government is defeated in Midlothian the end of that government is not far distant. The Unionists were handicapped by their differences on the question of tariffs on foodstuffs, and the Government pressed on relentlessly and fearlessly with its controversial measures. When challenged by the Unionists to submit the Irish question to the people at a general election, or at least to hold a referendum on the subject, Mr. Asquith and his colleagues replied that the electorate had already been duly consulted; and the unopposed return of the premier to Parliament by his constituency in the election to which he was required, early in 1914, to submit upon his acceptance of the war secretaryship, was urged by the Liberals as an indication that the Government retained unimpaired the confidence of the majorities that had continued it in power in 1910. Half a dozen defeats in by-elections in the winter of 1913-14, combined with a series of reverses in borough elections, pointed, however, to a different conclusion; and the premier himself felt it necessary, in the spring of 1914, to make a special appeal to the Labor forces for closer coöperation. When the Great War came on, the country was within fifteen months of a general election, entailed by the five-year limit placed upon the life of a parliament by the Parliament Act; and the indications were that the Unionists would be in a position to enter the contest with a very fair prospect of winning.1

1 The political history of the period is recorded with some fullness in the Annual Register for the successive years. See also the summaries of parliamentary proceedings in the Polit. Quar., Feb., May, and Sept., 1914.

CHAPTER XV

THE MAJOR PARTIES: COMPOSITION AND ORGANIZATION

Liberal and Conservative [Unionist] Alignments. Having outlined the party history of the past hundred years, we are prepared to look somewhat more closely into the character of the parties themselves, as indicated by their composition, their organization and methods, and their principles and policies; and inasmuch as the Great War forced all party organizations completely out of their accustomed positions, it will be desirable to deal with these varied aspects of party affairs as they stood in 1914, and afterwards to speak separately of developments in the party situation during and since the conflict. The parties as they were on the eve of the war will therefore be described in this chapter and the two succeeding chapters; party movements since 1914 will be briefly dealt with in the concluding chapter of the series on this subject.

Of the four parties that had attained substantial importance by 1914, one, the Irish Nationalist, was localized in Ireland and had for its sole purpose the achievement of Irish home rule; another, the Labor party, was composed principally of workingmen (mainly members of trade unions) and existed to promote the interests of the laboring masses; while the two older and more powerful ones, the Liberals and the Conservatives or Unionists, were broadly national both in their constituencies and in the range of their principles and policies. It had been customary for these two major parties to engage in heated combat in Parliament and at the polls, and the casual spectator might suppose that they were separated by a very wide gulf. As a matter of fact, there was no difference between them that need prevent a flexible-minded man from crossing from one to the other. Even the names "Liberal " and " Conservative" had, and still have, less significance than might be supposed. During the generation which began with the Reform Act of 1832 the Liberals, indeed, extended the suffrage to the middle classes, reformed the poor law, humanized the criminal law, introduced a new and improved scheme of municipal administration, started public provision for elementary education, enacted statutes to safeguard the

public health, removed the disabilities of dissenters, and helped the country get definitely on a free-trade basis. In general, they labored to bring the political system into accord with the new conditions produced by the industrial revolution and by the growth of democratic ideas. But if the Conservatives of the period 1830-70 lived fairly well up to their party name, their attitude, none the less, was by no means uniformly that of obstructionists; and in the days of the Disraelian leadership they became scarcely less a party of reform than were their opponents. Beginning with the Reform Act of 1867, a long list of progressive, and even revolutionizing, measures must be credited to them; and in later years they and the Liberals vied in advocating old age pensions, factory legislation, Irish land reform, accident insurance, housing laws, and many other kinds of advanced and remedial governmental action.

The differences which have separated the two parties are not so much those of principle as those of means or, at the most, of tendencies. It has been a favorite contention of the Liberals that they are the more democratic, the more willing to trust the people, the more devoted to the interests of the masses that they seek the well-being of the working classes from conviction, while their opponents do so only from a desire for votes; but the Unionists enter a strong, and to a degree plausible, denial. It used to be a theory of the Liberals, too, that they fostered peace and economy with more resoluteness than their rivals, and that the Unionists stood for a more aggressive, and even menacing, attitude abroad. There is some historical ground for these assertions. Yet the policy pursued in these matters is likely to be determined, year in and year out, far more by the circumstances. that arise and by the temperament of individual ministers than by any deliberate or permanent principle of party. Undoubtedly the Liberals have had more regard for the peculiar interests of Scotland, Wales, and especially Ireland; yet even here the difference is not as great as is often supposed.

