1908, by 4,174,000l. [It was subsequently pointed out, however, that November, 1908, was the time of the cotton lock-out.] In four years 15,000,000l. had been invested in Lancashire cottonmills, giving employment for 55,000 hands. The Manchester Ship Canal had been constructed to bring foreign goods; yet timber, grain, and perhaps cotton, the most important items of its traffic, would be struck at by Tariff Reform. Mr. Balfour had promised that cotton should be excluded; but why should it be excepted if the foreigner paid the duty? The Canal had greatly increased the value of adjacent land, while the ordinary shareholders had as yet received no dividend; why should not this increment be taxed? He cited authorities for the taxation of land values, remarked that, while foreign countries had land systems superior to our own, no country had both free land and Free Trade; and our local taxation was as clumsy and wasteful as the old system of taxation before Free Trade. The Lords, he contended, were the only irresponsible body in the country; and no Liberal Government would at any time take office without securing guarantees that within a single Parliament the will of the Commons should prevail.

Next day, at Bolton, Mr. Churchill referred to the efforts of the Ministry to increase the supply of cotton, and to its success in putting the gold industry on a healthier basis in South Africa, in spite of prophecies of disaster like those made as to the Budget; and pointed out that in forty years the average of Peers voting in divisions was only 110 out of some 600. At Liverpool on the day following his speech was more significant. He ridiculed the contention that the Lords were consulting the wishes of the people, and the idea of "taxing the foreigner"; the alternative was between taxing wealth and taxing wages. The capital and income of the nation were increasing rapidly; the latter had advanced in ten years by 100l. per head, wages by 1. per head. It might be asked whether this disparity was a satisfactory result of Free Trade; but wages were better in Great Britain than in Protected countries in Europe, the prices of food much better, the general condition of the majority of labourers superior-though a minority in Great Britain suffered more than any class elsewhere-and the rich abroad favoured Protection, while the poor did not. A Protective system could not raise the necessary revenue, especially as the Unionists were pledged to give back the equivalent of the burden on corn and meat in remissions on sugar, tea and tobacco. As to a 10 per cent. duty on manufactured articles, he argued at length that allowing for exceptions, reductions, drawbacks and the cost of collection, it would produce not more than 5,000,0001. or 6,000,000l. at most, at a cost to the consumer of 50,000,0001. He again declared that a Liberal Government would not take office without adequate guarantees against the Lords' veto.

At Crewe next day, Mr. Churchill dwelt on the necessity of the Budget for social reform, including national insurance and

labour exchanges. It was a People's Budget; it took a step towards land reform, and, having sensibly decreased the consumption of whisky, it had been successful as a temperance reform. At Oldham on Saturday, December 11, he attacked the vagueness of Mr. Balfour's manifesto (p. 267) which yet was a Tariff Reform plan. The great merit of the Budget was that it looked ahead and provided an expanding revenue for social reform. It was fortunate for Mr. Balfour that he was "constrained to be silent" about the Navy, considering his association in the spring with "the March hares and the April fools"; but he himself distrusted Mr. Balfour's silence about paying for it.

On the other hand, Mr. Long at Tring (Dec. 6) asked what Ministers objected to in the House of Lords; the hereditary principle, the existence of any Second Chamber, or the right to reject money Bills? Lord Rothschild, who presided at this meeting, declared that the attack on the Peers was meant to distract the electorate from other issues; and Mr. Lyttelton, speaking (against a strong body of opponents) at Barrow on December 8, repeated Mr. Long's question; the Liberals, he said, had no coherent views as to the Lords; moreover, they had given the new South African Chamber the right of rejecting money Bills. The real justification of the Lords' action was that if the Bill were passed some great issues would be prejudiced unfairly, and of these the greatest was Tariff Reform.

