Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day Part 9

At no moment in recent years was it more desirable to urge a demand for retrenchment in the national expenditure, and probably at no moment could such a demand be urged with more chance of good result. For the recent revelations made upon the highest authority as to the wastefulness which characterizes our Government departments have aroused in the public mind not merely indignation at the spendthrifts who rule us but determination to put an end to much of their extravagance.

The only way in which taxation can be reduced is to lessen the need for taxes, and that can be done in no other fashion than by reducing the expenditure. Ministry after Ministry has entered Downing Street with the announced determination to exercise retrenchment, and Ministry after Ministry has left that haven for office-seekers with the expenditure higher than ever. The stock excuse for this state of things is, that as the national needs increase, the national expenditure must increase with them; but, allowing that this will justify a rise upon certain items, the question which will have to be pressed home to every Minister and would-be Minister, to every member of Parliament and would-be member, is this--"Is the money that is disposed of spent in economical fashion and to the best advantage?" And he will have to be a very thick-skinned specimen of officialdom who will venture to reply "Yes" to the question.

In the estimates for the navy, the army, and the Civil Service, there is abundant room for the pruning knife, while to the principle which underlies the granting of many of the pensions there ought to be applied the axe. Of course, as long as we possess an empire which exceeds any the world has ever seen for the vastness of its extent and its resources, so long must an army and navy be maintained; and even if, by a reverse of fortune, every one of our colonies were cut off from us, an army and navy would still be needed for our own protection. They are as necessary to a nation, situated like our own, as a fire-brigade to a town; and it would be folly, and worse, to starve them into inefficiency. What money is needed, therefore, to place the defences of the country--whether those defences be men, ships, forts, or coaling stations--in such a state of efficiency as shall avoid the chance of national disaster should war burst upon us, ought to be definitely ascertained and cheerfully granted.

But is the money now voted for the army and navy expended to the best advantage, or is not a large portion of it wasted in useless and ornamental adjuncts? We have not yet reached the point attained by that Mexican force which is traditionally stated to have contained twenty-five thousand officers and twenty thousand men: but the number of superior officers of both services is altogether out of proportion to the size of the force. In order to stimulate what is called the "flow of promotion," officers are placed on the retired list at a ridiculously early age, and the country is deprived of, while having to pay for, the services of those who are in the prime of life, and still capable of doing their full duty, in order that room may be made for their juniors to climb into their places, those juniors themselves being soon supplanted, and the "flow of promotion" going merrily on--at our expense. And the hollowness of the pretension that all this is for the country's good is shown by the fact that, while a determined effort was made by the Horse Guards to compulsorily retire Sir Edward Hamley, the finest tactician England possesses, the Duke of Cambridge is suffered to remain commander-in-chief long after the age at which any other officer would have been shifted. This is only one example of how all rules, salutary and otherwise, are put aside when courtiership demands, for there is a distinct danger, to which the country should be awakened, of our services being royalty-ridden.

Royalty, it is true, has not yet invaded the Civil Service, though the scions of the reigning house are so rapidly increasing in number that the prizes even of this department are likely, at no distant date, to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from the skilled and deserving; but this particular Government department has plenty to be purged of, notwithstanding. Put in the shortest fashion, the complaint the public have a right to bring against the Civil Service is that it is over-manned and over-paid. A large section of its members--and those located at the various offices in Whitehall afford a glaring instance--commence work too late, leave off too early, and even when on their stools have not enough to do. Their number should be lessened, and their hours increased. Ten to four, with an interval for lunch, is a working period so scandalous in its inadequacy that even the Salisbury Ministry has condemned it, and has in some fashion, but at the country's expense, been striving to make it longer. No private business could possibly pay if it adopted such a system; and what must be done is to treat the Government service upon the same lines as a flourishing private concern. The old notion that a State should provide a maximum of pay for a minimum of work, and that a Government office should be a paradise for the idle and incompetent, must be swept away. It is nothing less than a scandal that taxes should be wrung in an ever-increasing amount from the toilers of the country to pay for work which, under efficient management, could be better done at a less price.

With this question of pay there is linked that of pensions. It is often urged that men join the public service at a less rate of pay than the same abilities could obtain in other walks of business life, not merely because of the security of tenure, but because they know there is a pension to follow the work. This is exceedingly to be doubted; and although it would be unjust to deprive of pensions those who have entered Government employment under present conditions, the question ought very seriously to be considered whether it would not be wise for the State to pay, as private firms do, for the services actually rendered, and for individual thrift to be allowed to provide for illness or old age. Or, if it be thought desirable to maintain the pension system, the Government servants should be called upon, like the police, to contribute out of their wages to a superannuation fund. The system of pensions, as at present in operation, is indefensible upon sound business principles, and taxpayers have something better to do with their money than continue to spend it for sentimental reasons.

