CHAPTER XXXVII

Session of 1895-Defeat of the Government-General Election-Free Trade and Protection

BEFORE Parliament met this Session I took a run to Pau, where I had an invalid sister. The weather was very cold. Deep snow lay most of the time in the South of France, and when we returned to England an astoundingly cold wave passed over the country. The thermometer went below zero in the Midlands. The Thames and Mersey were full of floating ice, and the sufferings of the unemployed people were intense. Great sickness and a heavy mortality occurred, and I was called to mourn the loss of my aged mother, who was called away at my house in Liverpool at the age of eighty-three-one of the most kind and unselfish of women, and the best of mothers. We laid her to rest in the family tomb at Borgue. The roads were still lined with deep banks of snow left by the unprecedented storm of February, which buried many houses in the South of Scotland, and made the roads impassable for several days. Even railway trains were snowed up, and the passengers almost starved and frozen with cold. It literally reproduced the terrific snowstorm described in The Raiders-the best book by Crockett. Had the funeral been a few days earlier we could scarcely have made our way to the rural churchyard. There stood by the grave as one of the chief mourners an old and faithful servant, John Sword, in his ninetieth year. He had been sixty-two years in the service of the family. For shrewdness, fidelity and Scotch humour he might have given Sir Walter Scott one of his finest portraits; he was like Eleazar, whom Abraham trusted with all he had—a type not too common nowadays. The Rev. George Elder, my mother's highly-esteemed and able minister, performed the service. In that tomb lie five of my ancestors and relatives, whose average age was eighty-eight!

I was at the opening of Parliament on February 5. On the

address the first amendment was only defeated by twelve. It soon became clear that the ministry could not hold office long, and so a sort of unreality was imparted to the legislation of the Session, the chief measure of which was the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, most ably conducted by Mr. Asquith. A useful Factory and Workshops Bill was passed, which brought small workshops under inspection.

In the spring of this year our excellent Speaker, Mr. Peel, resigned owing to failing health. He carried with him the deep respect of the whole House. Mr. Gully was appointed his successor, by a majority of eleven votes over Sir Matthew White Ridley. He also has worthily supported the great reputation of the Chair by a rare judicial faculty and a singular evenness of temper. Few posts are more difficult to fill than that of Speaker of the House of Commons, especially as the responsibility of putting motions of Closure now rests mainly with the Chair. There are times when firmness-even sternness are necessary, and it is impossible wholly to avoid friction; but it will be allowed that for many years our Parliament has set the example of choosing presiding officers singularly fitted for their high office.

Great anxiety was felt in England this year on account of the sufferings of the Armenian population in Asiatic Turkey. They had always been oppressed by the Turks. Yet by means of sti

pulations in the Treaty of Berlin, in which the Porte guaranteed their enjoyment of civil rights, and by the presence of British Consuls in the principal towns of Asia Minor, a tolerable degree of security had been attained. This country, under Lord Beaconsfield, had guaranteed to Turkey the possession of her Asiatic provinces on condition of her carrying out reforms for the benefit of her Christian subjects, and so we had a treaty right of interference in case of gross misgovernment. Some terrible cases of massacre occurred this year, and strong representations were made to the Porte, which were as usual met by illusory promises. Deep anxiety was felt by the nation, all the more as it soon became evident that no reliance could be placed on either Russia or Germany to back up the remonstrances of this country. It was not, however, till the following year that the awful horrors of the Armenian massacres burst upon Europe. It was most unfortunate that a change of Government occurred just at the time when strenuous and persistent pressure was needed at Constantinople. It weakened our influence and encouraged the Sultan in his diabolical policy.

Towards the end of June the Government sustained a trifling defeat on the question of the supply of cordite powder-a mere casual division on a vote in supply in a small House. Such defeats have never been treated as the equivalent of a vote of want of confidence; but Campbell-Bannerman, the Minister for War, resigned, and the Cabinet decided to follow his example. I suppose the truth was that they found it impossible to drive their team much longer. They had met with much difficulty in piloting the Welsh Disestablishment Bill through Committee. Their majorities had fallen almost to the vanishing point. The byeelections were going against them, and they thought it hopeless to pass further legislation, as their Bills were sure to be thrown out by the Lords. And thus the legislative harvest of the Session was lost, and we were plunged into an election in July.