Further, the Birmingham Daily Post published on December 8 a leader seemingly inspired by Mr. Chamberlain or his circle, and restating in broad outline the Tariff Reform programme of a Unionist Government. A general tariff, not "Protective" in the German or American sense, would be established, placing duties on practically all goods not deemed to be raw material. It would be as simple as possible; there would be three rates of duty, giving an average rate of 10 per cent. Goods on which little labour had been spent would pay 5 per cent., those more nearly finished 10 per cent., and fully manufactured articles 15 per cent. There would be three scales of duty-e.g., the 10 per cent. rate would be charged on goods from "commercially friendly" foreign countries, 7 per cent. on similar Colonial goods, and 12 to 15 per cent. on the imports from those foreign States that sought to "penalise" British goods. A 2s. duty would be imposed on corn, with a partial reduction only on Colonial corn; a relatively higher duty would be placed on flour; and bacon and maize would not be exempted, as originally proposed by Mr. Chamberlain. Such a tariff would produce a revenue of 16,000,000l. to 20,000,000l., and the cost of collection would be about 250,000l. The Tariff, or at least a beginning in the shape of Colonial preference and otherwise, might be enacted by a Unionist Government in 1910; or, at any rate, in 1911, the maximum rate not coming into force till 1913, to give time for the negotiation of commercial treaties. Liberal papers commented on this diminution of Colonial preference,

and on the substitution of Protectionist for Imperial ends; but little more was heard of the scheme during the contest.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered two speeches at Carnarvon on Thursday, December 9. In the first, he said that the most important question for Wales had long been the Lords' veto, and that he would remain at Carnarvon rather than accept the offer made him to contest Cardiff-an announcement received with such enthusiasm that his speech was abruptly cut short by his emotion. In the evening, addressing a mass meeting, and speaking partly in Welsh, Mr. Lloyd-George, after insisting on the dangers attendant on the existence of the Lords' veto, defended the new taxes at length, pointing out that Mr. Balfour had accepted the super-tax (p. 230), as had those who earned large incomes. Its opponents objected to declaring their income, but all tradesmen had to do so. The leasehold system he described as thoroughly vicious; what the landlords objected to was the valuation. In Cardiff, Lord Bute's castle with 100 acres was rated at 9241. per annum; "a little tailor's shop next door," covering 400 square yards, was rated at 9471. Similar inequalities were common; in Carnarvon, for land wanted for a cemetery and rated at 21. per acre, the landowner had asked 8471.; and for land wanted for a school, 100l. per acre. chapel in Gower had cost 150l. to build; on the lease expiring, it had been redeemed from the landlord for 150l. What the landlords really objected to was the valuation. He welcomed

the approaching struggle; freedom did not descend like manna from heaven; the race had nothing to fear except from stagnation. When the rough weather was over, something which would lighten their hard lot would be brought within reach of the poor.

This speech was regarded by Unionists as that of a demagogue and the accuracy of the examples contested. The "little tailor's shop" proved, on examination, to be a prosperous outfitting establishment in an important thoroughfare, some distance away from the Castle.

The Prime Minister addressed a meeting of 10,000 men in the Albert Hall on Friday evening, December 10. Thousands of applicants for tickets had been disappointed, and the assemblage was described by the Times as "boiling over with enthusiasm." The utmost precautions had been taken against disturbance; but the women suffragists had had a great meeting in the hall on the previous evening and many of those present had secreted themselves afterwards in order to interrupt the Prime Minister. One had only been discovered that morning; another had been extricated from the organ; and another, disguised as a telegraph boy, was stopped while attempting to enter during Mr. Asquith's speech. Three male sympathisers with their cause successively interrupted the Prime Minister, and were ejected. Many Ministers and London Liberal members were present, and Mr. W. H. Dickinson (St. Pancras, N.) was in the chair.

