favour of the foreign and against the British producer? If they regard that as a matter of indifference, I think they will come to find in time that the mass of the working classes do not agree with them. But be that as it may, it is certain that I, for one, do not advocate Tariff Reform in the interests of the rich, but in the interests of the whole nation, and therefore necessarily of the working classes, who are the majority of the nation.

A CONSTRUCTIVE POLICYToC

Guildford, October 29, 1907

I am very sensible of the honour of being called on to reply for the Unionist cause, but I approach the task with some diffidence, not to say trepidation. I feel very conscious that I am not a very good specimen of a party man. It is not that I do not hold strong opinions on many public questions—in fact, that is the very trouble. My opinions are too strong to fit well into any recognised programme. I suffer from an inveterate habit, which is partly congenital, but which has been developed by years spent in the service of the Crown, of looking at public questions from other than party points of view. And I am too old to unlearn it.

For a man so constituted there is evidently only a limited rôle in political life. But he may have his uses all the same, if you take him for what he is, and not for what he is not, and does not pretend to be. If he does not speak with the weight and authority of a party leader, he is at least free from the embarrassments by which a party leader is beset, and unhampered by the caution which a party leader is bound to exercise. He commits nobody but himself, and therefore he can afford to speak with a bluntness which is denied to those whose utterances commit many thousands of other people. And I am not sure whether the present moment is not one at which the unconventional treatment of public questions may not be specially useful, so, whether it be as an independent Unionist or as a friendly outsider—in whichever light you like to regard me—I venture to contribute my mite to the discussion.

Having now made my position clear, I will at once plunge in medias res with a few artless observations. You hear all this grumbling which is going on just now against the Unionist leader. Well, gentlemen, a party which is in low water always does grumble at its leader. I have known this sort of thing happen over and over again in my own lifetime. And the consequence is, it is all like water on a duck's back to me; it makes no impression on me whatsoever. I remember as long back as the late sixties and early seventies the Conservative party were ceaselessly grumbling at Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, right up to his greatest victory and the commencement of his longest tenure of power—almost up to the moment when he became the permanent idol of the Conservative party. I remember how the Liberals grumbled at Mr. Gladstone from 1873 and 1874 almost up to the opening of the Midlothian campaign. Again, I remember how the Conservatives grumbled at Lord Salisbury from the first moment of his accession to the leadership right up to 1885. I can recall as well as if it were yesterday a young Tory friend of mine—he has become a distinguished man since, and I am not going to give him away—telling me, who was at that time a Liberal, in the year of grace 1883 or 1884, that it was absolutely hopeless for the Tory party ever to expect to come back into power with such a leader as Lord Salisbury. He called him a "Professor." He said, "No doubt he is a very able man and an excellent speaker, but he is a man of science. He has no popular gifts whatever. There is not a ghost of a chance of a Conservative victory so long as he is in command." Yet that was not more than two years before Lord Salisbury commenced a series of Premierships which kept him, for some thirteen and a half years out of seventeen, at the helm of the State.

With all these experiences to look back upon it is really impossible for me to be much affected by the passing wave of dissatisfaction with Mr. Balfour. Men of first-rate ability and character are rare. Still rarer are men who, having those qualities, also have the knack of compelling the attention and respect even of a hostile House of Commons. When a party possesses a leader with all these gifts, it is not likely to change him in a hurry.

But if I refuse to take a gloomy view of the Unionist leadership, I must admit that I am not altogether an optimist about the immediate prospects of Unionism. There is no doubt a bright side to the picture as well as a less encouraging one. The bright side, from the party point of view, is afforded by the hopeless chaos of opinion in the ranks of our opponents—by the total absence of any clear conviction or definite line whatever in the counsels of the Government, which causes Ministers to dash wildly from measure to measure in endeavouring to satisfy first one section and then another section of their motley following, and which prevents them from ever giving really adequate attention to any one of their proposals.

I am not speaking of Ministers individually. Granted that some of them have done excellent work at the heads of their several departments—I think it would not be fair to deny that. I am thinking of their collective policy, and especially of their legislative efforts. For monuments of clumsy opportunism, commend me to the legislative failures, and, for the matter of that, to most of the legislative achievements, of the last two years.

So far so good. Unionists cannot complain of what the Government is doing for them. And on the negative side of policy—in their duty as a mere Opposition—their course is clear. It is a fundamental article of their faith to maintain the authority of the Imperial Parliament in Ireland. But that authority can be set aside by the toleration of lawlessness just as much, and in a worse way, than by the repeal of the Union. And such toleration is the rule to-day. There may be no violent crime, but there is open and widespread defiance of the law and interference with the elementary rights of law-abiding people. It is a demoralising state of affairs, and one to which no good citizen in any part of the United Kingdom, however little he may be personally affected by it, can afford to be indifferent. Once let it be granted that any popular movement, which is not strong enough to obtain an alteration of the law by regular means, can simply set the law aside in practice, and you are at the beginning of general anarchy.

Unionists have to fight for a restoration of the respect for law in Ireland in the interest of the whole kingdom. And they may have to fight also, it appears, against the abrogation of our existing constitution in favour of a system of quinquennial dictatorships. For that and nothing else is involved in the proposal to reduce the House of Lords to impotence and put nothing in its place. I am not concerned to represent the present constitution of the House of Lords as perfect. I have always been of opinion that a more representative and therefore a stronger second chamber was desirable. But that we can afford to do without any check on the House of Commons, especially since the removal of all checks upon the power of those who from time to time control the House of Commons to rush through any measures they please without the possibility of an appeal to the people—that is a proposition which no man with any knowledge of history or any respect for constitutional government can possibly defend. To resist such a proposal as that is not fighting for a party; it is not fighting for a class. It is fighting for the stability of society,