As to hereditary pensions, there is no need to say much. Thanks to Mr.

Bradlaugh these are in a fair way to be disposed of; but it will still need that a keen watch be kept, to prevent the State being further robbed by any fanciful scheme of commutation. It may be taken as settled that no further pensions will be granted for more than one life; but pensions for a single life, as now arranged, often prove an intolerable burden upon the revenue. A favourite device of the Government offices is to "reorganize" departments, with the result of placing a new set of officials upon the pay sheet and an old set upon the pension list. Many of the latter will be comparatively young men, capable of doing service in other departments; and, if they are not wanted in one, they ought to work for their pay in another. But that is not the way in which the State does its business. They are pensioned off with such astounding results as was seen in the case of one official, whose place was abolished in 1842, who was pensioned at the rate of nearly 2500 a year, and who lived until 1880; or of another, whose office was abolished in 1847, who was pensioned in 3100, and who, up to this date (for he is believed still to be living), has drawn over 120,000 from our pockets without having done a single day's work for the money. And not only is the "reorganization" system a means of lightening the national pocket without good result, but the "ill-health" device has the same effect.

Annuitants live long, as all insurance offices will tell you, and it is proved by the fact that there are pensioners still on the list who retired from the Government service between forty and fifty years ago because of "ill-health."

Here, then, are some of the fashions in which the country is defrauded; they could be multiplied, but the samples should suffice to arouse the attention of all who bewail the continual increase of taxation. The State is evidently regarded by a large section of the population as a huge milch-cow, which shall provide an ever-flowing stream; and this view will continue to be held as long as our legislators are not forced by the const.i.tuencies to give due heed to economy. Nothing practical in that direction can be done until the House of Commons has a thorough control over the national expenditure. At present the control it exercises partakes so largely of the nature of a sham that it is not worth considering; its scrutiny must become active and persistent, and it should be directed to the pickings secured in high places as well as in low--to the receivers of heavy salaries as well as of light wages.

The tendency has too long been to exhibit economy in regard to the small people and to pa.s.s over the extravagances which feed the large, and that is a tendency which will have to be stopped.

No one desires to lessen the efficiency of the public service; but as no one would seriously dream of saying that that quality is at this moment its most distinguishing feature, good rather than harm would be done by the exercise of sound economy. It is only by lopping off the extravagances which have grown up like weeds in our Government departments, and which are now choking much of their power for good, that the taxes can ever be reduced. And so it is the bounden duty of the Liberals to raise their old banner of Retrenchment once again.

XXVI.--IS FREE TRADE TO BE PERMANENT?

Before leaving the consideration of taxes, the question of Free Trade must be dealt with. A very few years ago it would have been thought as unnecessary to discuss the wisdom of continuing our system of Free Trade as of lengthening the existence of the House of Commons; but we are to-day threatened with the revival of a Protectionist agitation, and it is necessary to be argumentatively prepared for it.

It is impossible within my limits to say all that can be said in favour of Free Trade or all that ought to be said against Protection; but it should be the less necessary to do the former, because the proof that it is working evil to the country must rest with those who a.s.sert it, and that proof they do not afford.

The main contention of the Protectionists--Fair Traders some of them call themselves, but the old distinctive name is preferable--is that the free importation of corn has ruined agriculture, and of other goods has crippled manufactures. And, having a.s.sumed this to be correct, their remedy is to place such a duty upon all imported articles which compete with our own productions as to "protect British industry."

First for the complaint. Is it true that the system of free imports has ruined agriculture and crippled manufactures? There is no doubt that the farming interest has been very seriously hit by a series of inadequate harvests and the growth of foreign compet.i.tion; and there is as little doubt that, if such a duty were placed upon imported grain as would make its culture in England profitable under the present conditions, the farmers would thrive, even if the poorer among us starved. No one can deny that, if there is to be Protection at all, the agricultural interest demands it the most, but we will see directly whether such a tariff as would make profitable the growth of wheat is practicable. As to the crippling of manufactures, there is something to be said which is as true as it may be unpalatable. Without denying that the free importation of foreign goods, coupled with the heavy duties levied by other countries upon our exported articles, has seriously diminished the profits of certain of our manufacturers, and has thereby injured the persons by them employed, those who have watched the recent course of British trade are compelled to see that other causes have been at work to account for much of the depression.

