MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1909. THE COMING DISSOLUTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1909, Page 6

MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1909. THE COMING DISSOLUTION.

The British electors will not have long to wait before recording their decision on the momentous issues raised by the action of the House of Lords in rejecting the Budget. The dissolution is fixed for the Bth of next month, and polling will ibegin on tho 13tii. It is well indeed that the agony is not to be .prolonged, for it will be sharp and bitter .beyond any electoral struggle within living memory in the- United Kingdom. The Budget alone, with the alternative of Tariff Reform which it has to a large extent, whether for good or -for evil, superseded, would have been enough to make the contest a colossal one; but into the melting-pot which Lord Rosebery and others have accused the Liberals of devising, for all the timehonoured rights of property, tho House of Lords has insisted on throwing its own political privileges. The Dukes who have been fighting during the past six months against the proposed increase of taxation on their great possessions have now to fight for a retention of the power of Khemselves and their fellowpeers fo play what tricks they please with Liberal legislation, and, from a position which they hold regardless of merit or of popular favour, to force a dissolution of the popular Chamber .whenever it »wUa tlwm to do bo. Privi* tegQ W M fisvsr, §g nakedly geaortsd in

our time ; democracy was never so arrogantly flouted; and though we believe that democracy will come out on top, the power of vested interests and public aipathy is so strong that the fore* of reform will need to strain, every nerve if tihat result is to be achieved. The suggestion that the House of Lords is really taking a democratic step because it has insisted upon an appeal to the people is so absurd that we are amazed to find it championed to-day in. cold print at the ■distance of so many thousand miles from the gilded chamber. The House of Lords does not think it necessary to consult the people when the Conservatives are in .power, but they are very jealous in their regard for democracy when there is a chance of using it to the confusion of a Liberal Government. The matter was put with his usual clearness by Mr. Asquith in the speech with which he moved his resolution that the action of the Lords was "a breach of the Constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the House of Commons." "I emphatically protest," he said, "against the novel theory that the Bill is not being rejected, but is merely referred to the people. If such a claim and such a precedent are admitted, no Liberal Government will be safe. The conversion of the House of Lords into a plebiscitary organ is .one of the quaintest inventions of the day." The acquiescence in this claim would amount, as the Westminster Gazette recently observed, to the i-epeal of the Septennial \ Act so far as a Liberal Government is 1 ] concerned, while retaining it unimpaired for the benefit of the Conservatives. Immense, indeed,- is the tactical advantage which this high-handed procedure on the part of the- Lords has given them, but we cannot see that it is improved by the personal polemics in whiich the indignation of Mr. LloydGeorge is reported to-day to have again found expression. Lord Curzon and Lord Milner, Lord Rothschild and Lord Revelstoke, are all reasonably open to criticism, and brilliant as have been their public services in different departments, we do not think any more highly than Mr Lloyd-George of their quali/ fixations as leaders of democracy. But a wholesale disparagement, not merely of their claims in this respect, bu^also of their past services, and even in two cases of their ancestry, is not a mode of advocacy that can do anything but harm to the cause that relies upon it. Mr. Lloyd-George has courage and eloquence, and wit, and a genuine popular sympathy that has stood the stress of hard times, and is not merely that of a demagogue on the look-out for votes But, difficult though it may be to resist the temptation, whenever he sees a coroneted head, to hit it, he will do infinitely better if he holds himself in and allows the other side a monopoly both of class-feeling and of personal attack. In this respect his performance at Newcastle was -far better than that at Limehouse, though he had threatened to make it worse. His address to the National Liberal Club shows that he has now carried out his threat, but we hope to see him revert to a higher level and retain it to the end of the campaign. '