
 the terms of which bind Canada, often without her 
 assent having been asked or required, equally with the 
 United Kingdom. Equally numerous are the treaties 
 which similarly bind Australia, New Zealand, South 
 Africa, and Newfoundland. The decision of the 
 Government to yield to the desire of the Dominions
 
 198 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 for independent treaty-making powers took definite 
 shape at the last Imperial Conference. On that occa- 
 sion the Government undertook to approach the foreign 
 countries directly concerned with a proposal to release 
 the Dominions from the operation of the treaties. The 
 reciprocals obligations between the Dominions and 
 foreign countries conferred by these treaties were to 
 cease ; to be resumed later, on a different basis, as the 
 result of direct negotiations by representatives of these 
 Dominions. It is an adequate comment upon this pro- 
 cedure that, except Sweden and Morocco, no foreign 
 country has been willing to fall in with the proposed 
 arrangement. They at least have learned to appreciate 
 the essential unity and integrity of the British Empire. 
 For many years they have been granting a privileged 
 position to British trade which, in the case of all other 
 countries, has only been granted in return for privileges 
 of equal value. The fact that the Dominions have 
 been associated with us in our treaties has secured 
 foreign countries some return, if not in our markets, 
 at least in other parts of the Empire. But if the 
 Dominions are to be permitted to withdraw, the portion 
 of the treaty which would then remain would be, in 
 the opinion of foreign nations, the conferment of 
 obligations without any reciprocal obligation from our- 
 selves. A unilateral arrangement of tliis kind could 
 not (such is the contention) be justified in the Parha- 
 ments or to the democracies of those countries. If 
 the power to negotiate commercial treaties is to be 
 granted, on terms however limited, to the Dominions, 
 that power necessarily involves as a condition of its 
 salutary exercise the capacity to grant tariff' favours 
 ourselves in return for equal tarifl' favours required 
 by us. 
 
 Many ol)servers make the cardinal error of assuming
 
 TARIFF REFORM 199 
 
 that there is nothing wrong with our foreign trade. 
 They point to its growth in recent years, and especially 
 since the Tariff Reform campaign was launched in 
 1903. It is undeniably true that the value of our 
 foreign trade has shown astonishing expansion in 
 recent years. We may answer that, though the value 
 of our trade has increased, the volume has shown a 
 much smaller increase. Or we may argue that, however 
 large the British trade increase has been, the trade of 
 the leading foreign countries, such as Germany and the 
 United States, has increased even more. However 
 sound these positions may be, it is not strictly relevant 
 to the point it is desired to make here. This is that 
 the growth of our foreign trade in recent years is not 
 due to a growth in the total volume of production, but 
 only to an increased dependence on foreign markets for 
 the disposal of a larger share of the products of British 
 workers. The position might be illustrated as follows : 
 Ten years ago, out of every £lOO of commodities pro- 
 duced by British labour, some £20 was exported and 
 £80 retained. At the present time it is probable that 
 the proportions have altered to £25 exported and £75 
 retained. Attention is concentrated on the export 
 figures, because it is only in connection with this depart- 
 ment of commerce that official returns are available. 
 In the illustrative case cited it would appear that the 
 export had increased in the proportion of 20 to 25 or 
 by 25 per cent. This would take no account of the 
 larger volume of production due to the work of an 
 increased population. In ten years this alone would 
 account for an increase of about 10 per cent. Hence 
 the total increase in the volume of the export trade 
 arising partly from the growth of population, but mainly 
 from the greater proportion of the total product exported, 
 would amount to 37^ per cent. This is the figure
 
 200 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 which Free Traders flaunt in the faces of their opponents 
 to disprove and discredit, as they allege, the contention 
 that our foreign trade is not sound and prosperous. Un- 
 fortunately, there is no evidence to prove that trade as 
 a whole, whether for consumption abroad or at home, 
 has grown more prosperous. Indeed, all the available 
 evidence suggests a different conclusion. If all were 
 well with our trade we should not have lost 1,500,000 
 British citizens in the last ten years ; unemployment 
 might reasonably have been expected to be less ; wages 
 might with equal confidence have been expected to 
 show a larger growth. These facts prove rather the 
 soundness of the theory that the condition of British 
 trade as a whole has not improved in recent years. 
 
 In these circumstances the increase in the export 
 trade has a special importance. Never before has this 
 country depended on markets abroad for the disposal of 
 so large a share of her production. We are therefore 
 more vulner3,ble to the attacks of foreign countries upon 
 our trade. Any check to which that trade might be 
 subjected would visit us with very serious injury. We 
 cannot afford to have any markets closed against us. 
 We cannot afford even to have the smallest additional 
 barrier placed in the path of our merchants. A}\ our 
 efforts must be directed to make our entry into those 
 markets easier and freer, subject to fewer restrictions 
 and opposed by lower tariffs. 
 
 The approach to foreign Governments at the instance 
 of the Dominions to relieve us from their treaty 
 obligations has not been successful in securing its 
 object, and has served only to render those nations 
 suspicious of our intentions, and to induce a recon- 
 sideration of tlic equity of the treaties. We can, it 
 is true, always denounce our existing treaties ; but 
 no foreign minister is likely in our day and under
 
 TARIFF REFORM 201 
 
 present conditions to recommend so drastic a course. 
 True, it would give the Dominions the opportunity 
 they desire so much of making their own independent 
 trading agreements. But how about our interests ? 
 Without desiring to minimise the trade of the Domin- 
 ions, it must be recognised that foreign trade interests 
 are at present more extensive than those of all the 
 Empire combined. On what terms could we re-nego- 
 tiate the treaties so as to protect the interests of the 
 United Kingdom ? Are foreign countries likely, under 
 the altered circumstances, to grant us most-favoured- 
 nation treatment, a privilege upon which they place 
 a high value, and the consideration for which is a free 
 entry into our market ? The answer from those who 
 have devoted their attention to this aspect of the 
 question is clear. Such persons do not doubt that, 
 unless we tie our fiscal freedom in such manner as we 
 have already done in the last Japanese treaty, it is 
 unlikely that new treaties would be negotiated. Most- 
 favoured - nation treatment would be denied us. 
 Privileges which were extended to our keenest com- 
 petitors would be withheld from us. The whole of 
 our trade would be seriously menaced. 
 
 We cannot overlook the fact that in the Dominions 
 the desire to negotiate independent treaties is very 
 largely the result of a desire to find new markets for 
 their products. If by any policy of preference for 
 Imperial products we gave them privileges they do not 
 at present enjoy, much trade in the United Kingdom 
 at present enjoyed by foreign countries would be 
 diverted to the Dominions. So far as that diversion 
 was effected, the need for new markets would be 
 satisfied, and the demand for treaty-making powers 
 postponed. But this postponement could only be for 
 a time. The demand for treaty-making powers would
 
 202 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 certainly be renewed. The conditions, however, would 
 be different. We should then have secured a specially 
 privileged position in the markets of the Empire and 
 have conferred equally exceptional privileges upon 
 Empire trade in our own market. Possessing a tariff, 
 we could next approach foreign nations for the renewal 
 of our treaties on terms determined by our sole interests. 
 The Dominions would equally be able to negotiate 
 treaties in their respective interests without risking the 
 position of British trade. Only by the recognition of 
 these interests and necessities is it possible to grant the 
 legitimate demands of the Dominions without danger 
 to broader Imperial interests. 
 
 Considerations such as these, proving the intimate 
 connection between the policy of tariffs for securing 
 British interests and the policy of preference for securing 
 the interests of the Empire, have made it clear that the 
 policy is in the truest sense Imperial. Such a policy, 
 once adopted, would give the amplest scope for a final 
 settlement of some of the great outstanding problems 
 which have vexed the minds of statesmen for many 
 years. New sources of revenue for financing further 
 and even larger measures of social reform would be at 
 once opened up. Poor I^aw reform, readjustment of 
 the burdens of local taxation with the aid of grants 
 from the Imperial Exchequer, housing reform both in 
 the towns and rural districts — measures the effective 
 settlement of which has been continually postponed 
 because of the financial difficulty — would then approach 
 a real solution. These are social reforms whicli would 
 be a real boon to the masses of the people, and it is a 
 tragedy that devotion to a fiscal fetish shoukl continue 
 to bar the way to legislation. Tarifl' Ueformers are 
 confident, as the result of a world-wide experience, that 
 a tariff can be framed which would be of direct
 
 TARIFF REFORM 203 
 
 advantage to the working classes. The regulation of 
 imports would give greater security to our manufac- 
 turers. This result would in time lead to the invest- 
 ment of capital at home which would otherwise have 
 been invested abroad. More capital invested at home 
 would imply production in larger quantities at lower 
 costs. We should compete more readily and on better 
 terms in the markets abroad, and, owing to the larger 
 output and the increased demand for labour at home, 
 more wages would be distributed among our workers 
 at home. This is no imaginary picture ; its reality is 
 confirmed and corroborated, as has been said, by the 
 universal experience of the civilised world. There is 
 not a country where the adoption of a tariff system has 
 not ushered in a beneficial change in the progress of 
 the working classes. Our own dominions, Germany, 
 France, Italy, Belgium, the United States, all support 
 and illustrate this conclusion. 
 
 One of the greatest needs of the country is that 
 attention should be given to the condition of our agri- 
 culture. The maintenance of this industry is still vital 
 to our national interests. Our defence arrangements 
 would be greatly simplified if we could make sure of 
 a large home supply of food-stuffs. No Government 
 of whatever party complexion can afford to ignore the 
 agricultural industry. The present Government has 
 passed a Small Holdings measure which has been 
 singularly ineffective in fulfilling the expressed expec- 
 tations of its promoters. They have promised a scheme 
 of land banks and credit societies, which has not been 
 carried further than the stage of promising. These 
 attempts and promises to legislate for agriculture are 
 at best the merest tinkering with a great question. 
 There must be a tariff designed to help agriculture just 
 as much as manufacturing industry. Assistance on a
 
 204 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 large scale must be given to a policy of small holdings 
 for occupying tenants. Credit facilities must be 
 organised on a generous basis. Agricultural research 
 must be undertaken by and at the expense of the 
 State. Light railways must be encouraged, if neces- 
 sary at the public charge, in rural areas where the 
 building of railways by private enterprise is likely to 
 prove unremunerative. A tariff is the first essential 
 of such a comprehensive agricultural policy. With it 
 much may be accomplished : without it nothing can 
 be attempted. 
 
 From whatever point we approach the great ques- 
 tions which are agitating all political parties, Unionists 
 and Tariff Reformers find an effective solution in the 
 policy they advocate. It is the master-key of all 
 Unionist activities. Labour unrest will be settled, 
 or at least mitigated ; the condition of the masses will 
 be improved ; agriculture will be restored ; and the 
 Empire will be firmly consolidated by a determined 
 and bold policy of Tariff Reform. The next election 
 will be of critical importance. We appeal from the 
 House of Commons to our friends in the constituencies 
 for that sustained help without which all our efforts 
 are fruitless.
 
 X 
 
 TARIFF REFORM AND OTHER MATTERS 
 
 A speech delivered at Dudley on loth December 19 12 
 
 No one, who has been reading the papers attentively 
 in the last few weeks, can fail to be struck by the 
 circumstance that, whereas events of the most critical 
 character have been happening before our eyes on the 
 Continent of Europe, the attention of public men in 
 this country has been almost exclusively directed to our 
 own domestic controversies. This is not an altogether 
 healthy sign. The quarrels, however bitter — and they are 
 very bitter — which divide us at home, would be forgotten 
 as if they had never existed, if, unhappily, we should find 
 ourselves confronted by that crisis in Europe which only 
 those who have not closely followed the progress of Con- 
 tinental politics in the last five years will pronounce to be 
 impossible or even very unlikely. 1 n what position should 
 we find ourselves if war broke out in Europe to-morrow ? 
 
 I do not inquire now whether the commitment is 
 wise or unwise, necessary or unnecessary ; and I cannot 
 even say with authority that the commitment exists ; 
 but if we are committed to interpose by land as well as 
 by sea to assist France, should she ever become the 
 victim of an aggressive campaign, how far are we 
 to-day in a position to meet this necessity ? 
 
 We have our expeditionary force, second, I believe, 
 to none, officer for officer, man for man, in the armies 
 of the world ; but how are we equipped to meet the 
 
 205
 
 206 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 necessary wastage of Continental warfare in a struggle 
 where our numbers are relatively so small in comparison 
 with those alike of our opponents and of our allies ? 
 
 I hope no one is so simple as to imagine that the 
 weakness of our actual military position is without its 
 effect upon the efficiency of our diplomacy. Sir Edward 
 Grey has been the subject of much criticism, proceeding 
 almost entirely from his own supporters. For my part, 
 I confess that looking back upon the history of the last 
 five years, I marvel not that Sir Edward Grey has been 
 able to do so little, but that he has been able to effect 
 so much. There would be no war in Europe — and I go 
 further ; I say there would be no apprehension of war 
 in Europe — to-day, if a million English citizens had been 
 trained in those arts of self-defence which have never 
 been forgotten by any great country except in the period 
 of its decay, and as an incident of its dissolution. 
 
 The whole field of Foreign Affairs has long, by 
 common consent, been removed from the blighting area 
 of party controversy. The same salutary process, 
 though not so completely established, is m course of 
 development in the treatment of naval problems. The 
 most vital task for responsible statesmen to-day is to 
 place the problem of our military defence in such a 
 position that men of all political views may bring into 
 the common stock their knowledge and their ideas in 
 such a spirit that it would be universally realised by 
 everyone that the attempt to exploit them for the 
 purposes of party capital was unworthy of a patriotic 
 Englishman. No one party can persuade the youth of 
 this country to submit to a process of training in arms 
 if any other party is prepared to initiate a factious and 
 partisan opposition. Let us attempt, each according to 
 the measure of his powers, ever to enlarge the range and 
 area of those issues vital to the Commonwealth which
 
 TARIFF REFORM & OTHER MATTERS 207 
 
 public-spirited men are determined to exclude from the 
 battleground of politicians. 
 
 We have recently, as a party, passed through a period 
 the serious character of which has been, in my judgment, 
 much exaggerated. I speak a great deal in many parts 
 of the country ; and wherever I go I find none of those 
 doubts and apprehensions which have recently been rife in 
 the Clubs and the Lobbies. We require at the present 
 moment both a sense of perspective and a recollection of 
 recent history. Eight years ago Mr Chamberlain dedi- 
 cated what remained of his political life to a cause which 
 he believed, and we believed, to be vital to the permanence 
 of the Imperial connection. We first embraced that cause 
 in the darkest hour of the fortunes of that great party to 
 which we all belong. The adoption of that policy, and, 
 in a minor degree, its insistent prosecution in the months 
 and years that followed, threatened at one time to dis- 
 integrate the party. We who believed in Tariff Reform 
 were neither so ignorant nor so inattentive, either to 
 history or to common-sense, as to be unaware of the diffi- 
 culties which beset our path. The duties on food which 
 in those days were advocated, would at that time have 
 been of incalculable value to the Colonies. They told 
 us so, and I was, and am, content to accept their decision. 
 This was one method of carrying out our object, and we 
 at that day knew of no other, and they knew of no 
 other. With a full knowledge that of all the policies 
 which it might be our duty to recommend to our fellow- 
 countrymen, this of all others lent itself to misrepre- 
 sentation and dishonest travesty in the constituencies, 
 we made up our minds formally, deliberately, repeatedly, 
 that we would trust the common-sense and the patriotism 
 of our countrymen. We thought that under whatever 
 disadvantages we might enter upon the great struggles
 
 208 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 which lay in front of us, we should be strengthened by 
 the correlativ^e advantage that we were advocating what 
 was right, whether it was popular or not, because we 
 believed that the cause we so advocated would con- 
 solidate the Empire, and because we believed no other 
 policy could or would do so. Having taken a decision 
 so open to attack upon considerations of opportunism 
 alone, we contended on its behalf with all the determina- 
 tion and all the persuasiveness of which we were capable. 
 We carried on insistently a campaign which created great 
 enthusiasms. We made friends of men who, on other 
 subjects, were not in great sympathy with the ideals of the 
 Conservative Party. Nor had we long to wait before the 
 strength of the army, which had rallied in reply to our 
 efforts, was exposed to a most searching and public test. 
 In 1910, Mr Lloyd George introduced a Budget conceived 
 and framed with every artifice which skilful demagogy 
 could suggest, to attract the constituencies if he should 
 succeed, in his own phrase, in enticing the Lords into a 
 trap. We fought the Budget, and we fought the Land 
 Taxes, which supplied all the rhetoric of those who de- 
 fended the Budget, with one weapon, and with one 
 weapon only. We insisted, alike in the towns and on the 
 countryside, upon that policy of Tariff Reform on behalf 
 of which so much missionary enterprise had been lavished 
 in the years which had intervened since its adoption. Nor 
 was the result discouraging to those who challenged, for 
 the first time, in competition with a policy so specious, 
 the verdict of the nation upon an issue which had 
 been believed so completely dead that it had become 
 the very type and exemplar of causes deemed to be 
 hopelessly lost. We won more than a hundred seats ; 
 we destroyed, perhaps for all time, the Liberal Party as 
 an independent Ciovcrnment ; we created the Coalition, 
 with all its shifts, all its evasions, all its dishonesty, all
 
 TARIFF REFORM & OTHER MATTERS 209 
 
 its futility. We restored in large measure the strength 
 and the prestige of the Unionist minority, and we gave 
 it more than strength ; we gave it once again confidence, 
 self-respect, and the consciousness of an ideal for which its 
 members had made many sacrifices, and in front of which 
 they saw, or thought they saw, a sure and certain hope. 
 
 The twelve months which followed necessarily in- 
 volved some interruption in our campaign. The death 
 of King Edward VII., the constitutional conference, the 
 concentration of public attention upon the crisis which 
 followed, and the recrudescence of class hatred, upon 
 a scale of malignity as sinister as it was novel in our 
 political life, presented topics which made it impossible 
 in the Election which followed to concentrate public 
 attention upon the subject of Tariff Reform as ex- 
 clusively as we had done in the January election. 
 
 And here Mr Balfour, exercising a discretion which I 
 approved then, and approve now, announced a decision 
 which I am satisfied was required by the crisis then, and 
 which, in a modified form, may not inconceivably be 
 required by a similar crisis in the future.^ He decided 
 not to compromise the issues of a struggle on which the 
 whole fabric of the Constitution depended, by offering 
 for irrevocable decision to the constituencies an issue 
 which could not, from the very nature of the case, be an 
 exclusive or even a principal subject of public attention. 
 
 The result of that election is well within the memory 
 of you all. Fighting against great odds, we none the 
 less maintained our position ; and we have strengthened it 
 consistently in the by-elections, until to-day we are far the 
 largest homogeneous party in the House of Commons. 
 
 A month ago, no cloud, however small, menaced the 
 
 ^ Since this speech was made, the suggestion contained in the above 
 sentence has been, in substance, adopted by Lord Lansdowne and Mr 
 Bonar Law. 
 
 14
 
 210 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 prospect in front of us. For the Government the hand- 
 writing was upon the wall ; and the only question 
 seemed to be, when the final blow would be delivered. 
 
 Under these circumstances Lord Lansdowne and 
 Mr Bonar Law delivered their speeches at the Albert 
 Hall. It would be vain to deny that they produced 
 both doubt and heart-searching among men who thought 
 their leaders were changing a venue undoubtedly favour- 
 able, for one which was, at least, less favourable. If 
 tactics counted for everything in political life, this view 
 would not lack the support of powerful arguments. 
 But they do not ; they never did, and they never will. 
 The forgetfulness of this elementary truth betrayed the 
 Government into the attempt which will assuredly 
 wreck them before its consummation is complete, to 
 carry through Home Rule without an appeal to the 
 constituencies. We have criticised with indignation, 
 bitterly felt and bitterly expressed, the attempt to de- 
 fraud the constituencies of their right to pronounce 
 upon great and novel policies ; and we have insisted 
 for two years that no Government is justified in forcing 
 into law a scheme which has not been explained, both 
 on principle and with particularity, to the constituencies. 
 
 Other men might conceal their policy until tlie eve of 
 an election — conceal it still further by a perfunctory refer- 
 ence at the Albert Hall, and so claim that it had been 
 submitted to and pronounced upon by the constituencies. 
 Other men could do it ; we could not, if there was either 
 consistency, sincerity, or truthfulness left in public life. 
 
 We had, tlien, eitlier to make up our minds whether 
 at an early date we would take the constituencies into 
 our confidence, or whether we would be guilty of the 
 duplicity wliicli we had censured in our opponents. 
 Mr Bonar Law decided to adopt the straightforward 
 course. I am only entitled to speak on behalf of those
 
 TARIFF REFORM & OTHER MATTERS 211 
 
 of his colleagues who sit upon the Front Bench in the 
 House of Commons ; but on their behalf I say explicitly, 
 and with knowledge, that if he was wrong, we were 
 wrong with him ; that if he ought to have tried tactics 
 and evasion and craftiness, then the measure of his 
 shortcomings is the measure of our shortcomings too. 
 We shall win this battle upon straightforward lines, 
 or we shall not win it at all. If the tactics were bad, 
 we should none the less adopt them ; because no other 
 course was open to men possessing any claim to con- 
 sistency. But I am profoundly convinced that the 
 tactics were both well-considered and good. We are 
 either right or wrong in thinking that we can persuade 
 our countrymen of the strength of our case, i f we are 
 wrong, we shall fail, as others have failed in their advo- 
 cacy of great causes. If we are right, we shall carry 
 out our policy, and we shall found it upon a basis which 
 will never be shifted, because we shall be strong in the 
 support of a people whom we have freely and frankly 
 taken into our confidence, and from whom, being fully 
 informed, we have received an intelligent mandate. 
 
 If, then, we were to persevere at all in the policy of 
 Tariff Reform, it was right to speak as Lord Lansdowne 
 spoke, and it was right to speak now. The only other 
 course which honest men could take, in the position in 
 which we found ourselves, was to drop Tariff Reform 
 Is anyone prepared to advocate that policy ? If he is, 
 let me tell him that his task is a double one. He must 
 find, in the first place, new leaders, and he must find, in 
 the second place, new followers. 
 
 I affirm confidently that the events of the last three 
 years have strengthened immeasurably the claims which 
 the outer Dominions, and in particular Canada, pos- 
 sess upon the gratitude of England, and the fidelity of 
 the Unionist Party.
 
 212 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Has anyone yet forgotten the splendid bribe which 
 the United States of America offered to Canada ? Has 
 anyone forgotten — can anyone forget — that the Ameri- 
 can people made prodigious efforts in order to obtain 
 those advantages which we are offered for nothing, and 
 which we have hitherto been blind enough to refuse ? 
 If you still remember how greatly Canada was tempted, 
 and how greatly that temptation was reinforced by the 
 indifference, and even by the positive encouragement, 
 of the present Government, you will be in a position to 
 appreciate, and I hope to remember, the reality of the 
 sacrifices which Canada made for England when she 
 sent us the message, " We stand for England, and for 
 no other Power ; we refuse what America has offered 
 to us, not because we are blind to the material advan- 
 tages of that offer, but because it would rule out, now 
 and for ever, those closer ties with England, which are 
 the ideal of a United Canada, and which alone promise, 
 in permanence, a United Empire." 
 
 I can only say for myself, that just as Canada fought 
 her battle for England, so will I, according to the poor 
 measure of my capacity, fight my battle for Canada. 
 The Conservative party in Canada took their lives in 
 their hands on behalf of England, and I, for one, will 
 not put a higher value upon my political life. 
 
