At the recent elections the Liberals achieved a victory and suffered a disappointment. Instead of commanding, as in 1906, a clear majority of nearly ninety over all other parties combined, they face the new Parliament with only two more members than the Unionists. Instead of being the predominant partners in a coalition that outnumbered the Unionists four years ago by no less than 356, they now find themselves, even when fully supported by allies who partake somewhat of the character of guerillas, with a lead of only 124. Instead of being free to frame and prosecute their own policies with little or no fear of a revolt that would drive them into surrender or out of office, they are to-day dependent upon the Irish Nationalists who, if they abstain from voting, leave the Government with a majority of fortytwo, who, if they vote against the Government, and with the Unionists, bring about its immediate downfall. Instead of winning some 240 seats in Great Britain, as in 1906, they have in 1910 lost over 100. Their majority of 32,000 votes in London has been turned into an even larger minority; in the English boroughs, where four years ago they were 175,000 ahead of the Unionists, their majority has been reduced to 64,000; and in the English counties a lead of 220,000 has been whittled down to one of 25,000. Though Wales has added since 1906 some 35,000 to the Liberal majority, and though Scotland has stood wonderfully firm, the turnover of votes in England has been so prodigious that, whereas the Liberals and Labor men piled up a majority in Great Britain of over 630,000 in 1906, in 1910 that majority has been reduced to 280,000. Taking the United Kingdom as a whole, the Coalition majority which stood four years ago at 836.

It is true

000 has been nearly halved. that eight seats were lost to the Coalition through split votes, that the plural voter was never more assiduously polled, that "property" made the fight of its life, and that a majority in seats of 124 and in votes of 486,000 is something that cannot be lightly explained away. Nevertheless, no Liberal who is honest with himself can profess to be satisfied with the results. That the high-water mark of 1906 could be maintained was not, naturally, to be expected. The very stars in their courses fought then for Liberalism. Yet it cannot be said that the circumstances of the recent election, either political or atmospheric, were adverse. They were, on the contrary, considerably more propitious than they are ever likely to be at any normal election in the future. Liberals, indeed, could hardly have chosen more favorable ground than that offered to them by their opponents. Four years of energetic, novel, and variegated experiment in social and industrial reform; some unique and resplendent successes in Imperial policy; a total absence of the weakness in foreign affairs that has wrecked more than one Liberal Ministry in the past generation; a host of conspicuously useful administrative achievements; a Budget that, if it aroused more opposition, aroused also more enthusiasm than any financial proposals of our time; and, to crown all, the wantonness of the Lords in challenging one of the fundamental principles of the Constitution-no party could hope to take the field under brighter auspices than these. Yet the fact remains and has to be faced that from a contest as momentous and exciting as any in the annals of British democracy the Liberals have emerged dejected in their victory and the

Unionists elated in their defeat.

At few elections has it been more difficult to determine what were the predominant issues. In some of the constituencies the question of the Lords played, it would seem, no part at all; in others it proved a valuable Liberal asset; in most it was overshadowed by the fiscal question; in none, so far as my inquiries have gone, was it the supreme and decisive factor. Deeply as it stirred the impartial intelligence of the country, it does not appear to have made any great appeal to the average voter even in the towns, while in the rural parts it fell unmistakably flat. Whatever effect it produced told, no doubt, almost exclusively in favor of the Liberals-the Unionists for their part shrewdly said as little about it as possible-but as a general rule the electorate showed but a poor appetite for Constitutional discussion. The Budget was a far more moving topic, but he would be a bold man who would decide offhand whether it benefited Liberalism more in the boroughs than it damaged it in the counties, or whether Mr. Lloyd George's speeches in defence of it gained more votes than they lost. The electioneering value of the Liberals' record as a whole, and of such measures, in particular, as the Old Age Pensions Act, it seems impossible to assess with any definiteness. sonally I incline to the view, after studying the reports of many candidates in all parts of the country, that as in 1906 the fiscal question was the subject that was most discussed and that most interested the ordinary voter; that what held the industrial North to the cause of Liberalism was mainly devotion to Free Trade stimulated by resentment against the Lords and by enthusiasm for the land taxes; and that what seduced the counties was the rally of "property" and "society," the blandishments of the Tariff Reformers, the fear of new taxes suggested by the

Per

scheme for land valuation, the fierce and effective animosity of "the trade," that vague sense of insecurity which Liberal Governments rarely fail to inspire, and, here and there, the scare about the Navy and Germany.

A confused election has, in short, produced a confused result. It has emphasized at once the strength and the impossibility of Tariff Reform. It has shown that, as in Germany, Protection is beginning in England to draw a line of political division between North and South and between town and country; and it has demonstrated anew the terrible risks to be incurred by those who would seek to impose a change in our fiscal system against the almost unanimous opposition of the chief manufacturing centres. And yet if political action were governed solely by political convictions, if it were possible in politics to decide each question on its merits and without reference to other questions, the present House of Commons would show a clear majority against both the Budget and Free Trade. So far as the Budget is concerned, this fact has, indeed, already been made startlingly plain; and its consequences must be the paramount factor in guiding the strategy of the Government, and may even settle its fate. For the rest there are certain inferences that may, I think, be drawn from the General Election with a reasonable amount of assurance. One is that the national verdict was in no sense, as Mr. Redmond has declared it to be, a verdict in favor of Home Rule. Another is that the Liberals have received a warning and a rebuff, though whether the vote of diminished confidence accorded to them is to be interpreted on naval, social, fiscal, or merely "general" grounds is a matter of conjecture. A third fact established by the polls is that the revolution set on foot by the Lords has failed, has been condemned, and must never again be