The Dominion. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. THE BRITISH POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1625, 17 December 1912, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. THE BRITISH POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

Although the Home Rule Bill is now well on its way towards passage through the House of Commons, it has ceased to be' the most important point in the political situation at Home. The Bill is through Committee after a very lengthy discussion—but a discussion not lengthy enough to secure that it shall be sound in its details—and it will pass the House after a lengthy debate. It will then bo rejected by the House of Lords, and the country will be unable to ignore the fact that its final passage should be preceded by an appeal to the country. The public has lost interest in the details of the measure, and the concentration of tho , debates upon these details has for the moment suspended the general Unionist attack upon the Broad fact that the Government is improperly smuggling the Bill through Parliament, against tho will, so far as can be seen, of an unconsulted nation. This fact will bo re-emphasised, however, when the Bill is rejected later on, and then, too, the Ulster problem will again •become acute. As time passeß the full deadliness to the Government of the Ulster attitude becomes better understood. The practical fact is that Ulster is in earnest. The contention that Ulster is only "bluffing" disregards tho momentous fact that tho Ulstermeii have at their back the whole declared weight of tho official Unionist party. Had Mr. Bonar Law and his colleagues merely used Ulster without committing themselves, the Government could afford to disregard anything coming from Belfast. The Eadicals 'could in such a case have hoped that Ulster's resistance would in the end be smothered as treasonable and improper by the general consent of all. the English parties. In the, November Fortnightly; that able Unionist publicist who writes under the pen-name of "Curio," discusses this point. If Mr. Balfour, were still the leader of the Unionist ; party, he says, the "mugwumps"—; "the party," in this case, "of bland and inactive respectability"—would carry the day, and the Ulstermen would be doomed by official Unionist disapproval. But Mr. Bonar Law has taken a strong line,. and there is abundant ovidenco that the shrewder Radicals—Mn, Churchill, Mr. Massingham, and Mr. Scott, of the Manchester Guardian—have already prepared to hedge on the Irish question. Mr. Churchill's "Federalism" speech at Dundee was a surrender to the Ulster contention; Mr. Massingham has declared that Home Rule ought to be submitted to the people; Mr. Scott has advised a "go-slow" policy. But the Irish question is not the only difficulty of the Government. The Insurance Act, brought on to restore tho Government's popularity, has augmented its unpopularity, and Mb. Asquith has committed upon the Chancellor the brutal assault of ascribing the by-election losses to the' Act. Tho land-tax campaign has failed, and lias brought the Government into no little disrepute. The tide, indeed, has been running heavily against tho Government, and according to "Ourio," acute Liberals have long boon thinking uncomfortably of the danger oil "sticking to office when the country is tired of you." It cannot bo said, however, that the Unionist party is as strong and Wellplaced at) the Government is weak and demoralised. Mr.' Bonar Law has scored a greattriumph for his party in carrying it with him in his full support of_ Ulster's extreme: attiThere is, however, the question, and here the Unionist partyj as one of to-day's cables makes abundantly clear, is likely to suffer from the effects of disunion.

During tho second election campaign of 1810 the Spectator, which speaks for the Unionist Free-traders, succeeded in inducing Mb. Balfour to give a pledge that so long as he was leader the unionist party would never bring in Tariff Reform without first taking a referendum. This pledge, of course, bound nobody but Mr v ; Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne have both declared that when . the Unionists return to power they will impose foodduties forthwith.. To-day we aro told that tho Spectator and many Unionist Free-traders, are urging the Unionist' leaders to give a referendum pledge, and that, the Irish Times iB doing the same on behalf of the Irish Unionists. The Spectator fears that unlesß the Unionist Party commits itself to a pledge to submit Tariff Reform to & Referendum, a great body of opinion hostile to' tho Government will be driven away from Unionism by the apparition _of a protective tariff. The.probability is, however, that most or those for whose votes the Spectator is concerned will think that of the two evilß— Protection and the continuance of Radical misrule—the latter is the greater by far. "Curio," who is strongly against the giving of' a referendum pledge, argues that the Spectator and those who think with it are advocating a' course which will split tho Unionist Party on tho eve of a very critical election. "Tho next Unionist Ministry," he Bays, "would, after all, have to carry tho Tariff, or to refuse to carry it. ... If the new Government refused to carry the Tariff, it would bo thrown out of office by its own supporters. If, on the other hand, it proceeded to carry the Tariff, it would have obtained any Free Trade votes it possessed, which had been given not against the Liberal Government solely, but in the belief that tho Unionist Party was not pledged to Tariff Reform, by a process of fraud." This last-quoted proposition is obviously unsound: the Free-traders who supported the Unionists on the strength of a referendum pledge, would be prepared ■to accept the popular decision, and would know exactly what thoy_ wero_ voting for. Obviously, the position is a duel between tho Unionist Free-traders and the Tariff Reformers, and tho Tariff Reformers must have the advantage. For they will not budge an inch, while the Unionist Free-traders mußt, in the end, surrender their fiscal position to avert the supreme evil of a continued Radical dominance.