Tue quarrels of (Conservatives and Liberals have long been almost undignified in their insignificance, but we seem at last to be reaching a period, graver and more vigorous, than any we have known for a long time past. Behind the complacency of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and the elusive scepticism of Mr. Balfour, lie concealed a growing discontent and a strong idealism, and it will not be long before the present triviality of English polities is swept away by forces as strong, perhaps, us any which have divided Parliament Ey fiercely hostile camps. The last General Election wus fought upon a variety of questions, and however truly its result' may have reflected popular opinion, it did not, in an; way, dispose of the subject whicl must soon occupy the individual attention of the nation. The country. will soon be face to face with a clear issue. Questions of detail will disappear Before one of principle, and comfortable gradations of opinion will steepen perpendicularly into the sharpest of antagonis though the Imperial and economic aspects of the fiscal question bristle with so many difficulties that it might long remain unfit for popular decision, yet its domestic significance is so unmistakeably plain that a General Election, fought upos this question and this alone, is becoming absolutely unavoidable, The increasing ree er of Socialism has all along been bringing the country to the alternative of a change in the fiscal system, or a protracted struggle between rich and poor: so that when Mr. Lerlain started his crusade, he was! only hastening what had' already become inevitable.
The most general survey of Liberalism during the last half century will make this perfectly clear. Before the extension of the franchise, Liberalism connoted a strictly political attitude, and its tradition was traceable, step by step, through the period of Whigs and Tories, to the Revolution. Since the extension of the Franchise, it has, every year, been losing its original character. We are watching the last phase in the present attack upon the House of Lords: und even this is due to the personality of a man, rather than the survival of an ideal for the Peers defeated Mr. Glalstone's Trish policy and, conse=|1 quently, his followers are pledged against' the Peers. The strictly democratic work of Liberalism, as far ax the Constitution is concerned, has long been practi-leally completed, and for the last or forty years Liberals have become more' and more associated with Social Reform.
Side by side with this transformation has gone the gradual develop-pretentious whatever to the poxes-ment of a Party, which makes no
sion of a political programme, but is actuated only by ire remedy the unequal wealth. At the last election this Party polled nine per cent of the voting population, and every day its voice is growing more insistent. The reaction in favour of the! Moderates, at the last municipal elections, was due entirely to a sudden realisation of the Party's! increasing strength. Nor can it be for one moment supposed that a temporary set-back will do anything but cause a renewal of concentrated effort. The Labour and Socialist Party is bound to gather! force, simply because the contrast! between Labour and Capital. between those who have and' those who have not, is daily! becoming more striking. What makes assurance doubly sure is the fact that. at the polls, Liberalism, Socialism and Laboor, all fight under the same banner. Liberalism, now that its political significance has disappeared, has no other banner under which to were is not a single political principle round which the Liberal Party could rally. The old ty distinctions are dead and, con= sequently, Liberalism, as a strictly political force, is dead—too. The result is that Liberals are pled= wed to social reform, and are fight-side by side with men who mean to carry social reform to its furthest limits. And this union leads at once to the fiscal question, The Liberal Party cannot carry out its social programme without increasing direct taxation. It has, a body, refused to have anything to do with Mr. Chamberlain's plans, and the refusal has been so absolute that we may wonder whether the leaders of the Party will suddenly realize what they have done. What they have done is this: they ave pledged themselves to. stand by a system of t not possibly bes own reforms. have bound themselves, hand and foot, to a Party whose deliberate aim is to deflect. the wealth of the rich to the uses of the poor. They have signed a blank cheque, and drawn it on the account of the middle and the upper classe.
We can shore the next hi; Unless the basis is broadened, the middle and the upper classes will be faced with the prospect of financing reforms in order to benefit a class which is Ineither able, nor ing. to bear any considerable part of the expense. Unless a system of indirect taxation is inaugurated, a Liberal victory at the polls would alw he the for a conflict between (and Labotir. That is to say that, unless we alter our nicthod of raising revenue, we are on the eve of a long and fierce war of classes, Fortunately, whilst the Likeral Party has been undergoing a process of transformation, the conservative Party has hen chian, ing too. Tnstead of being a Party of defence, with nothing in par-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.