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Evening Star, Issue 14163, 13 September 1909, Page 4

Lokd Hugh Cecil, who has been termed " the Mr Gladstone of the twentieth century," some ten years ago said : " Lord Rosebery reminded him of an inexpert choir boy who was always a little too late for the responses. He said what everyone else, was saying, and, generally speaking, said it a little too late." The comparison still holds good. After more or less lengthy periods of profound silence, Lord Rosebery has of late years more than once come forward to say what everyone else has been saying. And this performance he repeated last week before an enormous gathering at Glasgow. In his own inimitable way and in his own unapproachable stylo he then collected and a-dopted all the terrible names the Opposition have been calling Mr Lloyd-George's Budget during the past four or five months, and hurled them at the Government. The Budget, we are again told, is harassing, inquisitorial, bureaucratic, tyrannical, and predatory. Some at least of these adjectives could l>e applied to any Budget that proposes to levy new taxes"; and of the others, so far as the Government are concerned, the answer is that they are not true. Lord Rosebery also assumes the role of a prophet, and calls up spirits from the deep. He invokes the mighty name of Gladstone. The "Grand Old Man," he assured his Glasgow audience, would have made short work of the deputation of his colleagues presenting a Budget such as that now before the country. "Wo question Lord Rosebery's Tight to interpret Mr Gladstone's mind, or to say what he. would or would not have done under pre-sent-day conditions. Certainly no statesman who has promised so much and done so Utile is competent to predict Mr Gladstone's probable lino of action. The mopt obvious conclusion to which the study of Mr Gladstone's political evolution leads the ordinary student is that a man who started his career a,s "the rising hope of the stern, unbending Tories," and ended it by twice seeking "to dissolve the Union and "disrupt the Empire" (vide the Opposition), even to the breaking in twain of his own party, was just the man to throw the greater portion of the. burden of taxation on land and monopoly, as the Liberals of to-day are seeking to do.

Lord Rosebery and the Budget.

The Imperinl Budget, repeats Lord Roschery, is tyrannical, rovoFrightening liitionary, and .Socialistic. the Electors. The constant iteration of

these names will possibly have the desired effect. Popular catchcries and imaginary hogies have ero now wrought sad havoc in the electorates, and the masses of the British people are easily frightened. The Liberal and Labor leaders and Trades Union Congresses will need all their eloquence and common sense and management to avoid a dispersal of the electors before the menacing trinity of evils that Lord Rosebery and other great landowners have called into being. The issue, shorn of what Ham Weller might call the trimmings, is simple. Money is wanted, whatever Government may be in power, to meet the increasing demands for the army and navy, for old age. pensions, and other social reforms. The Asqnith Government propose to raise it from incomes, tobacco, alcoholic liquors, death duties, scrip transfers, and land taxes. The Unionist alternative is Tariff Reform, which, being interpreted, means a tax on food, clothing, and articles of daily use and consumption- Stated in another way, the aim of the Government is to make all classes pay a share of the now liabilities the nation lias assumed, while I hat of the Opposition, under the guise of Protection and fanciful, unrealisable promises of work for all, is to make the poorer classes shoulder the greater share. Of the Opposition Mr W. T. Sttad says that they are "a plundering crew of Protectionists, who masquerade as Tariff Reformers, and are proof to all appeals to their conscience. ... It is loot they are after, and you might as well read the Ten Commandments to a pirate as speak of ethical considerations to thorn." No sophistry, no denunciation, and no eloquence, even though presented by the foremost orator of his generation, can shirk the alternative x or amend the situation. All that can _be done, all that js being done, is to frighten the -electors.

Sppjajistic, apfl the ward Socialism, carries, with*it all sorts Not of hints of vague and terÜbgfaltam. ribjo djsaster to/the hulk of Englishmen. That "it, should be fro used is but another proof of the need that exists for a universaliy-ac-coptcd definition of ■ Socialism. Lord Rose, bory asserts that- the Government's proposals will create staffs of -well paid officers for small holdings, factory inspection, housing, pensions, etc. ; therefore it is bureaucratic Socialism, such as is almost strangling France. We doubt whether tlie majority of the people in th© ■ Oversea Dominions will agree with him. There may be a tendency to create billets and needlessly to multiply officials on tfie part pf Governments, bub no colonist is prepared to condemn, much less to sweep away, our factory and land inspection and- pensions because of these easily Temediabfp overgrowths. Tho enhanced death duties, Hie Lordship declared, will react injuriously pn commerce and employment. Mr Carnegie, who ought to know something about this phase of the question, and can speak as ono having authoritv and not as a politician, advocates graduated death duties, going up to oao entire half of a millionaire estate. Mir Frederic Harrison, in the ' Positivist Review,' has reminded the British elector that " tho richest man in these islands (Mr Carnegie) has said that the community created the millionaires' wealth, and that ho heartily supported the drastic taxation of the unearned increment." Lord Rosehery'e objection that taxation of the unearned increment could lie applied to every other form of property is admitted. Two months ago Mr Churchill elaborated (ho reasons why tho Government had selected land for purposes of taxation. He then said:

It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies. It is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. It is quite truo that unearned increment in land is not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure; but it is the principal form, and it is in an enormous proportion, to an enormous extent, the principal form of unearned increment which is derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but which are positively detrimental to the general public. *

lie President of the Roard of Trade also drew a fundamental distinction between the principles of LiheraJism and Socialism. The second, he said, attacks capital; the first attacks monopoly. An impartial survey of the situation confirms tho Minister's view. The Motherland is upon the eve of great and far-reaching changes in her domestic government, and the holders of special privileges quite naturally are seeking to stave off the comini: "revolution."