THE BATTLE AT ST. STEPHENS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 83, 9 April 1910, Page 4

THE BATTLE AT ST. STEPHENS.

According to time-table, tho guillotine fell on the discussion of the first of Mr. Asquith's veto resolutions on Thursday evening, and a scene of excited uproar signalised the conclusion of this stage of a debate which, according to the Press Association's cable correspondent, has at times excited but a languid interest even in the House of Commons itself. The majority for the Government, which, on the fiscal amendment had been reduced, by tho absention of the Nationalists, to 33, was now restored to 102, which may he regarded as practically lls full working strength. The debate on this resolution — or, at any rate, the cabled report of it — has been very disappointing. The question raised by the first re.wlution was the expediency ot depriving the House of Lords of its power to reject a Money Bill, but the Unionists, who had previously complained with justice that two day* and a half was too short a time to allow for the discussion of so difficult and so momentous a question, evidently found that there was time enough nnd to upare when it actually j iame befoie the House. Such, at any | late, appears to be a fair inference from their introduction of the eternal fiscal question, which, however important, nas no conceivable reference, to a debatb on the constitutional powers of the Loids, There was, indeed, no attempt to make it appear relevant, for the amendment moved by Mr. Hamilton B*nn baldly •Uted "Hut, fiica) nlorm i| Msmwry

owing to foreign tariffs hindering British trade and aggravating unemployment." Mr. S. Storey, who seconded the amendment, frankly look the high ground that tariff reform was a totally distinct issue from that befoie the House, and a much more important one. "He declared that all petty constitutional squabbles were- worthless compared with the failing of Bi-itifh manufactures and the mi-.erics of chronic unemployment." It is nardly open for the Unionists to complain of the small amount of time allowed to the discupsion of a "petty constitutional squabble," after further reducing it by a needless discussion of an irrelevant question wnicn they declare to be of far greater importance. Though formally irrelevant, tariff reform is practically connected pretty closely with the question on which the House of Commons voted on Thursday by the fact that Mr. Lloyd-George's Budget and tariff reform are the two rival schemes of taxation before the country, and that tho Lords have slain the Budget and improved the prospects of its rival by virtue of the power of which the Government now seeks to deprive them. To our mind, the issue as betweeu tariff reform and the Budget is to a considerable extent a false one. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive policies, and we should be glad to see the Budget put into operation first, and tariff Teform allowed a fair trial I afterwards. But of course the two j policies cannot both be given the first place, and so, for the immediate purposes of practical politics in the Old Country, the struggle is one of life and death between two programmes that are mutually incompatible. The position thus bears a general analogy to the struggle in the Commonwealth, where the Labour party I is pushing a scheme of land taxation of a drastic kind, and their opponents are resisting it on the ground that the tariff will bring in all the revenue that is needed. In the slender allowance of [strictly relevant matter with which the cabled reports of the debate in the House of Commons have supplied us, the most interesting item is Mr. Asquith's statement that the Government will not waste timo over a Veto Bill if the Lords' treatment of the veto resolutions forbids the hope of doing any good with it. "The Lords will, of course, throw out the Bill, and they will, if they act up to their convictions, reject the resolutions with contumely. But the only question for them now is whether it may not be [ well to dissemble for the present. If, instead of kicking the resolutions down- | stairs, they dissemble their hatred, they j may well increase tho embarrassments of Mr. Asquith by compelling him to work out his proposals in the detailed form of a. Bill. We are pleased to see that Mr* Asquith says nothing about rejecting the Budget, and we trust that he intends to get that on to the statute-book without fail before the crash comes.