DA 
 566.7 
 
 W22.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 LETTERS 
 TO MY NEIGHBOURS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PRESENT ELECTION 
 
 By 
 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE, S.W 
 
 1910 
 
 Price Two Pence.
 
 DA 
 
 .7 
 
 a 
 
 LETTER No. 1 
 
 WHY THIS ELECTION? 
 
 STOCKS, TBINO : November 1010. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, It is not yet twelve 
 months since in connection with the General Election 
 of January 1910 I ventured to write you the little 
 series of letters on the questions before the electors 
 which have been since widely read, not only in the 
 
 fituency for which they were originally intended, 
 but if I may say so all over England. And now 
 here we are on the brink of another election within 
 twelve months ! and so many requests have come 
 to me that I should re-write and re-issue the Letters 
 that, short as the time is, I am trying to do it. I 
 am not a hot political partisan, and shall not attempt 
 to rival political speakers and newspapers in violence 
 of language. But I am a Unionist, and you will 
 find that my letters, if you care to read them, take 
 as before the Unionist view. It is in my belief the 
 view that those who love their country ought to take 
 at the coming election. 
 
 Why are we plunged into this new election ? 
 at a time so inconvenient to that trading and shop- 
 keeping class which, already, owing to the national 
 
 A 
 
 403234
 
 mourning for Edward VII., has suffered so severely 
 during the past year ? Let us look a little into what 
 has happened. I will put it simply, for simple people, 
 who are not professional politicians, people who are 
 doing the hard work of England in a thousand ways 
 and have not always time to straighten out for them- 
 selves the tangle of events. A year ago the House of 
 Lords by refusing to pass Mr. Lloyd George's Budget 
 till the country had expressed its opinion upon it 
 brought about a general election. That no one 
 denies. The House of Lords, which, as a rule, never 
 thinks of interfering with the Budget, felt that this 
 Budget was such a strange and novel one that it 
 included so m#ny things which had never been 
 mixed up with a Budget before that the country 
 ought to be asked to say whether it really desired such 
 a Budget or no. So the country was asked amid a 
 storm of abuse of the House of Lords, such as none of 
 us can ever remember, but which seems likely to be 
 outdone to judge from the scandalous things one 
 sees now in some of the Liberal newspapers by the 
 abuse with which we are threatened in the coming 
 election. 
 
 Well ! in spite of all the abuse, the shouting and 
 the violence, in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 a man specially bound by his position to just and 
 moderate statement, led the way what happened in 
 the election ? 
 
 In the first place the Government lost 105 seats. 
 England the predominant partner in this great firm
 
 of the United Kingdom England, which gave the 
 Liberals a great majority in 1906, gave a majority of 14 
 for the Lords and against the Budget. All the country 
 districts in England, with some exceptions in the 
 North and West, those districts which actually know 
 the peers, their general character as landlords, 
 and their work on the different bodies that carry 
 on the local business of the country the whole of 
 Hertfordshire, the whole of Sussex, the whole of Kent 
 and Surrey, the majority of the counties everywhere 
 gave a verdict for the Lords. In England alone, the 
 .Unionists defending the Lords, and attacking the 
 Budget had, I repeat, a majority of 14. 
 
 This was the work mainly of the counties, of those 
 parts of England, as I have said, which know the 
 peers and the great landlords in everyday life, and by 
 personal contact, while the towns only know them 
 by hearsay, and are too often at the mercy of 
 the silly and violent things that Radical speakers 
 and writers choose to say about them for party 
 purposes. 
 
 Meanwhile many of the large towns in the North 
 were carried away by cries of dear food, and the most 
 passionate appeals to prejudice and hatred against the 
 Lords ; Lancashire was told that her great cotton 
 industry would suffer from Tariff Reform ; Scotland 
 went for the Government, and Wales for Mr. Lloyd 
 George, whose speeches suited the excitable Welsh 
 character, while they told heavily against the Liberals 
 with moderate men all over the country. 
 
 '- - ' - - Al
 
 But there was the main fact staring the Govern- 
 ment in the face. In spite of all the wild talk of 
 trampling on the Lords, of having * got them like rats 
 in a trap,' and so on, Mr. Asquith had shed 105 seats 
 in the contest, and nobody who was present at the 
 opening of Parliament will ever forget the depression 
 of the Government, or the difficulty of the situation. 
 
 For in addition to the loss of seats what 
 had happened ? Mr. Redmond and his 72 Nation- 
 alists were masters of the House of Commons. The 
 Liberals had come back 275 in number, the Unionists 
 were 273. Forty Labour members, the great majority 
 bound by a Socialist pledge, and the Irishmen, held 
 the balance. 
 
 On one subject only the Government had a 
 majority. Liberals, Labour men, and Irishmen were 
 all pledged to attack the Lords. 
 
 But there was in fact no majority for the Budget, / 
 on which the Liberals had fought the election. 
 
 For the election had worked out as follows : The 
 Lords had referred the Budget to the country, and 
 the country had replied by sending back 275 Liberals 
 with 40 Labour members all Budget men ; and 273 
 Unionists, with 82 Irishmen. But the 82 Irishmen 
 were by no means Budget men. Mr. Lloyd George's 
 new land and licensing taxes were extremely un- 
 popular in Ireland., Mr. O'Brien denounced them ; 
 in the words of the Chancellor himself, * Mr. Redmond 
 was a stern and implacable critic of the Budget ; ' 
 and if the Irish members had voted according to
 
 the views of their constituents, they would have 
 helped the Unionists to throw out the Budget. 
 
 But Mr. Redmond saw in the Budget the means 
 of squeezing the Liberals on Home Rule, and of 
 making their quarrel with the House of Lords we 
 will talk about that quarrel presently serve his own 
 ends, and give the Nationalists what they wanted. 
 
 So that this is practically what he said to the 
 Liberals : * On one condition only will we let you 
 pass your Budget that you take the quarrel with the 
 Lords first. You must cripple the Lords you must 
 force the King to cripple the Lords if you cannot 
 do it yourselves so that we may get Home Rule. 
 Then you shall have your Budget. Ireland hates it, 
 but when we get a Parliament of our own we shall 
 soon do away with the land and whisky taxes. To 
 get that Parliament the House of Lords must be 
 broken ; because the House of Lords will never give 
 it to us without insisting on a special appeal to the 
 nation. It made such an appeal to the nation in 1893, 
 and the nation gave it against us. We will not face 
 another appeal of the same sort. There must be no 
 chance of it. Therefore the Lords must be swept 
 away. What do they or the English Constitution 
 matter to us ? And if you will not force the Crown 
 to help you in doing this, we will turn you out, and 
 your precious Budget too.' 
 
 This, put in plain English, is what the Irishmen 
 said, backed by the more extreme elements in the 
 Liberal ranks. Step by. step Mr. Asquith was driven
 
 6 
 
 into the policy dictated to him by Mr. Redmond. 
 The Budget was hung up for Mr. Redmond would 
 not allow it to pass till his plan had been followed ; 
 and what are called the Veto Resolutions were 
 hurriedly brought in, destroying the ancient powers 
 of the House of Lords powers which have been 
 created by Englishmen themselves through the 
 course of centuries in order that on the one side the 
 Irishmen might get, by a Parliamentary bargain, 
 what England in the interest of the whole United 
 Kingdom had twice refused them ; and that, on the 
 other, the Liberals might get a sham majority for 
 their Budget a majority that did not really answer 
 to men's convictions and consciences and so be able 
 to assert a victory over the House of Lords. 
 
 In this way the Veto Resolutions were passed by 
 the House of Commons, after a gallant Unionist 
 fight. Then a Bill based upon them was brought in 
 and read a first time. After which, the Irishmen 
 kindly allowed the Budget to pass the House of 
 Commons ; and the Lords quietly accepted it, true 
 to their claim that, while they have the power to 
 ask the electors specially to decide a question, they 
 have no power to resist the decision when it has been 
 made, however it may have been arrived at. But, 
 in debate, Lord Lansdowne was of course free to point 
 out, and did point out, that not only had the Govern- 
 ment lost heavily in the election, but that, so far 
 from the country as a whole having endorsed Mr. 
 Lloyd George's finance, if the House of Commons
 
 had been free to deal with it on its merits in a straight- 
 forward way, Mr. Lloyd George could not have 
 carried his Budget at all through the Commons. 
 
 But the Budget was carried, and the price had to 
 be paid. The House of Commons rose for the Easter 
 holidays the country was full of bitterness and 
 passion and moderate men of all sides looked 
 forward with dread to what would happen when the 
 Commons met again. 
 
 Then on May the 1th the King died. 
 
 Instantly there was a great change in people's 
 minds. It was felt that not only had a wise and 
 sensible man been taken suddenly from us, who by 
 his great position and his wide experience was 
 specially qualified to act as an arbiter between the 
 two English parties, but that it was impossible to 
 disturb the national mourning, and make the first 
 year of the new King miserable, by going on with the 
 quarrel between Liberals and Unionists as though 
 nothing had happened. 
 
 A great opportunity had arisen. Everybody 
 agreed that something must be done to settle the 
 dispute ; and after the King's funeral Mr. Asquith 
 announced that a Conference had been arranged 
 between four members of the Unionist party and 
 four members of the Liberal party. 
 On the Liberal side : 
 Mr. ASQUITH. 
 Mr. LLOYD GEORGE. 
 LORD CREWE. 
 Mr. BIRRELL.
 
 On the Conservative side : 
 
 Mr. BALFOUB. 
 Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN. 
 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 LORD CAWDOR. 
 
 So in June the Conference began to work, and the 
 nation allowed itself to hope that the great dispute 
 would be settled, without another election, and 
 without increasing the party bitterness which was 
 already so great. 
 
 And in all probability it might have been so 
 settled but for the Irish party. As we all know, the 
 Conference has broken down, and the quarrel has 
 burst out again. Why ? and what is the quarrel ? 
 To tackle that we shall want another Letter. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A, WABD.
 
 LETTEB No. 2 
 
 PEERS AND PEOPLE 
 
 STOCKS, THING : November 1910. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, At the end of my 
 last letter we had come to ask what are the real causes 
 of the quarrel between Liberals and Unionists about 
 the House of Lords. It is quite true that the Liberals 
 have a grievance with regard to the House of Lords ; 
 and, so far as I know, Unionist speakers and candi- 
 dates fully admitted it at the last election, and have 
 constantly admitted it since. 
 