 Nor does the story end there. We are beset to-day, 
 as every schoolboy knows, by a challenge, assiduous, 
 deliberate, and publicly proclaimed, to our maritime 
 supremacy. We have boasted for generations, and 
 indeed for centuries, that we rule the waves ; but the 
 last five years have witnessed a contraction, ever more 
 marked, of that ocean area which is patrolled by the 
 fleets of England. The menace is nearer home ; and 
 in inexorable response to its presence, we have been 
 compelled more and more to concentrate our fleet in
 
 TARIFF REFORM k OTHER MATTERS 213 
 
 home waters. But the more we so concentrate it, 
 the more completely and publicly do we repudiate the 
 function of a Power at once world-wide and supreme 
 upon the sea. We have, in other words, reached a 
 stage at which, unless we are prepared to make sacrifices 
 upon a scale which has never been demanded of us, 
 I say deliberately, in the most critical stages of our 
 history, we shall be proved unable, and within the short 
 period of a decade, to keep upon the oceans of the 
 world such a number of powerful modern vessels as 
 will be required by the necessities of imperial defence. 
 The naval programmes of Germany, Austria, and Italy 
 are growing before our eyes. The value of our pre- 
 Dreadnought vessels is constantly dwindling. In this 
 crisis, where so many are against us, who is it that has 
 come to our aid ? The Government of Canada are 
 proposing to give us three first-class modern vessels, 
 a gift which is splendid in conception, munificent in 
 execution, but which is even more splendid and more 
 munificent in the moral than in the material sphere. I 
 cannot form in my mind the picture of the Canadian 
 House of Commons on the conclusion of the debate in 
 which the Conservative proposal was brought forward — 
 and, let me equally add, of that on which the Liberal 
 amendment was submitted — I cannot, I say, picture 
 that scene without feelings of emotion for which I can 
 find no words. Before the whole world, and against so 
 formidable a portion of the world, they range themselves 
 by our side, partakers of our sacrifices, our dangers, and 
 our glories ; and, forgetting party, they sing, across that 
 vast Ocean, which no longer estranges, the anthem of 
 prayer for the King which is the symbol of loyalty 
 with them, as it is the symbol of loyalty with us. 
 
 And here, while this scene is fresh in our minds, 
 while these sounds are still ringing in our ears, I ask
 
 214 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the question : Will any man who has fought the battle 
 of Tariff Reform, against fierce odds, and in the teeth 
 of envenomed faction, for so many years, choose this 
 moment to lay aside his armour and abandon the cause ? 
 For myself, I can only say that a party so bankrupt of 
 honour, so saturated with poltroonery, would deserve 
 and would receive the contempt of the constituencies 
 and the condemnation of history. 
 
 In these critical circumstances, what did Mr Bonar 
 Law say at Ashton ? He has pointed out what is 
 evidently true : that the situation has already largely 
 changed in the Outer Dominions since Mr Chamberlahi 
 first brought forward his proposals. He has pointed 
 out that it would be impossible for any Government to 
 introduce any proposals in the direction of Imperial 
 Preference without protracted consultation with the 
 Representatives of the Colonies. He never said, as 
 some have supposed, that the decision would be left 
 to the Colonies. He never proposed, and he could 
 not propose, to abdicate the responsibility which the 
 Government of this country will always owe to the 
 people of this country. The importance of this Con- 
 ference, and its possible effect upon the Food Duties, 
 lies in quite other circumstances. Our object is 
 Imperial Preference. This is the end which we have 
 set in front of us. Only foolish people will confuse the 
 means with the end. The very object of discussing the 
 method of carrying out Imperial Preference with the 
 Colonies is in order that we may be informed by tliem 
 witli authority what, in their judgment, is vital in order 
 that that policy may be carried out. Some Canadians 
 are of opinion that while the duty on wheat would have 
 helped them enormously at the time Mr Cliamberlain 
 first proposed it, it is less vital to them to-day, and may 
 become even less so in two years. Other Canadians,
 
 TARIFF REFORM & OTHER MATTERS 215 
 
 again, are alive to the disadvantages that w^ould follow 
 if the working classes of this country were persuaded, 
 however untruthfully, that the price of living had been 
 raised for them by the incidence of duties whose object 
 was Imperial. And there are many, both in Canada 
 and in our other Colonies, who, without excluding from 
 consideration the question of duties on food, have other 
 suggestions to offer in the attempt to attain the object. 
 Once again I repeat, the end is greater than the means. 
 We shall not shrink from the means if the end requires 
 it ; but we shall not commit the error of subordinating 
 the greater to the less. 
 
 Let me add a word in conclusion. I believe the 
 views I have expressed are, in the main, those of an 
 overwhelming majority of the Unionist Party. If 
 there be any who do not agree, I would most respect- 
 fully, and without a vestige of ill-feeling, invite them to 
 await the developments which the years will surely 
 bring, rather than imperil at this moment the unity of 
 the only instrument which can safeguard those vital 
 national interests with the maintenance of which we are 
 all of us equally charged. Division means disaster. If 
 any man wishes civil war in Ulster, let him divide the 
 party. If any man wishes to consummate the ruin, 
 first of the Church in Wales, and then of the Church in 
 England, let him divide the party. If any man wishes 
 to perpetuate, in our Constitution, the Parliament Act 
 and all that it stands for, let him divide the party. 
 
 For myself, if I disbelieved in Tariff Reform as pro- 
 foundly as I believe in it, I would rather withdraw for 
 ever from public life than lift up my voice at this crisis 
 to disintegrate, and it may be to wreck, the only party 
 which, in my deliberate judgment, offers the slightest 
 guarantee for the maintenance of proprietary right, of 
 political principle, or of Constitutional freedom.
 
 XI 
 
 LICENSING POLICY 
 
 More than most causes, that of temperance has been 
 the victim of exaggerated advocacy. So completely, 
 indeed, has the fanatic dominated the movement that 
 fanaticism and temperance reform have become almost 
 synonymous terms. It will be well, therefore, to begin 
 this outline of a policy of temperance reform by an 
 effort to clear away the atmosphere of fanaticism which 
 has made the temperance movement a byword. Such 
 a clearance was never more necessary than to-day. 
 
 At present the very word temperance is misunder- 
 stood. I do not minimise the importance of sobriety in 
 the consumption of intoxicating beverages, and still less 
 the evil of insobriety, but 1 claim, none the less, that 
 the word temperance is too large for the particular 
 purpose to which it is put. And it is unfortunate that 
 a word which means so much more than self-restraint 
 in the drinking of certain classes of beverages should 
 have been adopted without qualification as the name 
 of a movement designed to serve this comparatively 
 narrow end. Temperance itself is only one of the seven 
 capital virtues. And, though occupying this limited 
 portion of the field of right living, it yet comprises 
 mucli more than sobriety in the use of intoxicants. It 
 is worth noting, for example, that in the list of the 
 
 216
 
 LICENSING POLICY 217 
 
 seven deadly sins the converse vice which corresponds 
 to the virtue of temperance is not drunkenness at all, 
 but gluttony. The evil of intemperance is excessive 
 indulgence. This article is not a theological treatise, 
 and so I need not pursue the subject into a detailed 
 statement of the reasons why excessive indulgence in any 
 natural good is harmful ; but we may usefully remember 
 that overfeeding is hardly less disgusting than over- 
 drinking and, according to the doctors, is responsible for 
 much more illness and death ; it denotes, moreover, at 
 least as great a weakening of the powers of self-restraint. 
 
 But the error in nomenclature is not concluded by 
 the adoption of too wide a word. In so far as the 
 great bulk of so-called temperance reformers are con- 
 cerned, temperance is altogether the wrong word. The 
 dictionaries tell us that temperance means moderation ; 
 the fanatical "temperance" reformers tell us that it means 
 total abstinence ; and, now that drunkenness is a waning 
 evil, these propagandists actually declare, on the plat- 
 form and in their journals, that " the fight now is 
 against the moderate drinker." The name, therefore — 
 never quite happy, because it necessarily narrowed a 
 word of very wide meaning — has become grotesquely 
 inappropriate as the label of a movement which has 
 degenerated into a modern form of the old Manichean 
 heresy, which regarded matter as evil — the hatred of 
 matter among these neo-JNlanicheans being concentrated 
 upon one particular substance — alcohol. It has now 
 become necessary, not only to uphold the virtue of 
 temperance by proclaiming the evil of excessive in- 
 dulgence in fermented liquors, but to reclaim the 
 word from those fanatics who presume to identify it 
 with the doctrine of total abstinence, a presumption with- 
 out sanction either in Christianity or in commonsense. 
 
 Extreme reformers foolishly develop their proposals
 
 218 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 as if either they themselves were possessed of despotic 
 powers, or as if all the world agreed with them. It is 
 evident that neither proposition is true. Their power 
 to rivet sumptuary laws upon their fellow citizens is, 
 under our existing political arrangements, co-extensive 
 with their power to persuade such persons to submit 
 to those laws. There is very little evidence that the 
 general body of Englishmen is either amenable to such 
 persuasion or is becoming more patient of its alternative 
 — coercion. The classification of mankind is old — but 
 it is eternal — according as they are by nature severe 
 and ascetic, or indulgent and relaxed in their standards 
 of conduct. Each class has its strength and its corre- 
 sponding weakness. The ascetic may be, and often is, 
 intolerant and tyrannical, the " severe sour-complexioned 
 man " of Izaak Walton. The advocate of moderate plea- 
 sures may Kill into excess and debauchery. But it is 
 incredibly stupid to ignore the strength of those who, 
 while alive to the mischiefs of its excessive use, are 
 wholly unimpressed by indiscriminating denunciations 
 of alcohol. The majority of mankind is condemned to 
 live laborious lives. Wise men of all ages, in all countries, 
 have recognised and praised the agreeable relaxation of 
 fatigue and care which may be gained by the moderate 
 use of this enchanting drug. " Vino," wrote Horace in 
 this connection, "diffugiunt mordaces cura^"; and if 
 more respectable authority is required than that of so 
 mundane a philosopher, the well-known eulogy of the 
 Psalmist may once again be recalled : " Wine that 
 maketh glad the heart of man." And, indeed, poets in 
 all ages have celebrated this almost universal admission 
 of mankind. In the knightly custom of Branksome Hall : 
 
 "They carved at the mciil 
 
 \\\\\\ <:^love.s of steel, 
 And drank the red wine through the luiniet barred.""
 
 LICENSING POLICY 219 
 
 And Hoffmann's lines have been sung in many a 
 jocund chorus : 
 
 " Sparkling and bright in liquid light 
 Does the wine our goblets gleam in, 
 With hue as red as the rosy bed 
 
 Which a bee would choose to dream in." 
 
 What Horace said of Homer may, perhaps, be retorted 
 upon those who write, or think (or sing) in this strain : 
 
 " Laudibus arquitur vini vinosus Homerus." 
 
 They will probably support this taunt with as much 
 composure as Horace himself would have exhibited, 
 content if they have made it clear how large a section 
 of mankind is willing to stand or fall, here or hereafter, 
 by its own choice in moral issues, and is determined 
 to tolerate no compulsion at the hands of those who 
 advocate a different, and it may even be an inferior, 
 philosophy of human conduct. Some men like music 
 more than others ; some women ; some wine. Neither 
 dogmatism nor compulsion will ever destroy disparities 
 which, being temperamental, are as old as the human 
 race. If temperance reformers would attempt to under- 
 stand these differences of type, they would approach 
 their self-imposed task with greater prospect of at least 
 speaking a language which those who are regarded 
 (according to the point of view) as their beneficiaries 
 or their victims would understand. 
 
 I have said that the temperance movement has 
 degenerated into fanaticism ; and the statement is 
 historically true. When it began, about a century 
 ago, arising spontaneously, and with reason, in a state 
 of society in which drunkenness was so widespread 
 and constant as to be regarded merely as an amiable 
 weakness, the propagandists of the movement went no 
 farther than to counsel the temperate use of alcohol.
 
 220 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 The ravages of excessive gin-drinking among the lower 
 classes, and to some extent of brandy- drinking in the 
 upper classes, certainly led these early reformers to 
 advocate the entire disuse of spirits in which the in- 
 toxicating element was so potent ; but they did not 
 preach total abstinence from the fermented drinks — 
 wines and beers ; and even to this day one may find 
 a curious survival of this old-fashioned temperance in 
 the North of England and in Ireland among persons 
 who will tell you that they are pledged teetotallers, and 
 therefore only drink port wine — in Ireland, I believe, 
 frequently adding stout. But if one is reckless enough 
 when opportunity arises, and one's stomach is strong 
 enough, beers and wines may be drunk to an extent 
 which produces intoxication. In those hard-drinking 
 days of which I am speaking, drunkenness from ex- 
 cessive consumption of beers and wines was prevalent, 
 and, seeing it, the temperance reformers took a new 
 departure, and advocated abstention from all alcoholic 
 beverages. Here I may say parenthetically that they 
 were not scientifically accurate ; it is still only a question 
 of decree. Just as wines contain about a third or a 
 fourth of the alcohol to be found in spirits, and beer 
 about a third of the alcohol in wine, so in the beverages 
 favoured by the teetotallers, as they now began to call 
 themselves, the alcoholic proportion was in some cases 
 less only, not absent ; ginger beer frequently contains 
 nearly half as much alcohol as beer. So almost omni- 
 present, indeed, is the vilified substance, that we now 
 know it to exist to the extent of half per cent, in new 
 bread, and that it is owing to its presence that new 
 bread is so peculiarly palatable. 
 
 Tliis departure from temperance into tcetotalism was 
 the deplorable turning point of the movement. One 
 can understand it ; lor the reformer is always in a Imrry,
 
 LICENSING POLICY 221 
 
 and the temperance reformer, being only human, forgot 
 that patience is one of the dictionary synonyms of tem- 
 perance. He soon also forgot all temperance of lan- 
 guage ; and, as we all know, the temperance movement 
 rapidly degenerated into narrow fanaticism, which has 
 become more violent rather than less violent with that 
 dwindling of drunkenness, the diminution of which was 
 its original object. 
 
 Extravagant speeches, and the collection of tee- 
 total pledges from reformed drunkards, abstemious 
 old ladies, and little children, did not long satisfy 
 the fanatics. In all ages the reformer in a hurry 
 has tended to develop into a persecutor. Impatience 
 prompts recourse to the secular arm. Conversion by 
 precept and example is a slow and uncertain process ; 
 the heavy hand of the law is much more inviting. And 
 so the fanatical teetotaller's mind and energies were 
 soon turned from exhortation to compulsion ; he availed 
 himself of a group of mediaeval laws which had regu- 
 lated public drinking at a time when the regulation 
 of men's habits in general was regarded as peculiarly 
 the province of the State ; and upon this foundation he 
 sought, and sought with success, to build a modern 
 edifice of restriction upon what he called the liquor 
 traffic. Two things made this work more easy : the 
 public disorder which drunkenness sometimes engenders, 
 and the State's practice of using the liquor trade as a 
 means of revenue. So began that long list of laws — 
 there were no fewer than 237 of them on the Statute 
 Book at once, until Parliament codified them a year 
 ago — the complexities of which have been the byword 
 of lawyers and publicans, as their teeming absurdities 
 have been the despair of lovers of liberty and common- 
 sense. 
 
 But, though the fanatic may be regarded as the main-
 
 222 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 spring of this legislation, as he was of the Licensing 
 Bill of 1908, and is of the proposal for the resuscitation 
 of that unfortunate measure, it is not wholly due to 
 him ; he would not have met with such success had he 
 not been aided — first, by Statecraft, for reasons I have 
 just given ; secondly, by the sentimentalists, who count 
 for so much in modern legislation ; and, thirdly, by the 
 class of legislator who regards restriction as the proper 
 environment for the working man. 
 
 These various influences have built up what is generi- 
 cally known as the licensing system. The legislative 
 feat is not one of which the nation can be very proud. 
 In spite of the happy change in drinking habits of late 
 years, it still leaves Britain a more drunken country 
 than are Continental nations, where the public con- 
 sumption of fermented beverages is left untrammelled 
 by the law. And it has, under the plea — not a good 
 plea at the best — of " reducing the facilities for drink- 
 ing," turned our comfortable old inns and what should 
 be our commodious modern refreshment houses into 
 ugly drinking shops, whose every appointment and 
 regulation impress upon the visitor that he enters for 
 the disreputable purpose of gulping down the maximum 
 amount of intoxicating liquor in the minimum time. 
 It has produced the tied-house system, which the pro- 
 moters of licensing legislation themselves denounce so 
 vigorously ; for that system has arisen solely out of the 
 poHcy of restriction in the number of public-houses 
 which bejian about 18()9. Public-houses are the chief 
 outlet for the products of the brewery. Relations of a 
 more or less exclusive kind tend naturally to grow up 
 between particular breweries and particular public- 
 houses. It became, therefore, a matter of importance 
 to brewers, when they saw the outlets for their produc- 
 tions being reduced in number, to cement the most
 
 LICENSING POLICY 223 
 
 intimate relations possible with as many of such outlets 
 as possible. 
 
 I have not space here, nor is it necessary, to analyse 
 the various enactments for enforcing sobriety by Act of 
 Parliament, or to show in detail how they have failed, 
 and why they were almost bound to fail, of their in- 
 tended effect ; but I may find room to remind the 
 reader that the closing of public-houses all day on 
 Sundays in some parts of these islands, and for most of 
 the day in other parts, and the earlier closing on week 
 days, inevitably tend to foster home drinking of the 
 more dangerous kind (one bottle of spirits being more 
 portable than half-a-dozen bottles of beer) ; secret 
 drinking ; rapid drinking during the final closing hours, 
 if they are too early for the habits of the neighbourhood ; 
 and the growth of clubs, where members and friends 
 can drink when and as long as they choose and without 
 the surveillance of the police. I would point out, too, 
 that the rigid discountenancing of games and respectable 
 social amenity in public-houses, which has been the 
 stupid and insolent policy of the law and its adminis- 
 trators, has degraded the public-house, and therewith 
 those who frequent it, by making it merely a place 
 to drink in. Again, the restriction in the number of 
 public-houses has not only produced the tied-house 
 system, and such evils as may be attributed thereto, 
 but it has encouraged drunkenness in two ways: (1) 
 By the crowding of bars (their space already restricted by 
 magistrates) in such public-houses as remain, the land- 
 lord's supervision of his customers becomes more diffi- 
 cult ; no landlord is such a brute or such a fool as 
 wittingly to serve with intoxicating liquor an already 
 drunken man, but he cannot so easily distinguish such 
 an one when wedged in a crowd. (2) The fewer public- 
 houses there are in the town the more likely is a con-
 
 224 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 vivial customer to meet a considerable number of his 
 friends in the particular house which he enters, and 
 be subjected by a larger number, therefore, to the 
 temptations of treating. 
 
 And, again, let me point out that the State's fiscal 
 policy has been almost as deplorable as it is extra- 
 ordinary. It is a fair estimate to say that a quarter of 
 the price of beer is tax in one form or another, while in 
 the case of spirits the price is almost all tax. In the selec- 
 tion of a single class of merchandise for such amazingly 
 heavy imposts the hand of fanaticism is easily detected. 
 It is not all Statecraft, or even Statecraft degenerated 
 into greed ; and it is not all a puritanical penalty upon 
 luxury, for other luxuries (save the cognate stimulant 
 of tobacco) go untaxed, or are but lightly taxed. The 
 adequate explanation can only be found in the assump- 
 tion that heavy taxation will reduce heavy drinking — 
 though it is a curious doctrine of public finance so to 
 arrange your taxes that they shall defeat their proper 
 object, which is the collection of revenue. 
 
 But no more futile effort to make people sober by 
 Act of Parliament has ever been conceived than this 
 of piling heavy imposts upon intoxicating liquors. 
 Such imposts may and do restrict the consumption of 
 a moderate man of small means, exercising a form 
 of pressure difficult to justify ; and they may, and 
 probably do, force the man who is not wealthy or 
 extravagant to drink liquors of inferior quality (and 
 here again the result of State interference is scarcely 
 happy) ; but it may be doubted whether the real 
 drunkard drinks any less. He is so weak in his 
 will and so strong in his passions, or is so deeply 
 afflicted with a craving arising out of mental or 
 physical disease, that he is ready, in order to obtain 
 drink, to make the deplorable sacrifices which the
 
 LICENSING POLICY 225 
 
 teetotal rhetoricians depict in colours so vivid. He 
 is going to have his drink, whatever it costs ; and the 
 more it costs the less money will be available for the 
 necessities of his home. When teetotal orators draw 
 harrowing pictures of ruined homes and starving children 
 through drink, they forget to put some of the blame 
 upon the shoulders of the State and those who have 
 induced the State to make drink of the better quality 
 so irrationally dear. 
 
 From the standpoint, therefore, of sobriety in drink 
 our licensing system, and the whole policy underlying 
 it, have singularly failed ; what progress has been made 
 in recent years towards temperance has been made, I 
 say deliberately, in spite of so-called temperance legisla- 
 tion and the licensing system. A simple test will prove 
 this : Where did the movement towards temperance 
 begin ? It began among those classes of society whose 
 members do not use the public-house, and who, except 
 in rare cases, have not been touched by the teetotal 
 propaganda, which has been confined to the working 
 and lower middle classes. The movement has filtered 
 down from the gentleman to the working man, as other 
 movements and fashions, good and bad, have the habit 
 of doing in this country. Neither the administrators of 
 teetotal pledges nor the builders or administrators of 
 licensing laws can claim any credit for the improvement 
 which has been achieved ; whereas it may well be 
 argued that a stupid licensing system has retarded the 
 improvement. 
 
 But we must avoid falling into the pit which most 
 
 teetotal propagandists have dug for themselves — that is, 
 
 of regarding sobriety in the use of fermented beverages 
 
 as the one virtue worth troubling about. That is the 
 
 way most heresies have arisen— by confining oneself to 
 
 one particular doctrine or aspect of the doctrine, per- 
 
 15
 
 226 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 fectly true in itself, but becoming monstrously untrue 
 when taken out of its setting and regarded exclusively. 
 There are other things of capital importance to our 
 well-being besides temperance in drink. Let me name 
 two : freedom, and the building up of character, for 
 which a large measure of freedom is essential. Living 
 in society, a man's freedom to do exactly as he chooses 
 must necessarily be curtailed in some directions. It 
 must be curtailed when he would do something which 
 would injure or oppress his neighbours. That is a 
 condition, indeed, of the freedom which those neigh- 
 bours are entitled to enjoy equally with himself. But, 
 outside certain obviously necessary limitations of personal 
 freedom, we ought to proceed with the utmost caution, 
 and only the strongest case will support interference. 
 It is desirable that men should neither become chronic 
 drunkards nor make a public exhibition of occasional 
 intoxication. Most men in most ages and countries are 
 temperate enough, but there is always a minority, of 
 varying size but usually small, of men addicted to 
 drunkenness ; and it is evidently desirable that they 
 should be weaned from this vice. But when, in order 
 that the few may be gathered from the burning, pro- 
 posals are brought forward for State restriction of the 
 habits and liberties of the whole population, the vast 
 majority of which is in no need of them, restrictions 
 which entail incon\ enience and, worse still, must neces- 
 sarily act upon individual character as the tying up of 
 an arm would act upon the muscles of that arm — then, 
 even if it could be proved that the proposed restrictions 
 would achieve their purpose of sobering the drunken 
 few, would it not be paid for too dearly ? Evil as 
 drunkenness is, the absence of it is no virtue when it is 
 produced by r/.v major; the excellent moral conduct of 
 a prisoner is hardly a virtue demanding special eulogy.
 
 LICENSING POLICY 227 
 
 To abolish by human force the divinely appointed area 
 in which human free will is designed to operate is an act 
 of blasphemy which in the early days of Christianity, in 
 connection with an analogous and interesting subject, 
 to which more detailed reference need not be made, was 
 condemned by the Church. Admirably, therefore, as 
 well as boldly, did a prelate of the Anglican Church 
 declare some years ago, " Better England free than 
 England sober." And here we have the final con- 
 demnation of teetotal legislation. 
 
 " Better free than sober " — but best of all, free and 
 sober. And that is the condition, as the Licensing 
 and Criminal Statistics show, which we are now ap- 
 proaching. The question is how to help forward that 
 object. In other words, what is the true line of 
 temperance reform ? For some years I have been 
 convinced, and my conviction grows in strength, that 
 the true line is to be found mainly in the transforma- 
 tion of the public-house. The public-house is a social 
 necessity. It is, and has long been, not only the place 
 of refreshment for the wayfarer, but the combined club, 
 cellar, and dining-room of the working classes. And 
 instead of being a diminishing necessity, as the State 
 closing of alleged superfluous public-houses would seem 
 to indicate, it is becoming an increasing social neces- 
 sity ; other classes of society, even the most w^ealthy, 
 are now appreciating the necessity, or at any rate the 
 desirability, of obtaining refreshment and amusement 
 and giving entertainment in public places designed for 
 the purpose, instead of in their own homes. There 
 should therefore be no question of abolishing the public- 
 house. Our sole aim should be to transform it, in 
 accordance with our best practicable ideals. 
 
