TOPICS of the DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 13

TOPICS of the DAY.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, October 1. THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK. All the omens now point to an early general election. Liberals, Tories, Socialists, and Labour folk have commenced in real earnest to prepare for the fray, which all seem convinced must come about either early in December or January. The Conservatives, it appears, are confident that the appeal to the country will take place ere Christmas comes, but the prophets of the other side are convinced that January will be the Tionth of bat tie, if battle there is to be in the near future. Everything depends on the action of the Lords with regard to the Budget, which, in the ordinary course, will probably reach the Upper House during the next three weeks. Of course, the Lords may give way and pass the Budget. Many old political hands are of opinion that they will not run the tremendous hazard involved in flinging out the measure. It is pointed out that the rejection of the Finance Bill would be an encroachment without precedent on the rights and privileges of .the House of Commons; that Tory and Liberal statesmen have always admitted the supreme control of the Commons over finance; that to throw out the Budget would be to utterly dislocate business and disorganise the money market, and that it must be followed by a general election, in which the very existence of the House of Lords, as at present constituted, would be at stake. These are weighty reasons, and it is said that Lord Lansdowne, Lord- St. Aldwyn and many other prominent personalities on both sides in the Upper House are in favour of the acceptance of the Budget on' the ground that its rejection would be unconstitutional. But it is very doubtful if the influence of the men of mark in the Lords will be sufficient to carry the day against the large number of obscure peers who find in the Budget a menace to their own order, and are spoiling to hit back at the Government. These "backwoodsmen," as Mr Lloyd George termed them, are in no mood to listen to the counsels of the peacemakers, and they are being egged on to reject the Finance Bill by the liquor trade, a most powerful political force, which is 4 exerting every influence to get the bill thrown out. The influences that are being brought to bear on the Lords to compel them to adopt a militant attitude are indeed exceedingly strong. And when these influences march with the peers' own in-, clinations, it is hard to resist the conelu-' sion that we are on the verge of a gr«o* constitutional crisis. If the Budget is thrown out the issue at the general election will be—who is to govern England, the peers (who represent themselves only) or the elected representatives of the people ? The wary among the Lords recognise that fact, and not liking the outlook, are trying to persuade the militant peers to allow the passage of the Budget, on the condition' that the. Government will agree to an early appeal to the country. By this means they hope to avoid making the election a battle of Lords V. People, and to reduce it to a sort of referendum on ;the Budget. ..-„-.%, • -f n The Liberals profess to care not how soon the fight begins, nor upon what ground it is fought, but if they were to bo given the choice they would, according to Mr Sydney Buxton. prefer to subordinate the Budget to ths more important issue of the power of the Lords. LADY CARDIGAN'S INDISCKEMuch" -water has passed under Limdon Bridge since the publication of the Greville memoirs, but one must go back to those days to find a parallel case to the boomshell which Lady Cardigan has thrown into Society by the publication of her "Recollections," or those days when Harriett Wilson, published her "Memoirs," and Stockdale, the Haymar; ket bookseller, had to erect barricades in front of his premises to keep in or-, der the hundreds who rushed to his shop to secure copies of the book. Lady Cardigan's work has already achieved a phenomenal sale, and it is, for the time being, almost impossible to secure a copy anywhere. Two large editions have been sold out, and a third now in hand will be exhausted by the orders already in the bands of the booksellers. That the book is clever and of a certain historical value is not to be denied, but it is strongly held' in many quarters! that Lady Cardigan has been guilty of something -worse than "bad form" in disinterring the skeletons of long dead scandals affecting the immediate ancestors of men and women prominent in the public eye to-day. The author's sex and age protect her from unpleasant manifestations of anger, but had the responsibility for the "Recollections" rested on a man, there can be no doubt whatever that some of the living descendants and relations of the dead Lady Cardigan has so ruthlessly exposed, would, ere this, have been seeking revenge with horsewhips. Society is divided into two camps over the book. Needless to say, perhaps, the pro-Cardiganites are not members of those families whose fore-» bears figure in the "Recollections." The anti-Cardiganites, however, include many of Society's most prominent lights, whom the scandalous tales told by Lady Cardigan do not even remotely affect. The views of these people have been expressed in a fierce attack on the "Recollections" in the "World" this week. The writer of the article calls the book shameless, scandalous and other hard names, denies emphatically that it gives in any way a true picture of mid-Victorian era, and demands that the authorities should suppress the sale of these "scurrilous recollections." It is not in the least likely that the authorities will take any steps to carry out the wishes of the anti-Cardiganites and the fulmination of their champion will probably only stimulate the sale of the work.