few authorities, and announced children, but the State will that some time in the future only perform this duty when they would develop the scheme the duty is clear- that is, in in the contributory direction. really necessitous cases. It is Mr Churchill, it is understood, quite a different thing for a has been devoting his talents feckless parent to claim a right to some portentous measure of to have his children fed. It universal, compulsory, State- may be the duty of the State aided thrift. But it will be to provide to provide employment in the powder without the jam, certain cases, but there is no for all the jam has been used right to such assistance in every up already. In a country such man out of work. Now Liberal as ours a measure is not popu- policy has got thoroughly conlar which gives the State the fused between the two points right of interference in a man's of view. It has tried to join private affairs. What is to be State duties and individual thought of the tactics of a rights-two mutual contraGovernment which has, for the dictories -in one unhallowed sake of a transient popularity, union. The old Liberal might surrendered the adjunct which talk of "rights," but then he might have made such inter- would have nothing to do with ference palatable? an interfering State. The man who accepts the doctrine of an all-potent State cannot gift the citizen with rights against it. If he does, he will reach the paradox that the State will be compelled to treat what is its own duty, and therefore within its discretion as a right of the individual, and therefore outside its discretion. Policies, of which the sole defence is that they are applicable only at the will of a competent authority, will be made universal and compulsory, and therefore nonsensical. Throughout the whole of Liberal social policy there is one elementary confusion which shows the danger of patchwork creeds. Happily this confusion is not yet embodied in legislation, but it appears throughout the speeches of the demagogic branch of the Cabinet. The old Liberal believed in a thing which he called the rights of the individual. The intelligent Socialist cares nothing for these, but he believes in certain duties for the performance of which the State is responsible. He wants the State to take over all manner of duties now called private, but they must be State duties and not individual rights. Obviously this change of the centre of gravity makes an immense difference. It may be the duty of the State to feed school second, and in a sense the more urgent, task is to revise the whole machinery of our Constitution. The mechanism is breaking down from sheer overwork. Discussion in the House of Commons has become a farce, and a scandalised nation waits to see what will happen. The problem is how to combine a new division and delegation of existing functions with the establishment of some consultative and executive machinery for the Empire. To the solution of these two questions the new Liberalism has made no contribution. In the case of the first, it has adopted some of the least defensible principles of doctrinaire Socialism, muddled them a little, and embodied them in legislation, protesting all the while that Socialism is the enemy and Liberalism its only counteragent. As for the second, the Liberal contribution to constitutional reform is a few heroics about that overworked and creaky machine, the House of Commons, and a scheme for making the said House, with all its existing blemishes, the one absolute and supreme power in the Empire. As we have said, we are not discussing Liberalism on the merits. We grant to the Government the qualities of sincerity and patriotism. It is with the faulty intellectual equipment of the creed that we are concerned-the fact that it is impossible to find coherent principles at its base, or to avoid finding logical This The Arimaspian, we believe, was one-eyed, which put him at a still greater disadvantage with the Gryphon. Let us state our point as fairly and clearly as possible. The present Liberal Government contains conspicuously able departmental chiefs; but Liberal policy lacks any kind of systematic and coherent meaning. or that measure may have some justification in good intentions or in some urgent need, but because it springs from no system of thought it is liable to be self-contradictory, and it is defended in the House and on public platforms by palpably irrational arguments. The old Liberalism may have been far narrower in outlook, but it was sure of itself, and condescended to an intellectual defence. But the half-truths of the new Liberalism have to rely upon the demagogic powers of Mr Lloyd-George and Mr Churchhill; and in place of the solid backing of the older creed it can look only to the journalism of men like Mr Chesterton and Mr Masterman, the laughing and the weeping philosophers of this odd faith. Duke is saluted on every Lib- But, we are told, it is Democracy that is speaking, triumphant Democracy, which cares nothing for narrow reason. "Non in dialectica," runs the argument in the words of the mediæval saint-"non in dialectica placuit Deo salvum facere populum suum." Well, at its best, this is only a new type of sycophancy. To have the vices of a courtier one Reason, indeed, is an ill need not toady a monarch. thing to reject, for it is apt In the old days the sycophant to return like a boomerang clung to the skirts of a king and hit the man who cast it or a cardinal, because he saw away. We are on the eve of in him the embodiment of a General Election, when the power. Nowadays it is the whole armoury of demagogic masses who are all-potent, weapons will be brought into and it is the demagogue who use. It will be easy to deliver is the spiritual successor of rhetorical speeches about freeCarr and Buckingham. What- ing the land for the nation and ever the masses desire they making the popular will premust have, though it is in vail: and no doubt they will defiance of reason and justice, have their effect at the polls. -to such a pass has fortune But we cannot imagine that brought those who claim to thinking Liberals will be very wear the mantle of Vane and easy in their mind when they Hampden. It is considered see a policy which is proright for a Member of Parlia- fessedly and, we believe, honment to use language about estly anti-Socialist, drawing its peers and landlords which far only logical defence from Socialexceeds the ordinary licence ist principles. We would ask, in of politics. The unfortunate all seriousness, how a creed of shreds and patches can hope to repel the compact and logical dogmas of Socialism? It is not the business of Tories to wish well to their opponents, but no Tory who believes in the party system desires to see the other national party in an unconscious and degrading alliance with the common enemy. No party can endure without principles; and until Liberalism foregoes its unintelligent worship of "democracy," and adopts a more manly and rational line of thought, it will remain estranged from the serious and thinking element in the nation. We would suggest, in conclusion, two considerations for our opponents. The first is that Democracy," in the class sense in which it is now used, has never been triumphant 66 The since the world began. masses, when they have won, have won only because they had reason fighting for them. Labour cannot for long coerce capital if capital be in the right, and the power of numbers is apt to crumble suddenly before organised intelligence. In the second place, we would suggest that our new demoorats are not really looking at the masses at all. Their eyes filled by the electoral machine, and they see the worker through the distorting medium of the election agent. We have had great popular leaders in our history, but they have held their places by respecting their followers and giving them of their best. Is it not possible, we ask, that Liberalism is underrating the intelligence of the people? INDEX TO VOL. CLXXXVI. ADAMANTINE MIND, THE, 166. 'Advertisements of "The Spectator," : 'Age of Reason, the,' by Tom Paine, Anderson, Sir Robert, parentage and Takes charge of Irish business at Becomes head of the detective de- PAST AND Army drill, some reforms in, 100 et seq. AWAKENING OF AMBROSE ROYLE, THE, Aytoun, Professor, collaboration of Sir Balfour, Mr, speech of, at Birmingham, Bank of England, imaginary Fenian Barrie, Mr, the novels of, as an example BIRD LIFE, ROMANCE IN, 199. Blériot, M., crossing of the Channel in a New Zealand, 199 et seq.-description BREAK IN THE RAins, a, 473. - Budget, the, revolutionary character of, - |