disloyalty for his constancy to that doctrine, and assailed in his own division by a Chamberlainite organisation. He wondered whether in such circumstances it was still possible to fight the battle of Free Trade from within the Unionist party. Mr. Winston Churchill had settled that question, and others, to his satisfaction by joining the Liberal party. Entertained at a dinner by the Manchester Reform Club (Jan. 17) he denounced the Government with inherited freedom of invective for their “administrative incompetence," proved among other things by the "utter chaos to which regardless of expense they had reduced the British Army"; their "profligate finance"; and their 'constitutional misdemeanour," as proved by "their want of candour, and he might almost say want of honesty in failing to set before the nation plainly and squarely the fiscal principles on which they were prepared to stand, by repeated attempts to restrict liberty of debate in the House of Commons . . . and by their increasing servility towards the vested interests."

There was a large amount of speaking on the Opposition side during the latter part of January. Sir Henry CampbellBannerman at Stirling (16th) dwelt on the extravagant expenditure of the Government, and suggested that many hundreds of thousands of men might be profitably employed by the money which had been diverted to costly administration. Retrenchment must therefore be insisted on, and further the evils of unemployment must be dealt with by enlarging the powers of local authorities, readjusting the rating system, and altering the land laws so as to increase the supply of houses and of available land in town and country alike. Mr. Morley also, at Brechin (Jan. 18), besides entering into some interesting political and social comparisons suggested by his recent visit to the United States and Canada, laid stress on the extravagant expenditure of the Government; whom, at Montrose (Jan. 20), he charged with failing to think out the problems they took up, whether of military administration, or of legislation, or of Parliamentary procedure. Mr. Asquith, at Reading (Jan. 19), dealt with the question of alien immigration, which was expected to hold a prominent place in the Ministerial programme in the forthcoming session, if the Government survived the debate on the Address. He urged that simple measures would enable us to avert any danger of the influx of foreign criminals, that it would be unworthy of our best traditions to exclude religious refugees, and that any social danger arising from the conditions under which some of the immigrants lived and worked could and ought to be dealt with by enforcing the law against overcrowding and by extending our factory and workshop legislation to the industries in which they were employed. But whatever other subjects these spokesmen of the Liberal party took up they agreed in emphasising the obscurities of Mr. Balfour and the unconstitutional and humiliating fashion in which, as they alleged, the Government continued to cling to office.

All to no effect, however. On January 27 the Prime Minister addressed his constituents in a fighting speech. The allegations of the Opposition as to the duty of dissolving were based, he maintained, upon a new and fundamentally vicious theory. So long as the party which he led in the House of Commons continued to show its confidence in him he should consider it his duty to carry on the work of government. Then, noting an offer by Mr. Morley of a reward to any one of his constituents who could state the Prime Minister's fiscal views on a sheet of notepaper, Mr. Balfour proceeded to read a half-sheet, on which he himself had put down his views. This curious document ran as follows:

"First, I desire such an alteration of our fiscal system as will give us a freedom of action impossible while we hold ourselves bound by the maxim that no taxation should be imposed except for revenue. I desire this freedom in the main for three reasons. It will strengthen our hands in any negotiations by which we may hope to lower foreign hostile tariffs. It may enable us to protect the fiscal independence of those Colonies which desire to give us preferential treatment. It may be useful where we wish to check the importation of those foreign goods which, because they are bounty-fed or tariff-protected abroad, are sold below cost price here. Such importations are ultimately as injurious to the consumer as they are immediately ruinous to the producer. Secondly, I desire closer commercial union with the Colonies, and I do so because I desire closer union in all its best modes, and because this particular mode is intrinsically of great importance and has received much Colonial support. I also think it might produce great and growing commercial advantages, both to the Colonies and the Mother Country, by promoting freer trade between them. No doubt such commercial union is beset with many difficulties. Those can best be dealt with by a Colonial Conference, provided its objects are permitted to be discussed unhampered by limiting instructions. Thirdly, I recommend, therefore, that the subject shall be referred to a conference on those terms. Fourth, and last, I do not desire to raise home prices for the purpose of aiding home productions."

