THE BRITISH BUDGET

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 71, 22 September 1915, Page 7

THE BRITISH BUDGET

A RARE SCENE PEERS, DIPLOMATS, AND LADIES (By" Telegraph.— Press Association. — Copyright.) (Received September 22, 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, 21sfc- September. Tie^HooseMrf Commons to-night presented one of those rare scenes winch mazk £be biggest events in its history. The greatest Budget ever intro-' dnced drew an enonnoos crowd within and without the House. Parliamentsquare and lire approaches to Palace-yard were filled with people anxious to see the con&raUeis of the country's destinies passing through to Westminster Hall. The lobbies and Central Hall were blocked by people anxious to get admission to the Chamber or secure a first hint of the new burdens of taxation. Merchants cm their representatives always crowd Parliament on Budget night, for changes in duties mean much to the masters of commerce, and many are the expedients resorted to in order to escape from the building with news of a fresh tax or a lowered duty. PACKED TO SUFFOCATION. Within the Chamber gangways and galleries were packed to suffocation. Many members before noon had deposited cards on their seats. Applicants for ■rickets to x the Strangers' Gallery thronged the precincts in crowds for which there was not a tithe of accommodation. Some two thousand peers and diplomatists looked down from their respective galleries upon an animated seene — black coats and white waistcoats, dotted with bald heads and sprinkled with khaki uniforms. Well-dressed women could be descried behind the grille of the Ladies' Gallery. But it might have" been a harem, for not a face was distinguishable. AN OH. A PODRIDA. The front bench was an. olla podrida, a strange compound of all sorts of politics — Radicals and Tories side by, side, and Sir Alfred Mond in close coalition with Sir Harry Verney.