We now know that this opinion of Sir Stafford Northcote's was quite true, so far as it went. In later years Sir Stafford's early connexion with Gladstone, coupled with his chivalrous nature and amiable disposition, that always led him to credit his former chief with the best intentions, was sometimes quoted against him by the Fourth Party, with suggestions that he was really a Peelite at heart. But at page 152 of his Financial Policy he distinctly said of the Peelites that

they gave a decided and powerful impulse to a system of financial policy with respect to the prudence of which they might, perhaps, under other circumstances have seen reason to hesitate.

But it was Disraeli himself who, in the House of Commons on the 17th of March 1845, proclaimed the real reason why it was that the Tories appeared as the Protectionists, while the Whigs and the Radicals, and ultimately the Peelites, posed as Free Traders. And his words, like those of Lord Salisbury at Manchester in 1879 to the same effect, and almost in the same language, put in a nutshell once and for ever the case for Tory Free Trade, which is Tariff Reform, as against Cobdenite Free Trade. For he said:

We must come to the test on this great question: Will you have Protection, or will you have-not Free Trade, for that is not the alternative, but-Free Imports !'

Over and over again had Disraeli demonstrated the folly of the doctrine of free imports. I have already referred to his memorable pronouncement in the House of Commons on the free imports amendment of Mr. Ricardo on the 25th of April 1843, that to 'fight against hostile tariffs with free imports' would be a policy financially of the most disastrous kind,' and that its immediate consequences would be tariffs more hostile to England.' And then, referring to the Tory doctrine of real Free Trade, he said:

The expression Free Trade,' as originally brought into public notice, designated very different principles from those it denoted in the mouths of the gentlemen opposite. . . . A peculiar characteristic of the Free Trade school was their total neglect of circumstances. . . . If they meant to obtain advantages by negotiation they must unreservedly announce it, and certainly it would not be long before they attained their end, because the Minister of England who negotiated is in a much more favourable position than the Minister of any other country

by reason of our possessing India and the Colonies. And he concluded by denouncing Mr. Ricardo's doctrine of free imports, as founded on principles which were utterly fallacious,' and he implored the House to adopt the medium course, the principle of Reciprocity.'

I must here remark, in passing, that Lord Morley of Blackburn, in that marvellously honest and sincere Life of Richard Cobden which, with Mr. Justin McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, has largely

influenced popular opinion on these events, says of Disraeli's opposition to Peel and free imports in 1846, that Mr. Disraeli must be said to have sinned against light-his compliments to Peel and Free Trade in 1842 prove it.' And yet Lord Morley had read, and studied, the speech of Disraeli that I have just quoted, for he magnanimously says of it that it is 'remarkable to this day for its large and comprehensive survey of the whole field of our commerce, and for its discernment of the channels in which it would expand.' How can Lord Morley reconcile these two statements? With an intimate knowledge of all Disraeli's great speeches, I venture to assert, with the utmost respect and deference, that on on every single occasion when he offered 'compliments to Peel and Free Trade' he was thinking and speaking, as is always abundantly shown by the context, of the true Free Trade, as over and over again defined by himself, of Reciprocity, and never in a single instance of the bastard Free Trade of the Cobdenite school-free imports, which he, like the late Lord Salisbury, invariably denounced as not Free Trade at all. I trust I shall not be thought presumptuous if I observe that so acute and sincere a statesman as Lord Morley is absolutely above the slightest suspicion of intentionally using any unfair term. But the fact, if I may say so, seems to be that the Liberal party-as even its very name suggests-has always had a keen eye for the value of unctuous question-begging appellatives, and it has so resolutely and persistently called the system of free imports by the disingenuous name of Free Trade,' that the term has become almost one of 'common form,' and in this way may sometimes be used by Liberal writers and speakers with no intention to deceive, but merely with terminological inexactitude.

Throughout his life Disraeli was never weary of denouncing this mischievous pretence of bastard Free Trade. At Shrewsbury, on the 9th of May 1843, he said:

My idea of Free Trade is this, that you cannot have Free Trade unless the person you deal with is as liberal as yourself. If I saw a prize-fighter encountering a galley-slave in irons, I should consider the combat equally as fair as to make England fight hostile tariffs with free imports.