When Lord Rosebery resigned Lord Salisbury formed an administration in which Lord Hartington (now the Duke of Devonshire) and Mr. Chamberlain took leading parts. The union between the two wings of the Party was now formally sealed, and an appeal was made to the country to support a Unionist administration. The result was astonishing. The Liberal Party went to pieces. Sir Wm. Harcourt lost his seat at Derby, but was soon after returned for West Monmouthshire: and a great number of prominent Liberals had similar misfortunes. If I remember rightly I was the only one of seven Liberals hailing from Liverpool who retained his seat, and by a reduction of 1,000 in my majority. Among these were my friends, Stephen Williamson, Caine, Billson, Crossfield, and Snape. Great Britain only returned 177 Liberals against 390 Unionists, and when the Irish Nationalists were added we were in a minority of 152. No such sweeping victory had been obtained by either side since the reformed Parliament which met in 1832! Even in Wales, the most Liberal part of the Kingdom, six seats were lost (all in South Wales). The whole aspect of Parliament has been entirely changed ever since. As there has often been great friction between the Liberals and the Nationalists, the real Unionist majority was much larger than these figures indicate, and it continues so to this day, but little affected by the election of 1900.

The real cause of the disaster was increasing distrust of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. So much was this felt that many of us dropped Home Rule out of our programme, and fought the election on other grounds. But added to this were two potent

causes the great liquor trade in all its branches was thoroughly frightened by Harcourt's adoption of the principle of local veto, and it used its enormous wealth and influence in a way that can only be described as unscrupulous. The leading temperance advocates were thereby driven out of Parliament, such men as Sir Wilfrid Lawson and W. S. Caine. But the great depression of trade had also much to do with the change. A strong movement sprang up in favour of what was called Fair Trade, or Reciprocity. I found in contesting my constituency a very strong feeling, especially among the farmers, in favour of a return to some form of protection. The distress was very great in all our industrial centres, and especially among the agricultural population. I never found so little enthusiasm among the Welsh people. Poverty and suffering had chilled their ardour, and they were open to the blandishments of flatterers who promised in a vague way some kind of protection for suffering industries.

I may take this opportunity of saying that I believe a great change has passed over this country on the question of Free Trade. It is no longer regarded as a panacea for all national evils. It was at one time elevated to a sort of fetish worship by men who did not comprehend its limitations. It was treated as an axiom of economical orthodoxy universally true, and any doubt was treated as heresy was by Torquemada. It is now acknowledged that it is only true with modifications, or rather, that though true as an abstract proposition, it needs to be applied with regard to the concrete phenomena of life. All nations except our own have gone in an opposite direction. The United States and our Colonies have flourished exceedingly under a contrary policy. None but ideologues would now accuse the American people, the shrewdest on earth, of being blind to their own interest. It is a matter of common knowledge that no nation since the world began has advanced with such rapidity in wealth and commerce as the United States in the past fifty years; yet it has increasingly adopted a protective policy. Our exports to that country are not more than they were fifty years ago, while we now import three or four times as much, and the balance of trade between us and the United States shows some 119 millions sterling a year in their favour!'

1 Our exports to the United States averaged from 1855 to 1859 nineteen millions sterling per annum : our total exports to that country in 1900 amounted to nineteen millions, eight hundred thousand sterling. The total imports from the United States

The real argument in favour of Free Trade for the United Kingdom is that we need cheap food and raw materials to enable us to be the cheapest producer. We must of necessity export largely of our manufactures to pay for the food of our dense population. We import half of our food from abroad, and a great part of the raw materials of our industries, and therefore we must have these elements of national life at the cheapest cost.'

Other nations that produce their own food and raw materials, like the United States and our Colonies, desire also to have manufacturing industries. They are willing to pay more for their goods for a term of years in order to draw to their shores the skilled labour and capital needed to produce them. By that policy hundreds of thousands of our artisans and hundreds of millions of our capital have been attracted to the United States and to our Colonies, which are now competing with us. These young countries consider that they are amply compensated for a period of higher prices by the great accession they get to their national resources; and they look forward to a time when protection will be no longer needed, and they can compete with the old countries of Europe on equal terms. Practically the United States has already reached that stage, and there is little doubt that if all protection were abolished the United States would run us hard in the field of open competition. They have developed their machinery quite beyond us, and have much more efficient labour, and their huge "trusts" and combinations have massed their vast trades together under the ablest management the world has ever seen. Their great steel trust has a capital of a billion dollars (200 millions sterling), and they have expended fabulous amounts to perfect every modern appliance, while we are still working with processes which are superseded in the United States. The one drawback to cheap production in the United States is that wages averaged from 1855 to 1859 thirty-three millions per annum ; in 1900 they amounted to the enormous sum of a hundred and thirty-three millions, eight hundred thousand sterling!-Financial Reform Almanack.

1 There is much to be said in favour of a moderate duty on manufactured goods imported into this country, especially articles of luxury like silks. By imposing such duties we would have something to bargain with in asking for lower duties on our goods by foreign nations. I see little objection to reciprocal free trade brought about n that way. It is certainly better than the one-sided free trade we now have. I also feel strongly the great advantage we have in our simple fiscal system as compared with the scheming and plotting and bribery by the protected interests in countries which reject our free-trade system. I say "Let well alone" unless a very strong case be made out to the contrary.

Yet