LUCK OF THE LIBERALS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10753, 26 April 1913, Page 6

LUCK OF THE LIBERALS

Fortuao Repeatedly Comas to Aid of the Aso_uith Government,

(By T. P. O'CONNOR, -in " Chicago Tribune.")

Xow that after more than thirteen ' months of continual sitting the House of Commons is at last taking a brief j rest-, a- favourable opportunity presents itself to take stock of the situation political and personal. I liar© heard more than ono Tory say with a certain cynical gaiety and detachment, which is a common mood among politicians, that this present Government had the devil's luck. It didn't seem possible for it to make any mistake without immediately finding something or somebody to come to its relief. t This is exactly what Augustine Birrell said, though he put it in another way. That gay philosopher, who can put concrete facts and realities with such penetrating sense underneath the disguise of mere badinage, is known to have declared that he and his colleagues dug their' own grave, only to find that A. Bonar Law or somebody else had come to the rescue and tilled, up the hole before they could get into it. LORDS IX ROLE Olf 81. TENDERERS. The House of Lords succeeded within two years after the gigantic victory of 1906 in reducing the House of Commons and the Liberal Ministry to impotence and' humiliation, and tilings were going from had to worse until David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer,' introduced his great Budget. Then the House of Lords once more came to the rescue by rejecting it and forcing the country to give a verdict against them, thus affording the Liberal Government another lease of power. Ihe folly of the Lords enabled the Ministry further to destrov their omnipotence for all time, and once more gave a new lease of vigour and power to the Ministry. IUIX TUROtGH COMMITTEE. If we come to recent events we find the same wonderful run of luck. Tims the Home .Rule Bill has gone through committee, the hardest of all stages for such a Bill, not only without being weakened, but positively strengthened with majorities not only remaining stead'y, but increasing. Even a snap division, which at one moment seemed to shake the Government to its foundations, proved a blessing in disguise, for ever since the supporters of the movement have ceased to be slack, and majorities have not only remained steady, but as a rule gone on increasing.

Recently the Government gob into a rare mess ovef the woman's suffrage question. Mr Bonar Law by inviting the intervention of the Speaker got them out of that mess.

This brings me to one of the great assets of the Liberal Ministry—that is Mr Bonar Law himself. Of course he is an incompetent politician, and it is doubtful whether he will be able to last, but one must not put on his back all the blsii'.G of the present disastrous position of the Tory party. The secret lies in the conditions in this as in most political combinations. OK AD WEIGHT ON J'ARTT. Tlie Tory party will remain hopeless so long as it sticks to protection. Nearly all the sane men of the party are now aware of this, and would gladly get rid of the whole incubus. In fact, a good many of them who have remained free traders are already speaking as if the incubus had been got rid of. For instance, Gibson Bowles, who lost liis seat in the House of Commons largely because of his fidelity to free trade, has once again been taken up by the Tory party. But he took care, to announce at this love feast that he regarded protection as dead in the Tory party.

However, it isn't dead. The Birmingham school, which, though diminished in influence, is still in the bosom of the Tory party, will not let- it die. Xor will the protectionists, like F. E. Smith, let it die. Above all. the Tory party has still to count with the Tariff Reform League, which has piled up so much money to keep protection going, and wliN"!! recently, under the impulse of the Duke of "Westminster, has raised another big fund. POSITION" OT FARTT. Tliua the Tory party is in this impossible position. that., while the tua-

joritv of its sane men want to get awav from protection, protection still hangs around its neck; it can neither do with it nor do without it.

I see no reason then, why the Liberals should not retain office until 1915, and that, when a general election comes then, they should not be again returned to power.