And admirers of Lord Randolph Churchill will be pleased to remember that, in his famous Blackpool speech, he improved on this simile of Disraeli's, for, where Disraeli compared England maimed by free imports to a manacled galley-slave being unfairly bruised by a prizefighter, Lord Randolph compared free imports to an assassin plunging his dagger into a prostrate and dying man. And again, Disraeli pointed out, in his speech in the House of Commons of the 20th of February 1846, that free imports must produce a proportionate displacement of the wages of labour.'

And now, in order to show very precisely how far the evolution.

of the exact principles of Tariff Reform, as advocated by Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain at the present day, had progressed in the days of Derby and Disraeli as leaders of the Tory party, I will make two brief quotations from two very definite speeches of Disraeli, one in support of Reciprocity, the other in support of Imperial Preference. Taken together these quotations afford absolute proof that Mr. Chamberlain's principles were those of the Tory party at that time. Speaking at the Crystal Palace in June 1872, Disraeli said:

If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalismforty years ago-you will find that there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire of England. . . . It has been proved by them to all of us that we have lost money by our Colonies. It has been shown with precise, with mathematical demonstration, that there never was a jewel in the Crown of England that was so truly costly as the possession of India. How often has it been suggested that we should at once emancipate ourselves from this incubus. Well, that result was nearly accomplished. When those subtle views were adopted by the country, under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the Colonies, I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I for one object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant Colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an Imperial tariff. . . . Well, what has been the result of this attempt during the reign of Liberalism for the disintegration of the Empire? It has entirely failed. But how has it failed? Through the sympathy of the Colonies with the Mother Country. They have decided that the Empire shall not be destroyed, and, in my opinion, no Minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our Colonial Empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land.

That is, clearly and definitely, the Imperial Preference branch of the Tariff Reform policy of the Unionist party to-day. And in the House of Commons on the 10th of March 1848 the other branch of the same policy, that of Reciprocity, or Fair Trade, was put forward by the Tory leader with equal clearness as the true Free Trade. Speaking of the Cobdenite agitation of the years before 1846, he said:

During that period a great commercial confederation had arisen, very completely organised and conducted by very able men. They made great way in the country, and they promulgated opinions on commerce very different from those propounded by the late Minister in 1842. They were not the opinions of Mr. Pitt, of Lord Shelburne, or of Lord Bolingbroke.. They were not the opinions of Free Trade which I am prepared to support. Yes, I am a Free Trader, but not a free-booter-honourable gentlemen opposite are free-booters. The great leaders of the school of Manchester never pretended for a moment that they advocated the principles of regulated competition or reciprocal intercourse; on the contrary, they brought forward new principles, expressed in peculiar language.

These new principles were totally opposed to the

principles of Free Trade. These were the principles, however, for which the country was agitated; and in 1845 the late Minister gave his adhesion to them. And here I must observe that during the whole period that elapsed between 1842 and 1845 the late Minister never produced one of those commercial treaties which he promised us in 1842. (Mr. Gladstone: Because foreign Powers would not agree to them.') I want no more important admission than that which I have just received from a late Secretary of State. The attempt to induce foreign Powers to enter into commercial treaties failed, and therefore the late Minister adopted a principle which denied the expediency of obtaining such treaties. That was the state of affairs in 1845. Now, I maintain that the principles acted upon were not the principles of Mr. Pitt.

Now let me again recall the fact that in the very year-1843— when Disraeli was resolutely preaching the Tory doctrine of Reciprocity, or Fair Trade, in opposition to the Radical theory of free imports, Lord Stanley (afterwards Earl of Derby) carried through his Canada Corn Act, with the sanction of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. That Act admitted colonial corn at a nominal duty of ls., with a preference of 3s. over foreign corn, Canada taxing all United States corn, whether for consumption or in transit, at the same rate of 3s. Professor Saintsbury shows, in his delightful but all too brief Life of Lord Derby, that this Act indicates Lord Derby's own principle, which was simple-protection against foreign, but not against colonial, industry.'