All in all, it would appear that the population of the United Kingdom, barring the Nationalist and Labor elements, was in 1914 about evenly divided between the Liberal and Conservative forces. Party composition, however, followed the lines of class or interest far more than in the United States; although all kinds of contradictory affiliations appeared, and it was never safe to assume that a man was of a given party connection simply because he belonged to a certain profession, class, or group. In the Conservative ranks, however, were found decidedly the larger part

of the people of title, wealth, and social position; almost all of the clergy of the Established Church, and some of the Dissenters, especially Wesleyans; a majority of the graduates of the universities1 and of members of the bar; most of the prosperous merchants, manufacturers, and financiers; a majority of clerks, and approximately half of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and a very considerable, although diminishing, number of working-people. The Liberal party contained a minor share of the professional and commercial classes, about half of the middle class (omitting clerks and other employees living on small fixed incomes), and at least half of the workingmen, although the Labor party was drawing off increasing numbers of the last-mentioned class. The Established Church in England and Wales was a bulwark of Unionism, but the Nonconformists were everywhere heavily Liberal.

Liberalism (in the party sense) drew the support of only an insignificant portion of the rank and wealth of the kingdom. At the middle of the nineteenth century the party indeed consisted fundamentally of two elements: (1) the aristocratic Whigs, of eighteenth-century antecedents, whose liberalism was of a very moderate sort, and (2) middle-class people enfranchised in 1832, who were more inclined to radicalism. The reform acts of 1867 and 1884 brought this second element great accessions of strength, and by drawing in the working people of the towns accentuated its radical propensities. The old-Whig and the more popular elements were, however, never really fused, and, beginning with the secession of the Liberal Unionists on Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill in 1886, the elements representing title, wealth, and fashion migrated almost en masse into the ranks of the opposing party. This drew off most of the old Whigs. In addition, many of the great manufacturers and traders, representing new and socially ambitious families, chose to link up their fortunes with conservatism. The immediate result was a decided weakening of the party, which was revealed no less by its failure to govern impressively in 1892-95 than by its low estate as an opposition party in 1895-1905. In the long run, however, there was a distinct gain in unity, and the party was able to become a party of liberalism in a degree that must otherwise have been impossible.2

1 At the election of 1906, 21,505 of the 25,771 votes recorded in the university constituencies were cast for Unionist candidates. From 1885 to 1918 not a Liberal member was returned by any one of the universities.

2 This Liberal secession is fully described and interpreted in Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, I, Chap. ix. See also Morley, Life

Geographical Distribution of Party Strength. The strength of Irish Nationalism up to 1914 lay almost wholly in Ireland, and that of the Labor party was largely confined to the great industrial centers and districts of England and Wales. The major parties, too, while less localized, were decidedly stronger in some portions of the country than in others. Scotland was overwhelmingly Liberal. Half of its counties and boroughs invariably returned Liberals to the House of Commons; a third more were predominantly Liberal; three or four counties were politically doubtful; not more than that number were predominantly Conservative. The situation in Wales was practically the same, except that the Liberal dominance was still more pronounced. On the other hand, England presented the aspect of a predominantly Conservative, or at all events Conservative and doubtful, stretch of country, generously spotted over with Liberal areas. Five of these Liberal regions stood out with some distinctness: (1) the extreme northeast, especially Northumberland, Durham, and parts of Cumberland; (2) a great belt stretching westwards from the Humber to Morecambe Bay, and including northern Lincoln, southern York, and northern Lancashire; (3) Norfolk and the other lands bordering the Wash; (4) a midlands area containing parts of Leicester, Warwick, Northampton, and Bedford; and (5) Devon and Cornwall, in the far southwest. The Conservative strongholds lay farther to the south and east. From Chester and Nottingham to the English Channel, and from Wales to the North Sea this was the great area in which almost all of the notable strength of Conservatism was to be found, aside from the four or five Protestant counties of the Irish province of Ulster. From Oxford and Hertford southwards past London to the Channel there was not a county that was not predominantly Conservative. Perhaps the most strongly Conservative section of the entire country was the southeasternmost county, Kent.1

The existence of "two Britains," a northern and a southern, a Liberal and a Conservative, has long been a matter of comment among students of politics and of sociology; Disraeli gave it

of William Ewart Gladstone, III, Bk. x; Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, II, Chaps. xii-xiii; Jeyes, Mr. Chamberlain, Chaps. ix-x; Mackintosh, Joseph Chamberlain, Chaps. xvi-xx.

1 See E. Krehbiel, "Geographic Influences in British Elections," in Geog. Rev., Dec., 1916. A map which accompanies this article shows in colors the distribution of party strength on the basis of composite returns for the eight parliamentary elections between 1885 and December, 1910. A book of some interest in this connection is R. H. Gretton, The English Middle Class (London, 1917).