PEERS AND PEOPLE. MR. BALFOUR'S CONCLUSION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 23, 27 July 1911, Page 7

PEERS AND PEOPLE. MR. BALFOUR'S CONCLUSION.

FIGHTING IMPOSSIBLE. LORD LANSDOWNE SHOULD BE SUPPORTED. DISSENSION DEPRECATED. Bj Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyrlstrt LONDON. 26th July. Mr. Balfour, Leader of the Opposition, in a letter to Lord Newton, says : "I do not desire to intervene in the affairs of thfe Upper House, but I thihk a majority of the Lords should support Lord Lansdowne. I agree with the advice Lord Lansdowne hae given his friend?. With Lord Lftttedowhe I Stand, and with Lord Lansdowne I am ready, if need be, to fall. , "The present situation ;« grave, aiM even, alarming, not only because we ate in the power of an unscrupulous revolutionary Government, but because Iho real character of tho peril is obscured by a controversy concerning tactics. "The crimeof the Government is thai by a gross misuse of the Royal preroga tivo they have made tho Second Ch&rnber powerless. They liaVo imitated Cromwell without his excuses of genins." Fighting in any effective sense, continued Mr. Ba-lfottr, was impossible, ahd the action of those refusing to follow Lord Lansdowne did not resemble any serious military operation and did not require the exercise of any military Virtue. It would be a misfortune if the present crisis left the House of Lords weaker than the Parliament Bill makes it, and it would be an irreparable tragedy if ifc left the Unionists a- divided party.