 I have talked of a grievance with regard to the 
 House of Lords, and not of a grievance against the 
 House of Lords, for I think the present House at any 
 rate is very little responsible for it. 
 
 The House of Lords, in the first place, is too 
 big. But whose fault is that ? Since 1832, 
 240 peers have been made by Liberal Prime 
 Ministers, more than forty of them by 
 this Radical Government, since 1906. And, 
 unfortunately, the majority of these peers, or their 
 sons, are now to be found on the Conservative side of 
 the House. Instead of adding to the Liberal strength 
 they have added to the Conservative strength, and 
 
 A3
 
 have become, one may almost say, an embarrassment 
 to the Conservatives themselves. 
 
 How does the change come about ? Partly, I 
 think, because the new peers thus added to the House 
 officials, administrators, rich men of business are 
 generally elderly men, and such men, who have led a 
 very busy and strenuous life, tend to grow more con- 
 servative as they grow older. Change no longer seems 
 to them so easy, or so sure to be good, as it did in 
 their youth when they became Liberals, or grew up 
 in a Liberal home. Some of them also, old members 
 of the House of Commons, when they are removed 
 from the hot party spirit of that House, begin to look 
 at things differently, and to see both sides as they 
 never saw them before. 
 
 Then the Home Rule split of 1886 threw a number 
 of Liberal peers on to the Unionist side, and that loss 
 has never been made good by the Liberals. The 
 country, as we all know, supported the Unionist 
 lords ; but, all the same, the results of that split left 
 the Liberals in the House of Lords in a minority too 
 small for Liberal purposes, and too small for the 
 good of the country. 
 
 In these two ways the secession of Liberal peers 
 on the Home Rule question and the tendency of 
 Liberal peers, men representing often great financial 
 or banking or business interests, of which they feel 
 themselves the guardians, to become Conservative 
 in later life, and to hand on Conservatism to their 
 sons the House of Lords has become and the
 
 11 
 
 peers are the first to admit it too Conservative. 
 It is not for want, I repeat, of making Liberal peers. 
 The Liberals have made 240 peers in the last eighty 
 years ; the Conservatives 183. But even a fine old 
 Radical like Lord Courtney, as we have seen this 
 week, or a life-long Liberal like Lord Weardale Mr. 
 Philip Stanhope that was when they get into the 
 House of Lords turn round upon their leaders and 
 protest against the bitterness and violence of party 
 action. Why ? Because in the House of Lords a 
 Liberal, without ceasing to be a Liberal in deed and 
 truth, is yet removed from party pressure, and is so 
 able to look at things first as an Englishman, and to 
 judge for the good of the country. 
 
 However, there is the grievance. We admit it. 
 The House of Lords used to be much more evenly 
 divided between the two great parties, and it is time 
 that Parliament and the country should see to it that 
 it is so divided again. 
 
 But do not let us exaggerate. For the thing has 
 been absurdly exaggerated by the Liberals. When a 
 Liberal minister like Lord Carrington goes into the 
 country to glorify the Liberal Government, he points 
 to the magnificent things that he and his colleagues 
 have been able to do, to the reforms they have carried, 
 and the fine crop of Bills they have passed into law. 
 How many Acts do you think the Liberals have passed 
 with the co-operation and help often the very valu- 
 able help of the House of Lords, since the Liberals 
 came into power ? Two hundred and thirty-two ! 
 
 A4
 
 And how many have they rejected ? Six. The 
 * smashing ' that the Liberals talk of seems to have 
 allowed a good many Liberal chicks to come unhurt 
 out of the Liberal eggs ! 
 
 But when, on the other hand, Lord Carrington 
 wants to attack the House of Lords, and make out a 
 case against them of persecuting the poor Liberal 
 Government, and standing in the way of all reform, 
 what does he do ? He says nothing about the two 
 hundred and thirty-two, but he points to the handful 
 of Bills which, as he says, they have * murdered and 
 mutilated,' and raises a cry of wrath and lamenta- 
 tion. ' Look,' he says, * at the Education Act of 
 1906 ! the Licensing Bill of 1908, the Plural 
 Voting Bill, and, last and most abominable, the 
 Budget of 1909 ! ' 
 
 Well, let us look at them. In the first place, let us 
 ask ourselves what is the good of a Second Chamber 
 at all, if they are not to have the power to revise and 
 amend Bills ? Either they have the power, or they 
 haven't. If they haven't, why have a Second Chamber 
 at all ? It is a mere cumbrous ornament to the Con- 
 stitution, and the Socialists are quite right in wanting 
 to do away with it. But if they possess the right and 
 the power and a Second Chamber that did not possess 
 it would be an absurdity is it never to be exercised 
 on Liberal Bills ? 
 
 It is no answer, I think, to say that the power of 
 the present House is never exercised on Conservative 
 Bills. That may be a very good argument for change
 
 and reform in the House of Lords, BO as to make it a 
 more impartial revising Chamber. I think it is a 
 good argument. But it does not in the least settle 
 the question whether the actual treatment of Liberal 
 Bills by the House of Lords has been reasonable or 
 not. And one may ask in passing is it not natural 
 to expect that the progressive party in a State, which 
 contains or carries with it the revolutionary elements 
 in the State I am not using the word revolutionary 
 in a bad sense will come more frequently into con- 
 tact with a revising Chamber, than the Conservative 
 and traditional party, which stands on the old 
 ways ? Is not this what you would look for to begin 
 with? 
 
 If, on the other hand, you insist that your Second 
 Chamber is to have no real revising power, you offer 
 in fact an insult to all the best men that it contains. 
 The English House of Lords, apart from those 
 weaker elements in it about which dispute may 
 arise precisely the elements which the present 
 Government proposes to keep ! numbers anffcng its 
 members, by the admission of everybody, a large 
 body of men of expert knowledge on different sub- 
 jects. You call them a revising Chamber, and the 
 English constitution gives them revising powers. If 
 you claim that these powers are not to be exercised 
 that, at least, all important Liberal bills on hotly dis- 
 puted matters must always escape them you make 
 the whole thing a farce and a pretence. How many 
 men of weight and knowledge are you going to get 
 to sit in your House of Lords on these terms ?
 
 14 
 
 At the same time, let me remind you that, in a 
 democracy, any revising Chamber exercising its 
 powers against the popular will, does so at its own 
 peril. 
 
 Has the House of Lords exercised its powers 
 against the popular will ? I don't propose to go 
 into matters that are as much ancient history as the 
 treatment of Wilkes by the eighteenth century House 
 of Commons. But take the famous case of the Home 
 Rule Bill. Take Mr. Haldane's admission long ago 
 that whenever the will of the country had been 
 clearly declared, the House of Lords had never proved 
 more than a temporary obstacle to a Liberal Govern- 
 ment. And take the Bills themselves about which 
 this present Government are raising such a clamour. 
 Take the Education Bill. What did the difficulty in 
 the case of the Education Bill really arise from ? 
 Not in the least from the obstinacy of the Lords. It 
 arose simply because the situation in the country 
 itself, as between the Church, the Catholics and the 
 Dissenters, was and is so difficult. Mr. Balfour's 
 Act of 1902 may not be a heaven-sent measure ; I 
 have myself always wished for its reform in important 
 respects ; but the efforts made since by earnest and 
 able men of all parties to improve and alter it, and the 
 failure of those efforts, show how thorny the matter 
 is. The Education Bill of 1906, indeed, was all but 
 carried ; and the final difficulty came from the fighting 
 Nonconformists, who would not ratify the terms which 
 the Liberal Government was ready to take. That is 
 the whole history of the failure of the Education Bill
 
 of 1906. The three great interests of the Church, the 
 Catholics, and the Nonconformists had very nearly 
 been brought to an agreement, in the informal con- 
 ference held between Lords and Commons, and at the 
 last moment the Nonconformists held out. To blame 
 the House of Lords for such a failure is absurd. 
 All that they did was in fact to say to the Govern- 
 ment this plan clearly will not work ; you must try 
 another. 
 
 And did the country show any anger with the 
 House of Lords ? Not at all ! The country either 
 was quite indifferent, as a whole, to the points raised, 
 or the intelligent man, following the situation, appre- 
 ciated its difficulties. There was no popular agitation, 
 no feeling against the Lords ; the by-elections indeed 
 supported them ; and the Government did try again. 
 It tried again, not only once, but three times. And 
 still it found it impossible to conciliate the different 
 interests involved. And in this case their Bills broke 
 down before even reaching the House of Lords ; show- 
 ing plainly that it was no mere perversity on the part 
 of the House of Lords that brought about the failure 
 of the Education Bill of 1906. I hope that some day 
 soon we may see a really broad and fair-minded settle- 
 ment of the Education question ; but just as in the 
 case of the House of Lords itself, it can never be done 
 by one party coercing and browbeating every other. 
 It will be a settlement by consent. 
 
 As to the Licensing Bill, I am no authority on 
 Licensing reform, and I will not attempt to argue the 
 Bill itself. But clearly the objection taken by the
 
 16 
 
 House of Lords was that the Bill amounted to an 
 unjust and penal treatment of a body of tradesmen 
 who were not only publicans but had also the mis- 
 fortune to be the political enemies of the Govern- 
 ment in pov/er. They pointed out that while the 
 publicans, who are generally Conservative, were so 
 drastically dealt with, the clubs with drinking 
 licences, which are generally Liberal, were not 
 touched ; and they argued that to gradually reform 
 and transform the public-houses was a more hopeful 
 temperance policy than the policy of the Govern- 
 ment. They took their stand on the injustice of the 
 Bill towards a body of men carrying on a trade per- 
 mitted by the laws of the country ; and they threw 
 it out. Their arguments may have been right or 
 wrong. But did the country resent their action ? 
 Was it a question of 600 peers against 45 millions ? 
 On the contrary. We all know that the country sup- 
 ported the Lords. While the Bill was actually before 
 the House the Government lost an important by- 
 election. The Bill was avowedly an unpopular 
 Bill ; and the controversy dropped for a time, to 
 be revived in the following year by the licensing 
 clauses in the Budget. 
 
