EVENING Post WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1908. INCREASED TAXATION AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 143, 16 December 1908, Page 6

EVENING Post WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1908. INCREASED TAXATION AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Mr. Keir Hardie proposes a delightfully simple and thorough method of dealing with the House of Lords. The Premier, as we mentioned yesterday, has suggested the possibility of "a great constitutional emergency" which would enable the House of Lords to dictate a dissolution. If the Lords threw out fie Budget Bill next session on account of the changes which it is likely to propose in the taxation of licensed houses and other perquisites of the wealthy, an immediate' dissolution must result, because the rejection of this Bill would mean that there would be no money voted to carry on the government of the country. Mr. Keir Hardies short way with the Peers will relieve them of this unpleasant necessity and will spare the Government the anxiety <~-f a waiting game. What he proposes is that until the King consents to the abolition of the House of Lords, the Commons should refuse to pass votes for tllie Army, the Navy, and the Civil Service. The King is, of course, not the only authority to be conpulled. Mr. Keir Hardie assumes that j a Bill for the abolition of the House of j Lords has first been carried through all its stages in the representative C'h-amber — a detail hardly worth mentioning when you are working in the free, grand style of the late leader of the Labour Party. Another detail not worth mentioning is { the substitute to" be provided for the .•hereditary Chamber. Mr. Keir Hardie probably sees no necessity for providing nny substitute at all, and if so his own tactics much better de&erve tc bo de.

scribed as "a campaign of words against the House of Lords" than the practical' half-measures of the Government to which he '.has applied the expression. "If," says Mr. Keir Hardie, "four hundred members of the House of Commons want-ad to, overthrow the Upper House, it could be done." But four hundred members of tho House of Commons would be as profitably employed in baying at the moon as in attempting to carry the nation with it along the lines of total abolition. "I am not cy House of Lords mtm," said Lord Ro&abery, in a speech at Edinburgh last year; "I am a Second Chamber man. . .. I would rather havo the House of Lordsthan any Single Chamber at all." And though Lord Rosebery's somewhat peevish criticisms of Government policy liavei procured him the distrust of the party which was once proud 'to follow him, the • coundness of his plea for some sort of Second Chamber is recognised by an overwhelming majority of the Liberals themselves. "The House of Lords," Lord Eosebery admits, "is no doubt a very weak barrier ; it is not constitutionally strong ; it is not rooted in popular election." But he prefers even a weak barrier to the "tyranny" of a Single Chamber. It is, perhaps, not so much the tyranny as the carelessness and precipitance of a Single Chamber that is to be feared. At present it is tthe tyranny of the irresponsible Chamber that has to be curbed, and it is certainly not to be done by wild talk about abolition. But though, in accordance with British traditions, reform must not assume the guise of revolution, one is not surprised to find the Prime Minister declaring "that ho is not prepared at present to take action on the report of Lord Eosebery's Committee upon the House of Lords." The irresponsible powers of that House for mischief would be absolutely untouched by the reforms suggested by Lord Rosebery's Committee, while the improved status which the scheme would giye to the House might very well result in a fresr use of those dangerous powers. To limit the Lords' power of veto along tho lines of the late Premier's resolution, seems the most practicable expedient for immediate use that hah yet been suggested. Mr. Keir Hardie also offers a very simple solution of the problem of taxation. "If they were to tax land at tha present-day value," he said, "they could obtain £40,000,000 per annum." Here again he is campaigning with words rather than with things that may reasonably be expected to produce a helpful, practical effect during the present Parliament or at the next General Election. One of the reforms which will figure in the Liberal programme was indicated by the Solicitor-General in the speech reported yesterday, in which he prophesied! that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would adopt the principle of a graduated income-tax. By his Budget last year Mr. Asquith. sacrificed about £1,260,000 of revenue by reducing the income tax from Is Co 9d in the £ on all earned incomes under £2000. But instead of further remissions next year a tightening of the screw on the highei incomes ha& been generally exp&cted for some time. Speaking of a proposal of this kind which was advocated in the House of Commons by a private member last year, Mr. Asquith said: — "It is very possible that we may come to it before we are very much older." No doubt this is- a part of the untapped reservoir to which the Premier referred in tho speech' cited by us yesterday as still open to the Freetrade financier. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer referred to the matter more definitely in a speech delivered at Swansea on the Ist October last. "All classes' were not taking their fair share of the burden of trade depression," said Mr. Lloyd George. "Ho could name twelve men— and so could they, for it was no Exchequer secret — whose average income during the worst days of depression would suffice to maintain in comfort dairing the whole of one month at least 50,000 workmen and their families, yet they would probably find these twelve- on. a Tariff Reform platform proclaiming that the distress incident to unemployment was entirely attributable to the fact that the bread of the workman was sill untaxed." There is surely room along these lines for a Freetrade Budget which, if rejected by the House of Lords, would give both that august assembly and the Tariff Reformers a good run at the next General Election.