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ing March received them in a deputation, at which he objected to nothing in their programme except Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's proposal of a land tax at 20s. in the L. He said that the country was a molten mass which could be moulded by them; he advised audacity—the very thing they already had in excess; and he invited them to make a new world'. He concluded by saying that the points of their programme would all be considered in his committees for reconstruction. No wonder the trade unionist leaders thanked him for his sympathy. They must have left the room knowing that what he called his reconstruction was really their revolution, and that their apparent opponent in the House of Commons was really their friend outside. By the time that he passed the Agriculture Act and the Reform Act, and thereupon resorted to a General Election, the Coalitionists ought to have known that the Lloyd George before the war would be the Lloyd George after the war in the peace.

Consequently, when Sir Ernest Wild says that the Coalitionists told their audiences that 'pre-war policies were dead and buried', they were mistaken; for there are now several parties outside and several parties inside the Coalition; so that no vote of the Coalitionists is a real vote of the party, without which unity no Ministry can be for the public good.

But the worst of it is that, even if pre-war party politics are dead, pre-war institutions are certainly being killed by the Coalition. A nation is wider than a Parliament and a Ministry, and it consists of associated men whose public good is the end of all good government. Now, Englishmen are more and more, day by day, losing their lawful rights of liberty, property, and contract; of self-help, of the management of their own business, and of their profits; of their livelihood, of their comfort, of their selfrespect; of their charity, of their justice, of their

happiness, which cannot last without the wherewithal.

It is an old legal maxim that the first duty of the State is to protect its citizens; but nowadays nobody feels safe, and everybody is left to bear his losses, to groan under enormous rates and taxes, and to endure the blundering tyranny of State interference and control. Who is responsible for this evil state of things? The Coalitionist Party, their favourite Prime Minister, and his spoilt children-the trade unionists, who follow the simple plan—

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

December 18, 1920.

A GENERAL ELECTION

The position of the Coalition Government was not very secure in August 1921, chiefly owing to its troubles with Ireland. The proposals of the Government with regard to Ireland were made public in the House of Commons on August 15. Parliament then adjourned until October 18. The Articles of Agreement with Ireland, establishing the Irish Free State were signed on December 6. No General Election took place this year.

FROM The Times, AUGUST 18, 1921.

Since the time of the Boer War every General Election has been fought on a false, or at least an unfair, issue. In the course of the Boer War a General Election was proclaimed by the Conservatives on the pretence that the war was over, which turned out to be by no means the case either in action or in expense. When the Conservatives had in eight years increased the taxation of the nation by £40,000,000, and deservedly fell in the ensuing General Election, the Liberals pretended that the issue was economy; but it soon turned out that their real object was democratic expenditure. In a very short time before the late war they increased the already partial and oppressive taxation to £200,000,000, when the present

Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer and wanted, without precedent, to have a still higher Budget for demagogic schemes which were not yet before Parliament.

During and towards the end of the late war against Austria and Germany a Reform Act was passed on the absurd pretext that soldiers and sailors, munitionists and women, should be rewarded for deeds in war by votes in peace; and the consequent General Élection was in great part based on the advancement of the labouring classes, without mentioning the obvious issue that private property was in danger from the threats of the nationalistic trade unionists in concert with the Prime Minister. How false and unfair the declared issue of that election was has been proved by its unfortunate sequel of general doubt and discontent.

Rumours are now in the air that Ministers, having involved themselves in a world-wide muddle, will resort to a General Election. If so, for Heaven's sake let it be fought for the good of the nation itself, not on any side issue, but on the broad, true, and fair issue between liberty and bureaucracy, between the protection of persons and property and the abuses of trade unionism, and between economy and

waste.

TRADE RECOVERY BY FREE TRADE

FROM The Times, OCTOBER 8, 1921.

In the course of the Premier's speech at Inverness, reported in The Times of to-day, there are two statements, one about the cause, and the other about the remedy, of unemployment:

I.

There are many who insist on better conditions than they 'had before the war, although the nation has only four-fifths of 'the output. Now that means that somebody has to go short.' 2. ' We must look for a permanent remedy in the restoration

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of the normal healthy conditions of trade and industry.'

These two propositions are both true, and a return to the conditions before the war mentioned in the first is the only means necessary to the realization of the remedy proposed in the second proposition. For the failure of State control and the superior efficiency of private agency in matters of trade and industry have been lately acknowledged; and the really serious obstacle in the way of further development of private agency is the abnormal wages of trade unionism. If these would only sink to what they were before the war, unemployment would gradually be succeeded by employment, and trade would soon recover the level at which it stood before the war.

There is only one fear-namely, that this spontaneous chain of cause and effect may be rudely broken by the ambition of the Prime Minister, or his Cabinet, or Parliament to return to the vomit of State control. The State can indeed do something to help trade; if difficulties arise with trade unionists, it can protect persons and property better than it has hitherto done; but, if it is wise, it should refrain from State intervention or arbitration, which usually end in concession after concession; it can pursue more economy and less bureaucracy; it can repeal any Reconstruction Acts which still cripple the freedom of trade. But as for positive State control, politicians have still to learn that their beneficial function is to govern the country, about which they know something, but not to manage business, about which they know nothing. Besides, even if they were ever so expert in both departments, they cannot do both at once, but only spoil both in the attempt.

Cabinets and Parliaments, committees and conferences, cannot manage trade, because they do not understand its intricacies. It is traders who understand trade, and therefore can more or less manage it; but not even they can manage it completely,

D d

because they cannot always foresee or master the spontaneity of its action. Take any market: in the morning some go to buy at this or that price, and some to sell at that or this price; but at the end of the day none of the individual buyers and sellers can usually dictate the final market price, because by the higgling of the market things finally settle themselves in accordance with the superiority of sales over purchases or of purchases over sales. What, therefore, made this country rich was not so much its Acts of Parliament as the competition of trade and its spontaneous action. Force should never be used when freedom is sufficient.

Oxford, October 5, 1921.

A TRUSTWORTHY PREMIER?

MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S RECORD

In March 1922 there was a serious crisis in the Coalition, over the debates in Parliament during the passage of the Irish Free State Bill, but more particularly on account of the action of Mr. Montague, Secretary of State for India. He published a telegram from the Government of India, pleading for leniency towards Turkey in regard to the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres. Mr. Lloyd George at once demanded Mr. Montague's resignation, which was announced in the House of Commons on March 9. Mr. Montague on March 12, in a speech at Cambridge, defended himself, and stated that Lord Curzon (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) had been apprized of his intention to publish the telegram. Lord Curzon's reply was made in the House of Lords on March 14. He stated that although Mr. Montague had told him that be (Mr. Montague) had shortly before authorized the publication of the telegram, he had not allowed any time or opportunity for Lord Curzon to put the question of publication in front of the Cabinet (Hansard, Lords, 1922, vol. 49, p. 465-6).

FROM The Times, MARCH 18, 1922.

Your issue of yesterday contained two references to the present relations of the Prime Minister to the Conservative Party and to the Cabinet which ought to be carefully considered together.

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