 But, says Mr. Winston Churchill, think of the 
 Plural Voting Bill ! think of the Scottish Land Bill ! 
 and finally think of the Budget ! 
 
 The case of the Plural Voting Bill is quite simple. 
 The Lords said, * Present it to us as a part of a general 
 scheme of franchise reform, and we have no objection 
 at all. But there must be reform all round. Ireland
 
 17 
 
 is absurdly over-represented ; the vote of an Irish- 
 man has a much higher electoral value than the vote 
 of an Englishman. In many cases it takes 20,000 
 to 30,000 Englishmen to return one member, while 
 1,500 Irishmen are enough for the purpose. Plural 
 voting may be an anomaly ; so is the present dis- 
 tribution of the constituencies. The Liberals get 
 party profit out of one anomaly, the Conservatives 
 out of another. We ask that they should be redressed 
 both together, without party advantage to either side.' 
 
 But, as you all know, if this had been done there 
 would be now thirty fewer supporters of a Radical 
 Government ! 
 
 Again, when the Bill was thrown out, where was 
 popular indignation ? All through, while these dif- 
 ferent Bills were pending, by-elections went against 
 the Government. It was perfectly plain that the 
 Lords had not misinterpreted the country. 
 
 Well, then, last of all came the Budget. I have 
 already given you the history of the rejection of the 
 Budget. But we have not said anything very much of 
 the reasons for that rejection. Look into them a little. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George, in the furious speeches which 
 every day he flings out in our midst for the troubling 
 of the waters of politics, repeats again and again 
 with a vocabulary of abuse it would be odious and 
 time-wasting to quote that the Lords, at the bidding 
 of the Unionists, threw it out, because they were 
 landlords and rich men, and because the landlords 
 and the idle rich were determined, according to him, 
 
 A 5
 
 18 
 
 not to pay their fair share of the taxation of the 
 country. Now, as I pointed out in my Letters last 
 January, nothing of the kind is really true. All the 
 taxes that have actually brought in the money which 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now boasting of, 
 the higher income tax, the super-tax, the motor tax, 
 and so on, were not opposed by the Unionists 
 in the Lower House, and had nothing to do with the 
 rejection of the Bill by the Lords. The Lords would 
 never have referred that Budget to the country had 
 it merely asked the rich all round, the rich of all 
 sorts and kinds, to pay according to their wealth. 
 The Unionists fully accept the great principle of 
 modern taxation that the rich should pay more 
 heavily more in proportion than the poor man. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George boasts of the twenty millions 
 that he has obtained, and that the House of Commons, 
 Liberal and Tory alike, assisted him to obtain, for 
 Old Age Pensions. It is easy to vote, but it may 
 perhaps be remembered that the people who have 
 paid the twenty millions, and without any demur, are 
 the richer classes of the country, against whom the 
 Chancellor is never tired of declaiming. 
 
 But the Lords objected to the new land taxes, as 
 singling out a particular kind of property for special 
 and, as they thought, unjust treatment. They said 
 this new taxation would increase unemployment 
 that it would hamper the building trade and that 
 the enormous cost of valuing all the land of England 
 would outweigh any benefit to be derived from it. 
 It is too early yet to say whether these contentions
 
 19 
 
 of the Lords were true. There are many observers 
 who are inclined to think that events are already 
 tending to prove them true in spite of the angry 
 denials of Mr. Lloyd George. At any rate, the 
 country districts of England the districts that have 
 since been flooded by Form IV. by their vote last 
 January supported the Lords. 
 
 The real explanation of the Lords' conduct, how- 
 ever, lies much deeper. The fact was that we had 
 come to a great parting of the ways. By-elections had 
 shown the progress of Tariff Reform in the country ; 
 and the rejection of the Budget may be taken, I 
 think, as an excellent instance of an English Referendum. 
 
 * Will you have this measure ? ' the Lords said 
 * Will you have this type of finance, or will you 
 have quite another type ? The country appears, to 
 judge from the by-elections, to be wavering between 
 Tariff Reform and Mr. Lloyd George. This Budget 
 is unconstitutional in form and enormously impor- 
 tant in substance. It is two or three Bills rolled into 
 one and we think the people should decide whether 
 they want this or whether they want another kind 
 of finance altogether, which is now being offered 
 them.' So in the exercise of a constitutional right 
 that Mr. Gladstone at least never disputed they 
 referred it to the country. 
 
 The real truth about the rejection of the Budget 
 is, I am convinced, what I say, it was a Referendum. 
 The Lords directly consulted the people on a single 
 and vitally important issue.
 
 20 
 
 Unfortunately the passion raised by the constitu- 
 tional quarrel obscured the issue very largely. The 
 Government was able, especially in Scotland, the 
 north of England, and in Wales, to stir up a tempest 
 of Radical and Socialist anger against the Lords, 
 which, together with the scandalous statements about 
 the food of protected countries the black bread and 
 horseflesh bogey carried the election. Back in a 
 passion came the Government, shorn of much of their 
 strength indeed, but determined to avenge themselves 
 on the Lords. And for that purpose, and owing to 
 the Irish Nationalist demand, they had a majority ; 
 though they had none for the Budget. 
 
 And now after the truce of the Conference has come 
 to an end, after the Conference has apparently 
 broken down, the torrent of political fury simulated 
 fury, some of it has burst forth again, and the 
 Government, rejecting all the overtures for peace and 
 conciliation made by the Lords, have forced a dissolu- 
 tion on King and people, amid every sign of public 
 inconvenience and annoyance. 
 
 FAy? 
 
 Let us examine in another letter the proposals now 
 before the country. I say * now.' For, in the few 
 days that have elapsed since Mr. Asquith announced 
 the dissolution, the remarkable debates in the House 
 of Lords have changed the whole aspect of affairs. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A. WARD.
 
 LBTTEE No. 3 
 
 REFORM OR REVOLUTION? 
 
 STOCKS, THING : November 1910. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, I closed my last 
 letter with the remark that the proceedings in the 
 House of Lords during the last week of the Session 
 have changed the whole aspect of affairs. It is not 
 too much to say that the scheme of Reform put 
 forward by the House of Lords has transferred the 
 advantages of attack from the Liberals to the Con- 
 servatives. Instead of the Lords against the wall, 
 facing the firing party of the Government, we now 
 see the Government placed on their defence by the 
 Lords' action. And the instant result may, I think, 
 be seen in the tone of Liberal speeches since the 
 Lords' scheme became known an evident abatement 
 of violence an evident and very welcome attempt to 
 exchange mere abuse for argument. Mr. Winston 
 Churchill, indeed, calls the Lords' Resolutions * vague 
 panic-stricken trash.' Allowances, however, have 
 to be made for the annoyance and surprise of Mr. 
 Churchill the enfant terrible of politics who rushed 
 into print with a Manifesto before the Lords had
 
 22 
 
 even met, wailing to high heaven that all the great 
 schemes, all the magnificent abilities of the Liberals 
 were of no avail, because of the Veto * the blank 
 sullen Veto ' which, like Milton's * two-handed engine 
 
 at the door,' 
 
 i 
 
 ' Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.' 
 
 Unfortunately while these foolish heroics were 
 being written, the Lords, amid the indecent hurry of 
 the dissolution, were quietly elaborating their own 
 plan of reform, quietly explaining them to the public 
 in a debate of great ability and interest, till on 
 Thursday, November 24, they finally added to the 
 Resolutions which Lord Rosebery introduced last 
 Spring, another set of Resolutions of equal importance, 
 which, with the first set, present a complete alter- 
 native to the scheme of the Government. 
 
 And the magnificent meeting at Glasgow which, on 
 the night after the passing of these Resolutions, Lord 
 Lansdowne and Mr. Austen Chamberlain addressed 
 a crowded meeting of the business men and artisans 
 of the city showed, as we Unionists hope, that the 
 * reform ' which the Conservatives propose, as against 
 the ' revolution ' that the Liberals propose, will not 
 appeal in vain to English electors. Let anyone read 
 the speech of Lord Lansdowne moderate, reasonable, 
 good-tempered, weighty and then turn to the vulgar 
 gibes and mendacities of Mr. Lloyd George, or the 
 scolding extravagance of Mr. Winston Churchill 
 and ask themselves what must be the degeneracy of
 
 23 
 
 Englishmen if they let themselves be guided by these 
 two Cleons of the Liberal party, rather than by the 
 broad-minded good sense that speaks through the 
 proposals of the Unionist peers ! 
 
 First of all, however, let us look at the Government 
 proposals. 
 
 1. It is intended that there shall be no change in the 
 existing House of Lords. There is, of course, a general 
 reference to reform in the Preamble of the Parliament 
 Bill, and the Liberal leaders talk vaguely of reform 
 in some unspecified future. But it is perfectly 
 understood that an attempt to carry it out would 
 break up the Liberal party, who do not want to 
 strengthen the House of Lords by reforming it ; and 
 there is no mention whatever of any reform of the 
 Lords in the Bill itself. 
 
 Now what is the meaning of this ? Simply that 
 the Liberals may keep what I may call a profitable 
 target in the House of Lords something to attack 
 something to abuse while they deprive it by the 
 Parliament Bill of any real constitutional power. 
 The Lords are to be treated like trapped pigeons 
 given just enough flight and no more as will 
 make sport for Mr. Lloyd George. Is this an unfair 
 comment on the action of the Government ? I think 
 if you will look back on many of the Liberal speeches 
 of the past year, if you look now at the spirit in which 
 Radical speakers and the Radical press are receiving 
 the Lords' Resolutions, you will agree with me that it 
 is, unfortunately, a perfectly fair one. It does not,
 
 24 
 
 of course, apply to some of the best men on the 
 Liberal side ; it does not apply to such a man as 
 Sir Edward Grey ; but it does apply to a large 
 section of the Government, and of the men behind 
 them. 
 
 2. If any Bill, other than a Money Bill, 
 is passed by the Commons three times in 
 three sessions, and the House of Lords 
 rejects it, or what is the same thing- 
 stands by its amendments against the will 
 of the Commons, the Bill is to become law 
 without further ado, be presented to the 
 King, and receive the Royal assent. 
 