Making haste to be rich has had more to do with that depression than the weight of foreign compet.i.tion. Manufacturers who scamp and merchants who swindle; folks who endow churches or build chapels to compromise with their conscience for robbing their customers and blasting the honour of the English name--these are the men who deserve to be pilloried when we talk of depression. We _do_ want fair trade in the sense of honest trade, for it is the burning desire for gain, the resolve to practise any device that leads to money-making, which is injuring the British manufacturing industry far more than the foreigner. The sick man who disliked a wash was at last, in desperation, recommended by his doctor to try soap; the manufacturers who size their cottons to the rotting point, and the merchants who have been accustomed to sell German cutlery with a Sheffield label, should be told, when they cry out upon depression, to try honesty. And when they whine, as they sometimes do, that it is the demand for cheap goods that makes such a supply, they must be reminded that the butcher who sells bad meat, or the baker who adulterates his bread, pleads the same excuse, but it does not save either from being branded as a cheat.

There is a further point which will account for the loss of British trade in foreign markets, and that is the lack of adaptability to new circ.u.mstances shown by English traders. And this is displayed all round. Our farmers ought to know by this time that they cannot compete by wheat-growing with the United States, Canada, or India; but they will not comprehend that they can compete with foreign countries in the matter of b.u.t.ter, eggs, cheese, fruit, and poultry. And the consequence is that we are paying many millions yearly to France, Holland, Belgium, and America for articles that our own farmers ought to supply; and that the largest cheesemongers in London find it cheaper, easier, and quicker to import all their b.u.t.ter from Normandy than to buy a single pound in England. It is the same with our manufacturers. An American firm had a large order to give for cutlery; they asked terms which the English manufacturer rejected because they were novel; and a German at once seized the chance, and kept the trade. In New Zealand there was wanted a light spade for agricultural purposes; the English manufacturer would not alter his pattern to suit his customers; and the whole order went to the United States. In China the people wish for a cotton cloth which will not vanish at the first shower of rain; Manchester is so accustomed to heavily size its goods that it cannot change; and the China trade in that commodity is going elsewhere. Before, then, we complain of foreign compet.i.tion--a complaint which is bitterly heard to-day as against England in France, Germany, Austria, and the United States--let us be certain that we are doing all we honestly can to cope with it.

Some there are who say that they are in favour of Free Trade in the abstract, but that they will not support it as long as it is not accepted by other nations. This is about as sensible as a decision to cheat in business as long as some of our neighbours cheat would be honest, and is exactly on a level with the old death-bed injunction of the miserly parent--"My son, make money--honestly if you can, but make money." And when it is stated, as it sometimes is, that Free Trade was adopted by this country only on the understanding that it would be universally agreed to, it is a sufficient answer that Sir Robert Peel, in introducing his measure for the repeal of the Corn Laws, observed:--"I fairly avow to you that in making this great reduction upon the import of articles, the produce and manufacture of foreign countries, I have no guarantee to give you that other countries will immediately follow our example."

When the Protectionists, call themselves by what name they will and use what arguments they may, ask us to change our present system, we first then deny their a.s.sumption that England is going to the dogs, and next we ask what they propose to put in its place. Upon a plan they find it impossible to agree. Some would tax corn lightly, others as heavily as would be required to make its growth certainly profitable to the farmer; some would fix a duty only upon manufactured articles, others upon everything which is imported that can be raised here; some would admit goods from our colonies at a lighter rate than from foreign countries, others would put them all on the same level. Out of this chaos of contradictions no definite plan has yet been evolved, and none is likely to be.

The corn question is the first difficulty, and will long remain so.