 Let me sketch my own. The ideal public-house 
 would be, allowing, of course, plenty of scope for local
 
 228 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 variations, a commodious and decent building, into 
 which any passer-by might enter and call for any 
 reasonable kind of refreshment — food or drink, the 
 latter alcoholic or non-alcoholic. He should be able 
 to consume these refreshments comfortably seated in a 
 room well lit, warmed, and ventilated. He should be 
 able not only to smoke, but if he chose, to obtain the 
 materials for smoking also on the premises. The place 
 should be so reputable that, whatever his social position, 
 he could enter it openly, and even take his wife and 
 children with him and find suitable refreshment there 
 for them. If he were alone he should be able to call 
 for or purchase in the house newspapers and magazines. 
 If he had any business to transact there should be a 
 telephone on the premises for his use. If he had one 
 or more friends, and the party desired amusement other 
 than conversation, they should be able to call for cards, 
 chess or dominoes, or quoits and bowls in the country. 
 Or, if they desired more passive amusement, there 
 should be music to listen to. The humblest inn could 
 provide an hour or two a day of piano playing ; the 
 richer — the large houses in wealthy towns — could 
 furnish a small orchestra and, perhaps, a vocalist. And 
 there is no reason why dancing should not be permitted 
 under due guarantees of respectability. This is the 
 ideal public-house. Sucli a house as this would add 
 to the innocent enjoyment of the people, and would be 
 an incentive to temperance and good order. No one 
 would misbehave himself in such surroundings by drink- 
 ing to excess, or by any other form of disorder ; public 
 opinion would make such conduct impossible. Upon 
 young people of the working and lower middle classes 
 such a liouse would exercise a positive influence for good. 
 It would improve their manners, and might improve their 
 morals. They would be better in such a house than
 
 LICENSING POLICY 229 
 
 in prowling streets and lanes at night ; and they would 
 avoid that boredom which is the fruitful parent of all 
 kinds of mischief. 
 
 Can this ideal be realised ? It evidently can. There 
 are difficulties in the way, of course. Has any great 
 reform ever been free from difficulties ? But of this 
 I am convinced — that the difficulties in the way of 
 the transformation of the public-house on the lines 
 I have indicated are not insuperable. 
 
 Take the obvious practical difficulty which has been 
 alleged — the difficulty of bringing up to a definite 
 standard the many thousands of public-houses up and 
 down the country which to-day not only deviate de- 
 plorably from the ideal type, but vary among themselves 
 and in reference to the requirements they have to serve. 
 The answer to this difficulty is that when one speaks 
 of the ideal public-house one is gathering up into a 
 picture a number of qualities to indicate the general 
 type. But there will be particular types ; and it is 
 not proposed that all public-houses should conform to 
 exactly the same standard. Let me illustrate by one 
 or two examples. 
 
 Take first the commodious, well-appointed house in 
 London or the near suburbs or one of the larger pro- 
 vincial towns — the house which tradesmen, clerks, men 
 of business generally, and the smaller professional men 
 now frequent in the evening, to chat over a glass of 
 whisky and perhaps play a game of billiards. Many 
 of these houses have been vastly improved already in 
 recent years, and the task of converting them into 
 ideal public-houses would not entail very serious 
 structural or decorative changes. The bars would be 
 removed, or reduced to a mere service bar in a corner 
 of the establishment ; tables and easy-chairs and a small 
 bandstand would occupy the vacant space ; a newspaper
 
 230 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 kiosk could be installed in one corner, and a counter 
 for the sale of confectionery and tobacco in another ; 
 an adjoining small room would do for the telephone, 
 and another room could be fitted with writing-tables. 
 And, just as to-day divisions are made between the 
 various bars, so some sort of partition could be put up 
 in the main hall to fence oif the serious diners from 
 those who only want light refreshment. Where 
 possible a conservatory should be thrown out, to give 
 an air of lightness and coolness and to add to the 
 pleasant and picturesque appearance of the house ; 
 and the floor would be carpeted with matting and rugs. 
 There would be a sufficient display of programmes, 
 setting forth the daily fare of all edibles and beverages 
 (with prices), as well as of the music to be performed 
 in the afternoon or evening. In most of such houses 
 as are now contemplated it would also be practicable 
 and desirable to provide an adjoining room where 
 women, alone or with children, could go if they pre- 
 ferred it. One could instance further details, but 
 enough has been said to indicate the transformation 
 which could be wrought in the better-class town or 
 suburban public-house. 
 
 But the town public-house frequented by poorer folk 
 is even more in need of transformation. The change is 
 not quite so easy, but it is not impossible of attainment 
 when allowance is made for the fact that the full pro- 
 gramme of accessories such as have been outlined in the 
 previous paragraph would not be expected with this class 
 of house. It is all a matter of degree.. The varieties 
 of refreshment and entertainment and decoration would 
 be on a simpler scale — that is all. The class of 
 customers in VVliitechapel would not want (and would 
 not pay for) such luxurious service as would be expected 
 in Ilampstead. Vet, in spite of comparative simplicity,
 
 LICENSING POLICY 231 
 
 the change would be greater than in the case of the 
 class of house previously referred to. The light and 
 warmth of the public-house as it is to-day in the poorer 
 quarters of towns would be retained ; but, by the 
 abolition of the stuffy compartment system and the 
 big space-destroying bars, fresher air would be secured, 
 and the additional space would diminish crowding 
 and allow a sufficiency of comfortable seats ; while 
 inexpensive but clean and simple, well-cooked, and 
 appetising food would furnish a welcome alternative 
 to the monotonous pots of beer. These and the like 
 alterations (which in most cases could be achieved 
 without structural extensions) would transform the 
 average poor man's public-house out of recognition, 
 and he and his womenfolk would quickly respond to 
 the new conditions and improve their own appearance 
 and manners to accord therewith. In this class of 
 house, above all, the opportunity of resting in comfort, 
 playing a game of draughts or dominoes, hearing the 
 popular songs and dances on a piano and violin, eating 
 decently cooked meals, reading a newspaper or writing 
 a letter, would be appreciated ; and the popularity of 
 the new style of house would stimulate licensees to com- 
 pete with each other in adding such comforts, adorn- 
 ments, and entertainments as their ingenuity could 
 suggest, or their means afford. 
 
 A third type of house may be mentioned — the village 
 inn. The same character of improvement would not be 
 wanted here as in town public-houses, but the oppor- 
 tunities of advancement are almost equally great. More 
 often than not the village inn has some ground attached 
 which could be utilised for bowls, and other games, or a 
 miniature rifle gallery, a dancing lawn, or an al fresco 
 concert place. At the least, comfortable chairs and 
 settees and small tables could be provided for the
 
 232 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 patronage of the public in fine weather. As to the 
 interior, in many village inns this is picturesque enough 
 now, and would need little more than a brightening up 
 on lines which would be harmonious Avith the character 
 of an old hostelry. A common fault at present with 
 many of these places is that space is rather cramped in 
 them, but the abolition of a bar, and the opening out of 
 two or three small rooms into one large room, would 
 usually remove this difficulty ; and building out, when 
 necessary, would not be a serious operation in a village. 
 Where the house was of sufficient importance the 
 adjoining courtyard could be roofed in with glass, and 
 be floored with tiles, as I have seen done with excellent 
 results in a Norfolk hotel. 
 
 Such attractions as musical entertainment would, of 
 course, be both simpler and less frequent in the village 
 than in the town, but some provision could be made for 
 them, and they would be even more appreciated than 
 in the town. The traveller would heartily welcome 
 such a haven of refreshment ; but the village resident, 
 for whom it would chiefly exist, would enjoy it quite as 
 much ; for it would brighten up and dispel the mono- 
 tony of village life, and the mechanical manufacture of 
 lethargic village topers would soon die out. In the 
 right situation — the green, or the outskirts of the 
 village street — and with the right type of licensee, the 
 village inn could easily develop into one of the most 
 charming features of English rural life. 
 
 There is no doubt of the practicability of this 
 much to be desired transformation of the public-house. 
 There is no doubt, either, of the popularity which 
 would await it : Continental experience, and initial 
 experiments at home, alike demonstrate this. ^Vll that 
 is wanted to start the transformation is the awakening 
 of public interest, the diversion of misplaced and mis-
 
 LICENSING POLICY 233 
 
 called " temperance " sentiment, a broader view on 
 licensing benches, the removal of a few useless restric- 
 tions from the Statute Book, a change in the methods 
 and extent of taxation, and an end of confiscatory 
 attacks upon the trade to whose enterprise the carrying 
 out of the improvements will necessarily be entrusted. 
 For we must not forget that the transformation would 
 involve the owners of public-houses in some capital 
 outlay, and though the actual work of improvement 
 must be left to voluntary enterprise, the State can and 
 ought to do something; it can ease the fiscal burden 
 for the purpose of encouraging enterprise and enabling 
 the needed capital to be raised, and it can overhaul, and 
 largely eliminate from the Statute Book, the restrictions 
 which in times past it has imposed, and which, with the 
 change in the character of the tavern, will become more 
 than ever unnecessary and harmful. So much, indeed, 
 will be only an act of reparation which the State owes 
 to the public and the publican for its past foolishness ; 
 but in doing this rather negative work the State will, 
 for the first time in its licensing history, be really taking 
 a part in true temperance reform.
 
 XII 
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 The public mind is now accustomed to regard in- 
 dustrial trouble not as a temporary inconvenience or 
 the sensation of a day, but as a recurrent factor in 
 our social life. 
 
 After the Transport Workers' and Rail way men's 
 strike of last summer came the coal strike, and hardly 
 was the coal strike over when the Dockers and Trans- 
 port Workers came out again. In a word, we are face 
 to face with a new phenomenon, and any Government 
 or any party which may become a Government must 
 be prepared with a real solution of new difficulties. 
 This thought is in the mind of every man. It has found 
 an echo in the press, where column after column has 
 been given up to the speculations or the dogmatism 
 of writers urging their panaceas to meet the public 
 ailments. The minimum wage, co-partnership, the 
 maintenance of the status quo ante, Syndicalism, 
 Socialism, or strong Government, tumble over each 
 otlier as rival cures for what is admitted to be a 
 common disease. Wisdom, as the Bible reminds us, 
 does not generally proceed from a multitude of coim- 
 sellors, nor is the sensational press the best guide 
 towards the formation of a sound and stable public 
 opinion. Things born of the day perish witli the 
 
 284
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 235 
 
 day : statesmanship must throw its roots into the 
 deeper soil of existing and probably permanent realities. 
 None the less, discussion has done good, even if it 
 has darkened counsel for the moment. The articula- 
 tion of new opinions has been of effect in so far 
 as it has uprooted superstitions which, though long 
 dead, still obstinately cumber the ground, and has left 
 a free pathway for modern constructive methods. The 
 site has been cleared — there remains the question : 
 What is to be built upon it ? 
 
 It was pointed out in an earlier chapter that it 
 is impossible that Conservatism should have a merely 
 negative policy of non-interference in industrial matters. 
 Conservatism may find itself in office in the course 
 of the next few years, and no Government would 
 be allowed, even if it was inclined, to view with 
 indifference a series of strikes and lock-outs which 
 affected vitally the well-being of the nation. A party 
 must make up its mind, before it possesses the responsi- 
 bilities of power, in what general direction it would 
 exercise the power which the electorate may confer upon 
 it. To act otherwise is to follow the example of Liberal 
 Ministers, and to make democratic government a farce. 
 Toryism, to adopt a phraseology still true even if it is 
 thirty years old, stands for the people, while Radicalism 
 stands for the Caucus and the Coalition. The Unionist 
 Party will have to deal with labour unrest, and while 
 in opposition it ought to give serious attention to the 
 cause of the evil and to possible methods of cure. 
 
 There is indeed only one set of circumstances which 
 might seem, wrongly enough, to relieve the next 
 Government of its responsibility. Labour began by 
 believing in the Parliamentary method : it has been 
 utterly deceived in its hopes by the ludicrous incapacity 
 of the Labour leaders. Since 1906 the so-called Labour
 
 236 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Members have neglected their whole duty to their con- 
 stituents and have been content, at a price usually 
 unpaid, to be bound to the wheels of the Liberal and 
 Coalition Cabinet. Even the class loyalty of the labour 
 organisations could not bear up against these perpetual 
 accommodations between Liberalism and Labour. As 
 a consequence, the Labour Party has been thrust aside 
 in recent industrial disputes and treated as nothing but 
 the lynch-pin on the wheel. A new set of leaders has 
 arisen ; Mr Ramsay JNIacdonald meekly takes his orders 
 from them, and reproduces his instructions in the 
 House of Commons in accents of becoming humility. 
 But the new leaders have so far failed as badly as 
 the old. They told their followers that there was 
 nothing in the Parliamentary method, and their followers 
 believed them. They told their followers that the 
 general and Syndicalist or irritating strike was the real 
 road to power, and their followers believed them until 
 the results of the railway and the coal strikes proved 
 to them that it was not so easy to dominate or terrorise 
 society. The result is that the new leaders are as badly 
 off as the old. Both sections have lost the confidence 
 of Labour, while our industrial and commercial life has 
 sustained a serious blow. 
 
 But there is a further possible consequence : if the 
 Parliamentary leaders have lost credit, the Syndicalist 
 leaders have lost cash. Labour may find itself bank- 
 rupt, both in its belief in the efficacy of constitutional 
 proceedings and in the power of expressing its view 
 through the method of strike. If there is reality in 
 the grievances of the working classes, the next Unionist 
 administration might find itself faced by a weakened 
 Labour Party, by Trade Unions with funds indeed 
 depleted and supporters who would not strike on 
 any terms, but also by a blind spirit of revolt which
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 237 
 
 could only express itself through purely revolutionary 
 channels. No supporter of constitutional government 
 could view such a position without the gravest anxiety. 
 To the apostles of class hatred all things are possible : 
 to those who believe in a united people, the failure 
 of both old and new methods of labour agitation 
 brings with it the certainty of national tragedy. In 
 any case, then. Unionism will have to deal with the 
 problem of unrest. For the absence of strikes will not 
 indicate the existence of industrial content. Whatever 
 may be brought forth by the future, the prdblem 
 has to be faced. Society cannot be left at the mercy 
 of the strikers in necessary services, nor can those 
 strikers be left absolutely dependent on the fact that 
 the Government must carry on the affairs of the 
 nation under any circumstances and at whatever cost. 
 Liberalism has failed to meet the situation for two 
 vital reasons. In the first place, it has never been 
 able to take a line independent of the support of the 
 Labour Party. In the second place, its whole creed is 
 by reason of its basis unable to grasp the actualities of 
 the industrial situation. The formulas of Liberalism 
 may not be broken, yet nothing but the shattering of 
 the Cobdenite idol can place society and industry on 
 a sound basis. As in the case of nearly every other 
 problem of social economy, the ultimate solution is left 
 to the next Tory Government. What, then, are the 
 broad facts of the situation which a year's industrial 
 unrest has revealed, and what is the remedy for the 
 trouble ? The facts are fairly plain. In the first place. 
 Free Trade and Cobdenite industrialism have brought to 
 the country nothing but high prices, stationary wages, 
 and a very large ratio of unemployment. These facts 
 are in themselves sufficient to account for a very con- 
 siderable and a very reasonable amount of discontent
 
 238 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 among the working classes. In the second place, the 
 general growth of luxury on the one side," and the class 
 hatred stirred up by interested politicians on the other, 
 have stirred up dormant possibilities of trouble and 
 blown the embers of discontent into a flame. Lastly, 
 as I have pointed out before, the belief in Parliamentary 
 action has died with the sycophancy of the Labour 
 Party, and Labour hopes have turned towards the more 
 violent spirits of the party. Yet even these desperate 
 hopes seem already doomed to disappointment. Society 
 has so far proved too strong for the Syndicalists, and 
 will always prove so, as long as public order is maintained. 
 Indeed, Society must beat Syndicalism, because the 
 failure to do so means nothing but the dissolution of 
 Society. No nation commits suicide readily, and if 
 Syndicalist attempts at a general strike were pushed to 
 their logical conclusion only one or two things could 
 happen : either the strikers would become the masters 
 of the nation, or the nation would assert itself in a 
 drastic fashion by organising itself against the dominance 
 of a particular industrial clique. 
 
 The foremost factor, then, in the difficulty is the 
 relation between wages and prices, and for this difficulty 
 a Free Trade Government can produce no cure, except 
 in those few industries that enjoy a natural monopoly. 
 There is a limit, and a limit soon reached, beyond which 
 it is impossible to raise wages against foreign competi- 
 tion ; but as I have already suggested, this circumstance 
 is of itself not sufficient to explain the intensity and the 
 bitterness with which the pretensions of labour have 
 been put forward in the last five years. A furtlier 
 explanation is undoubtedly to be found in the history 
 and the connnitments of the Liberal Government since 
 11)00. The matter began even a little earlier, when 
 the present Lord Gladstone as Chief Liberal Whip
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 239 
 
 surrendered so many safe Liberal seats to Labour 
 candidates, who would never have entered the Chamber 
 at Westminster on a three-cornered fight. The per- 
 manent result of these concessions was to make it 
 impossible for the Liberal Party thereafter, except in 
 such a land-slide as that of 1906, to command an in- 
 dependent majority in the House of Commons. The 
 incidental consequence was to subordinate on many 
 points of industrial and economic principle the practice 
 of the Liberal Party to the crude and ill-assimilated 
 theories of the Labour Party. In two principal ways 
 and in many less important, the present Government 
 have created, and are directly responsible for, strikes 
 which have brought irreparable disaster to many small 
 households. Their responsibility began with the passage 
 into law of the Trades Disputes Act. I myself 
 represent in Parliament a very large working-class 
 constituency, and I shall always recall with pleasure 
 that even in the critical election of 1906, appealing as 
 it was my fortune to appeal to thousands of Trade 
 Unionists, I refused positively and point blank to give 
 any support to the Trades Disputes Bill. Mr Asquith 
 and Lord Haldane had made emphatic speeches in 
 the same sense. Lord Haldane boastfully announced 
 that he would never toe JNlr Keir Hardie's line, and 
 Mr Asquith, in language more dignified but not less 
 precise, indicated what purported to be a final refusal 
 to accept the principles of this revolutionary Bill. 
 The new Parliament met : the Attorney- General, Sir 
 John Lawson Walton, in a speech to which he had 
 evidently given verbal preparation, and speaking on 
 behalf of the Government of which Mr Asquith and 
 Lord Haldane were conspicuous members, proposed a 
 solution wholly inconsistent with the Labour ideal. A 
 revolt, swift and resolute, and by no means limited to
 
 240 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the Labour benches, followed, and Mr Asquith, who 
 had up to that time been reckoned a politician of fibre 
 and stamina, was guilty of the first act of pusillanimous 
 weakness in his career. In a speech of prolix confusion 
 Lord Haldane announced his readiness to toe the line 
 he had abjured. The Labour Party received a charter 
 which is wholly inconsistent with the obligations of any 
 great and wealthy corporation in any civilised State. 
 Trade Unions notoriously possess powers for evil not 
 less conspicuous than their powers for good. There are 
 few offences known to the law of torts of which they 
 may not in theory be guilty, and they have from time 
 to time committed some of the gravest. A Liberal 
 Government consecrated by the solemnity of law the 
 claim, abhorrent to the jurisprudence of any civilised 
 country, that wealthy corporations may deliberately 
 plan and execute illegal acts without thereby rendering 
 their funds liable to compensate in damages the party 
 injured by calculated illegality. Henceforward why 
 should any Trade Union abstain from tortious acts ? 
 Why should any Trade Union keep its contracts ? 
 Why should any Trade Union abstain from conspiracy 
 to procure a breach of contract ? The accumulated 
 experience of centuries has found it necessary in re- 
 cognition of the weaknesses of human nature to penalise 
 acts injurious to the body politic by penalties — 
 
 Jura inventa metu injusti fateare necesse est. 
 
 The Liberal Government, for reasons unexplained and 
 inexpHcable, has discovered in the men who control 
 modern Trade Unions virtues so rare as to deserve or 
 require an immunity from the consequences of civil 
 offences wliich no civiHsed society lias ever conceded 
 to any individual or any corporation. Vestigia nulla 
 retroj'suni. It was a small step compared with this to
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 241 
 
 legalise peaceful picketing. I remember saying in the 
 course of the debate on the second reading of the 
 Trades Disputes Bill, No. 2, on 30th March 1906: 
 " Every honest man knows why Trade Unions insist on 
 the right to a strong numerical picket : it is because 
 they rely for their objects neither on peacefulness nor 
 persuasion. They understand with great precision their 
 own objects, and their own interests, and they are not 
 in the least likely to be persuaded by the representatives 
 of Trade Unions with different objects and different 
 interests. But though arguments may never persuade 
 them, numbers may easily intimidate them. And it is 
 just because argument has failed and intimidation has 
 succeeded that the Labour Party insists upon its right 
 to a picket unlimited in respect of numbers." 
 
 It is interesting to recall the reassurances with which 
 these arguments were met on the Labour benches. No 
 illegality was contemplated, none would be tolerated 
 by responsible Labour leaders. The events of the 
 transport workers' and of the railway strike furnish 
 an ironical commentary on these claims. The passage, 
 in spite of warning, of the peaceful picketing clause 
 authorised the Labour Party, with complete immunity 
 from the consequences of their acts, to apply those 
 methods of intimidation and lawlessness which have 
 excited the reprobation of the whole press of the 
 country during the struggles of the last two years. 
 One of the fundamental difficulties to-day in making 
 any arrangement between Capital and Labour is that 
 Labour, while insistently holding Capital to the word 
 and the spirit of their mutual compact, holds itself 
 free to break any inconvenient arrangement at any 
 moment it thinks proper ; and that it can do so with 
 complete pecuniary impunity. The coal-miners declared 
 a general strike in flagrant breach of their obligations. 
 
 16
 
 242 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 It was announced in the papers that the men were 
 going into the strike in a hoUday spirit. They could 
 afford to do so ; to them it was apparently immaterial 
 what loss their breach of contract might occasion to 
 their employers, or to others who in the complex 
 ramifications of modern commerce had entered upon 
 commitments on the strength of coal-owners continuing 
 to discharge their obligation to supply coal. None of 
 these things mattered to the coal-miners. Their funds, 
 rendered immune from action, were available as long 
 as they lasted for their support. They are permitted 
 by Act of Parliament to violate the law and then live 
 upon the money which should be liable to meet the 
 pecuniary claims of those who suffer by their illegality. 
 If five or ten men desire to exercise the common law 
 right of Englishmen to earn their living, one hundred 
 hooligans are empowered by the Trades Disputes Act 
 to coerce them into idleness. How fully this power 
 is used is abundantly shown by recent events. 
 
 But the Trades Disputes Act did not merely mark 
 the commencement of Mr Asquith's downward grade, 
 nor did it represent the last act of complicity of the 
 present Government in the unbridled licence of the 
 Labour movement. The Trades Disputes Act planted ; 
 political propaganda watered. The whole Budget 
 campaign, as conducted upon the platform by ^Ir 
 Lloyd George and by inferior performers, was a 
 wicked orgy of class hatred. No responsible Minister 
 in the whole history of Pinglish j)()litics has ever so 
 deliberately set himself for party purposes to inculcate 
 the sinister passions of envy, hatred, malice, and dis- 
 content. His speeches were pure .Jacobinism. Why, 
 he asked, should one man inhabit tliree lordly palaces 
 whilst another lives in a hovel unfit for human habita- 
 tion ? The working classes, not knowing Mr Lloyd
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 243 
 
 George as we in the House of Commons know him, 
 took his platform rhetoric at its face value. Many of 
 them really believed that the People's Budget would 
 remedy the state of affairs against which an invective, 
 otherwise as irrelevant as it was mischievous, was 
 directed. No one who went through that electioneering 
 campaign will ever forget the impression gathered in 
 the great industrial centres of population that for the 
 first time feelings of vile and dangerous rancour had 
 been excited in the artisan classes. It is much 
 easier to excite than to exorcise the spirit of class 
 hatred. The speeches of Limehouse and Newcastle 
 did their work. The spectre of bitterness and dis- 
 content excited by those speeches has survived the 
 purpose of the orator. The hounds have been blooded, 
 and to men who had drunk freely of the wine of the 
 platform campaign, the fruits of the Budget when it 
 was carried have been, as every sane man predicted at 
 the time, tame, insipid, and disappointing. The country 
 has been striking ever since Mr Lloyd George gave 
 them the measure which, like its more pallid successors, 
 the Insurance Act and the Land Campaign, was to be 
 the panacea for every human ill. The language used 
 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and tolerated 
 without protest by Mr Asquith, shares with the Trades 
 Disputes Act the responsibility for the spirit of unrest 
 which by singular irony of political Nemesis is not 
 unlikely to wreck the Government. 
 