 3. If a Money Bill passed by the House 
 of Commons is not passed by the House of 
 Lords, without amendments, within one 
 month, it shall become an Act of Parlia- 
 ment on the Royal Assent being signified. 
 
 4. The Speaker of the House of Commons 
 shall decide, without appeal, what is or is 
 not a Money Bill. 
 
 5. Parliament shall be shortened from 
 seven to five years. 
 
 Now let us observe, in the first place, that these 
 proposals give the Lords power to delay all Liberal 
 measures, except Money Bills, for two years ; and 
 they practically invite a House of Lords, justly 
 indignant at the treatment meted out to them, to 
 meddle with the legislation of the Commons infinitely 
 more than they have ever done yet. But in the case
 
 '25 
 
 of important measures carried by whatever scratch 
 majority in the House of Commons constitutional 
 changes of the first importance, like Home Rule for 
 Ireland ; measures like the Disestablishment of the 
 Church in England or Scotland, where half the nation 
 may be arrayed against the other half ; measures 
 dealing with property or land on principles hitherto 
 unknown to our legislation ; measures for extending 
 the vote to every grown man and woman all these 
 could be forced, under closure, through the House 
 of Commons, and there would be no means what- 
 ever of ascertaining the real mind of the country 
 upon them. 
 
 Granted, even, that the country at a preceding 
 election might be supposed to have given a general 
 mandate for some one or more of these vital 
 measures. But as we saw in the case of the Educa- 
 tion Bill of 1906 everything might depend on the details. 
 And, very often, these all-important details of such 
 Bills might be very little understood by the ordinary 
 voter. The cheap newspapers that the workman 
 reads report only a small fraction of what is said in 
 Parliament ; and legislation of the utmost import- 
 ance, which men of real authority upon it, men 
 whose business it is to understand the matters, 
 involved know well must have disastrous consequences, 
 might perfectly well be rushed through Parliament, at 
 the bidding of party passion, or of some temporary 
 political combination, if the safeguards we now have- 
 safeguards that many people think quite insufficient
 
 were removed and thrown away as the Parliament 
 Bill proposes to throw them away. 
 
 The possibility of such legislation has been expressly 
 admitted by the Liberal Prime Minister t as Lord 
 Lansdowne points out. 
 
 Then as to Money Bills. Anything whatever may 
 be mixed up with the Money Bills of the future, and 
 so avoid even the two years' delay, if the Speaker 
 decides they are Money Bills. What a position into 
 which to put a Speaker ! Hitherto the Speaker of 
 the House of Commons has been in the eyes of all 
 men a symbol of fair-dealing and impartiality. In 
 some hotly debated Budget of the future, involving 
 perhaps extreme Socialist proposals, you propose to 
 make him the sole arbiter of the situation between 
 two or more excited parties. If he says it is not a 
 Money Bill, then the Lords may debate it, and 
 possibly amend it, supposing always they can succeed 
 in persuading the House of Commons. They will, of 
 course, have no more power as to that than as to any 
 other Bill. But if, according to the Speaker him- 
 self necessarily either a Conservative or a Liberal, or, 
 shall we say, a Socialist it is a Money Bill, they may 
 not even debate it.'" 
 
 In other words, are we to exchange 
 Speaker Lowther for Speaker Cannon ? 
 
 The shortening of Parliament is possibly a neces- 
 sary change. But it does not seem to me to have 
 been very cordially received by the country, which 
 is only too tired of elections.
 
 Now let us turn to the other side and look at the 
 Lords' Resolutions. 
 
 In the first place, the Lords propose to reform the 
 House of Lords itself, and they lay down that 
 
 1. Nobody shall sit in the House of Lords 
 merely because he is his father's son. In 
 this all-important change, which alters the whole 
 basis of their ancient House, they have surely done 
 their best to meet the needs of a democratic time. 
 And as to the taunt that they should have done it 
 before, is it so easy in a community like ours to 
 transform the ancient and historic lines of things ? 
 How long is it since the first Reform Bill ? 
 Seventy-eight years. Is that too long for the full 
 adjustment of a constitutional system that has been 
 a thousand years in growing, to the needs of modern 
 democracy ? 
 
 2. The Second Chamber must be greatly 
 diminished in numbers, and it should in- 
 clude 'three kinds of persons (a) peers 
 chosen by the peers from the present House ; 
 
 (b) peers who have held high office, or who 
 have other qualifications of public service ; 
 
 (c) persons equal in number to both (a) and 
 (b), who are to be chosen from outside 
 either elected, or nominated by the King, or 
 by the Government of the day, but not by 
 the House of Lords itself. 
 
 That, it is calculated, would give you about 400 
 instead of 600 members of the Upper House ; would 
 
 A 8
 
 give you a strong, distinguished, useful body of men 
 with whom, if the plan were properly handled, 
 Liberal measures of any ordinary kind would have 
 just as much chance as Conservative measures of any 
 ordinary kind. 
 
 Then when you have got your changed and 
 reformed House of Lords, with its weak members and 
 its ' undesirables ' cut away, what do the Lords pro- 
 pose with regard to disputes between the two 
 Houses ? 
 
 1. That in the case of Budgets or Money 
 Bills, they renounce their * constitutional 
 rights to reject or amend Money Bills ' which 
 are really Money Bills. And the question 
 as to whether they are Money Bills or not 
 is to be determined by a Committee of both 
 Houses, with the Speaker of the House of 
 Commons as Chairman, who shall have a 
 casting vote. 
 
 2. As to other Bills, instead of allowing 
 a delay of two years, they lay it down that 
 after one year, and two failures to agree 
 between the two Houses, the dispute shall 
 be settled in a joint sitting composed of 
 members of the two Houses. The two 
 Houses will sit together, discuss the matter 
 together, and come to an agreement. 
 
 3. But in the case of measures that are 
 not of an ordinary kind, and 'that have not 
 been submitted to the judgment of the
 
 people/ then, if the two Houses, in joint 
 session, fail to agree, the Bill in question 
 shall be sent to the electors to decide by 
 Referendum. 
 
 What is a Referendum ? It is simply a question 
 addressed to the electors, so that they can vote upon 
 it * Yes ' or * No.' The most famous instance of it in 
 modern times was the question addressed by the 
 Emperor Napoleon to the French nation in the 
 spring before the outbreak of the war between France 
 and Germany. ' Will you confirm the Liberal reforms 
 passed by my Government, and do you desire the con- 
 tinuance of the Empire and the succession of my son ? ' 
 That, in effect was the issue put to the nation, and we 
 all remember the result Seven million and a half 
 
 * Ayes ' one million and a half * Noes.' 
 
 It has been used on other well-known occasions 
 on the union of Tuscany with Sardinia, on the cession 
 of Savoy to France. 
 
 But in ordinary politics, the best known example 
 of the Referendum is that shown by the prosperous 
 democratic community of Switzerland. There, before 
 an important and much-disputed bill finally passes, 
 if 30,000 citizens demand it, the electors are asked, 
 
 * Will you have the Bill ? Yes or No.' It is only 
 resorted to on great occasions ; from 1848 to 1909 
 there were only thirty referendums, in comparison 
 with the hundreds of Bills passed ; but it is a very 
 real thing, and measures approved by the Legislature, 
 have often been rejected by the electors.
 
 30 
 
 In the separate States of America also, questions 
 like the prohibition in the State of the sale of drink, 
 or of Woman Suffrage are put to a direct vote. * Will 
 you have it ? or will you not ? ' 
 
 Why cannot we have the same thing here ? 
 
 ' Look at the cost,' says Mr. Lloyd George and he 
 talks in his usual wild way of two or three millions. 
 The cost in Switzerland is a halfpenny a vote. But a 
 moderate calculation which does not seem like Mr. 
 Lloyd George's to have been made for party purposes 
 is that here in England, the probable necessary 
 cost would be about 200,000. Of course, if Leagues 
 and associations like to spend large sums on literature 
 and posters, that is their affair. But in any case the 
 expense would be a mere trifle compared to the 
 expense of an election. And it would save an election. 
 The text of the Bill would be put up, say, outside the 
 post-offices for everyone to read there would be 
 polling stations ; and the electors would vote in the 
 ordinary way. 
 
 Why cannot we have it here ? It would save elec- 
 tions educate our electors and reduce party passion. 
 
 Now look at the two proposals side by side. On 
 the one hand an unreformed House of Lords, kept 
 there for Mr. Lloyd George to mock at ; and all the 
 able and experienced men in it men who have 
 served the nation in a hundred different capacities- 
 hampered at all turns by its unreformed condition, and 
 quite unable to exercise any real influence on impor- 
 tant and debated matters. What interest could the
 
 31 
 
 work of such an Upper Chamber have for such men ? 
 Its importance, its value to the Constitution must 
 inevitably dwindle, while the House of Commons 
 would become more and more absolute. Would it be 
 worth while for some of the best and busiest men in the 
 nation to take part in any such game of shadows ? 
 
 On the other hand, accept the proposals of the 
 Lords, and you have an efficient Second Chamber, 
 brought into relation with democratic realities, and 
 able to help the nation through the difficult time that 
 many of us believe lies before us. 
 
 The very moderation the practical democratic 
 character of these proposals have alarmed and dis- 
 concerted the Liberals, and they are in full cry 
 against them. Let us look at some of their objections 
 in another letter. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A. WARD.
 
 LETTBE No. 4 
 
 WHO HAS RUSHED US INTO WAR ? 
 
 STOCKS, THING : November 1910. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, There are evident 
 signs even so early in the election (November 29) that 
 this scheme of the Lords has very favourably im- 
 pressed the country ; and the Liberals are in full cry 
 against it. 
 
