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 ' 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 he (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.

On the one hand, your Parliamentary Correspondent speaks of the promoters of the meeting on the 14th instant for the continuation of the Coalition as follows:

In the result they have discovered that the party is substantially united, but united in desiring the formulation of a 'Conservative policy as the policy of the Government which it supports. The Prime Minister is warned that this must be the ' price of continued Unionist support. Will he surrender?' On the other hand, your leading article on 'Lord Curzon's Reply' speaks of the Cabinet and its management by the Prime Minister as follows:

This miserable Cabinet squabble has revealed in all its nakedness the travesty of the Constitutional system which the present Prime Minister has developed under the conditions that have followed the war. Under that system Parliament ' has been reduced to a machine for the registration of Minis'terial decrees. . . . The collective responsibility of Ministers has vanished with the freedom and the control of the House ' of Commons. The Cabinet provides the Prime Minister ' with men of widely divergent opinions, from amongst whom ' he is able to select for any particular project a committee which he knows beforehand will recommend the policy he desires.'

If we compare the passage quoted from your Parliamentary Correspondent's report with the passage quoted from your leading article, we cannot but conclude that the question about the present Prime Minister is not merely, 'Will he surrender?' but far more, 'Is he trustworthy?' Can Mr. Lloyd George be trusted either in the Cabinet or in Parliament to carry out a Conservative policy, or indeed any policy but his own?

What is the policy of Mr. Lloyd George? He is at bottom a demagogue; and throughout his career the key to his policy has been the subordination of the superior to the inferior, which is a common property of all demagogues, but the very contrary of Conservatism. He has lately (see The Times of December 9, 1921) described himself to Lord Leverhulme as a Liberal Prime Minister, acting for no

party, but in the interests of the nation'. This is a flattering portrait of himself by himself; but how can a Liberal Prime Minister act for no party, and yet at the same time be the Prime Minister of the Conservative Party? An authoritative and noticeable statement has been proclaimed by the American Government, and quoted in your leading article of March 10. It is as follows:

'Production is conditioned upon the safety of life, the recog'nition by firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of 'contract, and the rights of free labour."

These inestimable blessings, descended for ages from the institutions of the Common Law, are among the very things which form the basis of Conservatism, and indeed of all good government. But they are also the very things which have suffered at the hands of Mr. Lloyd George throughout his career, and especially during his so-called reconstruction, which has gone far to destroy all of them, and with them, in consequence, the means of production. How, then, can such a destroyer be fitted to lead the Conservative Party, or indeed anything else but revolution?

In fact, this Liberal demagogue is not fitted to lead any party to the realization of the public good in the time of peace, because he is neither trustworthy nor steadfast. How, then, comes it that he is supposed to be indispensable? Partly because he has created a bureaucracy of lackeys, and partly because he has misled them into such a labyrinth of muddles that he alone can see his way into them without seeing how to get out of them.

This also is why one is constantly asked who could succeed him; but the answer is simple. Any good citizen who, in the language of Aristotle, the prince of political philosophers, has the ability and the purpose to rule and be ruled for the public good; who would set himself to clean the Augean stable