Having intimated that he had no expectation that this "concise and lucid" exposition of his fiscal views would make them clear to those who were determined to misunderstand them, the Prime Minister went on to dwell on the difficulties which would beset the Opposition leaders if they came into office. For example, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's phrase, “methods of barbarism," was "not likely to endear him to the Army," in regard to which the Liberal leaders were also pledged to enormous reductions in expenditure," without full knowledge of the facts. There would be no slight difficulties for them in dealing with the education question, and as to the Colonies a Radical Government would be "pledged to throw in their face the proposals

the Colonies made for closer union with the Mother Country," which would not be "a pleasant position " for any British Government. The language which the Opposition had used about Chinese labour in South Africa would seem to require that they should abolish it, but it would be quite impossible for them to do so. Finally, Mr. Balfour challenged the Liberal leaders to give a clear exposition of the policy they intended to pursue if returned to office, in respect of Home Rule for Ireland, Welsh Disestablishment, the Labour Laws, Social Reform and other

matters.

It was a vigorous fighting speech, and there was little doubt that the country recognised the general correctness of the estimate placed by the Prime Minister on the difficulties of the inheritance on which a Liberal Government would enter-difficulties at least in part, but by no means altogether, created by their own action in Opposition. But the prevailing mood by this time seemed to be readiness to take the chance of the ability of the Unionist Government's successors to solve the problems which they would have to meet, rather than face a further continuance in office of the present incumbents, with the special risks of enhanced cost of living through the probable adoption of Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal policy. This last consideration appeared to have been dominant in the determination of the North Dorset bye-election (Jan. 26), caused by the death of the Conservative Member, Mr. Wingfield-Digby, who had been returned unopposed in 1895, and by a majority of 540 in 1900. The Liberal poll shot up by more than 1,000, the Conservative fell by more than 350, and the Opposition candidate, Mr. A. W. Wills, was returned over the Ministerialist, Sir Randolf Baker, though the latter had declared himself repeatedly against any food taxes, by a majority of 909. It was complained that the rural labourers of North Dorset had been influenced by gross misrepresentations, which was possible. But it seemed more than conceivable that if the Prime Minister's latest speechwhich, as a matter of fact, was delivered on the polling day— had been before them, they would have said, in their own language, what Lord Goschen said at Cambridge on the following evening, that the Manchester half-sheet of notepaper was defective in two respects-that it did not explain the methods by which its policy was to be carried out, and that it contained no word as to " whether Mr. Balfour believed it wise or unwise to put a tax on food "--and would have voted as they did. Lord George Hamilton wrote complaining (Times, Jan. 30) that the Prime Minister had failed to clear up the confusion left by his Edinburgh speech, which was interpreted by both Free Traders and Fiscal Reformers as in accord with their respective policies, and asked: "How long is this state of distraction to prevail, to the detriment and disintegration of a great national party?" It was the obvious cue of the Liberals to identify Mr. Balfour's fiscal policy with that of Mr. Chamberlain, which there was

reason to believe was thoroughly unpopular, and Mr. Bryce devoted some considerable part of a speech at Lewes (Jan. 30) to arguing that, in the light of the half-sheet of notepaper, the two statesmen were "practically agreed."

