The noblest heritage you leave behind
Demos can scarce undo.
The prophecy that the Liberals would invoke the assistance of the Unionists to "save them from their friends" was not fulfilled; the course of legislation up to the war indicated in the main a desire to consult the demands of Labour rather than to break away from the alliance. The summary of reasons "Why I lost" from defeated candidates furnishes a useful commentary on the verses quoted above. They include Chinese Labour, the Big Loaf cry, the Education Bill of 1902, the Trade Disputes Bill, Overbridge Trams, the Japanese Alliance and the Entente Cordiale. The messages were not actually received by Punch, but they are not an unfair interpretation of the issues which weighed with the bulk of the electorate. A "spirited foreign policy" was out of favour, and a cold fit had succeeded to the fervour of the "Khaki" election.
The Government lost no time in setting to work to redeem their pledge about Trade Disputes. Early in April, C.-B. figures in the cartoon "Hard to please" as a farmer soliloquizing over his dog (Labour), "He's had two platefuls of biscuits and isn't satisfied. Looks as if he wanted raw meat." The plates, labelled Workmen's Compensation and Merchant Shipping Bill, are both empty. The third, the Trade Disputes Bill, is full of biscuits as yet untouched. When the Attorney-General, Sir J. Lawson Walton, introduced that measure, Punch, in his "Essence of Parliament," speaks of it as a "ticklish Bill" conceding important demands in regard to picketing and conspiracy, but "as to the immunity of Trade Union funds from amercement consequent on civil actions, the Bill does not go the full lengths of the demands of Labour." The attitude of the Labour Party, who threatened to bring in their own Bill and to insist on its substitution for the Government measure, is symbolized in the cartoon showing Labour offering his scales to Justice in preference to her own, in which Capital and Labour are equally balanced, with the comment, "I think you'll find this pair works better—for me." The climbing down of the Government in the autumn session is illustrated in a further cartoon representing Labour as the predominant partner. The Liberal Party is seen on foot being pushed on by a donkey (Labour) drawing a cart in which the Trade Disputes Bill is sitting. "Yes," says the old lady, "I was wrong to threaten him with a whip. The dear creature must be led, not driven. Still—this isn't quite the way I meant to come." Comment in Punch's "Essence of Parliament" on the progress of the Bill is curiously meagre, but there is one illuminating paragraph on the Report Stage: "The Attorney-General explained that when at the earlier stage he argued against the immunity of Trade Unions from action at law, he did not mean to debar himself from subsequently insisting upon the justice of such immunity." The momentous and far-reaching consequences of a measure which created a privileged class and set them above the law were only dimly apprehended in Punch, who confined himself in his further comments to the lack of spirit shown by the Opposition in the Lords. Thus in "The Better Part of Valour" we see the Trade Disputes Bill standing over the prostrate figure of the Education Bill, about to batter its way into the Lords, while Lord Lansdowne remarks: "I bar your way? My dear fellow! Why, you've got a mandate." "Well, so had my friend here," rejoins the T.D.B., on which Lord Lansdowne replies: "Ah! but not such a big one!" The same idea is developed in the Epilogue, where the Lords are charged by the representative of "The People's Will" with having attacked and brutally ill-treated the Education Bill, while they were too cowardly to tackle the Trade Disputes Bill.
The Revolt of the Middle Classes
The Daily Mail, which had anticipated a Unionist victory at the polls, now espoused the cause of the "Middle-Class Serf," taxed and rated and bled beyond endurance "in the interests of the most pampered section of the community the labouring man," and rumours of the formation of a new political body, with a view to obtaining justice and recognition, impelled Punch to indulge in a forecast, half sympathetic, half sceptical, of "The Turning of the Middle-Class Worm":—
England, be warned! The time for patience passes;
You are more near the eve
Of a revolt among the Middle Classes
Than you perhaps believe;