"TORY DEMOCRACY."

Why a Governor's "a Tory."

 LIBERALS WHO WERE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC.

 WHY THERE ARE CONSERVATIVE WORKING MEN.

It is strikingly significant of the extent to which journalists — both Labor and Liberal — keep their readers ignorant of the history of politics that, when the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Gerald Strickland, declared, at the Eight-hour banquet, that he was a Tory Democrat, his declaration was greeted with laughter. Why laughter? There is nothing comic about democratic Toryism, any more than about democratic Liberalism. As a matter of fact, the programme and methods of Australian Laborism more nearly resemble those of Toryism than they do those of Liberalism. This is quite contrary to the idea that is commonly conveyed by some journalists, but it is the truth. Even now, there is a considerable section of the Tory party of England that is

 MORE IN SYMPATHY

 with Australian Laborism than is any section of the British Liberal party.
 Of course, to the jejune journalists of official Laborism and Liberalism it is impossible for a man to be a Tory and yet approve of Labor ideals, and Labor legislation. As a matter of fact, however, it is the Tories who have ever distinguished themselves as more inclined to favor the aspirations of the wage-earning sections of the community than the Liberals. To such an extent has this been the case that Molesworth, in his typically petty-bourgeois Liberal "History of England," deplores the existence in his day of what he calls Tory Chartism, a form of Chartism that refused to connect itself in any way with the Liberal party, and whose leaders were never tired of denouncing that party. The so-called Tory Chartists had their leaders in the House of Commons, and, with the few men elected as Chartists or Radicals, were the only men that the

 WORKERS COULD RELY UPON

 to protect them from the inordinate and unscrupulous greed of Liberal capitalists.
 The party that Molesworth sought to stigmatise as "Tory Chartists" termed themselves the Young England party. To this party, in his early days, belonged that brilliant Hebrew statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, the grandson of a Jewish emigrant from Italy, who had settled in England. The party was small, but its influence was very great. It very strong sympathised with Chartism, trade unionism, and Owenism, and "Sybil, or the Two Nations," by Benjamin Disraeli, might have been written by an Australian Laborist — if he possessed the genius. It was the Tory party that passed the Factories Acts, by means of which — despite the bitter and determined opposition of the Liberals — the hours of work of women and children in factories were regulated and reduced by law. There was

 A FRIGHTFUL HOWL

 at this from the Liberal capitalists. Such typical Liberals as the Freetrade Quaker, John Bright—whom John Burns afterwards denounced at a big meeting in Hyde Park as an "impostor"— declared that the reduction of the hours of labor in factories was an interference with the law of supply and demand, which would reduce English manufacturers to ruin.
That other typical Liberal, Richard Cobden, said much the same thing; but the Tories ( who were, largely, country squires, and had a certain bias against the free-corn-loving capitalists of the cities) persevered in their support of the Tory Lord Shaftesbury's efforts to reduce the hours of dire drudgery of factory operatives, and, consequently, there were placed upon the English Statute-book Acts that were the forerunners of the kind of legislation that we have for years been familiar with in Australia. And, in spite of the

 PROPHECIES OF RUIN

 made by Bright and Cobden, nobody seems "one penny the worse."
 It was rather a misfortune for England that, just when the Chartist movement (which was a demand for democracy as a prelude to thorough social reform) was most militant, various Free-trade orators filled the ears of the English workers with tales of the glorious results that would follow from Free-trade. How far they went in their predictions is shown by one of the speeches made by a Mr. Fox, one of the most prominent of the Free-trade agitators, in which he said that, as soon as Free-trade was adopted, the ruins of English workhouses would attest the overthrow of pauperism, just as ruined castles testified to the fall of feudalism. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Free-trade in corn (in order to supply the manufacturers with flour for use in the "sizing" of shoddy cotton fabrics) was speedily brought about, but

 PAUPERISM INCREASED

 more than ever, in spite of the fact that a Liberal Parliament so altered the Poor Law as to make it press with most cruel severity upon the helpless poor.
 In their misery, the wage-earners fell back upon trade unionism; but this, too, was violently denounced by the official leaders of Liberalism. John Bright was particularly indignant at the conduct of the organised wage-earners, and declared that he would sooner live under the tyranny of the Dey of Algiers than under the rule of a trade union. Nevertheless, the unions, in spite of the most cruelly repressive laws, increased, and, naturally enough, showed no great anxiety to put Liberals into power in the places where, as employers of labor, Liberals were best known by the workers. Liberals were constantly professing to be horribly shocked at the conduct of the workers in voting for Tory candidates in manufacturing districts where the operatives had power; but the reason of their so voting was that they knew the

 BEAUTIES OF THE CHARACTER

 of the Liberal capitalist from personal knowledge of him, and, therefore, preferred his political opponent.
 There has always existed in the Tory party a section that favored democratic and industrial action somewhat on the lines followed by Australian Laborists. After the Young England party had died, there followed what was called the Fourth party, under the leadership of Lord Randolph Churchill, another brilliant statesman who, if his advice had been acted upon by the Tory party, would have made that party unquestionably supreme over the Liberals, and would have given it an exceedingly long lease of political life. Indeed, some of the standard works of the Tory writers; —notably Judge Byles' "Sophisms of Free-trade and Political Economy"— would, in Australia, be looked upon almost as text-books of Laborism.
 No; there was

 NOTHING TO LAUGH AT

 in Sir Gerald Strickland's statement that he was a Tory Democrat. But for the blunders of some of the British Tory leaders, the Tory party would be the most popular party in England to-day and it is quite probable that when a thoroughly democratic franchise is adopted the new electorates will considerably strengthen the Tory party. There is no great love of Liberalism among the English workers. One reason of this is that the Liberal party is deeply tainted with the form of Puritanism that we in Australia call wowserism; another reason is that the personnel and influence of capitalists are altogether too noticeable in the British Liberal party. With a thoroughly democratic franchise, either a quite new party will come into existence, somewhat on the lines of the old social democratic party, as it was in the days of the Chartist J. Bronterre O'Brien, or the Liberal party will have to throw overboard its Jonah, the capitalist, while the Tory party must throw over its Jonah, the landlord. The probability is that the Tory party will, in accordance with its traditions, "rise to the occasion," and capture the electorates with a programme somewhat like that of an Australian Labor party.

Truth (Brisbane, Qld. : 1900 - 1954), Sunday 18 October 1914, page 9