trial State Socialism. In the second place, trade unionism has, since 1848, more and more tended towards an International, much like the mediaeval Papacy, but more powerful. Consequently, if the Labour Party got into power, what it would establish is Industrial State Socialism, national and international. What then? Gone would be private liberty, private property, and freedom of contract; gone would be the already half-spoilt relation of master or mistress and servant, and therewith domestic happiness; gone would be the autonomy, independence, and sovereignty of the British nation, merged in an international Papacy of Labour.

In January 1917 the Labour Party at its conference issued a comprehensive and definite series of demands for the destruction of private property and the construction of national property, and they are now, after three years of consistency, not very far from the achievement of their final end. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and the Coalition Party never realized till quite recently the fact that the real political issue was between private and public ownership. From the first they went off to the false issue of neglecting private rights and concentrating their attention on the advancement of the minor ends of the Labour Party. They tried to conciliate the trade unionists by enfranchising millions of them, making them promises, passing isolated Acts, giving them doles, grants, pensions, appointments, increasing their wages, and inducing owners to give them some share in the management without expenses, and in the profits without losses, in businesses which were not their business. But all this systematic chaos of extravagance was foredoomed to disappointment, because the Government could not satisfy the workpeople, who indeed wanted whatever they received, but wanted something else very much more—namely, the destruction of their

masters' private property and their own enjoyment of its results as employees and partners of the State. How near they are to their main objects can be seen by the unsettled question of nationalization demanded by the coal-miners, and by the Spen Valley election, in which the successful Labour candidates stood on nationalization, conscription of capital, and democratic education. For three years, then, the Prime Minister, his Coalition Party, and Parliament have been at work on false issues. The only remedy is to look at the true issue, which is between the rights of all persons whatever in the community and the Socialistic demands of one particular class.

A ray of comfort has appeared at last in the first message sent to the electors of Paisley by Mr. Asquith, and published in The Times of the 23rd inst., as follows:

'Paisley Liberalism, which has never faltered or failed for 90 'years, is summoned to-day to the task of vindicating those great principles of freedom and justice for all classes for which Liberalism has ever stood.'

Sir West Ridgeway, in the letter which has led to mine, suggests the union of Free and Coalition Liberals as the best means of opposing the Labour Party. I am no professional politician, and since the rise of demagogy under Gladstone I have not been a member of any political party. Perhaps for that reason I may from a neutral point of view suggest a still wider union of all who are, in the eloquent language of Mr. Asquith, in favour of freedom and justice for all classes. A united party, which would consider the lawful rights of all owners over their real or personal property, over its uses and over its profits, and the rights of contract between all persons, including those between employers and employed, and the needs of all classes, might attract all Liberals and all Conservatives, who are now so much alike that they could easily sink their differ

ences at this crisis. Such a party, united by the conviction that the rights of man are free powers to have and to act for the general good of all against might and wrong, would make a powerful phalanx sitting opposite to the Labour Party in the House of Commons. January 26, 1920.

GOVERNMENT'S RELIEF PLANS

The Rt. Hon. J. R. Clynes, M.P. for North-east Manchester, was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1921-2.

FROM The Times, OCTOBER 26, 1921.

Ever since the accession of Mr. Lloyd George to the office of Prime Minister the trade unionists have aimed at two objects, among many others: the first, that it is the duty of the Government to see to it that the standard rates of wages in all trades should, relatively to the cost of living, be fully maintained; and the second, that it is the duty of the Government to adopt a policy of systematically preventing the occurrence of unemployment. The Government fell into the trap of this industrial State Socialism, and with its help the trade unionists have secured their first object; and its consequences are that they despise their employers, work as much or as little as they please, and have thus raised the cost of production and diminished the output, till at last they have brought about unemployment and lack of trade. As the Prime Minister himself said at Inverness, there are many who insist on better conditions than they had before the war, although the nation has only four-fifths of the output; and that means that some have to go short. The former are the employed, and the latter the unemployed.

Having obtained their first object, which they also call the standard of life, the trade unionists are now pursuing their second object, mentioned in the speech of Mr. Clynes in Parliament on October 19,

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

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