Hence the anomaly of Imperialism attended by direct taxation. In no other country have the political conditions operated so. Upon the Continent Militarism and Imperialism have thriven upon indirect taxation, and have enabled the agricultural and manufacturing interests to defeat easily any movement towards Free Trade by urging the needs of revenue through tariffs. In Great Britain it seems unlikely that the policy of direct taxation upon property and income for imperial purposes will be carried any further. The Government of the propertied classes has almost shaken itself free from the traditions of Free Trade; many of the leaders and the overwhelming majority of the rank and file are avowed Protectionists so far as agriculture and certain staple industries are concerned. They are no longer seriously frightened by the power of the people as implied by a popular franchise, nor are they prepared to conciliate it by further taxes upon property; they have experimented with the temper of “the monster,” and they think that by the assistance of “the trade” and the Church he is quite manageable, and can be cajoled into paying for Imperialism through protective duties. “Panem et circenses” interpreted into English means cheap booze and Mafficking. Popular education, instead of serving as a defence, is an incitement towards Imperialism; it has opened up a panorama of vulgar pride and crude sensationalism to a great inert mass who see current history and the tangled maze of world movements with dim, bewildered eyes, and are the inevitable dupes of the able organised interests who can lure, or scare, or drive them into any convenient course.
Had the Liberal party stood by the principles of peace, retrenchment, and reform, refusing to go beyond the true “colonialism” of such men as Molesworth, and rejecting the temptations to a “spirited foreign policy” dictated by bond-holders, they might now be able to resist the attack