RECRIMINATIONS.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 1127, 7 March 1910, Page 3

RECRIMINATIONS.

IN THE HOUSE OF -COMMONS

COMMON SLANGUAGE.

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE LORDS

WHO BAYS FOR THE HOME RULE

FIGHT?

A BALFOURIAN REVIEW

BY ELEOTBIO TELBGKAPH UOPYBISHT.

I>EK PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

London, March 6. In the House of Commons the Transvaal Loan Redemption Bill was read a third time.

_ The Treasury Temporary Borrowing Bill was read a third time. During the debate, Lord Cecil answering Mr Asquith's remark that the great majority of the people regarded it as incredible that the Lords would reject the Budget, recalled Mr Lloyd George's remark about a " rat-trap." Mr Stanley Wilson reminded the House of Commons that Lord Ribblesclale, a Government supporter, had described Mr Lloyd George as "half pantaloon, half highwayman.' r The Speaker objected to such offerjsiveness, but said he was unable to compel its withdrawal because the questions were from another House, and were frequently used during; the election.

Mr Wilson explained that he had mentioned it because Mr Lloyd George's methods in the House and in the country had produced the present situation.

Mr Lloyd George declared that the Government could not accept responsibility for using demand notes for income tax, which they were not prepared to enforce. They were prepared to receive income tax voluntarily. If the Government sent to the Lords a Bill for Single Tax the Government would surrender the ■right "-ained by Mr Gladstone in 1861 when he circumvented the Lords by putting taxes in one Bill which the Lords must accept or reject as a whole.

Lord Courtney, speakin|g iat the New Reform Club", thoiight a majority had been returned with a mandate to curb, restrain, and limit the Lords power. The mandate carried no absolute direction to carry through any Bill embodied in Sir H. Campbell Bannerman's resolution.

Mr Redmond, addressing the London Irishmen, said the last election was paid for by the American Irish. The coming election must be paid for by the Irish at home and in Great Britain.

Banqueted with Siy Frederick Banbury in the city, Mr Balfour remarked that Parliament in a fortnight had demolished the glowing picture painted by the enthusiastic brush of Radical journalists. The Government's own followers had charged Ministers with every sort of tergiversation and breach of the clearest pledges. We have seen weekly changes of plans of surrender. If the pledges, which consisted of insisting at the very beginning of the session in the Sovereign giving constitutional guarantees as so scandalous any device might be •justified to enable them to get out of it. The constituencies have justified the Lords' action, and Ministers were unable to pass the Budget. He wanted not a better, but a stronger second Chamber, not another House of Commons or one too strong, which might abrogate to itself, as some second chambers did, the rights of the immediately representative chamJb'er, but a House whcih should be "powerful enough to resist temporary gusts of opinion and representing, perhaps more accurately than the Commons, the permanent wishes of ■Eh© nation. The Radicals desired not social reform, but a The Government's policy would involve a revolutionary or anti-revolutionary struggle. ~Wbuld_ the country sit down under a single-chamber system ? Socialists, Radicals, and Nationalists were not going to bo in ■power for ever. One revolution would ■breed another. The abolition of the veto, said Mr Balfour, means Home Rule and Home Rule means Irish import duties and Customs barriers. Mr Balfour proceeded to say that our delay with fiscal reform was forcing Canada to make commercial treaties with foreign countries, in ignorance of the fact that • this country will ■adop.t a preference system which is possible between Canada and ourselves. He would like to see tariff reform, but whether such : reform would be the future policy or otherwise, the old system was gone never to return, largely owing] to the present Government's pressure of expenditure.