and solely by any action they may resolve to take upon the Budget. We
must look back upon the past. We remember the ill-usage and the
humiliation which the great majority that was returned by the nation
to support Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1906 has sustained in the
last three years at the hands of the House of Lords. That Assembly
must be judged by their conduct as a whole. Lord Lansdowne has
explained, to the amusement of the nation, that he claimed no right on
behalf of the House of Lords to "mince" the Budget. All, he tells us,
he has asked for, so far as he is concerned, is the right to "wince"
when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim. It is for
the Conservative Party to judge whether it is a very heroic claim for
one of their leaders to make. If they are satisfied with the wincing
Marquis, we have no reason to protest. We should greatly regret to
cause Lord Lansdowne and his friends any pain. We have no wish
whatever to grudge them any relief which they may obtain by wincing or
even by squirming. We accord them the fullest liberty in that
respect.
After all, the House of Lords has made others wince in its time. Even
in the present Parliament they have performed some notable exploits.
When the House of Lords rejected the Bill to prevent one man casting
his vote two or three times over in the same election, every one in
this country who desired to see a full and true representation of the
people in Parliament might well have winced. When the House of Lords
rejected or mutilated beyond repair the Land Valuation Bills for
England and for Scotland, every land reformer in the country might
have winced. When the House of Lords destroyed Mr. Birrell's Education
Bill of 1906, every man who cared for religious equality and
educational peace might have winced. When they contemptuously flung
out, without even discussing it or examining it, the Licensing Bill,
upon which so many hopes were centred and upon which so many months of
labour had been spent, they sent a message of despair to every
temperance reformer, to every social and philanthropic worker, to
every church, to every chapel, to every little Sunday school
throughout the land. If it should now prove to be their turn, if the
measure they have meted out to others should be meted out to them
again, however much we might regret their sorrows, we could not but
observe the workings of poetic justice.
But I hope the House of Lords and those who back them will not be
under any illusions about the Budget and the position of the
Government. The Government is in earnest about the Budget. The Budget
carries with it their fortunes and the fortunes of the Liberal Party.
Careful argument, reasonable amendment, amicable concession, not
affecting the principles at stake--all these we offer while the Bill
is in the House of Commons. But when all that is said and done, as the
Bill leaves the House of Commons so it must stand. It would be a great
pity if Lord Curzon, the Indian pro-Consul, or the London
_Spectator_--it would be a great pity if those potentates were to make
the great mistake of supposing that the Government would acquiesce in
the excision of the land clauses of the Budget by the House of Lords.
Such a course is unthinkable. Any Liberal Government which adopted it
would be swiftly ruined. The land proposals of the Government have not
been made without long deliberation and full responsibility. We shall
not fail to carry them effectively through the House of Commons; still
less shall we accept any amendment at the hands of the House of Lords.
Is it not an extraordinary thing that upon the Budget we should even
be discussing at all the action of the House of Lords? The House of
Lords is an institution absolutely foreign to the spirit of the age
and to the whole movement of society. It is not perhaps surprising in
a country so fond of tradition, so proud of continuity, as ourselves
that a feudal assembly of titled persons, with so long a history and
so many famous names, should have survived to exert an influence upon
public affairs at the present time. We see how often in England the
old forms are reverently preserved after the forces by which they are
sustained and the uses to which they were put and the dangers against
which they were designed have passed away. A state of gradual decline
was what the average Englishman had come to associate with the House
of Lords. Little by little, we might have expected, it would have
ceased to take a controversial part in practical politics. Year by
year it would have faded more completely into the past to which it
belongs until, like Jack-in-the-Green or Punch-and-Judy, only a
picturesque and fitfully lingering memory would have remained.
And during the last ten years of Conservative government this was
actually the case. But now we see the House of Lords flushed with the
wealth of the modern age, armed with a party caucus, fortified,
revived, resuscitated, asserting its claims in the harshest and in the
crudest manner, claiming to veto or destroy even without discussion
any legislation, however important, sent to them by any majority,
however large, from any House of Commons, however newly elected. We
see these unconscionable claims exercised with a frank and undisguised
regard to party interest, to class interest, and to personal interest.
We see the House of Lords using the power which they should not hold
at all, which if they hold at all, they should hold in trust for all,
to play a shrewd, fierce, aggressive party game of electioneering and
casting their votes according to the interest of the particular
political party to which, body and soul, they belong.