 The full appreciation of these circumstances has been 
 somewhat obscured by the desperate attempts which 
 Ministers have made to atone for the natural and inevit- 
 able consequences of their deeds. Conciliation Boards 
 have been set up, tribunals of arbitration appointed ; Sir 
 George Askwith, a very tactful and acceptable con- 
 ciliator, has been sent to intervene in every industrial
 
 244 UNIOlSnST POLICY 
 
 controversy. In many cases he has met with a 
 temporary success, but the circumstances only rendered 
 possible palliative and not curative measures. Working 
 under these limitations he has been extremely successful, 
 but neither he nor anyone else can permanently deal by 
 such methods with the position as it exists to-day. 
 
 ^Vhatever the proportions in which the spirit of 
 Limehouse, or stationary wages, have contributed to 
 the existing condition of the industrial world, that con- 
 dition itself is a fact, and it requires both diagnosis 
 and treatment. As I said before, Society has for the 
 moment beaten Syndicalism ; but that victory would 
 prove a barren and indeed a costly one, if Society took 
 no further steps to remove as far as possible the 
 cause of the evil and to protect itself in the future 
 against the resurgence of this malignant activity. 
 
 Matters have come to an impasse. The working 
 classes feel, not without justification, that they are, 
 under modern conditions, not getting their legitimate 
 share of an increasing national prosperity, while at the 
 same time their attempts either in the political or 
 industrial sphere of action to assert themselves have 
 proved a costly failure. On the other hand, society as 
 a whole is bewildered and irritated by a perpetual 
 succession of strikes — the reasons for which are difficult 
 to understand— which are bound to fail so loni^ as the 
 social order stands, and which are both irritant and 
 ineffective. The new type of strike damages the com- 
 munity witliout raising wages or improving conditions : 
 it fines the trades to the extent of millions : it does no 
 good to the workman. 
 
 Under these conditions the public mind is rapidly 
 advancing towards the view that a new method must 
 be tried, at least as far as the necessary services are 
 concerned. The comnmnity will never permit itself
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 245 
 
 to be starved into submission by a comparatively 
 small class of individuals. It will and must organise 
 itself and fight to the death against this particular 
 species of industrial blackmail. It will in the last 
 resort utilise the Navy to unload vessels, the Army 
 to run the railway food supplies, and civilian special 
 constables, as in the time of the Gordon riots, to 
 maintain public order where the official police are 
 insufficient for the task. Yet such a course of pro- 
 cedure, however necessary, is obviously unfair to the 
 workers in the necessary services. For on the one 
 hand you make, as matters now stand, no special 
 provision for them as an essential element in the 
 management of the State, while on the other hand you 
 take from them in effisct the power to enforce their 
 grievances in the form of a strike. The strike is 
 the ordinary and legitimate method of attempting 
 to secure an improvement in the condition of the 
 workers. But the strike must be broken by the 
 Government itself in the case of the necessary services. 
 Any Government which was ready to put its foot down 
 could break such a strike, and no Unionist Home 
 Secretary could or would hesitate for a moment to take 
 a course which would preserve the community at the 
 expense of the strikers. We are not going to let 
 England starve because the dockers are dissatisfied with 
 their conditions. Forty millions of people cannot be 
 sacriHced to the views or necessities of a single million. 
 
 But any Government which takes this view, as I 
 think all Governments must, is bound to consider the 
 other side of the case. It cannot break a strike without 
 considering the interest of the strikers. In other words, 
 if the work of the men employed in the certain services 
 is necessary to society, society is bound to give to those 
 men a special degree of consideration. If the Home
 
 246 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Secretary deprives them in effect of their most powerful 
 weapon, he is morally responsible for their general 
 welfare. The community must be fed, but the people 
 who transmit the food supplies ought not to suffer 
 because their services are essential. The State cannot 
 agree to sweat workers because the nation cannot get 
 on without their work. There is only one way out of 
 the difficulty. The Government must be prepared to 
 insure reasonable conditions of pay as far as the 
 workers in the necessary services are concerned, and in 
 return it must enforce the most stringent provisions 
 against striking in those services. The proposition is 
 obviously a fair one. An impartial board would decide 
 the rates of payment on the understanding that the 
 payment admits of reasonable conditions of living and 
 can be reasonably borne by the profits of the industry. 
 Such a decision gives to the worker all that he could 
 hope to obtain by the method of the strike. On the 
 other hand, it prevents the striker using his special and 
 privileged position for the purpose of holding up the 
 community as a whole to ransom. Liberalism can 
 never accept such a proposal because it involves 
 compulsory arbitration, and to compulsory arbitra- 
 tion the liabour Party will never agree. There is no 
 reason why Toryism should not insist on a scheme 
 which is just in essence and which safeguards both the 
 interests of the State and the rights of the worker. 
 Toryism is the party of the State — Radicalism is the 
 party of the sections. Toryism places the good of the 
 nation above all other considerations — Uadicahsm is 
 always ready to uphold a dissident element against the 
 national interest. 
 
 But when one has laid down this doctrine one has 
 still to carry it into effect. 
 
 Indeed, in embarking on a form of legislation new
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 247 
 
 in this country the greatest caution is necessary. The 
 alternatives for and against the attempt will have to 
 be weighed with the utmost care, and the particular 
 character and scope of the proposal must be given the 
 most minute attention. None the less, when all this 
 has been done, I believe that within a comparatively 
 short period of time public opinion will move irresistibly 
 in favour of legislation of the kind which I have 
 suggested. 
 
 We should not, of course, be required to act with- 
 out the aid of a considerable body of precedent 
 and experience. Apart altogether from foreign legis- 
 lation, there exists a whole range of statutes dealing 
 with this particular problem in our various Dominions. 
 For some twenty years the Governments of Australia 
 and New Zealand have been trying to cure their in- 
 dustrial troubles by the appointment of Industrial 
 Courts and Conciliation Boards, with more or less 
 drastic powers of enforcing their awards by law, and 
 of fining or imprisoning employers and workmen 
 who disregard their decisions. Here, again, it would 
 be easy to press a process of reasoning by analogy too 
 far. It does not follow that what has failed in New 
 Zealand would fail in London, nor that what has 
 succeeded in Australia would suit the conditions of 
 Liverpool. A large discount must be taken off in all 
 such comparisons to allow for the difference of local 
 conditions. Yet, when all this has been said and all 
 allowances made, certain broad facts require considera- 
 tion and may yield instruction. 
 
 Large communities of our own blood, possessed of 
 political and legal institutions and arrangements closely 
 resembling our own, and built, in most cases, on an 
 industrial civilisation as complex as ours, if narrower in 
 range, have attempted effectually or ineffectually to
 
 248 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 advance on lines not dissimilar to those which I am 
 suggesting for the consideration of the Unionist Party 
 and the public. However great the local variants, 
 there must be between us and them a vast amount of 
 common ground, and their experience cannot fail to 
 be of value to us when we face new difficulties in a 
 region of industry and politics which Great Britain has 
 not yet explored. 
 
 It would be tiresome and unnecessary to recapitulate 
 in detail all the various industrial legislation of the 
 Australian States and of New Zealand, or indeed of 
 Canada and South Africa. The whole body of colonial 
 legislation bears upon it the imprint of a common 
 method and idea. The machinery may differ here and 
 there, the extent to which compulsion is applied may 
 be great or small, but everyw^here one finds the trace 
 of a single root conception. It is that the only 
 condition which gives the Government the right to 
 declare a strike or lock-out illegal is the assertion of 
 the power to try the merits of the case by a tribunal 
 appointed by the State. This connection between trial 
 and sentence runs through the whole volume of Anti- 
 podean statutes, and necessarily so. As I have already 
 pointed out, the State cannot break or put down a 
 strike unless it is ready to assume the position of arbiter. 
 Even the least stringent of the industrial codes, such as 
 those of Canada and New Zealand, recognise this general 
 rule. The laws of these countries do not, indeed, make 
 the award of the impartial authority absolutely binding 
 on the contestants, but they do declare any strike or 
 lock-out illegal until the decision of the court has been 
 given. The more stern provisions of the New South 
 \Vales and Commonwealth code make resistance to the 
 award an offence against the law. 
 
 A broad sketch, then, of these various enactments
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 249 
 
 will leave us with a sufficiently clear impression both 
 of the legislative intention and of the legal procedure, 
 which in the first case lies behind them, and in the 
 second place accompanies their application. First 
 of all comes the Industrial Court, which consists of a 
 judge and such assessors as he may choose to summon. 
 The original conception was that such a court was 
 to try all cases of dispute. It still remains the 
 ultimate authority as a Court of Appeal, and the 
 Government can only take action on its advice. 
 Gradually, however, it was discovered that such a court 
 was not the most effective tribunal for trying the cases 
 which came before it, and of late years a strong tendency 
 has grown up to substitute Boards of Conciliation 
 drawn from the ranks of both disputants and under an 
 agreed or an impartial chairman. The Boards set up 
 after the Coal Strike are, perhaps, the nearest analogy 
 we possess, with one very marked distinction — the 
 powers of enforcing the award on both parties. The 
 court can, in most cases, intervene directly or through 
 its appointed Conciliation Board even without the 
 application of one of the parties to the dispute. The 
 Board then sits and gives its award, which is in some 
 cases of a voluntary, and in others of a compulsory, 
 character. In the compulsory cases very wide powers are 
 conferred on the State for the purpose of enforcing the 
 Board's decision, and the weapons of fine and imprison- 
 ment can be used against both employer and men. As 
 there is no Trades Disputes Act in Australia, the funds 
 of the Trade Union can be made liable for the purposes 
 of a fine, while the individual employer or workman is 
 also liable in his own person. Stringent clauses are 
 generally inserted for applying penalties to those who 
 incite either to a strike or to a lock-out in defiance or 
 in anticipation of the award; and in the case of the
 
 250 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 " necessary services " these penalties are particularly 
 •severe. 
 
 The distinction between the ordinary and the necessary 
 services is not indeed so marked in Australia as I 
 have endeavoured to suggest that it might be made in 
 the case of the United Kingdom. The reasons for 
 this are numerous. In the first place, in Australia a 
 far larger proportion of the necessary ser\'ices, such as 
 railways, are under the direct control of the Govern- 
 ment, and the civil servants who man them are then 
 under some special Act. In the second place, the 
 existence of the tariff in Australia makes the two cases 
 quite distinct. 
 
 In the United Kingdom the railway, the transport, 
 and to a great extent the coal-mining services are 
 practically a national monopoly. They cannot be 
 suddenly destroyed by a blast of foreign competition 
 if too great a burden is placed upon them. In these 
 cases, where conditions are to a large extent fixed, it 
 should not be impossible to arrive at a compromise 
 which includes a reasonable profit to the investor, a 
 decent wage to the worker, and an absolute prohibition 
 to strike except under severe financial penalties. But 
 the position of other British industries is, so long as 
 Free Trade lasts, fundameiitally different. Not only 
 have they no monopoly, they have not even a fair 
 chance. No court would really be in a position to say 
 whether a compulsory award might not produce an 
 invasion of cheaper foreign goods and so destroy trade, 
 employer, and workmen in one fell swoop. Vou can 
 never get a British standard of living set up in this 
 country so long as you adhere to Free Trade, and no 
 one but a fool, a Labour member, or a Cabinet Minister, 
 will pretend that you can. This I'act has been recognised 
 in the admirable working of the Trade Boards, the only
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 251 
 
 boards for fixing wages which have existed for any 
 length of time in this country, and of which the 
 inception was mainly due to the zeal and energy of 
 Lord INIilner. The Trade Boards have in effect been 
 obliged to confine themselves in fixing wages to those 
 sweated industries which are not subject to foreign 
 competition. To take any other course would merely 
 mean wiping out the industry concerned. For these 
 reasons industrial unrest outside the necessary services 
 can never be dealt with under a Free Trade regime, 
 nor, indeed, does the case for dealing with them press 
 so urgently upon the community as does the case for 
 dealing with the necessary services. An engineering 
 strike chiefly affects those people who are concerned 
 with that particular trade : a railway strike affects 
 the whole nation. In any case, I believe it will 
 be far wiser to concentrate one's attention on these 
 national services and to deal with them first. If com- 
 pulsory arbitration proved a legislative success, the case 
 for extending its operation to other trades would 
 obviously be strengthened. 
 
 Australia, however, with her tariff, has not suffered 
 from our particular limitations in this respect. She has 
 been free to extend her industrial legislation over the 
 whole sphere of her industry. It must be of the high- 
 est importance to this country to ascertain how far that 
 legislation has worked successfully in practice, and how 
 far it might, in a modified form, be applied to the 
 industrial conditions prevaihng here. It will be easiest, 
 in order to form an opinion on the first point, to take a 
 specific instance. New South Wales possesses the most 
 complete and drastic compulsory Arbitration Act of all 
 the Australian States, and that Act has in one form or 
 another been in operation long enough to enable us to 
 form a conclusion as to its merits. The provisions of
 
 252 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the Acts of 1901 and 1908 in New South Wales are 
 not dissimilar to those I have outlined in my general 
 survey of Australian legislation. They contain, however, 
 the strongest provisions against strikes and lock-outs 
 existent in the British Empire. 
 
 The general aim of the Act of 1908, which is merely 
 a strengthened version of that of 1901, is defined as 
 follows — " To provide for the constitution of Boards to 
 determine the conditions of employment in industries ; 
 to define the powers of jurisdiction and procedure of 
 such Boards, and to give effect to their awards and to 
 appoint a court to prohibit lock-outs and strikes ; to 
 preserve certain awards, orders, directions, and industrial 
 agreements." 
 
 The Industrial Court may, on its own discretion, 
 form a Board to investigate a dispute without any 
 application by the interested parties, and an appeal to 
 it also lies from the decision of the Board. Once, how- 
 ever, the decision has been confirmed, the award takes 
 the shape of law. 
 
 The most striking clauses of this Act are the penal 
 ones, which can be applied to any violation of the terms 
 of the award — 
 
 "1. If any person does any act or thing in the 
 nature of a lock-out or strike, or takes part in a 
 lock-out or strike, or suspends or discontinues 
 employment or work in any industry, he shall be 
 liable to a penalty not exceeding one thousand 
 pounds, or in default to imprisonment not exceed- 
 ing two months. 
 
 "2. If any person instigates or aids in any of 
 the above-mentioned acts he shall be liable to 
 imprisonment for a period of twelve months." 
 
 It may be noted that tlie clause against instigation
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 253 
 
 was strengthened from the Act of 1908 in 1909, when 
 the option of a fine was abolished. Meetings for the 
 purpose of defying the law of awards also make the 
 participators liable to punishment. There follows a 
 clause which will be of the greatest interest to those 
 in England who take an interest in industrial ques- 
 tions, and particularly to those who opposed the Trades 
 Disputes Act — 
 
 " Where any person convicted of an offence 
 against the provisions of Section 42 (Combination 
 in restraint of Trade) was, at the time of his 
 committing such offence, a member of a Trade 
 or Industrial Union, the Industrial Court may 
 order the Trustees of the Trade Union, or of a 
 branch thereof, or may order the Industrial Union 
 to pay out of the funds of the Union or branch 
 any amount not exceeding £20 of the penalty 
 imposed." 
 
 Finally, Section 59 contained a provision which is 
 worth noting in view of the recent offer of the Dockers 
 during the strike to give pecuniary guarantees that 
 they would abide by their agreements — 
 
 " The Board or the Industrial Court may at any 
 time after the conclusion of the evidence, and 
 before or after the making of an award, require 
 from any person or Union making application to 
 the Board or the Court in respect of any dispute 
 security to its satisfaction for the performance of 
 the award. ..." 
 
 These clauses taken together provide for Compulsory 
 Arbitration and a stationary rate of wages enforceable 
 by law, either by fine or imprisonment. They make
 
 254 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 the Trade Union or Employers' Federation liable up to 
 a certain point for the acts of its members. They 
 enable the court to exact a financial guarantee for the 
 carrying out of the award or agreement. 
 
 Before discussing how far it is possible to apply all or 
 any of these provisions to industrial conditions and 
 combinations in this country, one must inquire how the 
 Act has worked in New South Wales. It must be 
 admitted at once that it has not proved extremely 
 successful in operation. No official records are kept of 
 strikes, but the following particulars can be relied upon. 
 Strikes on the whole have increased rather than 
 diminished since 1901, though few of them have been 
 of any great importance. 
 
 Out of 186 strikes from 1901 to 1908 the law was 
 defied by the strikers in thirteen cases. "In two cases 
 only," to quote Mr Ernest Aves' well-known and 
 impartial report, " although leave to prosecute has been 
 much more often granted by the court, have prosecu- 
 tions been instituted. There has been one conviction 
 followed by the imposition of a fine." The Act, in a 
 word, has not been found to be really effective in 
 stopping strikes where the men were determined to go 
 out. On the other hand, the great number of decisions 
 and awards which have been accepted by both sides 
 would appear to prove that in a large proportion of 
 cases the pressure of public opinion and the influence 
 of the possible application of penal provisions have 
 acted as a deterrent. Apart from some legal diffi- 
 culties of interpretation, the real reasons for the com- 
 parative failure of the Act are perhaps best stated by 
 Mr Justice Heydon, President of the Arbitration Court — 
 
 " There is a good deal of confusion of thought 
 in the public mind as to the objects to be obtained
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 255 
 
 by the introduction of compulsory arbitration in 
 industrial matters. . . . Properly speaking, how- 
 ever, the objects aimed at are (1) the prevention of 
 sweating, and (2) the prevention or limitation of 
 strikes and lock-outs. . . . 
 
 " The second object of compulsory industrial 
 arbitration is much more difficult of attainment. 
 To forbid strikes, and compel industrial disputants 
 to come to a court, and to clothe that court with 
 power to regulate, by a compulsory decree, the 
 conditions that prevail in every industry in which 
 the parties are unable to agree of themselves, is to 
 intrude into a totally diffisrent sphere. If there are 
 weak classes likely to be imposed upon, and, in the 
 ordinary sense of the term, sweated, and to whom 
 it is in the highest degree just that a fair living 
 wage should be awarded, there are also strong 
 unions able, without the assistance of any tribunal, 
 to win for themselves terms which rise as far above 
 a fair living wage as those of the sweated classes 
 fall below it. To take away from those men the 
 weapon of the strike, and to impose upon them the 
 compulsion of a peaceful award is to enter at once 
 upon difficulties of the gravest character." 
 
 When one remembers the overpowering influence 
 which highly-skilled labour exercises on Australian 
 politics and Australian public opinion, one can only 
 come to the conclusion that the partial failure of these 
 Acts in New South Wales is due less to their actual 
 provisions than to the lack of any overwhelming support 
 from the public opinion of the country. Where the 
 wage is unduly low to start with, the award is accepted 
 and no further trouble ensues ; but where the wage is 
 already high, and the Board will not give in to the
 
 256 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 terms of the men, and the men will not accept the 
 decision of the Board, it appears that public opinion 
 will not support the application of the penal provisions. 
 
 So far I may appear to have been arguing against 
 my own contentions. That is not, as I shall hope 
 to show, the case. But in any case the decision we 
 have to take is so momentous that it would be folly to 
 embark on a scheme of compulsory arbitration without 
 weighing every fact which appears to tell against that 
 policy. 
 
 My own view is that the New South Wales Acts 
 have been a valuable factor in promoting industrial 
 peace in a number of cases where, but for the exist- 
 ence of the Boards, industrial war might have ensued. 
 Their failure, in so far as they have failed, has been 
 due to two causes, neither of which need necessarily be 
 reproduced in any analogous legislation in this country. 
 The penal provisions are too severe, and there is not 
 enough public opinion behind them. 
 
 I will take the penal provisions first. 
 
 The penalties of fine and imprisonment for defiance 
 of a Conciliation Board are of vital importance, because 
 they raise the issue of the liability of the Trade Union 
 in the case of resistance to an award of the court. 
 Although there is no Trades Disputes Act in New 
 South Wales, the Act of 1908 places the onus for 
 the violation of the award far too much on the indi- 
 vidual striker and far too little on the Union, and I 
 would, with the hesitation proper to an outsider, suggest 
 that this is one of the reasons for its failure. You cannot 
 fine twenty thousand people ten pounds each and send 
 them to prison if they will not or cannot pay. Neither 
 public opinion nor the machinery of society will stand 
 such a strain. What you can do is something quite 
 different, but probably far more effective. If a Trade
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNREST 257 
 
 Union submits its case to an impartial tribunal and 
 refuses to accept the award, you can at least insure 
 that the members of that Trade Union do not draw 
 strike pay while they are acting in defiance of the legal 
 decision of the tribunal to which their case has been 
 submitted. An employer who takes a similar course 
 can, of course, always be fined or sent to prison in de- 
 fault, because he is an individual in a prominent and 
 responsible position, and cannot escape by the mere 
 confusion and pressure of numbers. It is, of course, 
 obvious that to carry out these suggestions in the 
 necessary services involves amendment of the Trades 
 Disputes Act. Recent events have, however, made it 
 less difficult to make Trade Union funds liable for a 
 breach of agreement. One of the great difficulties in 
 recent labour troubles has been the continual accusation 
 from one side or another that the other party has failed 
 to keep an agreement, and that there was no method of 
 compelling them to do so. So evident did this difficulty 
 become in the last dock strike that the men — appar- 
 ently with the approval and consent of the Govern- 
 ment — made a voluntary offer of a financial deposit on 
 the part of their Union as a guarantee that terms once 
 accepted would not be broken as long as the term of 
 agreement lasted. This proposal is, of course, incon- 
 sistent with the principle of the Trades Disputes Act, and 
 some amendment of that Act must inevitably follow if 
 such a deposit is to be sequestrated or touched in any way. 
 There remains the second objection to the New 
 South Wales Act — the objection of public opinion to 
 putting it into force. Here, again, the position of affairs 
 in England is not the same as in New South Wales. 
 The objection comes, as my quotations have indicated, 
 from that class of highly skilled labour which believes 
 it can get more out of a strike than it could get out of 
 
 17
 
 258 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 any award. This particular class may be dominant in 
 New South Wales — it is certainly not so dominant in 
 the United Kingdom. Here it does not comprise the 
 sweated industries, unskilled labour, the agricultural 
 labourer, the employer of labour, the middle classes and 
 the great commercial interests. If in the necessary 
 services the unskilled or partially skilled labourer ob- 
 tained a proper remuneration for his services, and if in 
 return society obtained security from these continuous, 
 devastating, and as a rule ineffective strikes, surely 
 the vast mass of public opinion would support any 
 Government in enforcing, under financial penalties, the 
 award of a Conciliation Court. Nor, I think, would 
 society hesitate in taking the necessary drastic measures 
 against the professional disturbers of the public peace 
 who continued to disregard a fair decision of an impartial 
 tribunal. I do not for a moment regard a national 
 movement in favour of compulsory arbitration as a final 
 panacea of all our industrial difficulties. But such a 
 movement would at least do one thing : it would give 
 the nation a breathing space. It would give that vast 
 mass of public opinion, which is earnestly desirous of 
 doing the right thing by the industrial masses, an op- 
 portunity of considering all the various plans of Social 
 Reform which are before it, and of taking its choice. 
 If it delivered us from the blackmail strike, while 
 insuring reasonable conditions of life for the workers 
 in the essential services, a great advance would be 
 involved. Order would be maintained and unfair 
 conditions abolished, and the nation might go on 
 to prosper in its business under a reign of peace and 
 quietness and to lay the foundations of the State of the 
 future upon secure industrial and social conditions. If 
 the scheme proved practicable, we sliould secure both 
 justice and peace.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN 
 EDUCATION 
 
 A I'OLiTiCAL view of the education controversy implies 
 a certain spirit of detachment towards purely educa- 
 tional problems. A politician as such cannot be ex- 
 pected to formulate a theory of the merits of classical 
 education as compared with those of modern educa- 
 tion ; or to judge between different and competing 
 theories of physical culture ; or to select the books out 
 of which the English language and literature are to be 
 taught. These matters must be left to the teachers, 
 and to the educational experts whose business in life 
 it is to lead educational opinion and practice. The 
 experts must no doubt be exposed at times to the 
 criticism and the cross-examination of the plain man, 
 including the plain politician, whose duty it is to force 
 the specialists to make their work suit the broad 
 purposes of common life. But criticism and cross- 
 examination are not dictation, and to prescribe by 
 general law tutorial methods and educational curricula 
 would be almost as absurd as to prescribe similarly 
 for engineers the measurements and materials of the 
 bridges and public works which they execute for the 
 Government. A like or even greater spirit of detach- 
 ment should inspire the politician who seeks to form and 
 
 259
 
 260 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 expound \ie\vs on the religious element in public 
 education. The principle of toleration requires that he 
 shall not dictate by political action what other people's 
 religion is to be. The educational problem of the 
 precise method by which religion should be taught in 
 schools he must leave to those M'hose business it is to 
 teach religion and to their intellectual and religious 
 leaders. 
 