Mr. Asquith extolled the unexampled energy and industry of the late House of Commons, reviewed its achievements, and deplored the frustration of much of its labour by the House of Lords. The Old Age Pensions Bill, deliberately kept out of the Liberal programme of 1906 because Ministers did not then see their way to provide the money, had now become an indestructible part of our social legislation; but the educational and licensing reform had been nullified, and the supplies had been stopped which were needed for naval defence and social reform. At the last dissolution "we reckoned without our host." The Government had to vindicate and establish on an unshakable foundation the principle of representative government. On this hung all the causes for which they had been fighting— education, licensing reform, women's suffrage-and here, while not concealing his own opinions, he explicitly renewed the pledge (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1908, p. 110) that it would remain an open question for the House of Commons, notwithstanding the suicidal" excesses of a few advocates of the change-the claim of Wales to religious equality, and those of Scotland, which had suffered specially. Ireland for once had been fortunate; but Ireland was still the main failure of British statesmanship. The Irish problem could only be solved by a policy which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme and undeniable authority of the Imperial Parliament, would set up selfgovernment in Ireland in regard to Irish affairs. For such a policy in the new Parliament the hands of the Liberal Government and the Liberal majority would be perfectly free. Mr. Asquith then referred to the social reforms interrupted by the action of the Lords, who had put forward an entirely new claim not only to meddle with, but to control and mould national finance. After contrasting this with Mr. Balfour's utterances on June 24, 1907, and in October, 1908, and commenting on his recent evasion of the question in the House (Dec. 2), the Prime Minister said that it was the first duty of the Government to make the recurrence of the Lords' action impossible by a statute embodying the settled doctrine of the Constitution that it was beyond the Lords' province to meddle in any way with national finance. The motive of the Lords' manoeuvre had been unmasked by Mr. Chamberlain (p. 210); the Budget was to be rejected as providing an effective substitute for so-called Tariff Reform, which meant taxation of the necessaries of life. Our constitutional liberties, and Free Trade, were at stake; but a larger issue was hurried on for decision. Liberal Ministers would not again assume or hold office unless they could secure the safeguards shown to be necessary for the legislative utility and honour of the party of progress. The issue was not between government by two Chambers and government by one; he himself was in favour of two; but the House of Lords gave all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of a single-chamber system.

The will of the people must be made effective in the lifetime of a single Parliament, and the duration of Parliaments shortened to five years. The country was with them; the party was united, and they were following the best and surest lines of Liberal tradition and policy.

Mr. Balfour's address to the electors of the City was also published on December 10. The Budget, he said, was the subject primarily before the constituencies, but the Government claimed that the House of Commons should be the uncontrolled master of the community. Three questions were raised: was not an appeal to the people on matters of finance necessary on some occasions; was not this such an occasion; and if so, was there any other machinery for securing an appeal. Such taxation as that of the Budget would be practically impossible in the United States. The attack on the House of Lords was only the culmination of a long-drawn conspiracy to secure a singlechamber Legislature. It had been ingeniously contrived, but was proving unsuccessful. The people were not insulted by having their opinion asked on the Budget, nor did they think the House of Lords had exceeded their duty in asking for it. And they were surely right, for the single-chamber system was not consistent with the democratic working of representative government in complex and developing communities. But the single-chamber conspirators " wished the Commons to be independent not only of the Peers, but of the people. An appeal to the people was necessary, and no machinery ensuring it should be abandoned till better machinery had been devised. Declining to pronounce on the Referendum and the reform of the Lords, Mr. Balfour declared that the rights of the people were threatened by the "single-chamber plot." Turning to the Budget, he said that the complex problem of unemployment evidently could not be solved through existing Poor Law machinery, but no State agency could do much to promote the market demand for labour. The Budget seemed designed to drive away capital; Tariff Reform must keep capital at home and increase the demand for labour. Mr. Balfour then commented adversely at some length on the Liberal land policy of providing tenancy instead of ownership for small holders, and alluded briefly to the naval situation. He closed by emphasising the maintenance of the Empire, the Union, and the Constitution, as the great traditional obligations of the Unionist party.

These rival deliverances sufficiently defined the issues. To deal fully with the speeches that followed is alike impracticable and unnecessary. The country was deluged with a volume of platform oratory unparalleled in its history; but the orators for the most part repeated, in new forms and with even greater emphasis, contentions already familiar to all students of recent politics. Mr. Balfour and Mr. Haldane were disabled respectively by pulmonary catarrh till the last days of December and by an affection of the eyes till the middle of January; but the