FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1908.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 139, 11 December 1908, Page 6

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1908.

A STATEMENT OF UNIONIST POLICY. On the 12th October— the day of the re-assembling of the British Parliament after its summer holidays — the Morning Post published what it described as "the most important statement of Unionist policy that has appeared since the opening of Mr. Chamberlain's campaign in 1903." The statement is unsigned -and unofficial, and is introduced as an exposition of constructive policy "drawn up as the outcome of an exchange of views during the past twelve months among some of the most active supporters and influential members of the Unionist Party, both in and out of Parliament." The idea is an excellent "ne. The appeal to the country may cov^^ at any moment, and at the most can hardly be delayed beyond next year. The disasters of the Government at the byelections, and its repeated rebuffs at the hands of the House of Lords, make this result a practical certainty, for with all their faults Mr. Asquitb. and his colleagues may be trelied upon not to imitate the folly of their predecessors in clinging obstinately to office long after the departure of their popularity. The Unionists are therefore wise to be ready in time, and their ■wisdom in being ready, with a, constructive programme is especially praiseworthy. The weakness of every Opposition is its tendency to a purely negative or destructive attitude. Mr. Balfour is a master of negation, but the polemical dialectics in which he delights do not make a very sustaining diet for the average elector whose vote decides the fate of Governments. "From whom does the document emanate?" asks Mr. Jesse Collings, and it is surely safe to say that the Leader of the Opposition has not had a hand in it. If it has not received the sanction and support of Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, ithen, says Mr. Collings, the document is little more than "an able and a concentrated exposition of views already held by the vast and daily-increasing majority of Unionists in the country." If .Mr. Collings has correctly diagnosed the opinion of the rank and file of the party, we may be sure that the leaders will not be able to afford to stay far behind. Mr. Collings finds the chief merit of the statement to be "that it proclaims in a practical manner that no party can prosper, or even live, on mere criticisms and negations," and he is particularly pleased to find the propounders of the new programme putting Tariff Reform and Land Reform in the. front of it, though they have- not given to the latter quite that emphatic association with the fiscal question which he would like to see. That Tariff Reform should take the first and the- largest place- in the programme was inevitable. To what else have the Unionists been ascribing all their victories during the lasi, twelve months V "The basis of all Unionist policy is union," is the opening sentence of the manifesto, and this fundamental principle by which all national questions, whether domestic or Imperial, are to be tested is declared to imply "union of classes within the State, national union of Great Britain and Ireland, Imperial union of self-governing nations and dependencies under the Crown." The Imperial aspect of the fiscal question is 1 ; of course, not lost sight of, but it is not given anything like the exaggerated emphasis in which Mr. Chamberlain set the lead five years ago. That lany part of the Empire should adopt, for the benefit of other part*, of the Empire, a line of policy which it believed to be bad for itself, would be a very 'dangerous species of altruism on which to endeavour to erect any Imperial structure. In the exuberant generosity of the sentiment which inspired his fiscal crusade, Mr. Chamberlain rather suggested to th*. British electors that they were to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their brethren beyond the seas, and undoubtedly in his opening speeches, as iri his mind, the Imperial side of the argument was the prominent one. But the error, which had been to a large extent adjusted by Mr. Chamberlain himself before he was stricken with illness, has" almost entirely disappeared from the advocacy of those to whom he has handed on the torch of fiscal reform. Even now, as in the document under review, a good deal too much is made of the insistence with which the colonies are supposed to yearn for Imperial preference— was the subject so much as mentioned in the thousands of speeches made during our election campaign last month?— but the cart is no longer put before the horse. "The basis of a reformed tariff," says the ne.w programme, "should be the principle of placing moderate duties, both for purposes of revenue and for safeguarding some industries, upon all imports excepting those as regards which it may De shown either (a) thao the difficulty or inconvenience of levying a duty would outweigh the advantage sought, or (b) that the duty would iestrict production or handicap the competition of important industries in oversea markets." This is a thoroughly sound and rational basis for a policy of moderate protection. The substitution by the Unionists of protection for preference as their battle-cry, which is made the subject of a Free-trade taunt, is really an evidence of their wisdom. Imperial preference can have no safe" basis except as an incident lo a scheme of protection which the preferring country hns first' adopted for its own benefit. Accordingly, after the enunciation of the domestic basis of Tariff Reform which we have already cited, the manifesto adds that '"in all cases the products ot manufactures of any part of the Empire should bo admitted at a * lower rate of duty than competing; fry;-

eign goods." Reciprocity with the foreigner on such terms- that Imperial products or manufactures of any part of preference, is added as a second corollary. Strange, indeed, has been the fate of the rival theories which the two leading 1 men in the Unionist Party were respectively running. five years ago — Mr. Balfour's talisman of "retaliation," which, by punitive duties, was going to bring the high tariff foreigner to his senses, has disappeared altogether from the new programme, while Mr. Chamberlain's "preference" occupies its proper position of subordination to a general scheme of mild domestic protection. Other points of this interesting document must be reserved for future notice.