 * A mere trick ! ' they say indignantly, ' a mere 
 device for retaining Conservative power in the House 
 of Lords.' * A House of superior persons ! A House of 
 Swells ! ' shouts Mr. Winston Churchill. ' When 
 they talk of their joint Committees, why don't they 
 tell us the details how many Lords on them, how 
 many members of the House of Commons ? ' * A 
 Tory Caucus ! ' shrieks Mr. Winston Churchill again, 
 ' Lift up your right hand, ye men of London, and 
 smash the foul thing ! ' l 
 
 With the bluster of hatred and alarm it is no good 
 arguing. But with the sincere hesitation of the 
 Moderate Liberal who wants to get as favourable 
 terms as he can for his party and his measures out of 
 
 1 Daily News report, November 29,
 
 33 
 
 the present crisis there is great good in arguing. ' The 
 Lords have been from my point of view, overwhelm- 
 ingly Conservative so far,' he may say, * how do I 
 know that this reform won't be worked in a party 
 spirit ? Where is the security that our Bills shall pass, 
 if backed by a sufficient majority in the Commons ? 
 And as to the Referendum, and the matters of gravest 
 importance which this scheme would refer to the 
 country, wouldn't it be always our Bills that would 
 be sent to the country while the Conservative Bills 
 would pass without a murmur ? Above all where 
 are the details ? ' 
 
 Now the first part of this argument means that 
 when honest men of unstained political reputation 
 say that they admit the need of certain reforms, and 
 that they intend, if you put the matter into their 
 hands, to do certain things you don't believe them. 
 Yet I think there is nothing that this country visits 
 more severely than a breach of political pledges. 
 It is both dangerous and foolish. If Mr. Balfour and 
 Lord Lansdowne, having obtained power, were so to 
 use it as to refuse the Liberals that satisfaction and 
 those reforms which they have themselves admitted 
 to be necessary, the country would soon exact a heavy 
 account. 
 
 But the thing is of course unthinkable. And let 
 me point out that our whole Parliamentary and public 
 life, rests, and must rest, on a certain national trust in 
 the word of our public men. Woe to us when that 
 trust is broken down ! At present, parliamentary
 
 34 
 
 business could not be transacted for a week without 
 it, and the parliamentary system could not work. 
 
 When Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne say 
 ' There shall be reform, and if you will give us the 
 power we will carry it out in a certain spirit ' they 
 have a right to ask their countrymen to accept their 
 word. Their whole public record is there, both as 
 politicians and as Englishmen to enforce that right. 
 
 And when Mr. Birrell meets them by a gibe about 
 ' cowardice and cunning,* do not we, who are not 
 politicians but plain citizens with a love of our 
 country do not we feel that a blow is struck at 
 all the best elements of English life, at all that as 
 yet so honourably distinguishes our public life from 
 the life of some foreign countries ? 
 
 And, besides, the gibe is so foolish ! What have the 
 Lords to gain by * cunning ' in the matter ? What 
 has anybody to gain by prolonging this situation ? 
 The great, epoch-making step was taken when the 
 Lords decided that mere hereditary right alone should 
 no longer entitle a man to sit in the Upper House. 
 The rest is a matter of detail governed by the ad- 
 mission of the Unionist party that the Liberals have 
 a grievance which must be remedied. 
 
 And as to the details who has made it impossible 
 to go into details ? 
 
 By rushing the election as they have done, the 
 Liberals have made it impossible for the Lords to 
 put the full details of their plan before the public. 
 How is it possible to do anything of the kind in a
 
 36 
 
 week T If the Government had had their way, they 
 would have absolutely prevented the Lords from 
 putting their own scheme before the country. The 
 Lords checkmated this by insisting on the production 
 of the Parliament Bill, and their demand was so 
 obviously reasonable that on this the Government 
 had to give way. * Then ' said the Government 
 4 you must take it or leave it. No amendments. 
 No discussion. There is just one week before dis- 
 solution.' 
 
 As soon as these conditions were plain, the Lords 
 naturally declined to be bound by them, and Lord 
 Lansdowne brought in his Resolutions which in their 
 present form have passed the Lords in three days. 
 
 Clearly they are the outlines of a scheme, not the 
 full scheme itself. That in the time was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Take the Referendum, for instance, The Referen- 
 dum is a complicated matter, and it was not possible 
 to lay down the conditions of it in three days. But 
 those conditions must, of course, as I have said, be 
 governed by the admission of the Lords that the 
 Liberals have a grievance. It must be as possible for 
 a Liberal minority to appeal to the country ' in matters 
 of grave moment,' through the Referendum, as for a 
 Conservative minority. That every Unionist speaker 
 maintains. There is the principle. The details have 
 still to be threshed out. 
 
 But and here lies the great importance of the 
 Resolutions they almost certainly represent the scheme.
 
 36 
 
 or something very near it, which the Conference of 
 Eight have had before them through some twenty 
 sittings. 
 
 When they were brought in, indeed, Lord Crewe 
 complained of them ' as new and sweeping changes.' 
 Such actors are politicians ! ' I wonder ! ' said Lord 
 St. Aldwyn in the indignant and sincere speech which 
 made so deep an impression on the crowded House 
 which listened to him ' Are they really so unfamiliar 
 to the noble Earl ? ' Are they not, as a matter of 
 fact, the very proposals that in the Conference the 
 Government has been perfectly ready to discuss ? If 
 they had said to the Unionist party when they went 
 into Conference * The Veto Bill, the whole Bill and 
 nothing but the Bill,' would the Conference have 
 lasted an hour ? * They must have been ready to 
 settle it in some other way.' 
 
 Clearly they must ! whatever they tell the 
 country now. At some point in the discussion, then, 
 of something very like the Resolutions of a scheme 
 that would have brought peace with honour to both 
 parties a hitch intervened, probably on the Referen- 
 dum, bound up as it is with the Irish demand. Parlia- 
 ment was about to meet. And Mr. Redmond was 
 coming back, replenished with funds for a General 
 Election, and master of the situation. We know 
 the rest. 
 
 But what a monstrous thing, at the bidding of an 
 Irish party which, through its leader, had told the 
 Prime Minister of England in * language of unsur-
 
 37 
 
 passed insolence ' that he and his followers most 
 * toe the line ' on the matter of Home Rule, or he 
 would turn them out ! what a monstrous thing at 
 such a point, to deny full Parliamentary discussion 
 to the whole situation, and to throw England into 
 the turmoil of this disgraceful election ! 
 
 And here let me turn a moment from my Hert- 
 fordshire neighbours, to whom these letters were 
 first addressed, to the Yorkshiremen whom they 
 will now reach, I trust, through the columns of a well- 
 known Yorkshire paper. Do you think I have given 
 an unfair account of the haste and violence of this 
 dissolution, and of the impression made by it upon 
 honest minds ? Then let me ask you to listen to 
 your own Archbishop a Liberal of the Liberals, a 
 man who voted against the throwing out of the 
 Budget, who has all his life been in touch with the 
 people, who has given himself for the people. 
 
 Was there no hope, asked the Archbishop of York, 
 on the second night of the Lords' debate, of an 
 honourable and lasting settlement ? Clearly there 
 was, if the Liberals desired it. * What has impressed 
 an independent observer,' he says, * has been the 
 remarkable signs of drawing together (Opposition 
 cheers) on the part of serious and thoughtful men 
 on both sides of the House.' ' Parliamentary discus- 
 sion of the Lords' proposals for the settlement of the 
 constitutional difficulty would have been perfectly 
 possible if the ordinary procedure of Parliament had 
 
 402234
 
 been observed. But the election has been rushed 
 party purposes, and now 
 
 4 No General Election on a question of 
 such great importance was ever approached 
 by the people with less information as to 
 the real issues which are at stake.' 
 
 In the tones of one to whom the dignity and 
 harmony of the national life is dear, the Archbishop 
 went on to speak of the * heavy responsibility * lying 
 on the Government which had rushed into this 
 unnecessary war ; of the deep disappointment of 
 the independent citizen * that a great issue, one of 
 the greatest ever submitted within recent memory 
 to the decision of the people of the country, should 
 have been presented to them with a haste which 
 makes their judgment necessarily crude, and the 
 verdict which they return almost necessarily unstable.' 
 
 Let us mark that word * unstable? 
 
 Which will you have ? the revolutionary scheme 
 of the Government with its proposals that no honour- 
 able Conservative however he may be temporarily 
 borne down could ever permanently accept ; a plan 
 that must necessarily lead to renewed struggle and 
 frequent elections, and the postponement of all 
 useful reform ; that may risk even the possibility of 
 civil war in Ireland ? Or will you choose the great 
 Reform Bill of Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, 
 carried through in the light of their full admission 
 that the Liberals have a constitutional grievance 
 which must be met, and their pledge that if they are
 
 39 
 
 put in power they will do their best as honest men to 
 meet it ? 
 
 In other words, will you put the settlement of 
 this difficult matter into the hands of men like 
 Mr. Lloyd George, or men like Mr. Balfour and Lord 
 Lansdowne ? 
 
 It seems strange that at this moment any man 
 who loves his country should hesitate, with the 
 echoes of the Mile End speech false, scurrilous, 
 passionate in his ears, on the one hand, and on the 
 other the ' truth and soberness ' of Lord Lansdowne's 
 measured and earnest words. 
 
 But it rests with the Unionist party. If they will 
 only put out their whole strength, fight fair and hard, 
 and strike home, we shall win the day for orderly 
 progress and safe development, against those who talk 
 hatred, and counsel destruction. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A. WARD.
 
 LETTEE No. 5 
 
 LLOYD-GEORGISM 
 
 STOCKS, THING November 1910. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, I confess I think it 
 degrades controversy to have to answer Mr. Lloyd 
 George ; but as he does happen to be England's finance 
 minister, let us just take one portion of his recent 
 speech at Mile End, and examine it. Mr. Lloyd 
 George represents an imaginary Australian as saying 
 that rather than have a House of Lords like ours, 
 he would prefer a ' Senate of kangaroos.' He then 
 proceeds to analyse the composition of the Lords. 
 
 First of all, he says, there are the Norman fili- 
 busters who came over at the Conquest, and have 
 cut each other's throats, and robbed each other so 
 freely since, that there are very few of them left. 
 Then there are the people who at the Reformation 
 * appropriated to their own uses land and buildings 
 that had been consecrated to feed the needy and to 
 tend the sick,' and now ' they howl at us, because we 
 dare put a tax of a halfpenny upon the land they pur- 
 loined.' After which, by way of pathetic contrast 
 what a reporter lost to the Daily Shriek is Mr. Lloyd
 
 41 
 
 George ! he goes on to tell a pitiful tale of an old 
 man of sixty-five, whom he saw at Dartmoor, who had 
 been sentenced to thirteen years' penal servitude, 
 because, under the influence of drink, he had broken 
 into a church poor-box and stolen 2s. (The old man 
 turns out, unfortunately, to be an habitual criminal 
 with a long roll of convictions, sent to Dartmoor under 
 an Act passed by the Liberal Government, for his 
 own safety and the country's.) But what about 
 those peers the Chancellor went on to ask who 
 were living upon * the proceeds of the Church poor- 
 box which their ancestors stole in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury ? ' Receivers of stolen goods in the shape of 
 Church property there you have the second division 
 of the peers. 
 