 Few, 1 think, will be found to dispute these obvious 
 principles. It is with their application to the fticts that 
 the difficulty begins. One of the commonplaces of 
 political agitation is a complaint against the religious 
 denominations for their " wretched religious squabbles " ; 
 if only we had a clean slate, says the politician, and 
 could start afresh, free from the interference of priest 
 or preacher, how easy it would all be. I venture to 
 think that if priest and preacher were to compose their 
 differences and turn upon their critics, they might 
 make a not ineffective answer to these charges. After 
 all, the difficulty has been created as much by the 
 politicians as the sects. The politicians decreed that 
 all children should be compelled to attend school ; they 
 decreed the public bodies which were to provide the 
 schools and to enforce the attendance ; they decreed 
 the statutory obligations by which taxpayers and rate- 
 payers are compelled to find the funds for this educa- 
 tion. The greater part of the religious difficulty as we 
 see it to-day arises inevitably from these facts. The 
 sects and their differences were in existence, staring 
 Parliament in the face, before the education statutes 
 were passed, and complaints against the sects, because 
 the statutes have increased the differences, come ill 
 from the politicians who passed the statutes. As for 
 the complaint against vested interests. Parliament itself 
 did most to establish those interests.
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 261 
 
 A short account of some facts very familiar to the 
 educational expert, but often forgotten by politicians, 
 will show the basis of these conclusions. At the 
 beginning of the last century the lack of educational 
 opportunities for the poor began to attract the atten- 
 tion of social reformers. The increase in the urban 
 population and the growth of the factory system made 
 the matter urgent. Millowners in Lancashire began 
 to build schools for the children of their mill-hands. 
 Voluntary societies were founded to establish schools 
 for the poor throughout the land. The State for many 
 years did nothing to help, and school-building was 
 carried on entirely by voluntary effort. In 1833 a 
 small Exchequer grant was made to aid this volunteer 
 enterprise. A few years later a special public depart- 
 ment, the Committee of Council on Education, was set 
 up to create and control an extended system of Parlia- 
 mentary grants. Admirable work was done under this 
 system, but it was due in the main to the zeal of 
 religious bodies. A very large number of schools was 
 founded, and these schools are the origin of the so- 
 called non-provided schools of the existing Education 
 Acts. In view of the complaints now made against 
 the vested interests which this process produced, it 
 is needful to reconstruct it with precision. The 
 State in eifect went about entreating people to 
 build and manage schools, and offered subsidies to 
 anyone who consented ; it badly wanted schools to be 
 founded, and being incapable of founding them itself, 
 besought private citizens to come to its help. Our 
 splendid modern system of local authorities and their 
 lavish expenditure on local objects must not blind us to 
 the conditions under which statesmen worked in the 
 first three-quarters of the last century. In practically 
 all the country districts and in most of the smaller
 
 262 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 towns there was no public body capable of exercising 
 educational functions, and no source of public revenue 
 from which a contribution to the building of schools 
 was thinkable. The management question was as 
 difficult as any. and the published records of the Com- 
 mittee of Council show how anxious a matter was the 
 discovery of persons of culture and responsibility in 
 each village and township w^io, without payment, would 
 take upon themselves the permanent burden of estab- 
 lishing and controlling a village school for the poor. 
 The training of teachers was in its infancy, and general 
 educational experience hardly existed. The Education 
 Department, therefore, found it hard to secure a 
 sufficiency of unpaid and competent local officials. 
 Whitehall naturallj^ first looked in its difficulties to the 
 man who was charged with the cure of souls in the 
 parish, who was always on the spot, and who represented 
 a high average of culture and responsibility. If the 
 clergy took up the work of national education 
 out of zeal for denominational interests, they did so 
 at the urgent request of the State itself If the 
 system which the State then helped to create is now 
 obstructive to educational reform (I do not for a 
 moment say that it is), the State, as much as anyone, is 
 responsible for the obstruction. That politicians should 
 abuse the religious sects for vested interests which they 
 themselves called into being is indeed a deplorable 
 instance of one of the greatest evils of democracy, 
 namely, the evasion by the people of responsibility for 
 their own acts. 
 
 The Elementary Education Act, 1870, was a great 
 educational reform, but for my present purposes its 
 importance arises from its bearing on the religious 
 difliculty which confronts us to-day. It did not affect 
 the principle of the creation of vested interests ; both
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 263 
 
 under the Act of 1870 and under the Act of 1902 the 
 State continued to invite the help of voluntary effort in 
 the provision of schools. But the religious difficulty in 
 its present form was very largely caused by the Act of 
 1870. Its growth, though slow and gradual, is the 
 logical and historical result of the principles of the 
 Act. The difficulty may have existed before under 
 other phases and in a different degree, but its aspect 
 and extent to-day are the direct outcome of the Act of 
 1870. Before the Act anyone of any denomination 
 could found a school and receive a State grant on com- 
 plying with the conditions imposed by the Education 
 Department, but no ratepayer had to pay for any school, 
 and no parent had to send his child to one. Under the 
 Act of 1870 the principles were recognised that there 
 must be schools everywhere, that everyone must send 
 his child to one, and every ratepayer must if necessary 
 be prepared to pay for them. It became obvious that 
 these principles brought the State much closer to the 
 question of the character of the teaching given in the 
 schools, now called for the first time by the statutory 
 title of " public elementary schools," and that, if ever 
 the public took a controversial interest in the subject. 
 Parliament would have to give a definite decision on 
 educational principles in response to public require- 
 ments. 
 
 The decision given by Parliament in the Act 
 of 1870 upon the character of religious teaching — the 
 one point which has excited public controversy — 
 was not definite, and certainly does not respond to 
 the public requirements of to-day. The teaching in 
 voluntary schools was to be anything the founders 
 chose to dictate ; the teaching in the new " Board " 
 Schools was to be anything the school-boards chose to 
 dictate, subject to the Cowper-Temple clause, which
 
 264 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 prevented the school-boards (or was construed in 
 practice so as to prevent them) from giving rehgious 
 teaching satisfactory to the denominational views of 
 Churchmen, Roman Catholics, and Jews. It is often 
 said that the resulting grievances are theoretical only, 
 and have no real existence inside the schools themselves. 
 I am afraid that this answer will never satisfy the 
 politicians. Theoretical and sentimental the grievances 
 may be, but they confront the politician with a grim 
 reality in the shape of local deputations, questions at 
 public meetings, votes at elections, debates, and 
 divisions in Parliament. Moreover, though the local 
 griev^ances are no doubt much exaggerated, their com- 
 plete non-existence cannot truthfully be asserted. 
 
 The Education Act, 1902, was the next great step in 
 educational history. Its full educational importance 
 cannot be dealt with here, but, in order to appreciate 
 the results of the Act, both political and legal, a word 
 is necessary as to the purely educational grounds upon 
 which the Act was justified, and the nature of the 
 general objections to the Act. The previous Education 
 Acts dealt only with elementary education, and the 
 authorities they set up had, with minor exceptions, no 
 powers to deal with secondary education, which was the 
 sphere of another set of public bodies. This fact, 
 coupled with the dual system of voluntary and " Board " 
 schools in the elementary sphere, made the cry of the 
 educational and administrative experts urgent for the 
 co-ordination under one public authority of all pubhc 
 education. The financial difhculties of voluntary 
 schools constituted another element injurious to educa- 
 tion wliich reformers became anxious to remove. 'I'he 
 benefits of tlie Act in its effect upon these admitted 
 evils have been complete. Yet the hostile agitation 
 which the Act had to face rested originally quite as
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 265 
 
 much upon these educational provisions as upon the 
 specific religious grievances which it caused. The 
 framers of the Act have indeed reason to be satisfied 
 with the failure of the campaign against the Act upon 
 its secular side ; the cry against the destruction of 
 school-boards is no longer heard ^ ; the charge that 
 education controlled by committees appointed and 
 controlled by local authorities is an anti -popular system 
 has been shown to be baseless ; indeed, the whole trend 
 of legislation and public opinion since the Unionist 
 Party left ofifice in 1905 has been in the direction of the 
 policy of the Act of 1902 — the abolition of a multiplicity 
 of so-called ad hoc authorities and the enlargement of 
 the functions of the main local authority of each area, 
 so as to give it the general local government functions 
 of its area. The loud complaints against the local 
 expenditure which the Act caused have likewise been 
 dissipated on their political side by the course of 
 events ; the principle of an educational rate in every 
 area has been fully accepted by public opinion, and 
 every Education Bill introduced in succeeding Parlia- 
 ments has aimed at increasing the local burdens beyond 
 the limits of the Act of 1902. 
 
 At the present moment, therefore, the politician finds 
 the ground clearer before him than in the agitated 
 period of the years immediately following the Act. 
 The religious objections to the Act are now seen to be 
 the only ones which have endured the test of experience. 
 I have alluded to the other objections because the 
 political agitation in its immediate practical operation 
 cannot be resolved into its elements, and must be 
 
 ^ I ought to except from tliis statement the small body of old- 
 fashioned Radical educationists, led by Lord Sheffield, who has never 
 forgiven the merging of the London School Board, so long his own 
 special province, in the London County Council.
 
 266 UNIONIST POLICY ' 
 
 treated as a whole. As a whole, its effect upon the 
 Government of the day was disastrous ; the opponents 
 of the religious conditions of the Act were quick to see 
 their tactical advantage, and united all the discontented 
 factions in a furious onslaught on the Act in its entirety; 
 the grossest possible misrepresentations of the Act on 
 both its secular and religious sides became current, a 
 natural consequence of the issues being merged in 
 ordinary partisan warfare. The philosophic spectator 
 of the struggle can indeed hardly fail to derive innocent 
 enjoyment from the righteous operations of the whirli- 
 gig of time. Mr Lloyd George, the chief artist of the 
 educational calumny of those days, now bewails the 
 misrepresentation to which (as he asserts) a Budget 
 or an Insurance Act is subjected ; then he invited the 
 Welsh local authorities to defeat an Act of Parliament, 
 now he tells Treasury deputations that it is the duty of 
 all law-abiding citizens to carry out Acts of Parliament, 
 however much politically they may be opposed to them; 
 then he denounced the civil servants of the Board of 
 Education by name, now he denounces the unfairness 
 and constitutional impropriety of attacks on civil 
 servants.^ With the accession of Mr Lloyd George 
 and his friends to power and responsibility the Educa- 
 
 ^ An amusing fact is the recent appointment by Mr Lloyd George 
 of Sir Robert Morant as chairman of the Insurance Commissioners ; 
 the former, in the greatest political sci*ape of his life, goes to the civil 
 servant whom he attacked more fiercely than anyone during the 
 Etlucutioii controversy to get his distinguished assistance in carrying 
 tln'ough the administration of the most complicated and unpractical 
 measure of modern times. If anyone can succeed in making the Act 
 work, Sir Robert Morant will. It is to be hoj)ed that Mr Lloyd George 
 will })crccive that his former attacks were a menace to that Civil 
 Service tradition of independence which enables him to-day to 
 rely upon the loyal help of the new chairman of the Insurance 
 Commissioners.
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 267 
 
 tion Act of 1902 gets a fairer hearing, and the original 
 unpopularity of the Act in many of its aspects has 
 disappeared. 
 
 Even on its rehgious side, some misconceptions have 
 been partially cleared away by experience. The Pro- 
 testant ardour which saw in every body of voluntary 
 school managers a ritualistic conspiracy has ceased to 
 be suspicious of the Act. The gross legal fallacies by 
 which the popular mind was persuaded that the Act 
 gave to privately appointed managers the control of 
 public money provided for voluntary schools, if they 
 have not disappeared, have at any rate receded before 
 the contrary knowledge and contrary experience of 
 countless members and officials of the local authorities. 
 
 My object in the rest of this article is to examine the 
 true bulk of grievances in our educational system left 
 apparent after the clouds of misrepresentation, both 
 secular and religious, have been dispersed, and to discuss 
 the tendency shown by political opinion towards their 
 removal during the time since the original outburst 
 against the Act of 1902 spent its force. 
 
 These grievances, be it first noted, were not the 
 creation of the Act, which left the religious arrange- 
 ments of the previous system as it found them. But 
 collateral changes made in 1902 focussed and intensified 
 the theoretical objections which Nonconformists had 
 entertained to the system of 1870. They felt it to be a 
 perpetuation of a state of things which they had hoped 
 would ultimately disappear in the course of time, and, 
 in particular, before economic pressure. Above all, the 
 ratepayer at large was first brought into direct contact 
 with voluntary schools. Mr Balfour, when introducing 
 the Bill, showed that he was alive to the possibility of 
 sectarian agitation, but it is to be doubted whether his 
 acutely logical mind sufficiently appreciated the ease
 
 268 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 with which people who had for years paid taxes to 
 support religious teaching which was not of their own 
 faith could find it a point of conscience not to pay rates 
 for the same purpose. The truth was that grievances 
 which were remote and thought to be disappearing were 
 suddenly brought near, and endowed with a chance of 
 permanence. The favouring breeze of political agita- 
 tion, based on the other elements of unpopularity latent 
 in the Bill, fanned the flame into a blaze. The fact 
 that the Act actually cured various other Nonconformist 
 grievances did not avail to save it from the odium of 
 those which it left more prominent if not more real 
 than it found them.' The Nonconformist objections to 
 the Act of 1902 may be conveniently summarised as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. In a very large number of districts there is no 
 choice of religious instruction, and, owing to the 
 preponderance of schools founded by Churchmen, 
 Nonconformist parents must either accept Church 
 teaching for their children or withdraw them alto- 
 gether from all religious teaching ; this is the famous 
 " single-school area " grievance, and it is essentially 
 a parental grievance. 
 
 2. A large number of teacherships, especially 
 head-teacherships, are by the operation of the trust 
 deeds of voluntary schools closed to Nonconformist 
 teachers, and confined to members of the Church. 
 
 3. Ratepayers who are not interested in or are 
 
 ' The trust deed " test " for assistant teacherships and pupil 
 teacherships in Church schools was relaxed in favour of Noncon- 
 formists ; power was given to local authorities to set up undenomina- 
 tional training colleges ; in the provision of new schools, parental 
 choice was for the first time given play. All these matters had been 
 grounds of Nonconformist complaint, and justice has never been done 
 to the Act of \y0'2 for their removal.
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 269 
 
 opposed to Church teaching may be required 
 nevertheless to pay rates to support that teaching. 
 4. The purely religious objections of such rate- 
 payers are aggravated by the element of denomi- 
 national control over schools largely supported 
 by public funds and the exclusion of the public 
 authorities from the complete control of the public 
 patronage of the education service ; these latter 
 points are political rather than religious, but the 
 merging of politics and religion which has character- 
 ised the opposition to the Act of 1902 is closest at 
 such points of contact. 
 
 A full answer to these objections, themselves stated 
 in the baldest manner, would be foreign to my 
 purpose. As regards the first, Churchmen admit the 
 anomaly, but insist that the only cure thus far pro- 
 posed by official Nonconformity is one which shifts the 
 grievance from Nonconformity to the Church, and that 
 if the barrier of the trust deed is to be broken down 
 in the villages, that of the Cowper- Temple clause must 
 go in the towns. The reply as to the teacherships is 
 equally effective ; the Church pays through the value and 
 upkeep of school buildings for the right to dictate the 
 denominational qualifications of the teachers, subject 
 to the local authority's judgment as to their secular 
 efficiency ; if the privilege be abolished, the payment 
 must go too. Further, the qualification of teachers to 
 give religious teaching must be determined somehow, 
 and up to the present the legislative plans of official 
 Nonconformity have failed to provide any means for 
 its determination. As to the ratepayers, if a fair 
 educational system is set up by Parliament, it is not 
 for the ratepayers to decide that it shall not be carried 
 into effect, and the settlement of the ratepayers'
 
 270 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 grievances really depends on the settlement of the 
 other grievances. In the meantime, for the reasons 
 already stated, the Church ratepayer has at least as 
 much grievance as the Nonconformist ratepayer. The 
 demand for further public control over voluntary 
 schools can likewise only be justified by the acceptance 
 by the public of the whole burden of the expenditure. 
 Moreover, at present the local authority has all the 
 control required to insure the secular efficiency of the 
 schools, and the managers only so much as is needed 
 for maintaining their religious character. Assuming a 
 resettlement of religious conditions on fair lines, the 
 control can be arranged so as to suit the resettlement. 
 
 As I shall show, the controversy, so long as it proceeds 
 on these lines, runs on its course to a natural settlement 
 upon the principle of the substitution of parental choice 
 for the artificial restrictions of trust deeds and statutory 
 prohibitions. The early history of the post-1902 regime 
 showed clear tendencies in this direction. The Liberal 
 Party, as a whole, for the most part kept itself aloof 
 from extreme courses, and maintained a detached atti- 
 tude towards certain abstract claims put forward by 
 a militant section of Radical Nonconformity. The 
 most significant instance of this detachment is to be 
 found in the declaration which JMr Augustine Birrell 
 published in a well-known Liberal magazine at a time 
 when he was already Minister-designate of Education 
 in an approaching Liberal Government. The passage 
 has often been quoted ; and it is a landmark in the 
 progress of the educational ideas of the Liberal 
 Party :— 
 
 *' Here the parents really must, whether they 
 like it or not, conquer their shyness, and, making 
 their first appearance in this ancient and horrid
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 271 
 
 controversy, tell us, when they send Tom and Jane 
 to school, whether they wish them to receive any, 
 and, if any, what religious instruction. There is 
 no chance of the multiplication of strange parental 
 religions. We are not an imaginative people. 
 Jews, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Dissenters 
 (in a lump) will usually exhaust the list. The 
 great body of Dissenters will be found ready to 
 accept the same broad simple Bible-teaching which, 
 for the most part, characterised Board School 
 Christianity." — Independent Review, October 
 1903. 
 
 Declarations of a similar character came from other 
 prominent I^iberal politicians. Thus Mr Herbert 
 Samuel, fresh from a triumphant by-election in York- 
 shire, and claiming a special mandate on the education 
 question, declared in an emphatic way in favour of the 
 principle of free parental choice during the third reading 
 of the Bill :- 
 
 " Would it have been impossible after all to 
 have arrived at some new and larger compromise 
 on this question which would have ended once and 
 for all this long wrangle, this lamentable quarrel, 
 which for sixty years has kept the Churches apart 
 and has so often prevented this House from doing 
 its full duty to the children. What is it that 
 honourable members opposite specially desire ? Is 
 it that the children should have the right to be 
 instructed in the religious doctrines of their parents? 
 Would it have been impossible for us to have 
 conceded that claim ? . . . My right hon. friend 
 the Member for South Aberdeen urges that, after 
 all, this dogmatic teaching was unnecessary, and
 
 272 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 that the virtues could be inculcated without specific 
 denominational instructions. That is also my own 
 view, but I do not think the State is entitled to say 
 that. The State has no right to declare how much 
 or how little dogmatic teaching is necessary for the 
 formation of character. This House is not a synod, 
 and those who hold Disestablishment views should 
 be the first to proclaim that Parliament is incom- 
 petent to say exactly what particular religious 
 principles persons should hold and be taught. As 
 a Liberal I xvish to see the greatest possible liberty 
 given for all sorts of 7'eligious beliefs to be taught 
 even in the schools paid for by the State.'' — Hansard^ 
 1902, vol. 115, p. 975. 
 
 Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman committed himself 
 a year or two later to a similar principle : — 
 
 '* We want the child to be brought up in the 
 faith of his father, at least until he comes to such 
 an age as to be able to judge of a faith for himself." 
 — The Times, 27th October 1904. 
 
 A glance at the speeches of Liberal politicians on the 
 third reading of the Education Bill of 1902 makes it 
 clear that in those days they concentrated their atten- 
 tion upon the specific defects of the Bill, and the 
 specific grievances of Nonconformists, and refrained 
 from committing themselves to principles directly ad- 
 verse to the Church of England or to denominational 
 teaching. But in the meantime different infiuences 
 had been at work. Mr Lloyd George had raised 
 himself to power as head of a group by means of the 
 special agitation he had conducted in Wales against the 
 administration of the Education Act ; Dr Clifford and
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 273 
 
 other leaders of political Nonconformity had launched 
 out upon an aggressive campaign against the influence 
 of the Church ; vague language about a national system 
 of education, accompanied by denunciations of denomi- 
 nationalism and priestcraft, foreboded an adroit sectarian 
 attack upon the Church going far beyond the original 
 demand for the redress of specific grievances. 
 
 The effect of this movement was seen when Mr 
 Birrell's Education Bill of 1906 was introduced. It 
 contained but the faintest vestige of Mr Birrell's above- 
 quoted principles, and showed clearly that his original 
 draft had been torn in shreds by successive assaults from 
 the section of the Cabinet representing the forward 
 movement. The concessions to the denominational 
 principle were limited to a half-hearted attempt by 
 means of the notorious Clause 4 to conciliate the Irish 
 vote, in anticipation of the Irish Council Bill promised 
 for the next session, and to an equally half-hearted 
 attempt to provide compensation for the vested interests 
 in school buildings by certain facilities for denomina- 
 tional teaching in voluntary schools acquired by local 
 authorities. The doctrine of parental rights was de- 
 cisively repudiated in response to the strong insistence 
 by the forward group that its enforcement would split 
 the party on the morrow of its great electoral triumph. 
 
 The House of Lords by its amendments to the Bill 
 sought to bring the controversy back to its old footing. 
 Had the Bill passed in the form in which it recrossed the 
 Lobby, the specific grievances of Nonconformists would 
 have been met, while the rights of other denomina- 
 tions would to a large extent have been secured. But 
 the wave of extremism in the House of Commons was 
 too strong, and it found a ready ear in the purely 
 political hostility of Liberalism to any interference by 
 
 the House of Lords with a first-class Liberal Bill. 
 