Wheat, in the autumn of 1887, was selling at 28s. a quarter; on the average it cannot be grown to pay at less than 45s.; yet it is only a 5s. duty which is being dangled before the farmer. But if he is to lose 12s. a quarter he will be little farther removed from ruin than if he loses 17s.; he will as much as ever resemble the traditional refreshment contractor who lost a little upon every customer, but thought to make his profit by the number he served; and the agricultural interest in its wildest dreams cannot imagine that Englishmen are likely to impose a duty raising the price of wheat 60 per cent. A rise of 10 per cent. in the price of bread means a rise of 1 per cent. in the death-rate, and if a duty of 17s. were imposed, that rise would be 6 per cent. What would this mean? That where 100 persons die now, 106 would die then, and the added number would perish from that most awful of all forms of death--death from lack of food. And those extra six would not be drawn from the well-to-do, from the trading cla.s.ses, or from the ranks of skilled labour, but from those who even now are struggling their hardest for bread, and to whom the rise in price of a loaf from threepence to fourpence three-farthings would mean starvation. For let it never be forgotten that it is upon the poorest that a corn-tax would fall most heavily. The peer eats no more bread--probably he eats less--than the peasant; even when all his family and servants are reckoned, the quant.i.ty of bread consumed is comparatively little more than in an artisan's household; but while the peasant and the artisan would be made to feel with every mouthful that they were being starved in order that others might thrive, the few shillings a week that the peer would have to pay would be but a drop spilt from a full bucket, the loss of which no one could perceive.

Arising out of the proposal for the re-imposition of a corn-tax is a consideration which bears upon the idea of levying a duty upon other imports. India is rapidly becoming more and more a corn-growing country; if it were decided to admit its wheat free, the British farmer would continue handicapped; if it were resolved to tax it, India would necessarily retaliate by protecting its own cotton industries: and what would Lancashire say to that?

The fact is that, when the proposal to protect industries all round is considered, the difficulties of securing a feasible plan are found to be insurmountable. The simplest way, of course, would be to place a duty upon everything that entered our ports, and to follow that American tariff which commenced with a tax upon acorns, and was so jealous of interference with native industries that it fixed a duty upon skeletons.

And if it be replied that the line should be drawn at manufactured articles, the question must be asked at once how these are to be defined. One can understand shoemakers desiring to place a duty upon foreign-made boots, but they would object to have the price of leather increased by a tax upon the imports of that material. The tanner and currier would strongly favour a tax upon leather, while perfectly willing that hides should be admitted free. But the free importation of hides would affect the farmer, who would have as much right to protection as either tanner or bootmaker. And so the price of boots from the beginning would be raised to everybody, less boots would be bought, and the whole community, as well as the particular trades concerned, would suffer. Take the woollen industries again. Manufacturers might like cloths to be taxed, but would be willing to see yarns admitted free. Spinners would place a duty upon yarns, but would let wool alone.

But the farmer would again step in and demand that the price of his wool should not be lowered by free importation. If Protection is started there is no stopping it; no line can fairly be drawn between the importation of raw material and manufactured articles; every trade will want to be taken care of. And we shall be driven back to the time when, in order to protect the farmer, all bodies had to be buried in woollen shrouds; and, to protect the buckle maker, the use of shoestrings was by law prohibited. More; we shall be driven back to the period when the artisan and the labourer saw wheaten bread but once a year, when it was barley alone they could afford to eat, and when the rent of the landlord was the one consideration for which Parliament cared, and the welfare of the poor the last thing of which Parliament dreamed.

One can understand why the Protectionist movement should have supporters in high places. There are landlords who are tired of seeing their rents continuously fall, and are as anxious as ever their fathers were to make the community pay the difference between what the land can honestly yield and the return its possessor desires; and there are manufacturers who are disgusted to find that the days when colossal fortunes could be rapidly made are departing.

It is the duty, therefore, of every Liberal to resist the least approach to a reversal of the present fiscal policy. For it is not a mere question of taxation; it is not even a question only of money; it is a question of life and death to the poor. And every man who knows to what a depth of misery Protection brought this country less than fifty years since, and who feels for those who are hardly pressed, will strive to the uttermost against any renewal of the system which, while enriching a few, impoverishes the many, and, to add bitterness to its injustice, involves death by starvation.

XXVII.--IS FOREIGN LABOUR TO BE EXCLUDED?

Another of the remedies suggested by political quacks for depression in trade is the revival of the system of "protecting British labour" by preventing the immigration of foreigners--a process which, by the good sense of all Englishmen, has been abolished for centuries.

It is easy, of course, to take what at first sight may seem the "popular" side upon this question. There would be no difficulty in summoning a meeting of English bakers in London, and telling them that they were being ruined because German bakers are overrunning their trade; or gathering a small army of clerks, and informing them that but for foreign, and particularly German, compet.i.tion, the native article would have a better chance; or a.s.sembling a serried array of costermongers, and persuading them that, if it were not for Russian, Polish, and German Jews, who swarm the metropolitan thoroughfares with their handcarts, their own barrows would attract more customers. But the whole idea of excluding foreigners because they become compet.i.tors is not merely a confession of weakness and incapacity which Englishmen ought never to make, but it is so contrary to the spirit of freedom which has been cherished in this country for ages that no Liberal ought for a moment to give it countenance.

