I am that he is out of the battle, not only on personal, but on public grounds.  His fiercest opponents would welcome his re-entry into the political arena, if only for the fact that we should then have a man to deal with, and some one whose statement of the case for his side would be clear and bold, whose speeches would be worth reading and worth answering, instead of the melancholy marionettes whom the wire-pullers of the Tariff Reform League are accustomed to exhibit on provincial platforms.  But I hope you will not let these pretexts or complaints move you or prevent you from calling a spade a spade, a tax a tax, a protective tariff a gigantic dodge to cheat the poor, or the Liberal Unionist party the most illiberal thing on record.

But if the tariff reformers are so touchy and intolerant that they resent the slightest attack or criticism from their opponents as if it were sacrilege, that is nothing to the fury which they exhibit when any of their friends on the Conservative side begin to ask a few questions.  One would have thought at least that matters of such gravity and such novelty should be considered fairly on their merits.  But what does Mr. Austen Chamberlain say?  He tells us that no hesitation will be tolerated from Unionist Members of Parliament in regard to any tariff reform proposals which may in a future Parliament be submitted—­by whoever may be the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  No hesitation will be tolerated.  Not opposition, not criticism, not dissent, but no hesitation will be tolerated.  The members of the Unionist Party are to go to the next Parliament, not as honest gentlemen, free to use their minds and intelligences.  They are to go as the pledged, tied-up delegates of a caucus, forced to swallow without hesitation details of a tariff which they have not even seen; denied the right which every self-respecting man should claim, to give their vote on grand and cardinal issues according to their faith and their conscience.  And in order that those who would refuse to be bound by these dishonouring conditions may be smelt out and excluded from the House of Commons, a secret society of nameless but probably interested busybodies is hard at work in all the dirtiest sewers of political intrigue.

But, after all, these methods are an inseparable part of the process of carrying a protectionist tariff.  The whole question resolves itself into a matter of “business is business,” and the predatory interests which have banded themselves together to finance and organise the tariff campaign cannot be expected to put up with the conscientious scruples and reasonable hesitations of Members of Parliament.  It will be a cash transaction throughout, with large profits and quick delivery.  Every little would-be monopolist in the country is going to have his own association to run his own particular trade.  Every constituency will be forced to join in the scramble, and to secure special favours at the expense of the commonwealth for its special branches of industry.