 18
 
 274 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Resentment against the Lords rather tlian a desire for 
 an education settlement became (not unnaturally, as 
 political human nature goes) the mainspring of Liberal 
 education policy for the next eighteen months. A new 
 Bill was promised by a new Education Minister which, 
 in Mr McKenna's own words, was to be a "sword," 
 and, in the Prime Minister's words, "a short, simple, 
 and drastic Bill." These expressions and the Bill 
 which Mr McKenna introduced early in the session 
 of 1908 mark the turning point of Illiberal sentiment, 
 and from that time there has been a rapid return to 
 the original and more moderate standpoint. For 
 public opinion began to change, or rather to make 
 itself articulate on the dispute. Churchmen who had 
 voted Free Trade in 1906 found occasion to emphasise 
 their educational views ; Roman Catholics rallied in 
 defence of their schools ; the municipal elections of 
 1907 in many important areas swept local authorities 
 almost bare of the opponents of Church teaching; 
 Parliamentary by-elections showed a similar tendency. 
 The result was the withdrawal of Mr McKenna's Bill, 
 and the substitution of Mr Runciman's attempt at 
 compromise at the end of the same year. Nothing 
 could be more significant than the introduction of 
 Mr Runciman's Bill and the explanations given by 
 Ministers of the change in their tactics. The Bill 
 itself conceded the whole or the greater part of the 
 three main principles upon which the controversy 
 between tlie two Houses of Parliament liad turned in 
 190(), including the right of entry for denominational 
 teaching in Council schools. Ministers insisted that 
 the feelings of 1906 had subsided and that national 
 opinion required a more moderate policy. Thus Mr 
 Jiuru'iman, in moving the second reading of the Bill, 
 said : —
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 275 
 
 " My predecessors who have had charge of 
 previous Bills lived in much stormier times than 
 these ; and I am glad to think that the difficulties 
 which faced my right honourable friend the Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland (JMr Birrell) and my right 
 honourable friend the First Lord of the Admiralty 
 (Mr McKenna) have not surrounded me. When 
 I came into office, I already found that the 
 atmosphere was considerably altered. Not that 
 both sides did not cling just as tenaciously as 
 before to their principles, but there appeared to 
 me to be a greater readiness on the part of both 
 sides to understand, or to attempt to understand, 
 the principles of their opponents, and greater 
 eagerness to find methods upon which to base 
 compromise without sacrifice of principle. It was 
 only possible by the exercise of mutual forbear- 
 ance and respect to reach the present stage in this 
 controversy." — Hansard, 1908, vol. 197, p. 417. 
 
 Anything less like the " short, simple, and drastic " 
 or " sword " policy of the preceding two years cannot 
 well be imagined, and I do not complain that JNlr 
 Runciman's language aimed at concealing the facts 
 that the change was entirely on the Liberal side, and 
 that it involved an almost complete surrender of the 
 policy forced in 1906 upon Mr Birrell by his advanced 
 supporters, and taken up in 1907 by Mr McKenna with 
 ill-concealed enthusiasm. 
 
 Many utterances showing the change of Liberal 
 view might be quoted from the debates ; that of Mr 
 Llewelyn Williams, M.P., a typical Welsh Radical 
 educationist, will be sufficient ; he was himself in favour 
 of a secular solution, but he supported denominational 
 rights as a compromise and a matter of fairness : —
 
 276 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 "In this Bill Cowper-Temple teaching was 
 treated as denominational instruction ; it received 
 preferential treatment and that was unfair. . . . 
 That was why they were compelled to say that 
 the right of entry to all the schools should be 
 granted to all the denominations. . . . The right 
 of entry was a thing which he did not care for 
 himself. . . . He frankly confessed it was a thing 
 he denounced at the last election. To-day he 
 and his friends were compelled in fairness and 
 equity to support the Government in this matter. 
 The first reason was that, as they were told, it 
 was a compromise. It was a compromise which 
 entailed sacrifices on the Church of England ; they 
 had to give up every school they possessed in the 
 single-school areas. Some compensation should 
 be given in justice and fairness for that. In the 
 second place, Cowper-Temple teaching, which was 
 not only believed in by a majority of Noncon- 
 formists, but which was endowed out of public 
 funds, was continued by the Bill. In the face 
 of these two things it was only just and equitable 
 that real compensation should be given to the 
 Church of England for the sacrifices they made. 
 If the right of entry was to be granted to them, 
 they must see that the fticilities were real and not 
 sham:'— Ha7isar(/, 1908, vol. 197, p. 1312. 
 
 The next General Election amply confirmed these 
 views as to the tendency of events. The anti- 
 denominational majority of the 1900 I'arliament 
 disappeared, and the two parties. Unionist and Irish, 
 who voted au^ainst both IMr BirrelTs Bill and Mr 
 McKciHia's Bill in that Parliament, found themselves 
 in a majority in the new House of Commons. Tlie
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 277 
 
 General Election which took place ten months later 
 did not alter the situation, and it is now the duty of 
 politicians to face the facts. A recent speech delivered 
 by Mr Runciman in the course of his transit from 
 the Board of Education to the Board of Agriculture 
 suggests that some Liberal Ministers are under no 
 delusions. According to the report in TJie Times : — 
 
 " He counselled impatient Nonconformist friends 
 not to think of the education question as one easy 
 of settlement. True, some of the obstacles of the 
 past had gone, the foremost being the veto of 
 the House of Lords. But having regard to the 
 present composition of the House of Commons no 
 extreme view on the education question could 
 be rammed down its throat. Any such attempt 
 would necessarily be followed by reaction. The 
 dominant factor in any settlement must be, 
 religious equality." — The Times ^ 19th January 
 1912. 
 
 It remains to consider the practical outcome of 
 these hopeful tendencies. The main result is that the 
 principle of giving to the parents of the children who 
 are forced to attend public elementary schools the 
 widest possible freedom to determine the religious 
 teaching which the children are to have is in a fair 
 way to become the basis of future settlement. The 
 adoption of this principle cures at once the main 
 and most justifiable of Nonconformist grievances — 
 the single-school area grievance. At the same time 
 it is the one principle to which Churchmen are willing 
 to subordinate the vested interests of trust deeds and 
 school buildings. To it, also, the sacrifice by Non- 
 conformists of the Cowper- Temple clause is most
 
 278 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 easily made. Moreover, the operation of the principle 
 automatically gets rid of a large part of the Noncon- 
 formist grievance which is represented by the political 
 cry of " No tests for teachers " ; if any question were 
 to arise as to the religious qualifications of a Churchman 
 or a Nonconformist for a teachership, it would cease 
 to be decided by reference to a trust deed or a vested 
 interest, and would depend only on the nature of the 
 duties the teacher was required to perform — namely, 
 the instruction of Church or Nonconformist children. 
 
 Here I would offer a word of advice to Churchmen 
 bred in the old school of public education. They have, 
 I believe, two steps to take in order to provide a clear 
 ground for the settlement of this long-standing quarrel. 
 First, they must not stand too stiffly on the rights of 
 their vested interests. The State is bound in honour 
 to safefifuard those interests which, as I have shown 
 above, the State itself created ; and proposals to con- 
 fiscate or jettison Church schools will continue to be 
 fiercely resisted. But to insist upon the rigid main- 
 tenance of a particular educational mechanism, and 
 to refuse reasonable readjustment of the educational 
 system as a whole, would be to treat vested interests 
 as indefeasible rights incapable of alteration even with 
 proper compensation. Such a course would make too 
 high a demand on the gratitude of tlie State, and would 
 interpose a solid obstacle to the settlement with Non- 
 conformity, which all must desire. In the second 
 place, the old-fashioned Church educationist has to 
 reckon with Radicalism pure and simple, and on one 
 point at least he would be wise to make an effort to 
 conciliate it. Strange as it may seem, there is a sincere 
 bchef in the minds of a certain class of politicians, 
 wliosc political alliance with Nonconformity is an 
 accident of party warfare, that the village church
 
 RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN EDUCATION 279 
 
 school is a mere instrument of feudal oppression ; the 
 squire and the parson have combined to stifle the 
 nascent mind of an otlierwise free (and Radical) 
 peasantry ; the Church catechism is all mere make- 
 believe, except the statement that a child is to order 
 himself lowly and reverently to all his betters ; in fact, 
 political influence and not religious education is the 
 object of Church schools and their supporters. Let 
 these suspicions be met by Churchmen with a frank 
 offer to concede the fullest possible public control over 
 all the village schools in England. Let Churchmen 
 demand of Parliament fair regulation for the conduct 
 of religious teaching, and then let tliem surrender to 
 the public authority the conduct of the schools so 
 regulated. I entirely decline to bow down to the 
 fetish of public control, but, as a politician, I would 
 urge Church people, for the sake of peace, to sacrifice 
 in the country districts the small degree of control 
 still reserved to them by the management clauses of 
 the Act of 1902, and to trust entirely to the operation 
 of a carefully drawn statute imposing upon local educa- 
 tion authorities the terms and conditions of parental 
 choice and denominational equality in the conduct of 
 public elementary schools.^ 
 
 To the Radical I would appeal not to lose faith in 
 democracy just at the crucial point. Is our modern 
 system of local government to be treated as capable 
 of bearing almost any administrative weight except 
 
 ^ A reasonable elasticity of arrangement by which homogeneous 
 schools, such as Roman Catholics and Lancashire Churchmen require 
 for their children, could continue in areas where there is a choice of 
 schools, would, I assume, form an integral part of an Education Act 
 based on parents' rights. An interesting scheme of this kind, drawn 
 up by Sir Theodore Hope^ K.C.S.I., and Mr Arthur Eden, has recently 
 been published.
 
 280 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 that of a free system of religious education ? I would 
 ask him also to shake off once for all the strange link 
 which binds him to such an arch-sectarian as Dr 
 Clifford, and to the dogmatic abstractions with which 
 that eminent controversialist rivals the jurists of the 
 mediaeval Papacy. A sectarian policy does not acquire 
 virtue by being called civic ; a plot of political Noncon- 
 formity to oust Church influence from public education 
 may be popularised as an attack on priestcraft, but 
 it does not thereby cease to be sectarian aggression. 
 Radical democracy should have no truck with the 
 Jesuits of Protestantism. 
 
 The individual Nonconformist I would invite to fix 
 his mind on his specific legislative grievances, and take 
 their redress from any political party that will give it 
 to him. It is redress he should ask for, and he should 
 be careful that what is meat to him is not made 
 another man's poison. If he desires to follow Dr 
 Clifford away from tlie redress of grievances to the 
 pursuit of suppressing denominationalism, as a politician 
 I can only advise him to consider whether the history 
 of the last six years encourages him to hope that 
 the pursuit will be fruitful. ]Mr JNIcKenna's policy of 
 " thorough " failed of its own inherent vice, and without 
 the excuse of the House of Lords. A denominational 
 majority is now installed in both Houses of Parliament. 
 A Bill amending the Education Act of 1902 and based 
 on the principles of parents' rights could pass both these 
 Houses, and no other Education I^ill could. If Non- 
 conformists want the redress of their educational 
 grievances, they can get it. If, on the other hand, 
 tliey prefer to repeat the experiences of 190(1 11)10, 
 that alternative too is open to them.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT ACT IN RELATION 
 TO DEMOCRACY 
 
 At the time of the General Election the Parliament 
 Act was everywhere recommended as the restoration 
 to the constituencies of the right to govern England. 
 The House of Lords, such was the suggestion, had 
 usurped powers which they had never legally possessed, 
 and the time had come, once for all, to render them 
 helpless. This point of view was rhetorically expressed 
 in the familiar question, illustrated by a disgusting 
 cartoon, " Shall six hundred peers rule six million 
 Englishmen ? " The measure has now been in operation 
 for a period sufficiently long to make it possible to 
 examine, in an atmosphere somewhat calmer than that 
 of a General Election, the justice of the claim under- 
 lying these representations. 
 
 We are, all of us, agreed that for good or for evil we are 
 governed by democracy. The apparent tendency is to 
 extend rather than to restrict the popular character of 
 our Government. It is, indeed, perhaps a safe prediction 
 that the government of this country will remain demo- 
 cratic unless the tendency above adverted to should be 
 arrested by civil convulsions. This speculation, though 
 full of interest, would carry us too far from the immedi- 
 ate subject of inquiry. Democratic government has 
 
 281
 
 282 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 many merits, and it suffers from some not inconsiderable 
 defects. Some critics will lay stress on the merits, 
 others will be more impressed by the defects, but aU 
 alike will agree that it is supremely important, as long 
 as we purport to be governed by democracy, that the 
 reality of our constitution should correspond with its 
 labels. 
 
 There is much to be said for a democratic system of 
 government, as there is much to be urged on behalf of 
 an autocratic system. There is nothing whatever that 
 can be urged in favour of a constitution which, under 
 the name of democracy, has in effect concentrated every 
 faculty of government in the hands of a small clique 
 which has cheated the people of every vestige of effective 
 control over the national policy. It is the object of 
 this article to show that the present Cabinet is such a 
 clique ; that the Parliament Act is the instrument by 
 which they have speciously effected their purpose ; and 
 that, so far from having restored power to the electorate, 
 they have by a fraud persuaded democracy to sanction 
 a more supreme abdication of power than any democracy 
 has ever voluntarily made in the history of the world. 
 
 Many illustrations might be given to support this 
 view. The Insurance Bill is as instructive as any. 
 The Prime Minister assured the country that adequate 
 powers to delay unconsidered, or imperfectly understood, 
 legislation would still remain to the House of I^ords. 
 Tiie Insurance Act was sent to the Second Chamber 
 for consideration at the very end of a Session already 
 protracted beyond precedent, and under circumstances 
 making it evidently impossible for that House to give 
 the time necessary for its consideration. The House of 
 Commons had bestowed many months upon the measure 
 without a single obstructive discussion ; and yet many 
 of its most vital provisions were hardly discussed at all.
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 283 
 
 Three or four months would have been required for the 
 purposes of a serious or useful consideration in the 
 Second Chamber. Moreover, the Parliament Act ex- 
 pressly gave the countenance of a statute to the most 
 extreme claims ever made by the House of Commons 
 in respect of financial privilege ; any amendments of 
 importance made by the House of Lords to the National 
 Insurance Bill must have had a financial aspect, and 
 would have been denounced as a breach of the privi- 
 leges of the House of Commons. The Government, 
 under the stress of their Irish obligations, sent the Bill 
 to the Lords at a date and under circumstances which 
 insured that the Bill should become law with as little 
 reference to the Second Chamber as if the forms of that 
 assembly had been destroyed as completely as its sub- 
 stance. The Act, in fact, was passed under a uni- 
 cameral system of government, and it is very material 
 to notice that not even Mr Lloyd George has claimed 
 that his proposals were ever submitted to or sanctioned 
 by the constituencies. 
 
 It is, under these circumstances, illuminating to 
 analyse some of the Prime Minister's recent references 
 to the supposed electioneering consequences of the Act. 
 He has told us that the Government never expected it 
 would be an asset, and that they introduced it, not 
 because they thought it would be popular, but because 
 they were satisfied that it would at least be beneficial. 
 Similarly, JNIr Lloyd George has informed an admiring 
 interviewer that every statesman worthy the name 
 must be prepared to carry measures which are unpopular. 
 These expressions of opinion suggest much material for 
 thought. 
 
 If a grateful country had unanimously requested the 
 Prime Minister to be good enough for the next few years 
 to discharge in his own person the functions heretofore
 
 284 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 vaguely distributed between the Lords, the Commons, 
 and the Constituencies, his position would be perfectly 
 intelligible. He would, under those circumstances, be 
 entitled to pass this Act or any other Act which he 
 himself thought, or JNIr Lloyd George persuaded him, 
 was likely to benefit the community. Nor would it be 
 necessary in such a case to consult the people. But in 
 the actual circumstances the claim put forward is as- 
 tounding in its naive assurance. Mr Asquith says in 
 effect, " I have restored to the people by the Parliament 
 Act the right to govern themselves ; I have given a 
 new charter to democracy, and, having enfranchised 
 them, I pass a complex measure, affecting every house- 
 hold in the country, which is not ' an electioneering 
 asset ' " ; or, in other words, which the people do not 
 want and against which they would vote if they were 
 afforded an opportunity. 
 
 Nor can the answer be made that the Insurance Act 
 is likely to prove an exceptional case. There is no 
 reason whatever for supposing that it will be so, and 
 there is every reason for supposing that it will not. 
 The Parliament Act depended upon one principle only, 
 that there is an irresistible presumption that every new 
 House of Commons so completely represents the 
 constituencies on every conceivable subject which may 
 assume legislative form that it is unnecessary under any 
 circumstances to consult the people upon any proposals 
 which any House of Commons may sanction during the 
 first two years of its existence. The strength of this 
 cliain is the strengtli, neither more nor less, of its 
 weakest link. If it can be shown that a House of 
 Commons in the first two years of its existence has 
 passed or will pass a Bill which the constituencies, if 
 tliey retain the ])ower, would veto, it is a})parent that 
 by wliatever other arguments the measure may be
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 285 
 
 supported it cannot appeal to those which draw their 
 strength from the principles of democracy. 
 
 Accident, or the weakness of the Government, or 
 both, have provided us with a method of testing the 
 working of the Parliament Act which is even more 
 striking than that furnished by the Insurance Act. 
 The Franchise Bill is drafted in such a manner as to 
 allow an amendment which will enfranchise a certain 
 number of women. Whether such an amendment will 
 receive the support of a Parliamentary majority no man 
 living can confidently predict. Suppose, for the sake of 
 argument, that it is carried. We shall be face to face 
 then with a measure passed by the House of Commons 
 in that halcyon and sacrosanct period in which every 
 supporter of the Parliament Act is bound to admit 
 that the First Chamber necessarily reflects the real 
 wishes of the electors. If the Parliament Act was well- 
 conceived it is evident that the Government have the 
 same right, neither more nor less, to carry into law 
 Female Suffrage without consulting the constituencies 
 as they have to carry Home Rule and Welsh Dis- 
 establishment. But recent occurrences have made it 
 abundantly clear that some of the strongest supporters 
 of the Parliament Act are of opinion that the biennial 
 period may be freely used to carry into law every 
 change, however novel and far-reaching, which they 
 desire, but that it cannot without the gravest impro- 
 priety be used for the purpose of carrying novel 
 proposals of which they disapprove. 
 
 A great demonstration was recently held at the 
 Albert Hall to protest against the concession of votes 
 to women. The meeting was addressed by Lord 
 Loreburn, the late Lord Chancellor, and he was 
 supported upon the platform by, I think, no fewer than 
 fifteen of his colleagues. He stated, and evidently
 
 286 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 with their consent and approval, that it would be " a 
 constitutional outrage " to pass Female Suffrage by an 
 amendment of the Franchise Bill and without an appeal 
 to the constituencies. AMiy ? Such an amendment 
 will, on the hypothesis, have received the assent of a 
 House of Commons at the very moment when the 
 Parliament Act teaches that the House of Commons 
 for all purposes represents the people. Why is one 
 subject, and one subject only, to be withdrawn from 
 the legislative field upon which this inspired assembly 
 is otherwise permitted to browse in uncontrolled enjoy- 
 ment ? It is no answer to say, as I have myself said 
 in another connection, that however little Home Rule 
 was before the country, Female Suffrage was never 
 before it at all. An opponent of the Parliament Act 
 may draw these distinctions ; they are not open to a 
 supporter. No person can hold the view that this 
 House of Commons is constitutionally incapable, ex- 
 cept by outrage, of carrying Female Suffrage unless 
 he shares our view that the commission of supreme 
 powers to a Single Chamber during the period per- 
 mitted by the Parliament Act is inexpedient and 
 ought to be abolished. 
 
 It is, therefore, necessary to admit, firstly, that the 
 short period which has elapsed since the Parliament 
 Act became law has made an irreparable inroad upon 
 the principle upon which it was confusedly based ; and, 
 secondly, that it admits the risk that measures may 
 become law under its protection which are, in Lord 
 Lorcburn's phrase, outrageous. The events which are 
 taking place before the eyes of the country to-day show 
 in a variety of other ways how deeply injurious the 
 measure in operation is proving to those poj)ular rights 
 whicli it promised to found upon a permanent and 
 unassailable rock. When a new House of Commons
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 287 
 
 meets it will henceforth become necessary for Ministers 
 to draw a sharp line distinguishing such of their 
 legislative proposals as they really wish to become law 
 from those towards which they feel a vague benevolence, 
 or in respect of which they are bound by unattractive 
 historical commitment. All those measures which fall 
 in the first class will be, and indeed must be, brought 
 forward and carried through their stages either in the 
 first or second Session of the new House of Commons 
 in order that it may become law without consideration 
 by the constituencies. 
 
 The result is that the extent of our Parliamentary 
 labours is, and always will be henceforth, determined, 
 not by reference to the amount of work which the 
 House of Commons can reasonably and usefully 
 perform, but by reference to the number of measures 
 which the Government, either to maintain or to 
 prolong their existence, must introduce. The menace 
 to popular liberty of such a system is profound. Sup- 
 pose, for the sake of example, that the Cabinet of a 
 newly-elected Government decides that six measures at 
 least shall become law before they go out of ofhce. It 
 may well be that every one of those measures would 
 require, unless the Insurance muddle is to be repeated, 
 a whole Session of Parliamentary consideration. The 
 measure may require it, but it will certainly not receive 
 it. Time-tables will be automatically formulated de- 
 pending not in the least upon the importance of the 
 measure, but upon the available period, having regard 
 to the claims of other measures, which must also be- 
 come law in the preferential period. 
 
 Such a state of affairs makes it clear that deep and 
 vital as was the injury done by the Government to the 
 House of Lords, they have inflicted on the House of 
 Commons a blow far more serious. The House of
 
 288 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Commons, indeed, under its present masters, has be- 
 come as weary of itself as the country is weary of it. 
 The people do not read our debates, the popular Press 
 does not report them, and our legislators do not listen 
 to them. Vast, complex, and often unintelligible pro- 
 posals succeed in alternation to the Parliamentary stage 
 with a rapidity which not only bewilders the intelligent 
 politician in the constituencies, but leaves many quite 
 reasonably intelligent JNlembers of Parliament wholly 
 ignorant of the measures which they daily support by 
 their votes in the Lobby. 
 
 The state of affairs, thus produced, would be ludi- 
 crous if its consequences were not so tragic. The 
 actual results of the Parliament Act up to date may be 
 exhibited in the following way : — (1) The constituencies 
 have lost all control over the legislation of the House 
 of Commons during the period in question ; by-elections 
 are sneered at as the fruit of misrepresentation. (2) 
 The House of Lords has no control over legislation 
 during this period : it can only postpone measures, 
 sharing the hope of Mr Micawber that something will 
 turn up in the course of the following two years. (3) 
 The House of Commons has no control over legislation 
 during the critical period. 
 
 The third of these propositions may, at first sight, 
 appear somewhat paradoxical ; it is, in fact, less obvious 
 than the first two, but I believe that on analysis it will 
 appear equally well-founded. Every supporter of the 
 Goverimient in the House of Conmions knows that if 
 the Government is defeated during that period on an 
 occasion of importance it will resign and an election will 
 follow, but every supporter of the Government is deter- 
 mined under no circumstances to bring about a prema- 
 ture election, and he is more particuhirly determined 
 when the political barometer haj)pens to be low. It is
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 289 
 
 notorious, and no honest man who knows the House of 
 Commons would deny, that many members habitually 
 vote for measures of which they disapprove, supporting 
 themselves by the reflection that it is better to maintain 
 in office a Liberal Government of whose policy they 
 disapprove in one particular, than to give a vote which 
 would place in office the Conservative Party of whose 
 policy they disapprove in every particular. Not only is 
 this view natural, but it can be defended by very respect- 
 able authority. Burke said something very like it in his 
 famous vindication of government by party, but if it be 
 true — and that alone is the relevant inquiry in the con- 
 text — it is evident that the third proposition is as true 
 as the other two, that the House of Commons exercises 
 little or no control during the period when control is 
 most necessary. 
 
 But if the Parliament Act has excluded from a real 
 influence over legislation the Constituencies, the House 
 of Lords, and the House of Commons, by what man or 
 body of men are the enormous powers of government 
 in fact exercised ? Who is it, in other words, who 
 rules England with unrestricted power, controlled by no 
 checks or balances, and able to write his or their will 
 on all subjects upon the pages of the Statute Book ? 
 The legatees of the people, the Lords and the Commons, 
 are the Cabinet of the day. They operate with no 
 restraint except such as may be furnished by remote 
 electioneering apprehensions, and they always have at 
 hand for a rainy day Mr Lloyd George with a new 
 Limehouse speech or new land propaganda. Whether 
 the people like their new Constitution remains to be 
 seen, but if they do, and are prepared to stereotype it, 
 they may have many other merits, but they will have 
 ceased to be democrats. 
 
 An answer is frequently attempted to these objections, 
 
 19
 
 290 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 as stupid as it is superficial. It is contended that all 
 these mischiefs existed whenever a Conservative Govern- 
 ment held office, but that the present critics of the 
 Parliament Act were quite unconscious of their evil 
 consequences to the Commonwealth. The statement 
 is grossly exaggerated. I have before me as I write the 
 volumes of the Statutes which were passed during the 
 ten years before 1906, and side by side with them 
 the volumes containing our legislation from 1906 to 
 1911. A comparison of the size of the volumes during 
 the respective periods is the most effective distinction 
 between the two cases, but I will not elaborate either this 
 or other obvious grounds of differentiation. Let me, for 
 the sake of argument, accept the contention at its face 
 value, and attempt to appraise its controversial value. 
 
