THE BUDGET FIGHT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13597, 4 December 1909, Page 9

THE BUDGET FIGHT.

DISSOLUTION GRANTED

STATEMENT BY MR

ASQUITH

DEBATE ON THE RESO-

LUTION. United Press Associ*tion—Bv Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received December 3rd, 10.20 p.m.) LONDON, December 3. The House of Commons was thronged from floor to ceiling, and. there were rows upon rows of eager and attentive faces -when Mr Asquith moved his reresolution. The appearance of the Prime Minister was the signal for deafening Ministerial cheers, his followers rising to do him honour. Mr Balfour, in turn, -was enthusiastically acclaimed by the Unionists. Mis unexpected attendance after contracting a slight chill stimulated the high pitch of excitement. The debate was comparatively short. Mr Asquiths resolution was carried by 3-P votes to 231. Mr Asquith was grave and earnest. Hβ declared that the circumstances were unparalleled in the history of Parliament, and recalled with marked emphasis that the Commons alone were addressed in the Speech from the Throne in February, when they were invited to make provision for heavy additional expenditure due to social reform and national defence.

These division figures must be wrong unless there has been a big defection of Liberals. The Opposition could only muster 234 supporters with the help ot tho Nationalists or the Labour P art >j and we were told the Nationalists would not vote, while the Labour Party must have voted with the Government. The correct Opposition voting is probably 134.

(Received December 4th, 12.5 a.m.) Mr Asquith said that the history of the grant of whole ways and means for supply anci the service of the year had been intercepted and nullified by a body admittedly having no power to diminieh a single tax or substitute an alternative. Amid a storm of Liberal and Labour cheers, he remarked that tho House would be unworthy of its past if it allowed another day to pass without making it clear that it did not mean to brook tho greatest indignity and most arrogant usurpation to which in the past two centuries it had ever been asked to submit. He laid stress on the confusion, embarrassment and loss of revenue, and increase in the country's indebtedness, that would result from the Lord's' action, and the consequent necessity of restoring the borrowing powers conferred by the Appropriation Act. Mr Asquith expressed later on the hope that ultimately the irrecoverable loss to the Stat© would not bo very great. /

Mr Asquith scouted the suggestion that the Commons ehould stoon to the humiliation of presenting an amended Budget for the Lords' " criticism and sanction. He contended that there was only one course open without breaking the law or sacrificing constitutional principle, that was to awvise, as the Government had advised, the Crown to dissolve Parliament at the earliest possible moment. His Majesty had been graciously pleased to accept the advice. (Prolonged cheers on both eides of the House.)

Mr Asquith said if the Government were returned to power its firat duty would be to re-impose all the taxes and duties recently voted. Dwelling upon the Constitution, he remarked that Wβ great bulk of constitutional liberties and practice rested upon custom, usage and convention, and not on barren law. Hβ brushed aside the argument that the Bill was not really financial, and asserted that there was not a clause therein unconnected with the primary purposes of revenue. He emphatically protested against the novel theory that the Bill was not being rejected, but merely referred to the people. If such a claim and precedent were admitted, no Liberal Government would be safe. The conversion of the Lords into a plebiscitary organ was,one of the quaintest inventions of the day. The presumption always had been that the Commons was freely chosen by the people and represented the people's will. There was no such presumption regarding the Lorde. He admitted ( par . enthetically) that the presumption in the case of the Commons ought to be strengthened by shortening the duration of Parliament and more frequent contact with the electorates. Mr Asquith asked the House and the constituencies to declare that the organ and the voice of a free people was to be found in the elected representatives of the nation.

Mr Balfour criticised th© avoidable financial arrangements, inconveniencing trade, and taunted th© Government with having a passion for abstractmotions, which neither hurt nor encouraged nor frightened anyone, -he resolution was a gross misrepresentation. It ignored the fact that the Commons had in the very original resolution whereon all its claims were based, gratuitously admitted in terms that the House of Lords had a right to reject a finance Bill, though not to initiate or amend one. It had been hoped the Lords' exercise of that right would be rare, but it had never been abandoned. NATIONAL LIBERAL MANIFESTO. LONDON, December 2. The National Liberal Federation, in a manifesto, states that the issues involved are as grave as any that have arisen within the lifetime of the oldest, voter. The victory of the Tory Party would involve the degradation of th© House of Commons,

CABLE NEWS.

the aggrandisement of the Lords, and a return to Protection, with its inevitable taxes on food. The electors have to decide whether they wish to govern themselyes or be governed by a few hundred hereditary Peers, who have thrown the Constitution into the melting pot in order to shift the burden of taxation from wealth, land, and liquor, to food and necessaries. NEWSPAPER COMMENT. '•The Times" declares that Mr Asquith's resolution embodies tho doctrine of the last four years, and goes much beyond any previous assertion of the Commons' privileges, and, by implication, denies the power or right of the House of Lords to have any voice in any legislation tacked to a Budget. It is only incidentally that the Lords have refused supplies this year. What really has been done is to refer to the country a quantity of legislation involving noyel principles, denying tho right of appeal to Courts of Law, and establishing an expensive bureaucracy with arbitrary and inquisitorial powers. The Opiposition newspapers comment on the rise in British investment securities in consequence of the Lords' action. MESSAGE FROM MR CHAMBERLAIN. Mr Joseph Chamberlain, in a message to a tariff demonstration at Shoreditch, said that he was counting on the men of the democracy of the East End to help in the great struggle before the country.