NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14110, 12 July 1909, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE BRITISH BUDGET.

Mb. Lloyd-George has educed the most contradictory opinion from the public writers on the subject of his muchdiscussed Budget. The typical Liberal acclaims it as the crowning triumph ot a* heaven-sent economist. The typical Unionist condemns it as the desperate outrage of a political brigand. Lord Welby voices the former opinion in an article which occupies the first place in the Contemporary Review. He deplores the lavish expenditure upon which the country has embarked, but claims that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has acted with justice and wisdom in taxing the luxuries but not the necessaries of the workers, and at the same' time by imposing a heavy super-tax on large incomes, by largely increasing the already heavy estate duties and legacy duties, and by : adding to the taxation on land. Lord Wei by sighs for further retrenchment in the public expenditure, but holds that as the money must be found, it should be found by the whole nation. He charges the Conservatives with wanting to spare the wealthy and tax the poor. In the Ninteenth Century and After, Mr. Harold Cox, M.P., trounces the Chancellor of the Exchequer soundly, and at the same lime gives it hot to Liberals and Conservatives alike for the extravagance which has made the national bill so heavy. The Conservatives are insistent in their demand for more money for armaments. The Liberals hanker for further expenditure on social reforms, and (says the contributor caustically) "forgetting their old Liberalism in order to dally with a new socialism, appeal" to welcome taxation as a means of transferring the wealth of the rich to the pockets of the poor." In the present financial year the British taxpayers are asked to provide £162,102,000, or £10,000,000 more than last year. Mr. Cox shows that the Liberal Administration has cut down the expenditure on naval .and military armaments by £5,624,000 as compared with the expeilditure during the last year of office of their Conservative predecessors. Yet the Liberals request the taxpayers to provide £13,314,000 more altogether than the total asked for by the Conservatives. Mr. Harold Cox expresses the opinion that "it is not a public purpose to relieve a well-to-do working man of the duty of contributing to the cost ,of the education of his own children, or of providing for his own old a%e." A majority in Parliament, however, differ from him in this view. Hence the Budget.

MR. BALFOUR AND THE EMPIRE.

"Without something higher and greater than material considerations, you cannot manage an Empire like the British Empire," said Mr. Balfour in an address delivered last month, just prior to the meeting of the Press Conference. "If you will not admit sympathy, and imagination side by side with hard material calculations into the forces which mould your opinion and direct your policy," he proceeded, "then I say you are not fit to be the head of an Empire like this; and you are well advised not to allow yourselves to be driven into the merely material considerations raised by the fiscal controversy, important though, as I admit, these considerations are. The necessity of drawing closer the bonds which unite together the different parts of the Empire is plainly a growing necessity. I do not think anybody can contemplate the World-forces which are slowly shaping themselves in one or another quarter of the world without seeing that it is of vital necessity for this Empire to organise itself, to draw its different members closer together,-to make lit conscious of common Deeds, common destinies, aye, and of common perils. I am no pessimist, yet I say quite distinctly I do think that in the lifetime of many, of most, perhaps of all, of those I am addressing now, we may be face to face with great national difficulties in which it will be of absolutely vital importance that every fraction, every portion of this Empire should work together with a united soul towards preserving everything that we hold dear in common."