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THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

AFTER six years of Radical misgovernment it is possible to perceive clearly the chaos and anarchy to which our poor country is reduced. The Cabinet is without discipline and without a united purpose. The Prime Minister accepts measures, in the hard positive spirit of an advocate, which he confesses to be dangerous for the community. He is still a lawyer speaking to his brief, or rather to half a dozen briefs. He possesses neither authority nor initiative. He is as little able to control his Chancellor of the Exchequer as he is to check the precipitancy of the Irish.

Of the Chancellor of the Exchequer it is difficult to speak with moderation. He is a new factor in British politics. He is a foreigner in mind and speech, without the smallest understanding of our institutions. A Welshman in the true sense of the word, he has made no study of England or the English. Scotland is as remote from his experience as the North Pole. A few tags of information, hastily gathered on a trip through Germany, a rough reading of the exploded heresies of Henry George, a knowledge, now happily failing him, of the tricks which catch votes, these are the curta supellex of a man who aspires to control the finances of a great Empire. The result of putting a demagogue into the seat of a statesman is only too mani

fest. After years of peace prices are higher, we are more heavily taxed, Government securities are more profoundly depressed than ever within the memory of man. Despite years of prosperous trading, the feeling of national insecurity grows. The money which in happier days was invested at home, is now sent abroad for greater safety. The reproof publicly administered not long since to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is unique and well deserved. Never before has 8 responsible Minister of the Crown been thus severely handled. The Governor of the Bank of England pointed out to Mr Lloyd George, who is too busy speaking to learn the rudiments of his trade, that there is a solidarity in finance as in all other human activities. This lesson Mr Lloyd George is not likely to learn, as it is incompatible with his amiable method of making finance a pack-horse of class-hatred and revenge. As we all know, breweries and the land have during the last few years had heavy burdens laid upon them. They seemed to the Chancellor easy hen-roosts to rob, and as they are managed chiefly by Conservatives, an attack upon them involved neither a loss of votes nor a diminution in the Party's funds. But, as the Governor of the Bank of England said with inexorable logic, "you cannot injure one portion

of the community the rest of the community suffering."

without Act, upon which, in a melodramatic speech delivered at some Tabernacle or other, he staked his existence, is passed, and is reputed to be working.

The Birkbeck Bank, for instance, stopped payment because its securities were suddenly and wantonly depreciated, and they were depreciated because Mr Lloyd George chose to forget that it is the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay aside his personal animosities and to think only of the good of the State. Nor was the ruin of the Birkbeck Bank a solitary exploit. Everywhere the small and large holder have suffered equally. There is not a bank in the country that has not felt the pinch. One instance, quoted by the Governor of the Bank of England, is worth remembrance. "A catastrophe on a large scale in the North of England," said he, "which would have affected the savings of a multitude of poor people and caused widespread distress, was with difficulty averted last August. Of course, I refer to a bank for small savings, which was drifting, had it not been assisted, into the same position as the Birkbeck Bank, owing to the depreciation in home investments." Here we see the rare and refreshing fruit ripe upon the tree. Mr Lloyd George, of course, is indifferent. He is indifferent also that Consols have fallen below 75, though even he would be stirred from his lethargy if he were asked to borrow money for the country on a large scale.

Passed without discussion, closured, guillotined, and kangarooed into existence, it still keeps its provisions an inviolate secret. Peripatetic lecturers have failed to explain its benefits. The magnificent hotels which Mr Lloyd George promised the haunters of the Tabernacle are still so many castles in the air. Medical treatment is promised without doctors. The people must pay, we are told, and they are not likely to get any "consideration" for their payment. We quite agree with Mr Lloyd George that the National Insurance Act is not an Aladdin's Lamp. There was at least one passage in his joy-speech (word of ill omen!) which said no more than the truth. "You do not "-these his very words,-"by rubbing it, call out palaces from the sky, with a retinue of servants, and doctors, and nurses, and everything ready." Precisely. Why, then, did Mr Lloyd George flatter his silly dupes with promises of hotels which he knew could not be kept? Why did he insist upon enforcing his Act without delay when no detail was prepared, when no palace flashed from the sky, in spite of the rubbing of a thousand hands?

were

The reason is that Mr Lloyd George is in a hurry. As a vote-catcher the Insurance Bill

Meanwhile he cares not what happens. The Insurance has failed him, and he would, if

he could, pass from it to other measures for which he hopes a greater popularity. Meanwhile, he believes that his "imagination" will pull him through. Vain boast! Imagination is a quality, like honour, which no man should arrogate to himself. And surely none, save the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would mention imagination and Mr Lloyd George in the same sentence. Mr Lloyd George has many gifts. He is a master of that tawdry rhetoric which persuades the "spellbinder " of America, when gravelled for matter, to speak of the "ever-glades." The mist-laden valleys of his native land are always upon his tongue, without relevance and without excuse. He has not wholly surrendered the hills of Wales to that other staunch Welshman, Sir A. Mond. But in these cheap illusions there is no imagination. Had he been endowed with the true talent, Mr Lloyd George would have understood intuitively the scope, purpose, and effect of his Act. He would have known that compulsion is hateful in the eyes of Englishmen; that a measure made in Germany would have little chance of success in the free air of Britain. But having no imagination, living hungrily upon the foolish phrases he makes himself, he has plunged into a morass of difficulty from which no amount of native hills and mist laden valleys will avail to rescue him.