 The Liberal Party during the last thirty years has 
 almost invariably, when in office, come into collision 
 with the House of Lords. In the discussions which 
 have followed. Liberals have always contrasted the 
 state of affairs which exists under a Unionist Govern- 
 ment with that of which they complained when them- 
 selves in power. They have pointed out that Liberal 
 Governments were constantly harassed by a partisan 
 Second Chamber, whereas during every period of 
 Conservative Government the country was altogether 
 deprived of the control of a Second Chamber. I do not 
 make here the obvious point that it is the very boast 
 of the Liberal Party that they stand for progress and 
 change, that they commonly reproach the Unionist 
 Party with stagnation and reaction, and that therefore 
 any Second Chamber, however impartial, will certainly 
 be more active when the party which continually 
 proposes great changes is in power, than when the 
 other party is in power. I do not develop this point 
 because, although the statement which I am examining
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 291 
 
 is grossly exaggerated, it does none the less contain a 
 certain element of truth. It is, and has been the case 
 for many years that under Conservative Governments 
 there was too close a correspondence between the 
 Government of the day and the House of Lords. No 
 House of Commons, however little disposed to rash 
 and hazardous experiment, can be trusted with botii the 
 initial and the final control over legislation. 
 
 It is a commonplace that no great country in the 
 world is governed to-day by a Single Chamber. The 
 Conservative Party, of all parties, ought clearly to 
 recognise that of all great issues which concern the 
 party of order and stability, none is more vital than the 
 existence of an effective Second Chamber. If such a 
 Chamber be honest, strong, and independent, it matters 
 little what the party labels of its members may be. 
 Therefore, every period during which the Conservative 
 Party has carried on the Government of the country 
 without any real interference by the House of Lords 
 has supplied our opponents with a most dangerous 
 object-lesson of Single Chamber government in opera- 
 tion. These considerations led me in the crisis a year 
 ago to contemplate with great composure the creation of 
 even a considerable number of Liberal Peers. Thepersons 
 so promoted, if carefully chosen, would have afforded 
 a useful panel, the existence of which would have made 
 it possible to appoint one hundred and fifty Liberals, 
 and as many Conservatives out of the total number of 
 Peers as Lords of Parliament. This opportunity was 
 lost, and greatly as I myself dislike the idea of an elective 
 Second Chamber, the existence of which will, in my 
 judgment, destroy what remains of the prestige of the 
 House of Commons, I see many signs that one or the 
 other party will be driven to propose the solution of an 
 elective Second Chamber as the most defensible and
 
 292 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 logical method of escape from our constitutional 
 difficulties. 
 
 And it may be further observed that although the 
 Conservative Party is, on the whole, the cautious party, 
 there have been many occasions, periodically recurrent 
 in its history, in which it has made itself the instrument 
 for effecting the most far-reaching reforms. Peel, 
 Disraeli, Lord Randolph Churchill, and even Lord 
 Salisbury himself, introduced many momentous changes 
 in the consideration of which no one could contend that 
 the help of a Second Chamber would be superfluous. 
 Recent history affiDrds us an illustration both convenient 
 and forcible. INIr Balfour, after the Khaki Election, 
 introduced two measures, the Education Act and the 
 Licensing Act, which had certainly, to put it mildly, 
 not played a particularly prominent part amongst the 
 subjects discussed at the General Election, and each of 
 these Bills introduced very important changes in the 
 subject-matter to which it respectively related. The 
 Liberal Party complained most persistently and bitterly 
 of the conditions under which these Bills became law, 
 without, as they alleged, a mandate from the people, 
 and under the conditions of Single Chamber Govern- 
 ment. Many persons who were in entire agreement 
 with the policy of Mr Balfour's great Education Act 
 felt that there was some force in the complaints so 
 loudly put forward. The adoption, however, of the 
 policy which has been incorporated in the Parliament 
 Act has left Mr Balfour's I^iberal critics without a rag 
 of consistency. They complained that a Unionist 
 House of Commons passed two great measures without 
 an appeal to the people, and the principle of which liad 
 never been sanctioned by the people. When their time 
 comes to formulate a constitutional remedy, instead of 
 strengthening the Second Chamber and rendering the
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 293 
 
 repetition of an undesirable state of things impossible, 
 they stereotype it in the Constitution, and enable every 
 Parliament, Conservative and Liberal alike, to do 
 exactly the thing which they found so unconstitutional 
 and so dangerous. 
 
 It is, I think, clear that they were right in their 
 earlier view, and that they are wrong in their present 
 view. I have stated reasons for the conclusion that 
 even a Conservative Government would be stronger, 
 and its legislation better, if an effective Second Chamber 
 revised their measures ; but the arguments become 
 overwhelming in their strength when we consider the 
 position of a Coalition Government. The present 
 Ministry is kept in office by Liberals, Nationalists, and 
 Labour Members. They all want a few of the same 
 things, but each of the sections wants, in addition, a 
 number of things which the other sections do not want 
 at all. The objects which they commonly desire are 
 neither sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently popular to 
 constitute the whole Parliamentary stock-in-trade of 
 their supporters. Each group, in other words, does not 
 get enough of the things which it most particularly 
 desires, hence the necessity for an elaborate system of 
 bargaining. The Irish Party, for instance, wants Home 
 Rule. The Welsh Party wants Welsh Disestablish- 
 ment. The Irish Party is notoriously indifferent about 
 Welsh Disestablishment, but very anxious to procure 
 Welsh support for Home Rule. Hence the Union is 
 bargained for the Church in Wales. Instances could be 
 multiplied, but they will occur to everyone, and the 
 statement of phenomena so evident need not be pro- 
 longed ; but it must most carefully be observed that this 
 state of things makes it absolutely certain that measures 
 will be introduced which are positively disliked by a 
 majority in the constituencies. The Labour Party, for
 
 294 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 instance, whose strength in the constituencies is at 
 present neghgible, but whose votes in the House are at 
 the moment vital, are able to stipulate for a Bill re- 
 pealing the Osborne Judgment, to which 1 am certain 
 that the working classes are resolutely opposed. 
 
 These inconveniences and dangers were serious before 
 the Parliament Bill became law: they have become, 
 under its operation, a grave menace to the stability of 
 our whole political system. There is no mode by 
 which the constituencies can make their desires 
 effectively felt at the critical period in which alone an 
 unpopular measure may be defeated. Public meetings 
 are useless for the purpose. Any party can fill the 
 Albert Hall with cheering crowds in support of any 
 cause, from Female Suffrage to A nti- vaccination ; and 
 even by-elections are scarcely more helpful. No one 
 knows whether vacancies are likely to occur when they 
 are most required, or in seats where there is ever, under 
 any circumstances, a defection from the party in power. 
 It may, however, be argued that an ultimate check is 
 always present, like Black Care behind the ministerial 
 horseman, namely, the fear of an election Nemesis when 
 the inevitable appeal to the country comes at last. 
 
 But to this reassurance there are at least two im- 
 portant qualifications. In the first place, howev^er 
 paradoxical it may appear. Ministers occasionally be- 
 come exhausted, and consequently willing to see the 
 responsibility of government in other hands ; and if 
 their work has been effectively and unalterably done, 
 they may contemplate witli indifference the certainty 
 that the result* of an election will change the Govern- 
 ment of the country. The second qualification is even 
 more important. If Ministers do desire re- election, they 
 will be irresistibly tempted to cliange tlie wliole char- 
 acter of the issues on which they will be tried by the
 
 PARLIAMENT ACT AND DEMOCRACY 295 
 
 constituencies. For instance, suppose, to take an ex- 
 treme illustration, that the present Government were 
 to carry into law all their prof^ramme amid growing 
 signs of popular resentment. Suppose, further, that 
 when their work was done twelve months remained in 
 which to conciliate the constituencies. Ministers are left 
 face to face with an overwhelming temptation to devise 
 a great policy of debauchery or class-hatred, in the 
 hope that the popular attention may be diverted for the 
 moment from the legislation by which they ought to be 
 judged. Does anyone, for instance, suppose that JNIr 
 liloyd George ever intended to allow an appeal to the 
 country in which the principal issues would be Welsh 
 Disestablishment and Home Rule ? 
 
 These considerations are, I hope, sufficient to show 
 clearly the great danger to the whole cause of demo- 
 cratic government, and to the vital interests of the 
 people, which exist, and will exist, so long as the 
 Parliament Act, in its present shape, is on the Statute 
 Book. Under its provisions the constituencies enjoy 
 neither protection nor security, and it is certain that 
 measures will continually become law which are opposed 
 to the wishes of a majority of the electors. Under these 
 circumstances, it is of vital importance that the Unionist 
 Party should clear its mind and decide how great a 
 price it is worth its while to pay for the abolition of 
 conditions so disastrous. I am persuaded that the only 
 solution will be found in the creation of a Second 
 Chamber commanding the confidence of the country, 
 and therefore reasonably claiming the restoration of the 
 powers of which the Parliament Act robbed the House 
 of Lords ; and that it is extremely unlikely that any 
 Chamber will receive so large a measure of public support 
 unless it can be recommended to the constituencies as 
 independent and impartial.
 
 XV 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 
 
 Many Members of the House of Commons have 
 recently complained of the length of the speeches 
 made by those orators who have been successful in 
 catching the eye of Mr Speaker in important debates. 
 It is demonstrated, not without bitterness, that in 
 recent Second Reading debates the average duration of 
 the speeches has been an hour, and that so great a lack 
 of consideration has greatly curtailed the period avail- 
 able to less fortunate Members. The provocation, 
 indeed, has actually revived the movement associated 
 with the name of the late Major Rasch, who carried 
 on for many years a programme in favour of shorter 
 speeches. An appeal, we are told, has been made to 
 private Members, with the result that a considerable 
 majority of the House is pledged to reform in the 
 direction indicated. The movement has its origin on 
 the back benches, but it would be wrong to assume 
 that the grievance is one of the private Member against 
 the front-bencher. It is a movement of those who are 
 not fortunate enough to catch the eye of Mr Speaker 
 directed against those who have succeeded in catching 
 his eye. The greatest offenders are by no means 
 Ministers, ex-Ministers, or future Ministers. It is, of 
 course, true that Members of the two front benches are 
 
 296
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 297 
 
 naturally accorded the principal places in debate. They 
 speak when important measures require detailed ex- 
 position or detailed criticism ; but when, as occasion- 
 ally happens, the rejection of a measure is left in the 
 hands of a private Member, the substitution has not 
 been found to induce economy of debate. The truth is 
 that under modern conditions less time is afforded to 
 what are known as full-dress debates ; while far more 
 Members are competent and, being competent, desire 
 to take part in them. It may be true that the great 
 luminaries of the House of Commons are small in 
 comparison with their predecessors, though even this 
 admission must be qualified by the notorious tendency 
 of mankind to exaggerate the past at the expense of the 
 present : but whether this be true or not, it is un- 
 doubtedly true that a constantly growing number of 
 private Members has attained to a degree of debating 
 efficiency which would have astonished, as much as it 
 would have inconvenienced, those who stage-managed 
 Parliamentary Debates in the younger days of Disraeli. 
 Everyone will admit that brevity, " concinnatas " of 
 speech, is one of the great gifts of oratory, more 
 valuable because conceded to so few : but the admission 
 does not exclude the reflection that most of the greatest 
 speeches which have ever been delivered in the history 
 of oratory have not been brief. The occasion often 
 dictates the quality of the oratory which is addressed 
 to that occasion. Great subjects stimulate great 
 speakers, but great subjects are not usually treated 
 with adequacy within a short compass of time. Many 
 of Cicero's greatest speeches are models of compression, 
 but few of his greatest speeches are short. I should 
 myself contemplate \vith the greatest aversion any 
 proposal to limit the length of speeches in the House 
 of Commons. Some of the best speeches I have ever
 
 298 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 heard there have lasted an hour. It is true that some 
 of the worst have lasted the same time ; but it is a far 
 smaller misfortune that an empty House should be 
 bored by a long and foolish speech, than that a crowded 
 House should be denied, in the absence of special leave, 
 the opportunity of hearing a long and wise one. And 
 it is clear that a proposal to grant any special privilege 
 to the JNIembers of the front benches would be resisted 
 by private JNIembers of all parties. Mr Labouchere, 
 Mr Parnell, Mr Gibson Bowles, Mr Harold Cox, and 
 many other ornaments of parliamentary debate, never 
 sat on the front bench at all ; and there will always be 
 in the House of Commons a limited number of men 
 of distinguished parliamentary capacity who from 
 idiosyncrasy, independence, or accident remain faithful 
 to the back benches. To apply a form of closure to 
 such persons in favour of Under-Secretaries and Junior 
 Lords would be as absurd as it would be intolerable. 
 Any discrimination, therefore, between private Members 
 and those who sit on the front bench may be rejected ; 
 and I am aware of no other form of discrimination 
 which can be defended by plausible arguments. It has 
 been proposed that special privileges should be conceded 
 to the Minister introducing a Bill and to the Opposition 
 spokesman against it, but it is evident that the course 
 of debate may easily produce changes which would 
 make it reasonable and proper that later speakers should 
 receive similar indulgence. The House of Commons is 
 a very generous assembly : it listens with pleasure to 
 good speeches however bitter and extreme the stand- 
 point : but to ask for special indulgence in favour of 
 an able partisan making a provocative party speech 
 miglit easily impose an excessive strain upon this 
 quality. Nor do I place mucli hope in the most recent 
 suggestion that intending speakers should inform Mr
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 299 
 
 Speaker of the probable length of their speeches. I 
 assume an honest intention, but even with this assump- 
 tion the security is miserably poor. No man ever says 
 to himself, and no man ever believes when he rises to 
 make a speech that it will be a very long one ; still less 
 does he believe that it will be a very dull one ; but 
 the mischief which requires correction is that many 
 esteemed persons do, without anticipating their destiny, 
 make speeches which are both very long and very dull. 
 A record of their falsified intentions would merely 
 supply a few new stanzas to the Vanity of Human 
 AVishes. And, after all, the House of Commons is not 
 defenceless. If an inopportune prolixity annoys it at an 
 intolerable moment it can and it does end the mischief 
 by the time-honoured admonition "Vide, Vide." If 
 the complaint is not that an unwelcome speech has 
 been interposed after the leaders have spoken, and 
 immediately before a division, but merely that, though 
 delivered at a legitimate moment, the speech is dull and 
 the orator a bore. Members are not compelled to stay and 
 do not stay in the Chamber. Even this Government 
 has not ventured to put so great a strain upon the 
 loyalty of its supporters. 
 
 The House of Commons always listens with interest, 
 if not always without interruption, to really able 
 speeches : and interruption in a crowded and otherwise 
 silent House is itself one of the greatest compliments 
 that can be paid to a speaker. JNI embers do not 
 interrupt a dull man who is making no impression : 
 they have other weapons — they either leave the Chamber 
 or they talk. 
 
 Those who speak with pessimism of our modern 
 orators seem to me someA\'hat to ignore the tendency 
 to which I have already referred of mankind to make 
 heroes of their predecessors. 1 am sure that in the
 
 300 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 early days of Gladstone and Disraeli, old men who 
 could still recall the brilliant contemporaries of Canning 
 drew comparisons entirely in favour of the early genera- 
 tion. It is true that the taste of the House of Commons 
 has undergone a complete change, but I am by no 
 means satisfied that there are not a certain number of 
 JVlembers in the present House of Commons who could 
 have conformed with striking and even brilliant success 
 to the parliamentary standards of fifty years ago. It is 
 probably safe to predict that no great House of Commons 
 triumph will be attained hereafter, as in the days of 
 Robert Lowe, by Virgilian quotations thrice retorted : 
 still less will a Parliamentary contention be effectively 
 crystallised in a line of Euripides. Had such methods 
 survived, perhaps the late Sir Richard Jebb and the late 
 Mr Butcher would have suggested matter for reflection 
 to the undiscriminating laudator tcmporis acti. The 
 House of Commons has become more businesslike, re- 
 sponding with faithful reflection to a general tendency 
 in every department of life and letters. We are less 
 florid than our forefathers were : we do not write novels 
 in the style of Rienzi, nor do we attempt, if we could, 
 perorations of the diffuse eloquence demanded of the 
 heroes of the past. Yet in cultivation, in natural 
 eloquence, in the subtlety of dialectics, there are probably 
 at least as large a number of Members entitled to a high 
 place as have ever debated in the House of Commons 
 at any period of its history. 
 
 Nothing, for instance, will persuade me that there 
 has ever been a time in the history of the House of 
 Commons in which Mr Balfour would not have reached 
 the ascendency which has made him for so many years 
 a unique figure in our Parliamentary Debates. Many 
 people can speak better. I have never heard anyone 
 who can tliink aloud so brilhantly, so spontaneously,
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 301 
 
 and so conclusively. I have heard him rise to speak 
 on vital occasions where it was certain that every word, 
 reported exactly as he uttered it, would be read and 
 re-read by hundreds of thousands, with no notes except 
 such as he had hurriedly scribbled on an envelope during 
 the progress of the debate. Often his speech as delivered 
 has produced a great impression, sometimes an extra- 
 ordinary impression, but I have never heard Mr Balfour 
 speak without reading his speech with a wonder infinitely 
 greater ; for its structure, its logical evolution, and its 
 penetrating subtlety of thought always supply elements 
 which help him very little at the moment just because 
 it is not possible instantly to appreciate, while listening 
 to him, their amazing excellence. Several people can 
 make better extemporary speeches than Mr Balfour in 
 the House of Commons, judged by their instantaneous 
 impression, and many can make better ones upon the 
 platform, but I have never heard anyone make better 
 extemporary speeches than he, and I am certain that 
 I never shall, judged, not by the impression of the 
 moment upon an excited assembly, but by the far more 
 searching criterion of the deliberate judgment of critical 
 men. 
 
 In quite a different way Mr Asquith possesses 
 unique parliamentary gifts. His methods, I am well 
 aware, might very persuasively be cited in disproof of 
 the protest already made against the correction of 
 prolixity in debate. Mr Asquith seldom speaks for 
 more than forty minutes, often, and on important 
 occasions, for only half an hour, but it is given to few 
 to bend the bow of Odysseus. He can confine his 
 remarks within reasonable compass simply because he 
 possesses the gift of never saying a word too much ; he 
 always has at his command not merely the appropriate 
 but the inevitable word ; and it is therefore never
 
 302 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 necessary for him to use two words where one would 
 express his meanmg. Whether he has prepared his 
 speech or whether he is speaking extempore, the one 
 word is always swiftly available. He produces, where- 
 ever and whenever he wants them, an endless succession 
 of perfectly coined sentences conceived with unmatched 
 felicity, and delivered without hesitation in a parlia- 
 mentary style which is at once the en\y and the despair 
 of imitators. He never perhaps takes a point very 
 subtle, very recondite, very obviously out of the reach 
 of the ordinary Member of the House of Commons. 
 He lacks Mr Balfour's chief fascination, that of never 
 taking part in the discussion of a great subject without 
 illuminating it by rays of penetrating analysis wholly 
 novel, wholly unattainable to the average JNlember, and 
 yet immediately compelling attention and assent. But, 
 on the other hand, he realises completely the merit of 
 saying better in the House of Commons than anyone 
 else in it what all his party are thinking, and of giving 
 to their thoughts a felicitous and cogent expression of 
 which they are incapable. 
 
 JNIr Bonar I^aw employs methods of preparation which 
 are, so far as I know, unique. In his most carefully 
 prepared speeches he makes no notes, but formulates in 
 his mind the sequence of his argument in the very words 
 in which it is to be expressed, and then by a series of 
 mental rehearsals makes himself as much master of the 
 whole speech as if he read it from a manuscript on the 
 table. It might have been supposed that such a method 
 of preparation would have imposed an almost intolerable 
 mental strain, but it appears to cause JMr Bonar Law 
 neither trouble nor anxiety. And the present Session 
 has conchisively shown that JMr Bonar Law can make 
 extremely successful speeches on occasions on which no 
 preparation was possible. Whether he is making a
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 303 
 
 carefully prepared or an extemporary speech he uses no 
 notes whatev er, and in neither case does he ever trans- 
 gress in the slightest degree the exact proportional 
 treatment which the immediate subject requires. Mr 
 Bonar Law's style as a speaker is peculiar to himself: 
 he is simple, perspicuous, and extremely cogent. Very 
 few Latin words overload his sentences ; indeed, his 
 style and diction resemble those of the late Mr Bright 
 more closely than those of any parliamentary speaker 
 who has reached a great position in the interval 
 between them. He possesses a pungency, and a 
 degree of combative brilliancy, which have made the 
 closing speeches of many a fierce party debate a scene 
 of unmixed triumph to his delighted supporters. I 
 have never, during my experience of the House of 
 Commons, heard more successful fighting speeches 
 than those with which he has wound up late at night 
 the Unionist case in the more important debates 
 of the last few months. And he is, in my judgment, 
 only at the beginning of his successes. Until he became 
 leader his interposition in debate was infrequent, and he 
 had acquired the somewhat ambiguous reputation of an 
 expert upon tariff questions. He makes better speeches 
 on the tariff than anyone since Mr Chamberlain, but 
 neither in knowledge nor in range is he a limited man, 
 and successful as he has already proved himself, I think he 
 has not entered even yet upon his parliamentary kingdom. 
 Mr Lloyd George is undoubtedly a speaker of extra- 
 ordinary variety, Jiair, and plausibility. He has three 
 wholly distinct styles of speech. The first is that of 
 Limehouse ; the second that of the House of Commons 
 in an excited party debate ; the third that of the House 
 of Commons when he is concerned in forwarding business 
 and conciliating criticism. His cleverness and address 
 in the third method are beyond all praise. He thanks
 
 304 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 his opponents for their assistance, he compliments them 
 upon their pubHc spirit, he accepts their co-operation 
 with gratitude, and the whole proceeding is conducted 
 with an ingratiating bonhomie which, at its best, is 
 extraordinarily clever, if, at its worst, it recalls the 
 emollient properties of highly-scented soap. His second 
 style, that employed in the * combative party speech in 
 a full-dress debate, does not impress me equally. He 
 is, indeed, a very adroit controversialist on these occa- 
 sions, but the methods employed are a little crude. 
 His speeches are wholly lacking in that literary quality 
 which marks all the best House of Commons oratory, 
 and when he trusts, as he sometimes does, to the elo- 
 quence of the moment, it is usually more that of the 
 platform or the pulpit than of the House of Commons. 
 He is beyond question a very powerful controversialist, 
 but his special merits are to be found rather in his hrst 
 or third styles than his second. I have never heard 
 him speak on the platform to a great party audience, 
 but I should imagine that amid these surroundings he 
 is head and shoulders above any contemporary speaker. 
 He is, in fact, an unmatched demagogue ; but it is only 
 fair to add that he is a demagogue not by affectation or 
 from policy, but because he is the sincere mouthpiece 
 of his antecedents and his temperament. His speeches 
 at Limehouse and Newcastle were open to the gravest 
 criticisms both on the ground of taste and in relation 
 to their accuracy, but each of them was a formid- 
 able event. He has never been quite as eHective 
 since : his methods have become a little more unctuous 
 and a little more slipshod. His prestige is somewhat 
 impaired, and the atmosphere upon which he, almost 
 more than any one, depends for tlie liighest fulfilment 
 of liis powers has become in consequence somewhat 
 blurred ; but a politician who can do what Mr Lloyd
 
 PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY 305 
 
 George has already done must always be reckoned with 
 as a formidable and incalculable force. 
 