 As to the third division of the Lords, it consists of 
 men who owe their origin to the ' indiscretions ' of 
 kings, i.e. the illegitimate sons of royalty. 
 
 These different sorts, according to Mr. Lloyd 
 George at Mile End, sum up the Peers. There is no 
 country in the world that would look at our Second 
 Chamber ; ' it is a ludicrous assembly,' and all that 
 we have got to do is to turn them out to grass, like the 
 horses that used to drag the horse trams, * and to 
 convert the old tram into a cucumber frame.' Such 
 are the terms in which the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer describes the Peers of England. And the 
 people at Mile End seem to have cheered him till they 
 were hoarse, and taken it all for gospel. 
 
 Now, if some tub-thumper in Hyde Park were to
 
 42 
 
 give this description of the Lords, it would matter to 
 nobody. From a man who, as a member of the 
 Cabinet, is supposed to be holding office as the loyal 
 servant of an ancient constitution, which consists of 
 King, Lords, and Commons, it does matter a little. 
 So let us just begin by noting 
 
 1. As to the Norman filibusters, who have robbed 
 and stolen, and cut each other's throats, etc., etc., and 
 of whom very few now remain is Mr. Lloyd George 
 thinking of the Duke of Norfolk ? His peerage is 
 one of the oldest in the House, and there are not more 
 than a few others that the Chancellor can be thinking 
 of. Sheffield will appreciate the description. But 
 not only is the Duke of Norfolk the benefactor of 
 Sheffield ; he happens to be also the universally 
 respected lay head of the Catholic community in 
 England. Not only scores of the old Catholic families 
 of England, who have suffered for their faith in the 
 past, but thousands of the Catholic electors of 
 England look with an hereditary respect and regard, 
 that do them infinite credit, to the Duke of Norfolk 
 as the leader of Catholic interests in England. I 
 commend to their notice this particular gibe of Mr. 
 Lloyd George. 
 
 2. Then we come to the families that possess 
 what was once Church property. How they could 
 help possessing it at the present day, or whether they 
 should return it to the Papacy, the Chancellor does 
 not explain. But let us just remind ourselves that 
 the Duke of Bedford, the head of the Russells, is,
 
 43 
 
 of course, their leading representative. The Duke 
 of Bedford is, by the grudging admission of Lord 
 Carrington, the Liberal Minister of Agriculture, not 
 only a great landlord, but a model landlord ; one 
 who exercises the vast trust that came to him by 
 inheritance so as to earn and deserve the gratitude of 
 his countrymen. Two years ago, the Duke of Bedford, 
 by a large and well-considered scheme, sold his great 
 estates in the Eastern counties to his tenants, sorely 
 against their own will on much better terms than 
 they could have got from the Government Depart- 
 ment who tried to intervene in the bargain. He is 
 now engaged so the papers tell us in a remarkable 
 small-holding scheme on the Woburn estate. There 
 is no busier man no more business-like man in 
 England. But the East End of London knows 
 nothing about the daily life of a Duke of Bedford ; 
 while the coarse mud-flinging of a Cabinet Minister 
 amuses them. 
 
 But meanwhile, what Mr. Lloyd George carefully 
 refrained from telling his Mile End audience, was that 
 nearly half the present House of Lords sit there, not 
 by virtue of descent from Norman filibusters, or 
 Church robbers, or licentious kings, but by the creation 
 of Liberal Ministers. 
 
 Since the Reform Bill the Liberals have made 
 240 Peers, more than 40 of them within the last five 
 years. Just remember that, when next you read 
 one of Mr. Lloyd George's effusions ! Those Liberal 
 creations, together with the 183 Peers created by the
 
 44 
 
 Conservatives, in the same period, are, of course, the 
 main source of the present Upper House. 
 
 The Mile End speech was rant and vulgarity. 
 The attack which the Chancellor made on the Lords 
 last Saturday in Scotland was, most of it, sheer 
 nonsense ; and how even Scotch audiences can listen 
 to it in patience it is difficult to understand. c These 
 men,' he said of the Lords, * are not in touch with the 
 realities of life.' ' These 600 irresponsible persons 
 know nothing of the responsibility and the anxiety 
 of conducting business, great or small.' 
 
 Was this taken as a joke ? It should have been. 
 Take a few names at random as they come. Here 
 are the first that turn up : 
 
 Lord Allerton, Chairman of the Great Northern 
 Railway, F.R.S., formerly Chief Secretary for Ireland. 
 Lord Faber Lord Revelstoke Lord Biddulph 
 Lord Wolverton, all great bankers, respected through- 
 out the country on whose business faculty, and 
 integrity, and judgment, thousands of fortunes large 
 and small depend. But the Chancellor says * these 
 600 irresponsible persons ' know nothing of * busi- 
 ness ' or ' responsibility ' ! 
 
 Lord Stalbridge, the hard-working Chairman of 
 the L. & N. W. Railway, which must surely elect its 
 Managing Head on strange principles, if we are to 
 believe Mr. Lloyd George. 
 
 Lord Joicey, the Chairman and Managing Director 
 of two of the largest collieries in the County of 
 Durham. Four Presidents or ex-Presidents of the
 
 45 
 
 Associated Chambers of Commerce ; three of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce ; the heads of the 
 great shipping and ship-building companies : chosen, 
 no doubt, all of them for their ignorance of ' business ' ! 
 Lord Ampthill, acting Viceroy of India in 1904 ; 
 not to be compared, of course, in knowledge of 
 
 * realities ' and ' business ' with any of the young 
 journalists and barristers, such as Mr. P. W. Wilson 
 or Mr. Percy Alden, who supported Mr. Lloyd George 
 in the last Parliament or that of 1906 ! 
 
 Lord Burnham, proprietor of the Daily Telegraph. 
 No * business ' ability there, of course ! that is re- 
 served for any member of his staff who might be kind 
 enough to sit in the House of Commons. 
 
 Lord Strathcona, Lord Mountstephen, Lord Roths- 
 child ; ninety -four Cabinet Ministers or heads of 
 public departments ; twenty ex-Lords Lieutenant, 
 Viceroys, or Governors General, twenty-four High 
 Commissioners or Governors of a colony, all reckoned 
 among the * 600 irresponsible persons.' 
 
 Then as to the scores of landowners, great and 
 small, the vast majority of them, to judge from the 
 letters after their names, with a training either in 
 local government or the Army or the public service ? 
 And, besides, what is an estate but an agricultural 
 
 * business ' ? and how long will the man who has 
 no aptitude for managing it keep it going ? 
 
 Would it not have been greatly to the advantage 
 of Mr. Lloyd George if he had ever served a year's 
 apprenticeship under some of the men I have named ?
 
 46 
 
 Would he not have emerged from it with a better 
 knowledge of ' realities ' and a better equipment of 
 accuracy and fairmindedness than these deplorable 
 speeches show ? 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George is not alone, of course, in this 
 ludicrous abuse of the peers. Mr. Churchill runs 
 him a good second, and there are plenty of younger 
 men who ought to know better who repeat the same 
 parrot tale night after night. 
 
 The answer to it all is simply to turn over the 
 pages of any ' Who's Who ' and to look back a little 
 at the English history that Mr. Lloyd George has 
 never time to read. Let me quote one of these 
 1 idlers ' a man who happens to have borne for six 
 years the incredible strain of the Viceroyalty of India. 
 
 '.During the last 200 years,' says Lord Curzon, 
 * of our Prime Ministers, 41 have sat in the Lords 
 and only 17 in the Commons ; of our Foreign Secre- 
 taries, 56 in the Lords and only 8 in the Commons ; 
 of our Colonial Secretaries, 46 in the Lords and only 
 25 in the Commons ; of our War Ministers, 29 in 
 the Lords and 31 in the Commons ; of First Lords 
 of the Admiralty, 48 in the Lords and 28 in the 
 Commons.' 
 
 And then, in addition, let me turn from the Tory 
 Peer to a Radical Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone 
 was a Liberal, but he was not a wrecker and a dema- 
 gogue ; and it goes against the grain to find Mr. 
 Lloyd George taking his honoured name in vain in 
 Midlothian ! In the very critical year of 1884, when
 
 47 
 
 there was serious disagreement between Lords and 
 Commons, this is how Mr. Gladstone spoke of the 
 Lords : 
 
 ' Notwithstanding all the actions of the House of 
 Lords of which we are inclined to complain, we have 
 had a period of fifty years such as has never been 
 known in the entire history of the country I may 
 almost say in the entire history of the modern world 
 in which the House of Lords has introduced a vast 
 amount of practical legislation upon the statute book of 
 the land, from which we are from day to day reaping the 
 benefits.' 
 
 Such was the temperate and generous language 
 in a year of hot dispute between Lords and Commons 
 oi a man who was a Liberal indeed. If Mr. Lloyd 
 George had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under 
 Mr. Gladstone, would he have been allowed to make 
 the Mile End or Limehouse speeches ? I picture 
 to myself the letter in which Mr. Gladstone would 
 have dealt with him ! But there was Cabinet disci- 
 pline in those days, and some corporate sense of 
 dignity and honour in public life. 
 
 And as to the ' undesirables,' and the minority 
 of peers, who, while they may be quite harmless and 
 well-behaved persons, have no claim, except the claim 
 of heredity, to legislate for their countrymen, those 
 are precisely the people whom Lord Lansdowne's 
 scheme would remove from the House of Lords and 
 those are precisely the people whom Mr. Lloyd 
 George wishes, through the Parliament Bill, to keep
 
 48 
 
 in the House of Lords that the Lords may not be 
 too business-like, and that he may always have 
 something to talk about at Mile End. 
 