Here, then, were presented by two leading Tories, Derby and Disraeli, the twin policies of Reciprocity and Imperial Preference that were, in 1843 as now, the true Tory alternative to Protection.

After this lapse of time it is perhaps idle to speculate as to what would have been the result if Peel, when frankly abandoning Protection, had gone to the country with this Tory policy, instead of dishing the Whigs' by surrendering to Cobden and the Radicals. It is, of course, true that Peel's hand was to some extent forced by Lord John Russell, who, in his famous letter to his London constituents from Edinburgh on the 22nd of November 1845, made the first bid in this somewhat ignominious Dutch auction by declaring for immediate repeal. Lord John by this bold move probably secured the acquiescence of most of the official Whigs in a policy that would unite with them, under his leadership, all the Cobdenite Radicals, all O'Connell's Nationalists, and perhaps most of the unofficial Whigs. But Cobden's letters make it abundantly clear that the Whigs, as a party, disliked this policy quite as much as the Tories did. So that it was quite on the cards that, if Peel had stuck to his own policy -which was a temporary suspension of the corn duties to meet the existing scarcity, as advised also by Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Lord Aberdeen, coupled with the ultimate reversion to the Reciprocity and Colonial Preference of the other Tory leaders --he might very probably have carried with him a large following of Whigs as well as the solid Tory party. He chose the line of least

resistance by dishing the Whigs.' It is not necessary to adopt the severe judgment on this action that was expressed by Lord Melbourne to Queen Victoria in his famous outburst on the occasion. Nor is it necessary to regard Lord Melbourne's sentiment as mere Whig spleen, for it was undoubtedly shared by nearly every Tory. But, however that may be, Peel succeeded, indeed, in dishing the Whigs, and in tying them to the chariot-wheels of the triumphant Radicals; but in doing so-as Disraeli often pointed out-he established the Radical power and destroyed the Tory party as an effective political force for nearly thirty years to come.

During the Administrations of Lord Derby the Tories were in office, but not in power. For this period, then, there is little to be said about the evolution of Tariff Reform in the Tory party. There were occasions, however, when the principle seemed to be making its way, even in the dominant party.

For instance, in Lord Palmerston's Administration, when the Peelites seceded from the Ministry on the appointment of the Sebastopol Committee, Sir George Cornewall Lewis succeeded Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In presenting the Budget of 1857 Sir George took occasion to speak very strongly against some features of the Gladstonian finance. He inveighed especially against the pet theory of the Cobdenites that taxation on imports should be 'simplified,' as they called it, by being restricted to a few articles-as opposed to the Tariff Reform theory of broadening the basis of taxation.' This is how Sir Stafford Northcote briefly describes Sir George Lewis's argument:

In support of his views he quoted the following passage from Mr. Arthur Young: The mere circumstance of taxes being very numerous in order to raise a given sum is a considerable step towards equality in the burden falling on the people. If I was to define a good system of taxation, it should be that of bearing lightly on an infinite number of points, heavily on none. In other words, that simplicity in taxation is the greatest additional weight that can be given to taxes, and ought in every country to be most sedulously avoided.' That opinion, said Sir George Lewis, though contrary to much that we hear at the present day, seems to me to be full of wisdom, and to be a most useful, practical guide in the arrangement of a system of taxation.

Sir Stafford Northcote adds that Mr. Gladstone treated the Chancellor of the Exchequer's language as a total condemnation of the principles by which Parliament had been guided during the last fifteen years!'-i.e. the principles of Cobdenism.

Another occasion was in 1860, when Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Cobden negotiated their famous treaty of commercial reciprocity with France. Of course this treaty violated every canon of Cobdenism as to import duties being only used for revenue purposes. It was simply an ordinary treaty of reciprocity; and it was hardly in accord with Mr. Cobden's usual candour that he attempted to harmonise it with his doctrinaire theories by pointing out that its favours-of importing at