THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MORNING JANUARY 4, 1907. LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9019, 4 January 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MORNING JANUARY 4, 1907. LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM.

In view of what is occurring in the political arena of New Zealand, it i 3 interesting to note the Liberal attitude towards Social ideals in the Old Country. Speaking at East Fife, on October 19th, last year, Mr H. H. Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: —"They could not take up a Tory newspaper or read a Tory speech without coming across the suggestion that the Socialists had captured or were in process of capturing the Liberal party, and that the people of this country, if they wished to the inconveniences of universal spoliation, would do well—indeed, it was the only course I open to them—to throw themselves bodily and blindly into the arms of Toryism and tariff reform." This Mr Asquith proceeded to refute. Tt would clear the ground, he said, if the rhetoricians could be persuaded to define their terms. There was a very real sense in which wo were all Socialists novv-a-days; and there was much in what was vaguely described and loosely denounced as the spread of Socialism, which meant no more than this —that men's social vision was being enlarged and their social conscience aroused. Thin he held to be one of the healthiest signs of the times. Liberalism in England, proceeded the Chancellor, had necessarily begun as an emancipating and therefore, in a sense, a destructive under-current. Largo areas of the social and industrial life of the people had bad to be set free from the misdirected and paralysing activity of State, trade had had to be

set free from throttling tariffs, both in national and municipal government the barriers of caste had had to be broken down and a way opened to the democracy. That task of emancipation or of liberation was still far from complete. "There was another side to the matter," continued Mr Asquith. "The experience of our own and of every other progressive country had shown that there were wants, needs, services, which could not be safely left ':o the. unregulated operation of the forces of supply and demand, and for which only the community as a whole could make adequate and effective provision. Each case must be judged on its own merits by the balance of experiences so long as we kepi; in mind that a large part of the evils and apparent injustices of society were due to causes beyond the reach of merely mechanical treatment. Tlierd was not a single stage in that process of emancipation and liberation which had not been denounced as a form of Socialism ; but did any man now regret it? Did anyone wish us as a nation to retrace our steps? Could anyone be blind enough to think the process was complete? If they asked him at what point it was that Liberalism and what was called Socialism in the true and strict sense of the term parted company, he answered, When liberty in its positive, and not merely its negative, sense was threatened. Liberty meant [more than the mere absence of coercion or restraint; it meant the power of initiative, the free play of intelligences and wills, the right, so long as a man did not become a danger or a nuisance to the community, to use as he thought best the faculties of his nature or his brain, and the opportunities of his life. The great loss counterbalancing all apparent gains of reconstruction of soicety upon what were called Socialistic lines would be that liberty would be slowly but surely starved to death, and that with the superficial equality of fortunes and conditions, even if that could be attained, we should have the most startling despotism that the world had ever seen. To Socialism, so understood, Liberals were prepared to offer a convinced and uncompromising opposition. But he was not so much afraid of its advent in this country as many excellent people seemed to be." Mr Asquith said he had heard a story the other day of one of our most advanced Labour members who saw last year for the first time the quaint ceremonial attendant upon the opening of Parilament by the King. The member remarked rather grimly to a friend, "All this will take a lot of abolishing." "Yes," added the Chancellor, "and before the foundations of the new Jerusalem on Socialist lines were well and truly laid they would find they had to get rid not only of a great deal of solemn parade and ceremonial entwining themgelves round the fabric of society, but that they had also to get rid of some of the elementary sentiments and passions of human nature that were engrained in the average Briton." Mr Asquith went on to say that the real danger to Liberalism lay in leaving evils unredressed and problems unsolved on the grounds that ,' except by revolutionary expedients it was beyond the competence of statesmen to deal with them. Property and liberty each of them became more and noc less secure by every step which was taken to remove the sens» of injustice, to diffuse and equalise the pressure of the common burden, and to keep—and this was most important of ailto keep every particular interest in subordination to the interest of the whole.