 Well, in these country districts we know a good 
 deal, in a quiet way, about these Lords. We are not 
 influenced by this wild talk we see through it now as 
 we saw through it last January. We know that 
 peers are just like other people ; that both in the House 
 of Commons and the House of Lords there are wise 
 men and unwise men, selfish men and public-spirited 
 men ; and we have a way of believing that, whether 
 in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, 
 Englishmen desire on the whole to do their duty and 
 wish honestly to see and know what is their duty. 
 
 Moreover, in the country, we happen to know that 
 peers are not all selfish men who take no thought for 
 any interests but their own. Close at -our gates are 
 cottages, modern cottages, in excellent repair, let for 
 70s. a year, less than "1*. Qd. a week ; a little way oS, 
 a peer who is the favourite butt of the halfpenny 
 Liberal press, has already re-built the large village on 
 the hill, and is now engaged in entirely re-housing the 
 poorer quarters of the small town in the plain. It will 
 bring him in nothing but a loss ; but if he doesn't do 
 it, the Daily Shriek will call him a monster, and if he 
 does, it will cry ' corruption.' Fifteen miles away is 
 the great Woburn Estate, with its beautiful cottages, 
 and its fruit-farming experiments, and its small- 
 holdings. More small-holdings, by all means ! It is, 
 next to Tariff Reform, next to the protection of the
 
 49 
 
 town workman's standard of life, and next to Colonial 
 Preference, the policy on which the Unionist party 
 has most set its heart. But why begin as the Liberal 
 party does by reviling and insulting those heads of 
 the agricultural industry in this country, on whose 
 co-operation in the long run they will have to depend 
 for any serious dealing with the land ? 
 
 Many years ago, when I first came to live in this 
 country, full of vague and, on the whole, hostile ideas 
 about land and landlords, it fell to me in the course of 
 writing ' Marcella ' to go through the Agricultural 
 Reports of the great Labour Commission. I read all 
 I could find in them a strange mixed tale ! about 
 the condition of the country labourer, his housing and 
 his wages. And nothing impressed me more im- 
 pressed a mind reluctant at that time to be impressed 
 in any such way than the gradual discovery that 
 in the preceding forty years the housing of the 
 labourer throughout England had been practically 
 renewed and transformed, at great effort and cost, 
 often at real personal sacrifice, by the landlord class. 
 Wherever that is to say landlords existed. England, 
 one saw, was divided between two types of rural 
 dwelling the ' open ' village, without any resident 
 landlord, where the houses belonged to small owners, 
 and were the result of speculative building ; and the 
 c close ' village belonging to a landed estate, where the 
 cottages had been re-built, or efficiently repaired, and 
 were decently maintained. 
 
 The 'open' village was still as it is now full of
 
 hovels. The * close ' village had been rebuilt, gardens 
 and allotments had been provided. Of course there 
 were exceptions. There always are. But broadly 
 speaking a great and beneficent change was worked 
 during these years over large tracts of England by the 
 landlords of England ; and it is the more creditable to 
 them because it was done at a time of falling rents 
 and agricultural depression. 
 
 Look at the reports, in 1894, of Mr. Arthur Wilson 
 Fox a good Liberal, or Mr. Cecil Chapman a good 
 Conservative, if anyone doubts what I say. 
 
 1 Well, what then ? ' perhaps the scornful Radical 
 will reply. * It was their duty.' 
 
 Yes, it was their duty. And when we have done 
 our duty, we are, as we all know, unprofitable ser- 
 vants. But is it always so easy to do one's duty ? 
 Do we all achieve it ? And does not one's blood boil 
 a little when one remembers these things, and then 
 reads the odious diatribes of Mr. Lloyd George ? 
 
 No doubt the Gladstone League would meet any 
 such plea by shrieks of ' intimidation,' ' slavery,' 
 * aristocratic dictation ' and the rest. They have 
 been flooding this division, as no doubt they have 
 flooded others, with leaflets accusing the Conservative 
 landlords of exercising a political tyranny over the 
 tenant and labourer class. Conservative votes, they 
 say, are a matter of bribes and threats ; and they set 
 out to prove it. 
 
 Well I don't think they will get much by it. For 
 the fact is we all know better 1 In the first place,
 
 none of us have forgotten that the only two election 
 petitions after the last election were brought against 
 Liberal members ; that one was unseated, and the 
 other escaped after evidence that left some dis- 
 comfort in the Liberal ranks. And in the next, ' let 
 us clear our minds of cant.' There are many kinds of 
 undue influence in this country as there are in all 
 communities. There is the great lady Liberal or 
 Conservative who in her political eagerness is too 
 ready with her smiles and her frowns ; too ready also, 
 sometimes, to translate them into actual pressure. 
 This kind of undue influence is, I honestly believe, 
 much rarer in England now than it ever was. In the 
 first place it is dangerous ; in the next it is unpopular, 
 and so defeats itself. 
 
 Then there is the undue influence and coercion of 
 the * open village, 5 where the small tradesman owner 
 lives side by side with his tenant and keeps a sharp 
 political eye on his doings. There are many small 
 owners I am acquainted with some of them, Radical 
 and Conservative who would no more abuse their 
 power than any scrupulous peer. Still the situation 
 does often lend itself to intimidation ; and it exists 
 all over the country. Lastly, there is the town 
 tyranny of trade-unions of which we have heard 
 much. All these forms of intimidation are equally 
 odious and detestable. But the two latter forms are 
 harder to meet, and the third is much more serious 
 than the first. 
 
 And then the absurdity of supposing that the
 
 election in these Southern counties was won last 
 January by threats and bribery ! but especially 
 threats. I have before me the vision of a polling day 
 on these Hertfordshire uplands of the smiling faces 
 of the children, of the blue on the carters' whips, 
 of the co-operation of everybody, high and low, in 
 a common task of the wild enthusiasm after the poll. 
 
 If all this was make-believe, what a nation of 
 actors we are ! 
 
 Well no more about it just yet. For the fight is 
 next week, and we have got to win it again, as we won 
 it last time. 
 
 And meanwhile will not every Unionist, man and 
 woman, strain every nerve during these coming days 
 of the election to overthrow Mr. Asquith's Govern- 
 ment, and to give effect to the broad, business-like 
 and democratic scheme of constitutional reform put 
 before them by the Unionist party ? 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A. WARD.
 
 LETTER No. 6 
 
 TARIFF REFORM 
 
 STOCKS, TRING : November 1910. 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, So far these Letters 
 have dealt with the constitutional question before 
 the country. But I think you will wish that the last 
 two should be given to the other great cause on which 
 the Unionists are appealing to the country the cause 
 of Tariff Reform. I would gladly re-write at length 
 the three or four brief letters which I addressed to you 
 last January on this subject ; but the time is too 
 short ! All one can do is to make a general appeal. 
 
 Last January, I tried to show you, as the Liberal 
 Publication Department had pointed out before me, 
 in the case of the higher income tax rendered necessary 
 by the Boer War that heavy direct taxation much 
 increased income tax, much increased death duties, 
 etc., always did mean, and always would mean in- 
 creased unemployment for Labour in town and 
 country ; and I asked was there no other means of 
 raising some at least of the money that we all agree 
 we want ; for Old Age Pensions, Poor Law Reform, 
 Sick Insurance ; and for the Navy, first and foremost,
 
 without which it is not possible for us English people 
 to live and thrive at all in our England. 
 
 The answer is this winter, as last, there is another 
 way the way of Tariff Reform. Again and again 
 during the past year we have been assured, with an 
 assumed confidence covering a real anxiety, that 
 Tariff Reform was ' dead ' ; only to find that now, 
 in the very midst of this ' Lords ' election, the contest 
 on which the attention of all England is fixed is the 
 contest in North West Manchester, between the Tariff 
 Reformer, Mr. Bonar Law, and the Free Trader, Sir 
 George Kemp ; while the autumn campaign of the 
 Tariff Reform League in Lancashire, the stronghold 
 of the enemy, has been successful beyond all expec- 
 tation, and every village throughout these southern 
 counties, is, even now at this excited moment, so far 
 as my experience goes, much more eager for Tariff 
 Reform argument than it is to hear speeches either 
 for or against the Lords. 
 
 It was the unemployment question that turned my 
 own Free Trade opinions into those of the Tariff 
 Reformer ; the stern realisation through certain work 
 in London which has interested me greatly of late 
 years, that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's famous 
 picture of the thirteen and a half millions in this 
 country on the verge of hunger was a dismal truth ; 
 that studies of poverty like Mr. Rowntree's or Mr. 
 Charles Booth's are under rather than over the mark ; 
 and that we have in our midst a population of 
 unskilled or half-employed labour, which is defeating
 
 65 
 
 the energies of all our reformers, and is producing 
 a race of children at a much faster rate than the 
 richer classes of the population which is the despair 
 of our schools. 
 
 In 1900 1 had spent an autumn holiday in Germany, 
 after an absence of 30 years ; and in 1908 I crossed 
 the Atlantic for the first time, and made it my 
 business to see something of the schools in New York, 
 Boston, and Toronto. 
 
 In Germany, I could hardly believe my eyes, so 
 great was the growth of wealth. The towns had 
 grown so big and fine ; there were so many new 
 factories and houses and public buildings ; the people 
 looked so well-fed ; one saw no rags and no poverty. 
 
 And in America in 1908, it was the same. The 
 panic of 1907 had not yet, indeed, spent its effects. 
 The prosperity of the country was not yet normal 
 again. But nowhere in the schools could I see the 
 poor, sickly, ragged, bare-footed children that I 
 see constantly in London. In a great receiving-house 
 for immigrants such as New York really is, there must 
 always be a certain amount of poverty and distress ; 
 and there are still some bad slums in the city. But 
 nobody could go into the poorer quarters of New York, 
 who knew the poorer quarters of London, without 
 being struck with the fact that here was a better 
 nourished and a better clothed population than our 
 own. The physique and the energy of the girls and 
 boys from 14 to 20 gathered in the Evening Recrea- 
 tion Centres of New York were a revelation !
 
