The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1913. THE TARIFF REFORMERS' DIFFICULTY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1649, 16 January 1913, Page 6

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1913. THE TARIFF REFORMERS' DIFFICULTY.

A itEMAUKADLE statement by Me. Bonail Law in reply to the memorial presented to him by the Unionist members in the House is cabled to us to-day. During the past few days wo have been receiving fragmentary and unilluminating messages concerning the position of the party on the fiscal question, and We have been left to guess, with the British public, at the exact terms of the memorial. That there has been a serious split in the solidarity of the party has been clear enough for some time, however, and Mr. Bonar Law, with characteristic outspokenness, makes no attempt to disguise his opinion of the drift of the party away from the Chamberlain position. All we know of tho memorial is that cally'all the Unionists signed it, and that they asked Mr. Bonar Law to retain his leadership, and to wipe "food duties" out of the'fiscal programme for the next election. The Unionist leader, in his.reply, admits that a committal of the party to "food duties" is not essential, to a policy of tariff preference; "nevertheless it would have been more agreeable to ourselves and inoro for tho party's interest that the changed method should havo been accompanied bj; a change of leaders." His task, obyiously, was to choose between his personal inclination to fight all the fiscal guns : and fight them at once and his pldin enough duty not to imperil the cause by obstinacy • and impetuousncss. Ho chpso.to suppress his own personal dc?ii'es, and it might have been expcctcd that this would "end the trouble;in the party. Mr. Austen CiuimfißLAiN, however, in a speech in Worcestershire, which was summar-' ised in one of yesterday's Cable messages, has iSsUcd : what'looks like nothing less than a declaration of war. He will not consent to tho new attitude of the party,'believing that.the strong and extreme course is the best. A .Chamberlain, apparently, is going to break up the Unionist party in 1913, just as a Chamberlain did in 1903, and with infinitely less justification.. ': ■

In the meantime the essentials of the controversy stand exactly, where they stood in 1903. Not even the most faithful friend of the principle of freo exchange will deny, really out of his heart, that it it, conceivable that a system of mutual tariff preferences within tho Empireliiiay be defended as a, thing : not entirely fiscal, but' rather politic,and diplomatic. That is Mr.; Bonab Law's view. But the Tariff Reformers have hot kept their policy on that high level. They have been forced by the British Radicals— tho bulk of whom have a thousand times outraged the noble principle of j freo exchange, and the bulk of whom, also, know and' care nothing l .for | fiscal truth, caring only for any eatch-encs they can wring out of it —to make a policy .Imperial ■ iri.inf tentiofl a,policy for loc&l'party purposes. \Vhen wo commented aome Weeks ago on the : speeches of Mb, Bonar LaW, and Lord Lansuowne at the Albert; Hall .in ; No.vcmbor, ..,\ye said that there was nothing, really, to chooso between the rank demagogy of Lloyd-Georgeisj'i arid,tho fank demagogy of part pf the advocacy of tariffs. In the English mail to hand this week we • find to me , amusing proofs that the Radical pot knows that there is n Tariff Reform kettle. Lord Lansdowne, it will be remembered, said that the Unionist party would "undertake that any revenuo raised; from ■ taxes of this kind [Customs duties] shall not bo treated as ordinary revenue, but shall be 1 used for the,purpose of alloviating other burdens fallihg upon the shdulders of:the< working classes."! This struck us, as ' it must have struck every impartial spectator of British politics, as an exact imitation'of the hollow Radical pretence that,the taxes the Radicals 'impose Will go towards biiyiilg, in Mr. Lloyd-George's phrase, "rare and refreshing fruits" for the poor. It would require, most people must have reflected, a great deal of assurance in a Radical to attack Lord LansdoWne on this point, since he was simply subscribing to the main Radical fallacy.: that uy arbitrarily taxiing the community the' State can confer a precise and, real boon on some specified Section of the community. , -■ , Party warfare in Britaiii, however,• has left the Radicals bare of scruples, and destitute of any sense of hunioUr.: The Solicitor-General, for example, riot only 'condemned for its unsoundness the passage wo have quoted ; from Lord _ Lansdowne's speech—thus condemning also nearly every word said by his colleagues in thoir speeches on their plans of "social justice"—but went.- a little further with a little dialectic which will bo milch more useful to the enemy than it can bo to his friends.' "Observe," ho said, "that to the Tory, mind there is an essential contrast between the relief of working class burdens and the Spending of ordinary revenue." Any; Unionist can tako almost any "Limchouse" speech by any Minister, and quote passages which can be followed dv a tu quoque, with the damning addition that "since the Radicals deny that special taxes on the community can be devoted to easing 'the worker's' burden, their promise of 'rare and refreshing fruit' is a wilful tricking of the workingman." But, of course, it is Britain's business to decide which of tho two medicines it will take; and in the long run Britain will be likely to prefer, as the less dangerous and by far the less complicated,' the taxation policy whioh is at any rate untainted 'oy what Burke has called the "cruel parentage of Jacobinism, or by the destructive acoompaniment of class hatred. It is impossible to say what will immediately follow any active opposition by Mit. Austin Chamberlain to the official Unionist policy; but Mr. . Bonar Law's reluctant ac* ceptance of the policy of the memorial goes a long way towards making; easier his party's advocacy of Tariff Reform as a piece of Imperial diplomacy. : .