CABLE NEWS. THE BUDGET.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue IV, 3 December 1909, Page 2

CABLE NEWS. THE BUDGET.

>♦■ THE LORDS AISD THE COMMONS. CHALLENGE TAKEN UP. THE LIBERAL FEDERATION'S MANIFESTO. B? EL\OTB£O TELKGRAPH — COPYRIGHT PER PRESS ASSOCIATION. London, Dec. 2. In the House of Commons, Premier Asquith was received with loud Ministerial cheers when he gave notice to move to-day, " That the action of the House of Lords in refusing to pass into law the financial provision made by the House of Commons for the services of the year was a breach of tho constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the House of Commons." (Renewed cheers.) The Unionist .ueadors have resolved not to propose an amendment, but to give a direct vote against Mr Asquith's motion. After Mr Asquith's speech, Mr Austen Chamberlain will express the Opposition views and Mr A. Henderson the Labour Party's. The Nationalists will not participate in the division on the resolution, it being generally agreed, irrespective i of party, that in a crisis of such gravity a prolonged discussion on a constitutional issue would be out of place. Lord Lansdowne has received telegrams from many Unionist Associations throughout the country promising to support the House of Lords-. The Government is arranging to receive rather than to continue to collect the new taxes and income tax and tea duty, until the now Parliament regularises the situation officially. Lord Rosebery, in a letter replying to Lord Curzon, declares that he still tears, as ho did at Glasgow, that an action such as the Lords have now taken may 1 havo injurious effects on a valuable institution and enhance what popularity the Budget may possess. 'At Lord Lansdown&'s instance, the House of Lords resolved that, while not insisting upon tho amendments in the Development Bill, the House does nob accept the reasons offered by the House of Commons, and does not consent, on the ground of the said reasons, to being drawn into a precedent, as the Bill involves questions of policy in which both Houses are concerned and with which the Lords heretofore havo been accustonled to deal. (Received December 3, 8.5 a.m.) London, December 2. The National Liberal Federation, in a manifesto, states that the issues involved are as grave as any remembered in tho lifetime of the oldest voter. Tho victory of the Tory Party would involve the degradation of the House of Commons, the aggandiselnent of the House of Lords, and a return to protection, with it 6 inevitable taxes on food. The electors will have to decide whether they wish to govern themselves or be governed by a few hundred hereditary peers who have thrown the Constitution into the melting-pot in order to shift the burden from wealth, land, and liquor to food and necessaries. The Times declares that Premier Asquith's resolution embodies the doctrine of the last four years, and goes much beyond any previous assertion of privileges, and by its implication denies the power or bhe right of the House of Lords to have a voice in any legislation tacked on to a Budget. It ■was only incidentally that the House of Lords refused supplies this year. What really has been done is to refer to the country a quantity of legislation involving novel principles, denying the right of appeal to courts of law, and establishing an expensive bureaucracy with arbitrary and inquisitor jal powers. Mr Joseph Chamborlain, in a message to tariff demonstrates at Shoremen said that he was counting on the democracy of the East End of London to help in the great struggle which was before the country. Opposition newspapers comment on the rise m British investment securities as a consequence of the action of the House of Lords.