It is now suggested--publicly in some quarters, privately in many
quarters--that the House of Lords will not only use without scruple
their veto in legislation but they propose to extend their
prerogatives; they are going to lay their hands upon finance, and if
they choose they will reject or amend the Budget. I have always
thought it a great pity that Mr. Gladstone made a compromise with the
House of Lords over the Franchise Bill of 1884. I regret, and I think
many of my hon. friends in the House of Commons will regret, looking
back upon the past, that the present Government did not advise a
dissolution of Parliament upon the rejection of the Education Bill in
1906. A dissolution in those circumstances would not merely have
involved the measure under discussion, but if the Government of that
day had received the support of the electors at the poll their victory
must have carried with it that settlement and reform of the relations
between the two Houses of Parliament which is necessary to secure the
effective authority of the House of Commons. That is the question
which, behind and beyond all others, even the Budget, even Free Trade,
even the land--that is the question which, as the Prime Minister has
said, is the dominant issue of our time.
Opportunity is fickle, opportunity seldom returns; but I think you
will agree with me that if the House of Lords, not content with its
recent exploits with the legislative veto, were to seize on the new
power which its backers claim for it over finance--if, not content
with the extreme assertions of its own privileges, it were to invade
the most ancient privileges of the House of Commons--if, as an act of
class warfare, for it would be nothing less, the House of Lords were
to destroy the Budget, and thus not only create a Constitutional
deadlock of novel and unmeasured gravity, but also plunge the whole
finance of the country into unparalleled confusion, then, in my
judgment, opportunity, clear, brilliant, and decisive, would return,
and we should have the best chance we have ever had of dealing with
them once for all.
These circumstances may never occur. I don't believe they will occur.
If we only all stand firm together I believe the Budget will be
carried. I believe the Budget will vindicate the strength of the
Government supported by the House of Commons. I believe it will
vindicate the financial strength of this great country. I don't
believe, if we pursue our course without wavering or weakening, there
is any force in this country which can stand against us. The
Conservative Whip in the House of Lords, a friend of mine, Lord
Churchill, said the other day that the House of Lords when they
received the Budget would do their duty. I hope they will. But in any
case be sure of this--that the Government and the House of Commons
will do their duty. Then if there is anything more to be done, see
that you are ready to do your duty too.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Since the date of this speech the new concessions, doubling the
allowance exempted from income tax for the expenses of agricultural
estates, have been made public.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BUDGET
LEICESTER, _September 5, 1909_
(From _The Times_, by permission.)
I have done my best to study the political history of the last forty
or fifty years, and I cannot find any Government which, at the end of
its fourth year, enjoyed the same measure of support, prestige, and
good fortune that we do. The only Administration which could compare
in the importance and the volume of its legislation with the present
Government is Mr. Gladstone's great Government of 1868. That was a
Government of measures and of men; but no measure of that Government
could equal in importance the Old-Age Pensions Act which we have
placed on the Statute-book. The settlement of the Irish Church
question by Disestablishment was not a more baffling and intricate
business, than the settlement of the Irish University question which
Mr. Birrell has achieved. The labour legislation of the Government of
1868, although very important, shows nothing which equals in
importance the Trades Disputes Act, which we have carried through, and
Mr. Cardwell's reforms in army organisation were not more successful,
and were certainly much less generally accepted, than those which have
been effected by Mr. Haldane. In the fourth year of its administration
the Government of 1868 was genuinely unpopular. It had quarrelled with
the Nonconformists without gaining the support of the Church; it had
offended the liquor interest without satisfying the Temperance forces
in the country; it had disturbed and offended many vested interests
without arousing popular enthusiasm.
Indeed, if you look back, you will find that the fourth year in the
history of a Government is always a very critical and has often been a
very unfortunate year. It is quite true that Mr. Disraeli's
Government, which assumed office in 1874, did enjoy in its fourth year
a fleeting flush of success, which, however, proved illusory. With
that single exception, every other modern Government that has lasted
so long, has occupied an unsatisfactory position in its fourth year.
The Government of 1880 in the year 1884 was brought very low, and was
deeply involved in disastrous enterprises beyond the sea which
ultimately resulted in sorrow and misfortune. The Conservative
Government which took office in 1886 was by the year 1890, owing to
its strange proceedings against Mr. Parnell, brought to the depths of
humiliation. The Government of 1895 was in the year 1899 thoroughly
unpopular, and if they had not plunged into the tumult of war in South
Africa, they would very shortly have been dismissed from power. As for
the Government of 1900, in the fourth year of Mr. Balfour's late
Administration, I am sure I could not easily do justice to the
melancholy position which they occupied.