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The Home Secretary is a very close second to the Chan

cellor of the Exchequer in the race of failure. He has handled the strike at the Docks in a miserable spirit of pusillanimity. As though the Trade Disputes Act were not enough to support the cause of injustice, he has wantonly discriminated in favour of the Unions, has declared that firms who go about their business in their own way are guilty of provocative action, and has left the neighbourhood of the Docks cruelly exposed to the brutality of "peaceful pickets." The Government, under his auspices, has made no attempt to enforce "the right to work,' not when there is no work to be done, but even when work waits, and men are willing to do it. The peculiar virtues of Mr Tillett are not generally obvious. He is exalted by our Home Secretary above kings. He can do no wrong, and if he threatens those in authority, he is not even gently reproved. Great, indeed, is the power of organisation! In number the free labourers of England vastly surpass the Trade Unionists. But they are free men, and their vote is free. They cannot be driven into the ballot-boxes like slaves. Therefore they are not permitted to work where and when they will, and if they are kicked and robbed in the public street, it serves them right. Why do they not starve with their betters, and obey the bludgeoning argument of the peaceful picket?

In labour, as in finance, the triumph of anarchy is complete. And instead of attempting to restore peace to the

many

places smooth, the Government
has embarked upon
schemes of reckless legislation.
For these it may not plead the
mandate of the people. At
bye-elections it is strangely
silent of the benefits which it
pretends to confer. It cannot
but recognise the general
apathy of the electors. Con-
fronted by three revolutionary
measures at once, how shall
the voter, whose mind moves
slowly, profess a vivid interest
in them all? The Government
cares not a jot for this apathy.
It has dissociated itself entirely
from the people. It has ceased
to be representative in any
sense of the word. It expends
all its ingenuity in accommo-
dating groups, and hopes to
preserve itself in office by the
simple bribery of exchanged
measures. Wales supports Ire-
land with the prospect of
favours to come, and thus a
corruption far worse than any
dreamt of by Walpole destroys
the morals of the country.

The

country, to make the rough those who cannot tamely witness the dismemberment of the United Kingdom, the Irish difficulty will begin only when the Act asks to be administered. Infamous as it is to pass so large a measure of revolution as this without appealing to the country, it is still more infamous, without argument or excuse, to place the destinies of honest, law-abiding citizens beneath the heels of the Molly Maguires. It is evident to all that Ulster will not submit to the degradation which Mr Asquith has devised for her as the payment of eighty votes. There are certain tyrannies which cannot be fought at the hustings. When Charles I. carried his autocracy a step too far, he was met by Cromwell, with the county gentlemen of England behind him. autocracy of our present Government is far meaner and far fiercer than the autocracy of Charles I. Charles, at any rate, had a loyal and patient belief in the divine right of kings. It must strain even Mr Asquith's sense of humour to put faith in the divine right of Mr Redmond or of Mr Devlin. Nor do we suppose that the spirit of England has changed vastly since the seventeenth century, and perhaps it is through Ulster that salvation will come to the country. In any case, the Irish Bill lives and moves in an atmosphere of unreality. Its pompous clauses will be discussed after an academic fashion. The opponents of the House of Lords will stand up one after another and sing the praises of a Second Chamber.

Meanwhile, the bill for giving Home Rule to Ireland awaits the guillotine. The House of Commons, fearful of a reverse, has laid aside its labours earlier than it intended. Nor is there the smallest chance that, that, when it reassembles in October, it will give the Irish Bill a free, frank, and just discussion. The Prime Minister's one purpose will be to drive it through by all the means of tyranny which he has invented, and having satisfied the exactions of Mr Patrick Ford, to let the Empire take its chance. Fortunately for

And nobody will take what they say too seriously. Those who have a spark of humour will not take it seriously themselves.

Home

It

Disestablishment, also like Rule, is suspended between earth and heaven. is neither passed nor rejected. It stands a worse chance even than Home Rule of adequate discussion. It lights no spark of faith; it awakens no enenthusiasm. Not all the fairy stories of Mr Lloyd George concerning larders and sideboards can stir the pulses of its supporters. But it will go through the House of Commons, because the Treasury, having ceased to be the home of government, has become a clearinghouse, where the demands of groups are honoured. Whether it will survive the ordeal of two years' veto we do not know. Perhaps it is not intended to survive it. Perhaps the Government, having fulfilled in the Commons all its "obligations," will contrive a fall before any of its monstrous measures are ripe. But certain it is that of all its experiments the disendowing of the Welsh Church inspires least confidence in its begetters. They speak of it somewhat furtively. They are perplexed what to do with the money, when they shall have stolen it. To rob a poor man is not considered a gracious act by any save the Trade Unionists of the East End, and our Radical Government, when it has sated the malice of Nonconformists, will be at a loss how to apply the pilfered funds of the Church.

However, that is their affair, and they must drag themselves out of a squalid situation as best they may.

And now, as though these enterprises were not enough for the guillotine, the Radicals have determined upon the course, which is always nearest to their hearts, of gerrymandering the suffrage. In order to make sure their return after the next General Election, they have devised a franchise bill whose only object is to make them "tenants for life." The bill is shamefully and shamelessly partisan. It pretends to abolish "anomalies," as though anomalies had not been the lifeblood of our constitution. Its real purpose is to abolish as many Tory voters as possible. Whether we shall have womanhood as well as manhood suffrage depends upon the taste and fancy of the members. Mr Asquith has renounced the task of guidance, and so long as they consent with proper alacrity to the slaughter of Tories, he does not care what his colleagues do. It is his opinion that the sudden enfranchisement of many millions of women will be a danger to the State. Rather than risk a dispute, says he, let them be added. We suppose, like Mr M'Kenna, he thinks that it is no business of his to ward off dangers from the State. Perhaps he has done his duty when he has conciliated his groups of henchmen, and cut down the list of Tory voters.

Of the anomalies which he proposes to abolish the chief are plural voting and University representation. In favour of

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