 In many ways I consider Mr Horatio Bottomley to 
 be one of the most attractive speakers to whom I have 
 ever listened. He certainly attains to a higher degree 
 of excellence in three quite distinct types of speech 
 than any speaker known to me. His House of Com- 
 mons style was almost ideal. Self-possessed, quiet, 
 irresistibly witty, and distinguished equally by common 
 sense and tolerance, he made for himself a position in 
 the House of Commons of which nothing but the loss 
 of his seat would ever have deprived him. I am assured 
 by good judges that he was, if possible, even more 
 effective when addressing a great audience of many 
 thousands, and as a forensic speaker I can say with long 
 experience that his force, his persuasiveness, and the 
 perfection of his form were unrivalled. Many men can 
 speak well in the Law Courts who speak well nowhere 
 else : some can speak well in the Law Courts and 
 in the House of Commons : some, again, in the I,aw 
 Courts and on the platform. I have never met any 
 one who reached so high a degree of excellence in 
 all three methods of speech. He united to a brilliant 
 native humour a broad range of treatment, nerves of 
 steel, an original outlook upon affairs, and an exact 
 grasp of detail which hardly ever accompanies the other 
 qualities. His removal from the House of Commons 
 has impoverished the public stock of gaiety, of clever- 
 ness, and of common sense. 
 
 Mr Winston Churchill is a speaker of a wholly 
 
 different type. He could not, of course, have made so 
 
 great a reputation as a speaker without extraordinary 
 
 ability, but equally I think he could not have done so 
 
 if his perseverance and tenacity had been less dogged ; 
 
 for he hardly belongs to the class of orators who are 
 
 20
 
 306 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 sometimes called "natural." He bestows upon his 
 important speeches a degree of almost meticulous pre- 
 paration : he elaborates and sometimes over-elaborates. 
 Latterly an excessive dependence upon his manuscript 
 has a little impaired the parliamentary success of some 
 of his most important speeches, but his hearers enjoy 
 the compensating qualities of these defects. His 
 speeches are marked by an arresting literary quality. 
 Some of his phrases are scarcely less happy than those 
 of Disraeli ; and nearly all his carefully considered 
 speeches bear the impress of deep and fruitful thought. 
 He is more instinct with the House of Commons spirit 
 than any of the new generation. He has brooded 
 deeply upon the records of parliamentary oratory, has 
 analysed with inexhaustible patience the temperament 
 of the House of Commons, and will perhaps recall to a 
 generation which has almost forgotten them the parlia- 
 mentary standards and modes of expression amid which 
 Mr Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr Chaplin 
 served their apprenticeship. 
 
 Eight years ago Mr Winston Churchill and Lord 
 Hugh Cecil were intimates, confederates, and, in a 
 sense, rivals. Lord Hugh was then, and is now, a far 
 more spontaneous speaker than Mr Churchill, and he 
 has other qualities which, so far as I know, no one in 
 the House of Commons but himself possesses. He 
 unites to the most tenacious combativeness an idealism 
 of view which even those who are most affronted by 
 his controversial bitterness admit in their hearts. In- 
 deed, nothing is more striking than to observe how the 
 Government Benches, almost unable to control their 
 disagreeable anticipations when Lord Hugh rises to 
 speak, are compelled in spite of themselves to Hsten 
 and often even to symj)athise with an outlook upon 
 affairs which has so little in common with their own.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 {^Letter to '■^The TimeSy' 2nd July 1912) 
 THE UNIONIST HOUSING BILL 
 
 Sir, — Indications are not wanting that the Government con- 
 templates an attempt to shift the venue of their trial whenever it 
 takes place in the constituencies. 
 
 Home Rule, the Franchise Bill, and the Welsh Church Bill 
 are, it would appear, bad electioneering business. The General 
 Election, when it takes place, will be fought not upon such incon- 
 venient issues, but upon the revival of the Battle of Limehouse. 
 Certain underlings of the Liberal Party, wholly undistinguished 
 in the House of Commons, and apparently incapable of putting 
 forward any intelligible Parliamentary explanation of their 
 peculiar views, have, it is understood, gained the ear of a 
 Minister who has every motive (if it be practicable) to raise 
 the value of his political stock. The outcome, we are told, is 
 to be a new land programme involving, amongst other proposals, 
 a comprehensive measure of housing reform, applicable alike to 
 town and country. 
 
 Such a proposal must, of course, proceed from the Government, 
 and it cannot be carried through the House of Commons except 
 as one of the principal measures of the Session. It is therefore 
 not altogether irrelevant to recall the existing commitments of the 
 Government. They are pledged to carry into law the Home 
 Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Bill, a Franchise Bill to be followefi 
 by a Redistribution Bill, and a measure for the reconstitution of 
 the House of Lords. But this is not all. The Prime Minister 
 has specifically bound himself to pass through the present House 
 
 307
 
 308 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 of Commons a Licensing Bill " as drastic as the last," and an 
 Education Bill to remedy the "grievances"" of the passive 
 resister. 
 
 It is, I imagine, obvious that an ambitious land programme 
 cannot be added to these commitments with any hope that it will 
 find a place upon the Statute-book in the lifetime of this Parlia- 
 ment. Its object, in other words, will be not to abolish slums, 
 but to gain votes. The Government cannot afford to destroy 
 slums ; they require them for their perorations. The hypocrisy 
 of their professions is vividly illustrated by their treatment of the 
 Unionist Housing Bill. 
 
 Everything valuable in this Bill has now been killed by the 
 action of Ministers and their friends. You will therefore perhaps 
 allow me to pronounce a funeral oration over it. The Bill 
 started its career as a wide, drastic, and comprehensive measure 
 for dealing with the admitted defects of our present housing legis- 
 lation and administration ; it survives under the pressure of the 
 President of the Local Government Board, and of the single-tax 
 lunatics as a mere simulacrum of any social policy. 
 
 The Bill, as introduced in December 1911, and re-introduced 
 in February 1912, was not devoid of substantial expert backing. 
 It was drafted and backed by Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, for 
 two years chairman of the London County Council Housing Com- 
 mittee ; by Colonel Kyffin Taylor, chairman of the Liverpool 
 Housing Committee ; by the Hon. Walter Guinness, ex-chairman 
 of the London County Council Housing Committee ; by Mr 
 Charles Bathurst, who is by common consent one of the best 
 known authorities on rural housing in the House of Commons ; 
 by Mr Montague Barlow, Lord Henry Bentinck, Mr Waldorf 
 Astor, Mr J. W. Hills, Lord Wolmer, and Mr Harold Smith, all 
 of them well known for their interest in and knowledge of the 
 social problems of to-day. These members of the House made 
 extended tours to the nine important municipalities in order to 
 gather the opinions and collate the experience of the local 
 authorities, and drafted their Bill to meet the requirements of the 
 special localities. The proposals they finallv embodied in the 
 Bill were suj)ported by practically every housing association 
 in the country, including the National Housing and Town 
 Planning Couiu-il, the Rural Housing Association, the National 
 Land and Home League, and tlie Workmen's Housing Council.
 
 APPENDIX 309 
 
 An impartial person will admit that a Bill which commanded such 
 general support, and was vouched by such expert knowledge, was 
 worthy at least of the respectful consideration of his Majesty's 
 Ministers. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that it did not receive such con- 
 sideration from these new housing enthusiasts. 
 
 When the second reading was moved by Sir Arthur Griffith- 
 Boscawen and Mr Charles Bathurst, on 15th March, it was at once 
 opposed in the most violent language, not only by the single-tax 
 March hares represented by Mr Wedgwood or the self-advertising 
 section represented by Mr Booth, but by the President of the 
 Local Government Board himself. Mr Burns referred to the 
 backers of the Bill and the expert associations and local authorities 
 behind them as "economic fledglings from East-end settlements 
 who thought that the last word on housing reform had been 
 spoken when they had delivered a speech after they had motored 
 through a London slum in a taxi-cab." This cheap and insolent 
 sneer has been resented deeply by men of all parties, who have 
 forgotten more about housing reform than Mr John Burns ever 
 learnt. These men have been struggling for many years to 
 improve the conditions of the working classes, while the 
 President of the Local Government Board has been bawling to 
 the universe in vain and prolix speeches that it is impertinent 
 even to offer a suggestion upon housing matters to a Depart- 
 ment which is dignified by a President at once so enterprising 
 and so modest. 
 
 Fortunately we were able to depend on the support of a few 
 sincere housing reformers on the Liberal and Labour benches. 
 On behalf of the Unionist Social Reform Committee I should like 
 to thank those members habitually opposed to us in politics who 
 have been our constant supporters in this matter. Mr Burns was 
 apparently warned by the Government Whips that he would be 
 defeated if he moved the rejection of the Bill on second reading. 
 Not being courageous enough to face this contingency, he and the 
 Government front bench indulged in the mean and cowardly trick 
 of supporting Mr Booth's proposal for referring the Bill, not to a 
 Standing Committee, but to a Committee of the whole House — a 
 motion tantamount to rejection. They were publicly rebuffed by 
 the determination of the House, and in spite of their opposition 
 the Bill passed to Standing Committee A.
 
 310 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 The less experienced supporters of the measure imagined that 
 their difficulties were over until the Report stage. They were 
 mistaken. The hostility of Liberalism to any measure of social 
 reform which is not recommended by the spirit of class-hatred was 
 bv no means abated. The main proposals of the Bill were to 
 establish Housing Commissioners under the Local Government 
 Board, and to give an Imperial grant of half a million accom- 
 panied by real powers to compel local authorities to do their duty 
 in exchange for the grant. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 refused the grant, and the three main clauses of the Bill became 
 at once inoperative. A somewhat heated debate ensued, Sir 
 Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Mr Hills, and others protesting against 
 the mutilation of the Bill. Many Liberals at once began a policy 
 of obstruction, which they continued throughout the Committee 
 stage, the worst offenders being Mr Jonathan Samuel, M.P. for 
 Stockton, Mr Handel Booth, M.P. for Pontefract, Mr Wedgwood, 
 M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Mr King, M.P. for North 
 Somerset. All these gentlemen will be reminded in their con- 
 stituencies of the zeal they displayed for housing reform. At 
 length Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen and his friends announced 
 that thay had no course open to them but to allow the first three 
 clauses to be deleted and attempt to pass what was left of the Bill. 
 A division was taken, and the first clause, that for the appoint- 
 ment of Housing Commissions, was struck out by thirty to fifteen, 
 every Liberal, Labour, and Nationalist member voting with the 
 Government. 
 
 After this, although the promoters agreed to practically every 
 suggestion on the part of the Government, seeing that nothing but 
 the minor clauses of the Bill remained, obstruction became 
 rampant. The promoters abandoned, in deference to Ministerial 
 objections. Clause 8, which dealt with compensation for demolition 
 in cases where the owner undertook not to build without the 
 consent of the local authority — a clause taken from the Liverpool 
 Private Act and strongly recommended by the Liverpool authori- 
 ties. No concession could appease the hostility of the Liberal 
 Anti-Social Reformers. The Committee sat for no less than six 
 more days, and its opponents divided against the liill fifteen times. 
 Mr Jonathan Samuel distinguished himself most (or at least most 
 often) as an oljstructionist, and on tlie clause dealing with the 
 relaxation ol" by-laws, which was discussed on no less than four
 
 APPENDIX 311 
 
 days, he succeeded in making the same speech (which showed 
 much ignorance of the subject) six times. Messrs Booth, Wedg- 
 wood, King, and Martin were nearly as bad, and one of the worst 
 offenders was Mr Burns himself, who made second reading speeches 
 of twenty minutes' duration on several of the amendments. In the 
 end the only vital clause of the Bill which went through was that 
 which provided against the owner of a slum claiming undue com- 
 pensation for overcrowded premises ; and even this clause was 
 fought bitterly by the single-taxers. The history of the Bill on 
 Report is short. The Liberals took good care that it never came 
 up for discussion by obstructing a minor measure which stood 
 immediately before it on the Order Paper. 
 
 I do not know that in any case the exiguous remainder of the 
 Bill is worth saving. But I do know this. There has never in 
 my Parliamentary experience been such a flagrant instance of 
 obstruction to a considered measure of social reform as that with 
 which the Liberal Party has just presented us. We now know 
 what the real attitude of Liberals on housing reform is, and the 
 country will realise what their professions are worth. They have 
 killed our Bill at the expense of the working classes in a fit of 
 party spite and jealousy. We shall remove the issue to the con- 
 stituencies, and ask them to decide which is the party of social 
 reform — the men who introduced the Housing Bill or the men 
 who killed it. 
 
 On this point it is useless for the country to trust to the 
 present Government. Mr Burns tells us that there is no further 
 need of housing legislation. Mr Lloyd George explains in an 
 interview that the one thing to do is " to clear out the slums." 
 When the Opposition brings forward a measure to facilitate the 
 clearing of the slums Mr Burns opposes it, and, when defeated in 
 the division lobby, gets Mr Lloyd George to refuse the money 
 necessary to give effect to the Bill. There is not much to 
 choose between open opposition to housing reform and furtive 
 obstruction to its operation. The Unionist Party at any rate 
 will pursue its traditional policy on housing reform, and leave 
 the verdict to the country. We are concerned with the condition 
 of the people, not with the public disagreements of the President 
 of the Local Government Board and the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 Mr Lloyd George now seems in the mood to challenge us on the
 
 312 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 question of rural housing and rural conditions. I can assure him 
 that the Unionist Party is ready to take up that particular gage 
 of battle, and will not be backward in reminding him and his 
 party of their conduct on the Housing Bill of the Unionist Social 
 Reform Committee. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 F. E. Smith.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Albert Hall declaration, 183. 
 
 Ashton-under-Lyne speech, 214. 
 
 Askwith, Sir George, 243. 
 
 Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 86, 88, 89, 
 93, 95, 99, loi, 102, 104, III, 
 117, 118, 119, 122, 158, 165, 166, 
 169, 170, 172, 175, 176, 179, 239, 
 240, 242, 243, 274, 282, 283, 284, 
 301. 
 
 Austin, John, 23. 
 
 Austinian fabric of arguments, 71. 
 
 Aves, Ernest, 254. 
 
 Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 27,97, 137, 
 
 175, 180, 209, 267, 292, 300, 301, 
 
 302. 
 Banbury, Sir Frederick, 15. 
 Baptists, 160, 161. 
 Belfast demonstration, in. 
 Bennett, Arnold, 138. 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 26. 
 Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, 9, 102, 
 
 131,270, 273,275,276. 
 Bishops (Welsh), 160. 
 Bismarck, Prince von, 38, 68. 
 Blenheim declaration, 109, no. 
 Bonar Law, Rt. Hon. A., no, 183, 
 
 184, 210, 214, 302, 303. 
 Booth, Charles, 16, 17. 
 Bottomley, Horatio, 305. 
 Bowles, T. Gibson, 298. 
 Bowley, Arthur, 193. 
 Bright, John, 23, 67, 149, 303. 
 Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, 170. 
 Buckmaster, S. O., K.C., 147. 
 Budget campaign, 1909, 14, 133. 
 Budget, 1910, 19. 
 Budget (Great), 181. 
 Burke, Edmund (in 1775), 187, 188, 
 
 Butcher, Henry, 300. 
 Bute, Marquess of, 134. 
 Butt, Isaac, 96. 
 
 Calvinistic Methodist, 160, 161. 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 137, 
 
 158, 272. 
 Canada, 189, 196, 211, 212, 213, 215, 
 
 248. 
 Canning, George, 23. 
 Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, 106. 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, M.P., 7, 159, 
 
 306. 
 Cecil, Lord Robert, M.P., 7. 
 Census (Religious), 160. 
 Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, 2, 24, 
 
 43, 44, 112, 151, 183, 184, 187, 
 
 191, 207, 214, 303. 
 Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry, 306. 
 Chartists, 30. 
 Church of England, 11. 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 15, 24, 42, 
 
 292. 
 Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston, 106, 
 
 109, no, 120, 143, 144, 146, 305, 
 
 306. 
 Civil Service, 148, 149. 
 Class-hatred, 12, 17, 32, 33, 43. 
 ChfFord, Dr, 272, 280. 
 Cobden, Richard, 23, 67. 
 Committee of Council on Education, 
 
 261. 
 Compulsory national training, 6. 
 Conciliation Boards, 243, 247, 249, 
 
 256. 
 Congregationalists, 160, 161. 
 Conservatism and the principle of 
 
 Government, 126 et seq. 
 Cowper - Temple clause, 269, 276, 
 
 277. 
 
 313
 
 314 
 
 UNIONIST POLICY 
 
 Cox, Harold, 298. 
 Crewe, Marquess of, 59. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 26, 27. 
 Devlin, Joseph, jM.P., 121. 
 Dillon, John, M.P., 96. 
 Disendowment of Welsh Church, 
 
 171, 173- 
 Disestablishment of Welsh Church, 
 
 156. 
 DisraeH, Benjamin, 15, 21, 23, 24, 
 
 41, 42, 45, 82, 292, 297, 300, 
 
 306. 
 Dissenters' Chapels Act, 1844, 177, 
 
 178. 
 Dundee speech, Mr Churchill's, in. 
 
 Eden, Arthur, 279. 
 
 Education Act of 1902, 136, 154, 264, 
 266, 272. 
 
 Education Bill of 1906, 136, 273. 
 
 Education (Board of), 141, 142. 
 
 Election, the General, of 1906, 126. 
 
 Elementary Education Act, 262. 
 
 Establishment of Catholicism in Ire- 
 land, 91. 
 
 Fabians, 29. 
 
 Female Suffrage, 285, 286, 294. 
 
 France, formal alliance with, 77. 
 
 Franchise Bill, 285, 286. 
 
 Frederick I., Emperor of Germany, 
 
 67. 
 Freeman, Edward A., Professor, 175, 
 
 176. 
 Free Trader, The, Feb. 1908, 186. 
 
 General Election, 1906, 126. 
 Germany, Unification of, 70. 
 Gladstone, Viscount, 143, 238. 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 13, 82, 
 
 85, 99, 112, 117, 118, 143, 162, 
 
 167, 300, 306. 
 Glamorgan riots, 145. 
 Gorst, Sir John, 176. 
 Grattan's Parliament, 97. 
 Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, 120, 138, 
 
 206. 
 Griffith, Ellis, M.P., 157, 171, 172, 
 
 I74> '75. 176. 
 Griffith-Boscawen, Sir Arthur, M.P., 
 
 171. 
 Guillotine, 137. 
 
 Hague Conference (Second), 73. 
 Haldane of Cloan, Viscount, 59, 239, 
 
 240. 
 Haldane, criticisms of Lord Roberts, 
 
 65. 
 Hampden, John, 112. 
 Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William, 
 
 306. 
 Hardie, Keir, M.P., 16, 239. 
 Herbert, Auberon, 24. 
 Heydon, Mr Justice, 254. 
 Hicks-Beach, Rt. Hon. Sir Michael 
 
 (Corn Dutv), 185. 
 Hickson, Colonel, S. A. E., D.S.O., 
 
 62. 
 Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. C, 156. 
 Holmes incident, 147, 148, 149. 
 Home Rule Bill, 1893, 93, 102. 
 Home Rule Bill, clause 16, Customs 
 
 and Excise, 97 and 98. 
 Home Rule Bill, safeguards, 81, 92, 
 
 93, 95, 96, 97- 
 Hope, Sir Theodore, 279. 
 
 Independent Review, Oct. 1903, 
 
 271. 
 Individualistic school (contention of), 
 
 34- 
 Industrial unrest, 234 et seq. 
 Insurance Act, 18, 99, loi, 102, 137, 
 
 138, 282. 
 International law, 72. 
 Ireland, Senate in, 84. 
 Irish Council Bill, 273. 
 Irish Court of Appeal, 90. 
 Irish deficit, 99. 
 Irish Tobacco, 98. 
 
 James II., 1 13. 
 
 Jebb, Sir Richard, 300. 
 
 Jones, Edgar, M.P., 179. 
 
 Labouchere, Henry, 298. 
 
 Labour leaders (ludicrous incapa- 
 city), 235. 
 
 Land purchase, 96, 99, loi, 102. 
 
 Lansbury, George, 16. 
 
 Lansdowne, Marquess of, 8, 139, 183, 
 184, 210, 211. 
 
 Licensing policy, 216 et seq. 
 
 Light railways, 204. 
 
 Limehousc, Gospel of, 129, 134. 
 
 Liverpool demonstration, iii. 
 
 Liverpool, Earl of, 82.
 
 INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 Lloyd George, Rt. Hon. D., i6, 23, 
 25, 33.40,41, 43, 112, 129, 131, 
 156, 157, 158, 159, 180, 182, 208, 
 242, 243, 266, 272, 283, 284, 289, 
 
 295, 303 304- 
 Lloyd-Georgian method (failure of), 
 
 20. 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 88, 90, 
 
 106. 
 Loreburn, Earl, 145, 285, 286. 
 Lowe, Robert, 300. 
 Lundy (the traitor), 1 1 6. 
 
 Macdonald, Ramsay, M.P., 23, 104, 
 
 236. 
 McKenna, Rt. Hon. R., 141, 142, 
 
 180, 274, 275, 276, 280. 
 Manchester school of politicians, 42, 
 
 62. 
 Manchurian battlefield (warning of), 
 
 n- 
 
 Mill, James, 23. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 23. 
 Milner, Viscount, 251. 
 Moltke, Count von, 68. 
 Mond, Sir Alfred, M.P., 185. 
 Money, Chiozza, M.P., 195. 
 Morant, Sir Robert, 266. 
 Morgan, Sir George Osborne, 171. 
 Morley, Viscount, 86, 87. 
 Motor cars and Socialism, 16. 
 
 Napoleon L, 17, 30, 128. 
 National service, 47 et seq. 
 National service, Unionist action 
 
 with regard to National Service 
 
 League, 58. 
 New South Wales Acts, 255, 256, 257. 
 No-rent campaign, 96. 
 
 Old Age Pensions, 99, loi, 102, 152, 
 
 181. 
 Osborne Judgment Bill, 121, 294. 
 
 Palmerston, Viscount, 82. 
 Parliament Act in relation to De- 
 mocracy, 8, 281 et seq. 
 Parliamentary oratory, 296 et seq. 
 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 96, 298. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 42, 82, 292. 
 Plato, 29. 
 Pym, John, 112. 
 
 Railwaymen's strike, 234. 
 Rasch, Major, 296. 
 
 Redmond, John, M.P., 106, 107, no, 
 
 III, 118, 119, 138, 155, 156. 
 Religious question in education, 259 
 
 et seq. 
 Roberts, Earl, 7. 
 at Manchester, 64. 
 his career, and on Germany, 78. 
 Rosebery, Earl of, 42, 66, 82, 117. 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 26. 
 Rowntree, Seebohm, 17. 
 Runciman, Rt. Hon. W., 147, 148, 
 
 274, 277. 
 Russell, Lord John, 82. 
 
 Salisbury, third Marquess of, 109, 292. 
 Samuel, Rt. Hon. Herbert, 97, 271. 
 Second Chamber, primary qualities 
 
 of, 10. 
 Selborne, the Earl of, 175, 176. 
 Sherwell, Arthur, 157. 
 South African war (warnings of), ']']. 
 State Toryism and Social Reform, 
 
 20 et seq. 
 Swansea case, 142. 
 
 Tammany Hall, 150. 
 Tariff Reform, 181 et seq. 
 Temperance Reform, 130. 
 Territorial Army, duties of, 50. 
 Thomas, Alderman (of Cardiff), 157. 
 Thomas, D. A., 171. 
 Times., 19th January 1912, 277. 
 Tobacco manufactories, Irish, 98. 
 Trades Disputes Act, 9, 11, 239, 241, 
 
 242,243, 253, 256,257. 
 Trades Union Bill, 147. 
 Transport workers, 234. 
 Trinitarian doctrine, 178. 
 
 Ulster, position of, 115 et seq. 
 Ulster's fears of injustice, 94. 
 Union versus Separatism, 81. 
 Unionist Housing Bill (letter to 
 
 Times., 2nd July 191 2), 307. 
 Unionist Party, relations of, to the 
 
 Church, II. 
 Unionist policy, i et seq. 
 Unitarian doctrine, 178. 
 
 Veto crisis, 8. 
 
 Walker, George, 116. 
 Walton, Sir John Lawson, 239. 
 Welsh Disestablishment, 121, 156 
 et seq.
 
 316 
 
 UNIONIST POIJCY 
 
 Welsh Disestablishment, Report of 
 Royal Commission, 158. 
 
 Wesleyans, 160, 161. 
 
 Westminster Gazette on French food 
 supply, 186. 
 
 " Whig- dogs," 42. 
 
 Whittaker, Sir Thomas, 156, 157. 
 
 William I., 
 
 67. 
 William II 
 
 67. 
 
 William of Orange, 116. 
 Williams, Sir John, 116. 
 Williams, Llewelyn, 275 
 
 Emperor of Germany, 
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