The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1911-04-22
me Rule and of a e!oser union of the

Thus it is clear that, except by
small section Of irreconcilable Ulster
Orangemen and Of the old school Tor
les, like Lord Hugh Cecil, even the
Tory fight against Home Rule is half
hearted.
Some weeks ago Winston Churchill
in a passage Of almost cruel vigor
threw at Mr. Balfour the taunt that
the Tory party had gone from defeat
to defeat from disaster to disaster,
since the death of Lord Salisbury, that
is to say, since the day when Mr.. Bal
four succeeded to the leadership Mr..
Balfour has great parliamentary cour-
age and preserves his equilibrium in
circumstances OF great difficulty.
But now and then he has a fit OF
almost girlish shyness; and when he
gets one of these fits he holds down
his head just like schoolgirl detected
in a fib, and seems sheepish and lost
And he looked like that when Church.
hill threw that terrible and true taunt
at him across the floor of the house.
Like so many men beaten, the Tory
to change it's policy from week to
week and even from hour to hour, and
it throws out proposals Of the most
far reaching and revolutionary char
acter without thinking them out, or
without filling in the details.
What is the explanation of this eX-
traordinary lit of folly. instability of
purpose and change Of plan that has
come on a once powerful party, upon
a party which up to 1900 seemed des-
tined to rule England?
1t is to be sought partly in the char
acter of the Tory leaders, partly in the
condition of the party itself. Balfour.
as L have said, has some extraordinary
gifts as parliamenetariar, inexhaust-
ible subtlety, persuasive, conciliatory
manners; there is perhaps no man in
the house Of commons who has fewer
personal enemies, and greater courage
and tenacity. But he lacks one great
characteristic of a leader, courage of
the prompt kind, what Napoleon used
to call "2 o'clock in the morning cour-
age" which impels a man to see that
a certain moment is decisive, that it
requires a decisive act, and that on
that moment depends the whole future.
When Chamberlain started his new
protectionist campaign Balfour might
have defied Chamberlain; he had quite
half the Tory party with him, and he
had all it's really Intelligent men, but
Balfour hesitated shirlled the encount-
er with Chamberlain, allowed his in
telligent free trade colleagues to grad
ually disappear from his side, and, in
short, gave up the keys of the citadel
to Chamberlain, and from that mo-
ment he and the Tory party We're lost
From that moment it became IL high
tariff party, which in England means
destruction.
And, while Balfour lost himself, he
did not save his party. The tariff re-
formers, the most active and at the
same time the least Intelligent section
Of the Tory party, began a fierce VEN
delta against every Tory who was d
free trader They knitted any such
Tory when he came before the party
caucus in any constituency as a cam
didate, they expelled every Tory free
trader one by one; Lord Hugh Cecil
is the only one left and he would have
been destroyed also but that his prin-
ciples as a violent and narrow and
sacerdotalist high Anglican secured
university, which rules the rectors and
the parsonages Of the Anglican church.
But there again, in accepting tariff
reform, Balfour lost himself, and lost
his party He has for eight years
shown a deXterity and ineXhaustible
resourcefulness, a marvellous craftiness,
whole world and most all of his own
followers in complete uncertainty as
to what his real views are with regard
to protection.
1t is only certain that he is not a
true and thoroughgoing protectionist;
that, though he has hirted with all
kinds Of things approaching protection,
he has always succeeded in eluding
the embrace Of full protection, however
much that perilous political siren was
forced by his followers into his arms.
Would Gust BaIfour.
And this has broken his leadership.
He is dstrusted he is even hated by
a large number of his own followers.
All really extreme protectionists re-
gard him as a more dangerous and
more effective enemy to the cause of
protection than Asquith, Lloyd George