 Then one asked as to wages. 12*., 13s., 16s., 20s. 
 a day ! It was evident that the workman had some- 
 thing to help him through times of unemployment 
 when they came ; and it was evident also looking 
 back on the distressful year of 1907 that these 
 times disappeared with extraordinary rapidity under 
 the influence of the general progress of the country. 
 
 In 1908, food of all kinds was not only excellent, 
 but cheap and abundant throughout America. Cloth- 
 ing the clothing made in the country the cotton, 
 woollen and silk goods were and are both cheap and 
 excellent. One saw also that if the rich people wanted 
 foreign goods and foreign luxuries they had to pay 
 heavily for them ; and a great deal of what they paid 
 went in the form of Customs duties to the Govern- 
 ment, which reaped an enormous revenue from these 
 duties ; that is the American way of taxing the rich t 
 who have no income tax to pay, as they have here. 
 
 Then in Canada, it was the same thing. It was 
 plain, I think, to any careful observer that the 
 rapidly-filling agricultural West would in time want 
 a lower protection than the manufacturing East ; 
 but as to a Free Trader in the English sense, we never 
 came across one. A year or two ago, a workman 
 wrote to me from Toronto. He had read my books, 
 and he wanted to know what I had thought of Tariff 
 Reform. ' It is true,' he said, ' that some things are 
 rather dearer here in Toronto than they were in 
 London, especially house rent. But, then, look at 
 the wages of the men in this boarding-house ! 3
 
 57 
 
 and 4 a week, where a man gets barely half as much 
 in London. We can afford a little more on living.' 
 
 So it was in 1908. Since that time we have heard 
 a great deal in the Free Trade papers of the supposed 
 ' revolt against Protection ' in America and Germany, 
 and of the enormously high cost of living, out of 
 which the Free Trade press here has made capital, 
 very welcome to a failing cause. 
 
 Now what is the truth about this revolt against 
 Protection in the States ? The Free Trade party 
 here pin their hopes on the Democratic successes in 
 the recent American elections, and they would like 
 to persuade the working-class here that a Free Trade 
 policy in our sense is possible in America. 
 
 Well let us quote the words of the Secretary of 
 the New York State Democratic Committee com- 
 municated in a signed article to an English newspaper 
 a few weeks ago. 
 
 * No American political party which advocated 
 Free Trade could survive a single election. The Demo- 
 cratic party is not a Free Trade party. The whole 
 of America is Protectionist. Undoubtedly Congress 
 will now make changes in the tariff, but there will be 
 no changes which might open American markets to 
 the cheap-labour products of foreign countries.' 
 
 And Mr. Mason went on to say, * It costs more for 
 working-men to live in America than in England only 
 because the American working-men live much better 
 than Englishmen at home can afford.' 
 
 There is no doubt, however, about the rise in
 
 68 
 
 prices since 1908. The Americans have been much 
 exercised about it themselves, and many enquiries 
 have been set on foot. Mr. Consul-General Bennett 
 gives an interesting account of them in his recently- 
 issued Report. There are no doubt many causes for 
 the rise in prices in America, only unfortunately for 
 our Free Traders here, the tariff is not among them. 
 Mr. Bennett points out, as does the Governor of 
 Massachusetts in the State report on the same sub- 
 ject, * the rise in food prices is almost universal and 
 not confined to the United States alone ; and many 
 of the articles in which a rise of price has occurred are 
 not affected by tariff rates.' 
 
 The cause, therefore, is not to be found in the 
 tariff. 
 
 But then our Consul-General goes on to mention 
 some of the many causes that have contributed to 
 the rise : 
 
 Increased output of gold, 
 
 The eight-hours day, 
 
 Trade combinations, 
 
 The demand for increased wages, 
 And last, but certainly not least, 
 
 That the demand for food-stuffs exceeds the supply. 
 
 And of late the complaint of high prices has 
 lessened ; prices, in fact, have somewhat fallen ;* 
 
 * American price-lists look indeed extremely reasonable to an 
 English housewife with the exception of one or two items that are 
 easily explained by American conditions. Flour, for instance, is a 
 good deal cheaper, while the 1-lb. rolls which the well-to-do workman 
 ati which involve baker's wages make a dearer breadstuff than
 
 59 
 
 and the vast industry of America goes on its booming 
 way. * The year just ended,' says the Consul, * has 
 been marked by a constantly progressive trade 
 recovery, by rapid advances in prices on both stock 
 and commodity markets, by an enormous increase 
 in the production of iron and steel, by an export 
 trade so large as to overbalance the value of imports, 
 and by a quite abnormal export of gold ... by 
 increased credit facilities, and increased immigra- 
 tion ; and, above all, large increases in the value of 
 farm products. 1 
 
 Again, ' If banking statistics are a true index to 
 economic condition, the United States would appear 
 to be enjoying a greater measure of prosperity than 
 ever before.' Last September * there was very little 
 unemployment in the State of New York.' Mean- 
 while the average quarterly earnings of the Union 
 working-man in New York were $233, or 46 the 
 highest on record. 
 
 At the same time Mr. Bennett gives full weight to 
 the pressure of prices on wages, and he says this 
 has been much quoted by Free Traders * To live in 
 decency a man, his wife, and a couple of children 
 must spend just 200 a year.' But Mr. Bennett has 
 since explained that what he meant by ' in decency * 
 was in the enjoyment of a degree of comfort and luxury 
 which the English workman never dreams of. Things 
 
 any we have here. The American housewife, baking at home, has a 
 decidedly cheaper loaf.
 
 60 
 
 which to the Englishman are luxuries are necessaries 
 to the American. 
 
 Then take Germany. We have heard much of 
 high prices there. And there is no doubt that the 
 high Protection demanded by the Agrarian or Country 
 party has weighed heavily on the town populations. 
 But even our Free Trade Consul at Frankfurt, Sir 
 Francis Oppenheimer, who is very critical of the 
 German system, points out in his last report that, 
 with regard to the meat scarcity on which the Free 
 Trade papers have been so eloquent, under the 
 stimulus of the increased demand, the home supply 
 of meat is now overtaking it. ' Compared with the 
 figures of only a few years ago, the increased pro- 
 duction of meat is entirely satisfactory. 61,000 head 
 of cattle more in Bavaria alone. Increases in all 
 districts except in Berlin.* 
 
 Meanwhile Sir Francis shows that German trade 
 as a whole has recovered from the depression of 
 1907-1908, that unemployment is much less, and 
 many of the great industries have had a record year. 
 The ' rapidly advancing industry ' of the country goes 
 on apace, and Germans have ' no need to emigrate.' 
 And another of our Consuls, Mr. Consul Ladenburg, 
 writing from Baden, says, even more emphatically, 
 on the subject of the undisputed rise of wages during 
 the last two years in Germany * This improved con- 
 dition of the labouring classes has to some extent 
 been defeated by the increased cost of living. Yet 
 the level of wages has gone up more than that of the prices
 
 61 
 
 o/18 kinds of the main necessaries of life. Prices have 
 gone up at most 25 per cent. (3d. in the shilling, or 5*. 
 in the pound) between 1895 and 1906, whereas the 
 average wages of the industrial workmen in Germany 
 have increased by at least 37 to 38 per cent.' (that is 
 about Ss. in the pound). 
 
 Can we say the same here ? 
 
 Why is it that the German workman has increased 
 his wage even in bad times, and in face of high prices 
 all round ? 
 
 ' Because,' says the Tariff Reformer, * the Germans 
 have a protected home market ; and their people have 
 been kept on the land.' 
 
 ' Ah, but/ replies the Free Trader, * what about the 
 Socialist discontent with Protection ? * Well ; that 
 discontent is largely a political discontent, the protest 
 of the town workman against the Junker party, who 
 make him pay more for his food than he thinks right ; 
 a protest too against a Government and an administra- 
 tion that, with all its wonderful merits, English demo- 
 cratic ideas would find in many respects intolerable.^ 
 
 Through the protests against high agrarian pro- 
 tection, the German Socialist workman asserts himself 
 against the Government. But you may be very sure 
 that he will not carry his protest beyond a certain 
 point. He wants a lesser and lowered protection, and 
 he is quite right in wanting it. But he will never 
 allow his standard of life to be endangered by foreign 
 competition ; he will never interfere with that amaz- 
 ing growth in wealth, in comfort, in opportunity,
 
 62 
 
 which has followed on the adoption of Protection by 
 Bismarck in 1879. Let anyone who is dazzled by the 
 figures of English trade during the past year, look into 
 the figures of the increase of German wealth, the 
 i? oread of German trade, the development of German 
 industry. Let him note that if food prices are, for 
 the time, and on certain commodities, somewhat 
 higher in Berlin than in London, that the average un- 
 skilled wage is probably higher now than the English 
 wage, while the skilled wage is rapidly approaching 
 the English standard, and has in some trades passed 
 it ; the hours of labour are being steadily diminished ; 
 and unemployment, by the avowal of English ministers 
 themselves, is decidedly less than the English un- 
 employment. 
 
 Not that all is for the best in Germany, any more 
 than in England. The condition of the poor in both 
 countries leaves much to be desired. But all the 
 evidence goes to show that their protective system 
 tends to save them from those worst and most hope- 
 less forms of poverty that we have in this country. 
 
 Unemployment! The ugly slovenly word is like 
 a melancholy bell tolling through this wintry air. Is 
 it not Mr. Amery one of the shrewdest and most 
 careful of observers who tells us this morning that 
 there are ' 100,000 skilled trade unionists out of work 
 in this country, and something like 400,000 unskilled 
 men ' 1 And what of the women and children 
 dependent upon them T 
 
 Let us try to think out what such figures mean
 
 let us keep in mind the squalid home, and the neglected 
 children, and the wife toiling for a pittance to keep the 
 family alive ! When one thinks of the gradual de- 
 generacy of whole tracts of English labour, how the 
 industry that implies more labour yields to the 
 industry that implies less, the higher wage to the lower 
 while our Free Traders point triumphantly to the 
 growing volume of trade and the growing wealth of 
 the rich ! Well ! I for one am proud to be on the side 
 of Tariff Reform ; I believe in none of the difficulties 
 that of course attend it, as any valid argument against 
 it ; and I am confident that before long England will 
 make the change, and England will not regret it. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 MARY A. WARD. 
 
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