On February 1, at Grimsby, Mr. Chamberlain concluded his extra-Parliamentary campaign by addressing a great meeting of 7,000 ticket-holders at Gainsborough, in a hall recently erected for their machinery by an engineering firm who lent it for the occasion. His speech was a vigorous re-statement of his case for a system of fiscal preferences within the Empire. The British Empire, he said, was a great potentiality, but for the moment it was a loose bundle of sticks, bound together indeed by a thin tie of sentiment and sympathy, but a tie so slender that a rough blow might dissolve it. The most eminent Colonial statesmen held that the political bond could be most effectually strengthened by a closer commercial union; and, if words. meant anything, there could be no doubt that the Colonies had offered us Preference. Several of them had given it us, in measure, without asking anything in return. The modification of the Canadian tariff in favour of Great Britain had increased our trade with the Dominion by between 5,000,000l. and 6,000,000. a year, which involved 2,500,000l. of wages-in other words, the equivalent of continuous employment, at 30s. a week, for 32,000 working men, representing with their families 160,000 individuals. When such were the consequences of "one single act of preference on the part of one single Colony," was it not reasonable, Mr. Chamberlain asked, to consider "whether more might not be done in the same way." And when the Canadians came to us, as they did, and said "we have given you this for nothing; now give us something, and we will give you more, were we prepared to meet them with "a flat and an insulting refusal?" (The implication, of course, was that such was the course counselled by those who differed from Mr. Chamberlain.) Having explained once more his general idea as to fiscal reform, Mr. Chamberlain touched upon the incidence of taxation, maintaining that the consumer would at the worst only pay a part of the proposed duties. His object was not to lessen the size of their loaf, but to give them more money to buy it with, for the whole question of the social condition of the poor was contained in one word-employment.

On the same evening, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was maintaining at Malvern that the fiscal question "stood at the root not merely of our prosperity as a great trading nation, but at the root of our position as a great Imperial and world Power." And on the following evening the same Cabinet Minister, speaking at Birmingham, asked if it was not possible to "secure the payment of some moderate rate on the import of foreign manufactures towards the maintenance of the country," and urged that under our present "foolish policy" if we were confronted with any great crisis we

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had no sufficient reserves upon which we could draw without undue hardship on the existing taxpayer.

Replies to Mr. Chamberlain's Gainsborough speech were made by several Opposition leaders. The freshest, perhaps, was that of Mr. Haldane who, speaking at Chertsey (Feb. 3), asked what would be the relations between the United States and Canada if we adopted a preferential system? The United States would reply to our preference by offering Canada special terms, and Canada would be free to make a choice between this country and the States. That was just the kind of situation in which he saw serious danger to the Imperial bond. This point of view was specially interesting, as put by a politician of high standing and unusual freedom from partisan prepossessions, who was well known for the earnest study he had given to the subject of Imperial consolidation. And the more thoughtful section of the public weighed it against the undoubtedly noteworthy fact that Lord Minto, so recently the Viceroy of Canada, had more than once since his return from the Dominion taken occasion to express his strong opinion as to the Imperial necessity of Mr. Chamberlain's policy.

Some of Mr. Chamberlain's Imperial and economic arguments were dealt with by Mr. Bryce who, at Stroud (Feb. 3), pointed out that the trade of Canada, after preference was given to England, increased far faster with France and Belgium and far faster with the United States than it did with us. Mr. Chamberlain said we did nothing for the Colonies, but was it nothing, Mr. Bryce asked, to pay 86,000,000l. a year for an Army and Navy to defend them? How could Mr. Chamberlain believe that, as he alleged, the exporter paid the duty, or any sensible portion of it, on food sent into a protected country when a recent Blue-book showed that the price of food in France, for instance, went steadily up in proportion to the amount of the duty?

The Opposition utterance which attracted the largest amount of attention at this period, not indeed on account of any fresh feature of a positive character, but by reason of the position of its author, was a letter (published Feb. 10) from Lord Spencer to Mr. Corrie Grant, Member of Parliament for the Rugby division of Warwickshire, setting forth his views on the political situation. With regard to Tariff Reform, Lord Spencer said that it seemed clear to him that Mr. Chamberlain's proposals were Protectionist, and that Liberals were bound to offer them the most strenuous opposition. "Mr. Balfour's attitude is subtle rather than clear, but is really the same." As to conferences with the Colonies, everybody agreed that at proper times and on proper questions they were admirable, but no conference could settle the fiscal question until the country had been consulted upon it. Turning to other subjects, and first of all to education and licensing, Lord Spencer quoted the following passage from a speech by Mr. Morley at Newbury (Feb. 3): "A writer