III. IV. v. The Lass of Windward Farm. By Halliwell Sutcliffe (To be con- 22 FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the U. S. or Canada. Postage to foreign countries in U. P. U. is 3 cents per copy or $1.56 per annum. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express, and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co. Single copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. THE FLOOD-AND AFTER. Mr. Herbert Paul's diluvial metaphor, to illustrate the General Election of 1906, is no whit extravagant. "The flood came and destroyed them all," or nearly all. Nor may one dispute his conclusion, that the calamity which has overtaken the Unionist party is largely owing to their own misdoing. He is entitled to exult, and the vanquished do not grudge him his pæan of victory, though the performance had been more musical if he could have refrained from punctuating his overture with personalities. The practice of exposing prisoners of war to jeers and insult has been discarded, with other methods of barbarism, by civilized nations. Metaphor, however, is almost proverbially dangerous as a substitute for argument, and Tariff Reformers may draw good augury from Mr. Paul's scriptural parallel, in which the part of Noah is assigned to Mr. Chamberlain. It is recorded that special provision was made for Noah's safety, because he "was a just man and perfect in his generations." Moreover, he lived to see the waters subside and the earth replenished. The morrow of a great disaster is a mournful affair, but it is not too early to take account of the cause of defeat, and to estimate the resources that remain for carrying on the campaign. The cause of defeat, not the causes, for we may write off the contributory agents which helped to turn the defeat into a rout-revenge for the Education Act, Chin-Chin-Chinaman, the triumph of pictorial mendacity, and even the pendulum, which may be noticed only to be dismissed as inevitable. As Mr. Balfour aptly said (at Leeds, was it?), one cannot reason with a pendulum. It is a constant factor in every General Election-hodie mihi, cras tibi. The last time that the pendulum had full swing, unaffected by exceptional factors such as the Home Rule alarum in 1886, and the war enthusiasm of 1900, was when the Conservatives went to the wall in 1880. The extent of the turnover in that election was as follows: Paul has received his answer in Mr. Balfour's letter to Mr. Chamberlain on St. Valentine's Day, wherein he has at last definitely proclaimed that "Fiscal Reform is, and must remain, the first constructive work of the Unionist party." Now we know where we stand; until these stirring words were published, it seemed as if the whole Unionist strategy was to be one of passive waiting until dissension should break out in the enemy's camp-a contingency neither improbable nor one to be neglected by a sagacious commander; but to have made it the sole aim and hope of a great historic party would be in the last degree demoralizing. Henry Campbell-Bannerman can afford to shed considerable segments of his following before running any risk of being placed in a minority. Besides, it is not very creditable to make waiting for a dead man's shoes one's sole occupation; unprofitable, moreover, while that man enjoys peculiarly robust health. Sir Albeit Mr. Herbert Paul conceives that Tariff Reform is a dead horse, he has devoted a considerable part of his article to flogging it. His arguments will appear less convincing to the dispassionate readers of a review than he may have found them before an excited gathering of Northampton electors. If what he has written is a fair sample in style and substance of what can be urged in favor of letting things alone, then may Tariff Reformers be of good courage, for such defences as these can never stand a siege. Mr. Paul seems conscious of their weakness, for he has recourse to misrepresenting the policy of his opponents, and traducing their motives. He dismisses the elections for the City of London and Birmingham as devoid of all bearing upon the main issue before the electors; yet it was not very long ago that the Liberal host was proud to count these great business communi ties as their advanced guard. Mr. Paul protests that the good sense of the City was "swamped by a crowd of stockbrokers"-a pretty considerable crowd to account for a majority of 15,000! Were there no stockbrokers forty years ago, when the City returned four Liberal members, as it had done continuously since the Reform Act of 1832? The phalanx of London Liberalism was first broken in 1868 by the election of Mr. Bell for the City, Mr. W. H. Smith for Westminster, and Lord George Hamilton for Middlesexheralds of the Conservative reaction in 1874. As for Birmingham, it is almost ludicrous to account for the emphatic verdict of a great