And, to put it on the most sordid ground, where would England and English trade have been had such a principle been acted upon by other countries? No people in the world has so much benefited by freedom of movement in foreign lands as ourselves. Go where one may, he will find Englishmen to the fore--not only as traders but as workers. What they have done in the colonies and in the United States is patent to all men, but it is not alone in Saxon-speaking lands that they have flourished.

If one visits Italy to-day, he will find Englishmen working in the Government dockyards; when Russia wanted railways it was Bra.s.sey and his navvies who made them, and when she needed telegraphs it was English linesmen who stretched the wires; while in Brazil on every hand Englishmen are pushing to the front. And there is a lesson to be learned from that pa.s.sage in the diary of Macaulay, which records how, on a visit to France, he met some English navvies, with the leader of whom he entered into talk: "He told me, to my comfort, that they did very well, being, as he said, sober men; that the wages were good, and that they were well treated, and had no quarrels with their French fellow-labourers."

China for a long series of ages acted upon the principle of keeping out the foreigner, and upon various pretexts we fought her again and again to secure our own admission. j.a.pan was equally exclusive, and for a longer time; but even j.a.pan has found out the mistake of trying to live in "a garden walled around." As far back as the date when Magna Charta was signed, the right of foreign merchants to reside and to possess personal effects in England was recognized; and although the blindness and bigotry of succeeding times banished the Jews in one age and the Flemings in another, we long ago established the right of free entry. It is true that, in the fit of reaction provoked by the French Terror, Alien Acts were pa.s.sed conferring upon the Crown the power of banishing foreigners, but these were superseded half a hundred years ago, and their revival is not to be looked for.

It may be retorted that the United States Congress has taken a different view, for, in addition to various measures adopted in recent years to prevent the immigration of Chinamen, an Act was pa.s.sed in 1885 "to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens, under contract or agreement to perform labour in the United States, its territories, and the district of Columbia." The effect of that measure, coupled with an amending Act adopted two years later, according to English official authority, is "to subject to heavy penalties any person who prepays the transportation, or in any way a.s.sists the importation or migration of any alien or foreigner into the said countries under agreement of any kind whatsoever made previously to such importation, to perform there labour or service of any description (with a few exceptions). Masters of vessels knowingly conveying such aliens render themselves liable to fine or imprisonment, and the aliens themselves are not allowed to land, but are returned to the country whence they came."

This law, even if it had not been rendered ridiculous by an attempt to bring ministers of religion within its scope, and even also if it had not proved practically a dead letter, does not, however, go far in the direction of excluding foreign labour. For men of all nations are as free to proceed to the United States to-day as ever they were, the only condition being that they shall not, before landing, have made themselves secure of finding work. If the same law were applied in England, and even if not a single person evaded (as it would be remarkably easy to evade) its provisions, it would not affect one in a hundred of the foreigners who come hither to compete with our own people. Does any one imagine that the German bakers and clerks and costermongers, who are now so much in evidence, have before landing entered into a contract of service?

If they have not, what further measure could be taken? Ought we to pa.s.s a law prohibiting every foreigner from landing? Should we add to it the condition that, if he will swear he is a _bona fide_ traveller, he may be allowed to remain a few weeks under strict surveillance of the police, who will not only watch very carefully that he does no stroke of work while in England, but will see to it that he is promptly expelled when his time is up? Are our customs officers to search incoming ships for aliens as they do for tobacco, and is the penalty for smuggling foreigners to be the same as for smuggling snuff? The project of totally excluding foreign labour would be as impossible of accomplishment as it would be repellent to attempt.

"But," some will answer, "is it right that we should be deluged with foreign paupers, who come upon our rates without paying a penny towards them?" That is quite another matter, and does not affect the question of foreign labour in any but an indirect way. It certainly is not right that we should be burdened by foreign paupers; and England would be acting in perfect consistence with the principles of liberty and justice if she did as the United States and the Continental countries have done, in prohibiting the landing of paupers, and insisting upon sending them back to the place whence they came. This is a matter of munic.i.p.al rather than international law; and a repet.i.tion of such a scandal as that of the Greek gipsies, who were excluded from various European ports, and were yet suffered to land here and to become a nuisance and a burden, ought not to be allowed.

