AGAIN FROM BIRMINGHAM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 140, 10 December 1909, Page 6

AGAIN FROM BIRMINGHAM.

We referred last week to the excellence of the report of Lord Morley's speech on the Budget in the House of Lords which had been supplied by the Press Association. To-day we have a striking example of an opposite character. Mr. George Wyndham is a person of some note in the Unionist Party, but he is not of sufficient importance to justify a cabled report of his speeches on those occasions when he speaks, not because he has something to say, but because he has to say something. His speech at the Constitutional Club was of this character. "The policy of tariff reform alone assured the Empire the means of meeting the urgent needs of defence, employment, and unity. He could hardly call the Budget a policy. It was a rehash of stale Cdbdenism, spiced with a little Socialistic seasoning." This is not even good rhetoric, and it is hopelessly stale, flat, and unprofitable from every other point of view. It throws about as much light on the Budget controversy as that thrilling announcement which had also been deemed worth cabling that the daughter of an earl and the wife of a baronet was about to make her deout as a dancer on the music-hall stage. The most interesting thing that has reached us about the Budget controversy since the Lords struck their fatal blow was yesterday's message about the scheme of fiscal reform outlined by the Birmingham Post, and we should have been glad to get to-day a summary of the welcome that it has received from the newspapers and the politicians on both sides of the struggle. Mr. Balfour's opinion would have been particularly welcome, but we cannot fairly blame the Press Association's agent for not supplying us with information for which even the best-informed of correspondents may have to wait until after the general election. Mr. Balfour's chief feeling is probably one of resentment and surprise at those prosaic and reckless people who will insist on being definite when philosophy and policy proclaim with equal emphasis the advantages of nebulosity. Mr. Chamberlain is, however, even now far more like the leader of the Tariff Reform party than Mr. Balfour, and his views may be pretty safely identified with those of the Birmingham Post. There is no reason for supposing that an organ which has so often enjoyed his inspiration in the past has lost touch with him now. The scheme which the Birmingham Post believes will be adopted by the Unionist Cabinet if the party comes into power after the general election includes a general tariff for all goods not deemed to be raw material. "There is no intention," we are told, "to have multifarious rates of duty which will throw open the door to Parliamentary intrigue and lobbying." Goods upon which little labour has been expended prior to their importation are to pay 5 per cent. ; goods, imported in a nearly finished state, 10 per cent. ; goods imported in a completely manufactured 6tate, 15 per cent. On paper the scheme is simple enough, but there will still be room for a good dea' of political manipulation before the boundaries of each class are settled. The only food-tax mentioned is a 2s duty on corn, under which "a substantial preference will be given to colonial corn, but possibly not the whole -two shillings.'" Nothing is said as to meat and dairy produce, with which this country is chiefly concerned. There are many good points about tho proposed duties on manufactures, and especially the suggestion that the tariff should remain in abeyance for two years, in order to givo time for negotiations with other Powers, with a view to reel-

procal concessions. But we cannot feel any enthusiasm for a corn tax which will be mainly borne by the British Worker, and we should say just the same of a tax on meat. Nor do we care for tariff reform at all as a means of killing a Budget which Mr. Wyndham declares to be not a policy, but has-been less absurdly described by some of his colleagues as embodying too many policies. The last annual conference of the National Conservative Union attacked the Budget as calculated, if passed, to postpone indefinitely the coming of tariff reform. The hope of the Unionists is to use tariff reform as a means of securing a sine die adjournment of the Budget. Our own idea is that both the Budget and tariff reform will be good for the Old Country, but that the former should come first.