business community as a mere personal compliment to Mr. Chamberlain. Trust the people! is the Liberal shibboleth; but when the people, or any important section of them, give a deliberate reply unpalatable to Liberalism-go to! They are either a pack of "greedy speculators," as Mr. Paul terms the City electors, or a set of puppets under control of a clever fellow-townsman. It is one of the features peculiar to the fiscal controversy that the opponents of reform seem unable to credit its advocates with honesty of conviction in the expediency of strengthening the sentimental bond of empire by the tie of common interest. Mr. Herbert Paul, at all events, can discern no motive in the policy of Tariff Reform except a selfish one. His generalization is simple, if somewhat crude. "To greedy speculators and to needy landlords Protection is undoubtedly attractive." Now I never have speculated, but I confess to being a landlord depending entirely on agricultural rents. I have been elected to Parliament seven consecutive times as a Fair Trader and Tariff Reformer; but never, in my most sanguine moments, have I deluded myself into the expectation that fiscal reform could be of the slightest direct benefit to agriculture, and, through agriculture, to my pocket. Does it seem incredible to Mr. Paul that there are men capable of strenuously advocating a policy in the interest of industries in which they have no pecuniary concern whatever? Let me give an example of the sort of thing that inclines one to despair of the future of this country if the policy of laissez-faire is persisted in much longer, having first disarmed Mr. Paul's suspicion of my motives as a landowner, by explaining that I am neither a quarry-owner, nor have I so much as half a crown invested in any quarry. Neither do I own a single acre of land within forty miles of the town of Dalbeattie. This pretty little place of 3500 inhabitants was, until a year ago, exceedingly prosperous, built entirely of granite raised from quarries around it, and containing shops dependent almost exclusively for custom upon the local granite industry. Two years ago, eleven of these quarries were in full work; at the present moment all but one of them are closed, and that one is employing exactly one-fourth of the number of hands that were at work in it twelve months ago. The industry has been killed by free imports of manufactured granite from Norway. It is no case of bad trade. There is plenty of demand for good granite. At the present time there is a large building being erected in Manchester. The lowest British tender for the granite required came from Dalbeattie, between 30001. and 40007. The order went to Norway for about 20 per cent. less. So with the great bridge which is being built in Newcastle; the lowest British tender for the granite was from Aberdeen, but it was underbid from Norway. The Aberdeen quarries would be in as bad a plight as those of Dalbeattie at the present moment but for protection of a peculiar and, as Tariff Reformers believe, an undesirable kind. The London County Council having invited tenders for the supply of granite setts under a contract to run for several years, received the lowest tender from Norway; but the Labor members of the Council managed to secure the contract, on dearer terms, for Aberdeen. Similar influence was brought to bear recently upon the Glasgow Corporation, whereby a valuable contract was given to the Bonaw quarries, which remain at work in consequence. No such interference with economic principle has served the turn of the Cornish granite quarries, which have been closed and the men discharged; the principal lessee of quarries in that county having protected himself by transferring his plant and machinery to Norway. The reason why Norway is able to underbid Scotland and Cornwall in the price of manufactured granite is that the Norwegian quarry-men work longer hours than our men, and at a less wage -3 kröner (38. 24d.) a day instead of 48. 6d. It is contrary to theory, but none the less true, that living in protectionist Norway is considerably cheaper than in Free-Trade Britain. Rather than work for a starvation wage, our people up with their tools and go to America. I was informed by a gentleman connected with the granite trade that he recently visited all the principal quarries in the United States, and that he found Dalbeattie men working in every one of them. Thoughtful people are feeling honest and growing concern about rural depopulation. Can nothing be done to check it? In the case of Dalbeattie, a moderate tariff on manufactured granite would have kept an industrious community at work in rural environment at a healthy and well-paid occupation. Instead of which, most of the men have gone elsewhere to seek employment or to figure as unemployed. Those who remain are idling about the |