What is being argued against is not the enactment of a law to exclude foreign paupers, but of one to exclude foreign workers. But even if the former were to be proposed, it would have to be narrowly watched, lest it should be so drafted as to deprive England by a sidewind of the t.i.tle of an asylum for the oppressed which she has so long and proudly worn.

For it is at the right of asylum that some of the advocates of exclusion wish to strike. In the United States there is being formed a party to strengthen the "Contract to Labour" Law, which avowedly wishes "to stop the import of lawless elements"--an elastic phrase which might cover any body of persons who wished for reform. And in England, Mr. Vincent, the proposer of the Protectionist resolution adopted by the Tory conference at Oxford in 1887, stated that "the indiscriminate asylum afforded here has long been regarded by continental Governments as an outrage on good order and civilization." He may rely upon it, however, that the English love for the right of asylum is not to be destroyed by the wish or the opinion of any despotic Government on earth, and that a right which shook down the strong Administration of Lord Palmerston, when in an evil hour he menaced it at the bidding of Louis Napoleon 30 years since, will withstand the threatenings even of a conclave of chosen Conservatives.

Many things are possible to a Tory Government, and it may be that, in the endeavour to secure some puff of a popular breeze to fill its sails, it will pander to the section which demands the exclusion of foreigners. But how could such a measure be proposed by a Ministry which has among its members the Duke of Portland, whose family name, Bentinck, proclaims his Dutch descent; Mr. Goschen and Baron Henry de Worms, whose names no less emphatically announce them to have sprung from German Jews; and Mr. Bartlett, who, though he tells the world by means of reference-books that he was born at Plymouth, forgets to add that this is not the town in England but one in the United States?

But it is not to be believed that England will in this matter forget her traditions. We, who are descended from Briton and Saxon, from Norman and Dane, have had reason to be proud of our faculty of absorbing all the foreign elements that have reached these sh.o.r.es, and turning them to good account. When our Puritan fathers were hunted down in England, it was in a foreign clime they made their home; when other Englishmen have lacked employment, it is to foreign lands they have gone; and the hospitality extended to them by the foreigner we have returned. Go into Canterbury Cathedral to-day, and there see the chapel set apart for the French refugees, driven from their country for conscience' sake; remember how, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the unhappy Huguenots fled to England to do good service to their adopted country by establishing here the manufacture of silk. Never forget how advantageous it has been for Englishmen to have the whole world open to their endeavours; and hesitate long before attempting to deny to others that right of free movement in labour which has been and is of such immense advantage to ourselves.

XXVIII.--HOW SHOULD WE GUIDE OUR FOREIGN POLICY?

By a natural process of thought, the consideration of the proposed exclusion of foreign labour leads to that of foreign policy generally; and although the vast questions involved in our external relations are not to be solved in a few lines, an attempt to lay down some general principles upon the matter can hardly be wasted, for of all things connected with public affairs, foreign policy is that of which the average voter knows the least, and for which he pays the most. The yearly twenty-seven millions as interest on the National Debt is a perpetual legacy from the foreign policy of the past; while an equally turbulent one in the present would increase the already heavy expenditure on the navy and army to an alarming extent. But as all questions covered by the phrase cannot be put in the simple form "Shall we go to war?" there is a necessity for the leading principles which should govern them to be considered.

A good guide to the future is experience of the past, and our English history will have taught us little if it has not shown that many a war has been waged which patience and wisdom might have avoided. And although we have never avowedly gone to war "for an idea," as Louis Napoleon said that France did concerning the expedition in which he stole two Italian provinces, it has been because of the devotion of our statesmen to certain pet theories that much shedding of blood is due.

One of these theories is that some nation or other is "our natural enemy." France for several centuries held that position, and it was as obvious to one generation that the word "Frenchman" was synonymous with "fiend" as it was for another to link "Spaniard" with "devil" and for a nearer still to consider that the Emperor Nicholas of Russia and "Old Nick" were one and the same. Just now the "natural enemy" idea is happily dormant, if not dead; but its evil effect upon our foreign policy has been all too plainly marked in many a page of history.

Another theory, and one which has had a more far-reaching extent, is that it is inc.u.mbent upon the nations of Europe to maintain "the balance of power." This, again, is a phrase which has lost much of its old force; but a Continental struggle might cause it to bloom once more with all its baleful effects. Speaking about a quarter of a century ago, Mr.

Bright, considering the theory to be "pretty nearly dead and buried,"