Where do we stand to-day at the end of our fourth year of office? I
put it plainly to you to consider, whether one is not justified in
saying that we occupy a position of unexampled strength at the present
time. The Government is strong in its administrative record, which
reveals no single serious or striking mistake in all the complicated
conduct of affairs. There have been no regrettable incidents by land
or sea and none of those personal conflicts between the high officials
that used to occur so frequently under a late dispensation. We have
had no waste of public treasure and no bloodshed. We are strong in
the consciousness of a persistent effort to sweep away anomalies and
inequalities, to redress injustice, to open more widely to the masses
of the people the good chances in life, and to safeguard them against
its evil chances. We also claim that we are strong in the support and
enthusiasm of a majority of our fellow-countrymen. We are strong in
the triumph of our policy in South Africa; most of all we are strong
in the hopes and plans which we have formed for the future.
It is about this future that I will speak to you this afternoon. And
let me tell you that when I think about it, I do not feel at all
inclined to plead exhaustion in consequence of the exertions we have
made, or to dwell upon the successes which we have had in the past, or
to survey with complacency the record of the Government or to ask you
to praise us for the work which we have done. No; when I think of the
work which lies before us, upon which we have already entered, of the
long avenues of social reconstruction and reorganisation which open
out in so many directions and ever more broadly before us, of the
hideous squalor and misery which darken and poison the life of
Britain, of the need of earnest action, of the prospects of effective
and immediate action--when I dwell upon this, it is not of feelings of
lassitude or exhaustion that I am conscious, but only of a vehement
impulse to press onwards.
The social conditions of the British people in the early years of the
twentieth century cannot be contemplated without deep anxiety. The
anxiety is keen because it arises out of uncertainty. It is the
gnawing anxiety of suspense. What is the destiny of our country to be?
Nothing is settled either for or against us. We have no reason to
despair; still less have we any reason to be self-satisfied. All is
still in our hands for good or for ill. We have the power to-day to
choose our fortune, and I believe there is no nation in the world,
perhaps there never has been in history, any nation which at one and
the same moment was confronted with such opposite possibilities, was
threatened on the one hand by more melancholy disaster, and cheered on
the other by more bright, yet not unreasonable hopes. The two roads
are open. We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on in the old
happy-go-lucky way, the richer classes ever growing in wealth and in
number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining
plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I
think there is nothing before us but savage strife between class and
class, with an increasing disorganisation, with an increasing
destruction of human strength and human virtue--nothing, in fact, but
that dual degeneration which comes from the simultaneous waste of
extreme wealth and of extreme want.
Now we have had over here lately colonial editors from all the
Colonies of the British Empire, and what is the opinion which they
expressed as to the worst thing they saw in the old country? The
representatives of every Colony have expressed the opinion that the
worst they saw here, was the extreme of poverty side by side with the
extreme of luxury. Do not you think it is very impressive to find an
opinion like that, expressed in all friendship and sincerity, by men
of our own race who have come from lands which are so widely scattered
over the surface of the earth, and are the product of such varied
conditions? Is it not impressive to find that they are all agreed,
coming as they do from Australia, or Canada, or South Africa, or New
Zealand, that the greatest danger to the British Empire and to the
British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies
of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it
is not the Yellow peril nor the Black peril nor any danger in the wide
circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst,
close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and
Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded
countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and
national decay--the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce
of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and
training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical
degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilised poverty,
the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the
liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence
and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working
man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and
comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase
of vulgar, joyless luxury--here are the enemies of Britain. Beware
lest they shatter the foundations of her power.
Then look at the other side, look at the forces for good, the moral
forces, the spiritual forces, the civic, the scientific, the patriotic
forces which make for order and harmony and health and life. Are they
not tremendous too? Do we not see them everywhere, in every town, in
every class, in every creed, strong forces worthy of Old England,
coming to her rescue, fighting for her soul? That is the situation in
our country as I see it this afternoon--two great armies evenly
matched, locked in fierce conflict with each other all along the line,
swaying backwards and forwards in strife--and for my part I am
confident that the right will win, that the generous influences will
triumph over the selfish influences, that the organising forces will
devour the forces of degeneration, and that the British people will
emerge triumphant from their struggles to clear the road and lead the
march amongst the foremost nations of the world.
Well, now, I want to ask you a question. I daresay there are some of
you who do not like this or that particular point in the Budget, who
do not like some particular argument or phrase which some of us may
have used in advocating or defending it. But it is not of these
details that I speak; the question I want each of you to ask himself
is this: On which side of this great battle which I have described to
you, does the Budget count? Can any of you, looking at it broadly and
as a whole, looking on the policy which surrounds it, and which
depends upon it, looking at the arguments by which it is defended, as
well as the arguments by which it is opposed--can any one doubt that
the Budget in its essential character and meaning, in its spirit and
in its practical effect, would be a tremendous reinforcement, almost
like a new army coming up at the end of the day, upon the side of all
those forces and influences which are fighting for the life and health
and progress of our race?
