that it is the duty of the Government systematically to prevent unemployment; and he had the satisfaction of pointing out that the speech of the Prime Minister denoted that Parliament must govern the people by providing the masses of the people both with contentment and with employment. In other words, there is a danger of the Government falling out of one trap into another, without any prior consideration whether it is the duty of the Government to maintain the standard of wages or to prevent unemployment, or whether it ought to have left the first to the employers and the second to the municipalities and guardians of the poor, to the charity of the community, and to the spontaneous action of trade, in which at the present time there is a tendency to lower wages and prices.

Nor are we at the end of these novel duties of the Government, suggested by the trade unionists and more or less adopted by the Prime Minister. He has invented a further and more comprehensive duty of the Government, about which your Parliamentary Correspondent says that the Government's trade-revival schemes involve a considerable amount of money; and he might have added that it is a great deal for a bankrupt Government to pay, which owes £8,000 millions and has not balanced its own account for the present year. The whole programme is as follows:

Export credits and loans on home con

This large sum would ultimately fall on an impoverished community. The first part would require far more time for consideration than can be given at the fag end of a session of Parliament, and the revival of trade is beyond the skill and the power

of Parliament. The second part-the subject of relief-is all that Parliament ought to consider carefully, because it contains the difficult problem whether and how far the Central Government should undertake the functions of the local municipalities, in which it has long gone too far.

In the whole scheme, contained in four Bills, there is also a secret danger lurking beneath: it is the danger that the Government should become a permanent paymaster and controller of all labour, employed and unemployed, which was the point of the speeches of Mr. Clynes, when he introduced the 'Prevention of Unemployment' at the Labour Party Conference on January 24, 1917, and again in the House of Commons. Mr. Clynes would devolve on the Government not mere temporary relief when unemployment occurs, but systematic management of all employment, so that nobody could ever be unemployed. If Parliament is not very careful, it will drift into this perversion of its functions, and will degenerate first into a permanent controller of labour, then into a universal proprietor, and finally into amalgamating with the one national trade union, which is the ultimate goal of trade unionism. God forbid!

Parliament should refuse all the Bills except the measures of temporary relief. It should ask what are the functions of the State even on this subject. Of all things, it should ask what it can leave to Poor Law Guardians and local governments.

MR. MACDONALD'S POLICY

1917 CONFERENCE RECALLED

At a General Election held on December 6, 1923, the parties returned were Conservatives 258, Labour 191, Liberals 158, Independents 8. Mr. J. R. MacDonald became Prime Minister of a Labour Government on January 23, 1924. Mr. MacDonald's 'victory speech' was delivered at the Albert Hall on January 8. In the Labour Government, Mr. Clynes was Lord Privy Seal and

Ꮓ

Deputy Leader of the House of Commons. Mr. J. H. Thomas was Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Mr. George Lansbury was Labour Member for the Bow and Bromley Division of Poplar.

FROM The Times, JANUARY 15, 1924.

On June 11, 1917, you published a letter on 'The Future of the Nation', in which I showed that the conference of the Labour Party on January 23-6, 1917, carried many unanimous resolutions which, in all, constituted a revolutionary programme. One of the resolutions was that of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, headed Taxation', divided into four proposals-namely: (1) Conscription of accumulated wealth; (2) direct taxation on luxuries, increased on unearned incomes, and graduated up to not less than 155. in the pound; (3) nationalization of the land by revised land taxation; and (4) nationalization of the banking system. What is now his attitude to this revolutionary resolution, of which confiscation would be the end, super-taxation the means, and ruination of the capitalists the consequence?

His 'Victory Speech", published on the 9th inst., was replete with vague phrases, such as 'We are a party of idealists', One step enough for me', but on one condition-that it leads to the next step', without saying what step; 'I am thinking of the national well-being', without saying whether he meant the good of everybody or the good to be got for the workpeople from the confiscation of capital, as contemplated in his fourfold resolution on taxation on January 25, 1917.

Mr. Clynes, who followed him, repeated Mr. MacDonald's equivocal statement. 'Labour', said he, if entrusted with the power of government, would not be influenced by any consideration other than that of the national well-being.' But he immediately explained that any party having the responsibility of government would fail in its first duty if

it did not give ready aid to the class numbering millions of the poorest of the country, who had suffered under conditions of social and economic robbery which had deprived them of the ordinary necessities of life'.

This frank explanation could only mean that the 'national well-being' contemplated by Messrs. MacDonald and Clynes is that of the workpeople, who are the supposed sufferers, and not that of the Capitalists, who are the supposed robbers.

After the indiscretion of Mr. Clynes, Mr. J. H. Thomas was more guarded. Falling back into the vague phrases of Mr. MacDonald, he said that they would accept power, and their government would be judged from the standpoint of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number in the community', without explaining whether he meant the common good of all, which is the real end of good government, or the good of the majority, which might mean the good of the workpeople, as opposed to that of the capitalists. Finally, Mr. G. Lansbury openly proclaimed what was really in the minds of all these victors '-Labour against Capital-expressed in the following boast:

'The common people of Great Britain had imposed upon 'them the task of showing the world the way out of the 'morass of misery and destitution into which capitalism had flung it.' (Cheers.)

I submit, Sir, that, beneath the appearance of moderation and the rhetoric of phrases, the real attitude of the Labour Party, represented by the 'victors' assembled on the 9th inst., was identical with Mr. MacDonald's own revolutionary resolution of January 25, 1917-to confiscate capital by taxation. Why, then, do certain members of Parliament assume that Mr. MacDonald is a fit person to become the Prime Minister of this civilized nation, which, throughout many centuries of order and

progress, has established the rights of property and capital, because it knows that the rights are essential to the very life of the nation? Why, too, do some Liberals, nevertheless, tend to vote with the Labour Party, which is unsound, against the Conservative Party, which is sound, on the essentiality of capital? There is surely no need for the Liberals to vote at all; for, if they remain neutral, the Conservatives, with whom they agree that capital is essential, will win; whereas, if they vote for the Labour Party, they will help to establish a domination of workpeople, who, unfortunately, do not understand that the more capital a nation provides, the more it can pay for employment.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

'A WORD TO LIBERALS'

FROM The Times, JANUARY 19, 1924.

On the 15th inst. you very kindly allowed me room which I used in order to show that it lies with Liberals to help either the Unionists to prevent, or the Labour Party to project, its cherished but ruinous policy of confiscating the property and capital which are necessary to the very livelihood of the nation. They appear, however, to suppose that, though few, they could at once and at any moment stop Mr. MacDonald's onward progress, whenever they might think him wrong. So they could in Parliament; but his real strength is outside Parliament, where his power would be overwhelming. He would not only be the Prime Minister of a constitutional government and in the various Departments of the State, but also the prime mover of trade unionism, a vast and ramifying organization, sanctioned by the State, but armed with the weapon of the strike', as it was styled at the conference of the Labour Party in January 1917.