In the speeches which I have made about the country since the Budget
was introduced I have explained and defended in detail the special
financial proposals upon which we rely to provide the revenue for the
year. You are, no doubt, generally acquainted with them. There is the
increase in the income-tax of twopence, the further discrimination
between earned and unearned income, and the super-tax of sixpence on
incomes of over L5,000 a year. There are the increases in estate
duties and in the legacy duties, and there are the new duties on
stamps; there is the tax on motor-cars and petrol, the proceeds of
which are to go to the improvement of the roads and the abatement of
the dust nuisance; there are the taxes on working class
indulgences--namely, the increase in the tax on tobacco and on whisky,
which enable the working man to pay his share, as indeed he has shown
himself very ready to do; there are the taxes on liquor licences,
which are designed to secure for the State a certain special
proportion of the monopoly value created wholly by the State and with
which it should never have parted; and, lastly, there are the three
taxes upon the unearned increment in land, upon undeveloped land, upon
the unearned increment in the reversion of leases, and then there is
the tax upon mining royalties.
Now these are the actual proposals of the Budget, and I do not think
that, if I had the time, I should find any great difficulty in showing
you that there are many good arguments, a great volume of sound
reason, which can be adduced in support of every one of these
proposals. Certainly there is no difficulty in showing that since the
Budget has been introduced there has been no shock to credit, there
has been no dislocation of business, there has been no setback in the
beginning of that trade revival about the approach of which I spoke to
you, when I was in Leicester at the beginning of the year and which
there are now good reasons for believing is actually in progress. The
taxes which have been proposed have not laid any burden upon the
necessaries of life like bread or meat, nor have they laid any
increased burden upon comforts like tea and sugar. There is nothing in
these taxes which makes it harder for a labouring man to keep up his
strength or for the small man of the middle class to maintain his
style of living. There is nothing in these taxes which makes it more
difficult for any hard-working person, whether he works with his hands
or his head, to keep a home together in decent comfort. No impediment
has been placed by these taxes upon enterprise; no hampering
restrictions interrupt the flow of commerce. On the contrary, if the
tax upon spirits should result in a diminution in the consumption of
strong drink, depend upon it, the State will gain, and all classes
will gain. The health of millions of people, the happiness of hundreds
of thousands of homes, will be sensibly improved, and money that would
have been spent upon whisky will flow into other channels, much less
likely to produce evil and much more likely to produce employment. And
if the tax on undeveloped land, on land, that is to say, which is kept
out of the market, which is held up idly in order that its owner may
reap unearned profit by the exertions and through the needs of the
surrounding community, if that tax should have the effect of breaking
this monopoly and of making land cheaper, a tremendous check on every
form of productive activity will have been removed. All sorts of
enterprises will become economically possible which are now impossible
owing to the artificially high price of land, and new forces will be
liberated to stimulate the wealth of the nation.
But it is not on these points that I wish to dwell this afternoon. I
want to tell you about the meaning and the spirit of the Budget. Upon
the Budget and upon the policy of the Budget depends a far-reaching
plan of social organisation designed to give a greater measure of
security to all classes, but particularly to the labouring classes.
In the centre of that plan stands the policy of national insurance.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been for more than a year at work
upon this scheme, and it is proposed--I hope next year, if there is a
next year--it is proposed, working through the great friendly
societies, which have done so much invaluable work on these lines, to
make sure that, by the aid of a substantial subvention from the State,
even the poorest steady worker or the poorest family shall be enabled
to make provision against sickness, against invalidity, and for the
widows and orphans who may be left behind.
Side by side with this is the scheme of insurance against unemployment
which I hope to have the honour of passing through Parliament next
year. The details of that scheme are practically complete, and it will
enable upwards of two and a quarter millions of workers in the most
uncertain trades of this country--trades like ship-building,
engineering, and building--to secure unemployment benefits, which in a
great majority of cases will be sufficient to tide them over the
season of unemployment. This scheme in its compulsory form is limited
to certain great trades like those I have specified, but it will be
open to other trades, to trade unions, to workers' associations of
various kinds, or even to individuals to insure with the State
Unemployment Insurance Office against unemployment on a voluntary
basis, and to secure, through the State subvention, much better terms
than it would be possible for them to obtain at the present time.