TOPICS OF THE DAY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7024, 12 January 1910, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE DAY

THE PEERS AND THE BUDGET. FBOM OUB SPECIAL COEEEfII’OKDENT. LONDON, November 26. Contrary to- all expectations the vote on. Lord Landsdowue's motion against the Budget will not be taken in the Houiie of Lords till next week. The Peers, , as was expected, have rolled up in great force at Westminster this week, and the usually sparingly occupied benches in the “Gilded Chamber" have been filled to overflowing with Lords well-known, Lor-ds one hears once of in a year, and Lords of whoso existence only close students of Debrctt have hitherto been aware, . , The Budget debate certainly brought together a fine contingent ot what Air Lioyd-George called “the Backwoodsmen" of the Peerage. They came from all the ends of the earth to do battle for their little Empire against the forces of progress. In the end. of course, they propose to annihilate the enemy by the means ot the 12-inch gun of the vote, hut meanwhile they are doing their best to scare the foe with the “pom-poms" and Maxim guns of “logic.'" A score of Peers have i already said their say on the Budget, and we are told, that over fifty more have declared their intention of speaking thereon Perhaps the most remarkable of the speeches made in the Lords during the past week was that •sf Lord Rosebery—* the Hamlet of British politics. No man has condemned the Budget in more vehement and forcible terms than the whilom leader of the Liberal party, and on Wednesday he out-Bosebened even the Rosebery of the famous Glasglow speech. According to his lordship the Budget is everything that is bad—“the end of all things." According to his lordship the Budget “threatens to sap the resources of national wealth"; it has “the unpleasant aspect of being both orudo and vindictive;" “Never has such a mass of raw material been dumped down at any one time in any on© Bill." “It has done incalculable Since its introduction this country is no longer “the strongbox and tho safe of Europe/ where every man who desired security placed his savings. European capitalists and investors have withdrawn their millions. Millions more of our Home wealth jure fleeing, the country. “Ships going westward are carrying bonds and stock certificates as ballast." There i& no confidence, anywhere. “Every avenue of commercial enterprise is locked up. ' Over tho whole country there is spreading a great all-pervading fog or miasma —the disease of want of confidence and want of credit. Such is tho gospel according to Lord Rosebery. Yet wnat does , his -lordship do. Ally himself with Lord Lansdowne and party in the attempt to kill the fearful monster created by Mr LloydGeorge? No! He is not going to vote for or against tho motion for the reason that he thinks the very existence of a second chamber is at stake. Rather than place that in jeopardy he would pass the Budget, convinced that its operation would work a process of disenchantment. “Tho Budget in operation," said Lord Rosebery, “would give you a victory which would surprise you. An anti-Soci’nlistic Government would then be called into being, which would put the national finances on a sound basis, and, by reforming the constitution of the House of Lords, make it less vulnerable. Such in brief was the.counsel tendered by Lord Rosebery to the House of Lords on this critical occasion. In briefer language still, his lordship's advice to th© Lords was: “It's-a National Ruin Budget. but I'm not going to vote against it, and you will bo fools if you do," TO EUCHRE THE LORDS. As everybody appears to be in agreement in predicting that the rejection of the ' Budget J by the Lords will produce all, sorts of financial evils, people are now asking whether the Government cannot avoid most of them by passing a resolution declaring that all . taxes au-; thbrisecl by the Budget resolutions ofl the present session shall continue to bei collected under tho authority of such l resolutions until the close of the current' financial year in March. 1910. It is admitted that the Budget resolutions have tlie - force of law until the end of the session. • But experts are doubtful if they continue to have the force of law after the end of the session, Then, why, it is asked, should! their doubts be solved by a .House ofl Commons resolution declaring that they shall continue in force? The House of[ Commons can pass whatever resolution:' it pleases. If objection is raised on the grounds that there is no precedent this course, or that it is revolutionary —j well, the situation is unprecedented, and, if the Lords choose to play at revolu-* tion, the Commons have surely a rightj to retort by a counter revolution. And euch a course would, it is urged.i effectually checkmate the House of Lords! and would obviate the financial chaos ex-‘ perts predict will reign if the Lords are allowed to. have their way, and the people are allowed to remain in doubt as to the validity of the taxes demanded from them for Imperial purposes. LAND PANIC MYTH. It is somewhat unfortunate for the thick and thin opponents of the Budget that the land taxes to which particular exception is taken, do not appear to be scaring people from buying land in any paid of tho country. The opponents of tho Budget have been telling the people that the general effect of Mr . LloydGcorge's measure would be to depreciate tho value of land as security, but recent soles of large estates in various, parts: of England have failed miserably to give countenance to that contention. It has been made indeed, that the # value, of land-is rising, and that there is any amount of money ready for investment in land in almost every part of the country. , t* A jjood illustration of this fact was supplied by Lord Carrington in a speech in the Lords upon the Budget last Wed-, nesday. . ■ The Duke of Bedford, in 1897, published a book in which ho gave particulars of an estate of 23,000 acres of reclaimed land at Thorncy, in Cambridgeshire. That land showed' a deficit of £440 a year, and was charged with income tax at the rate of £l5O a year. At this time the country was under a Conservative Government. Now, at the end of four years of Liberal Government, the duke put this unprofitable ©state on the market. Earl Carrington mad© a bid for it at once—on behalf of the Crown. “I was," said Lord Carrington, “extremely courteously treated, but my jaffer wa.s received with the contempt that it deserved." This estate at. Thorney. he now learned, had. been sold for three-quarters of a. million of money, which, at 4 per cent., meant <£30,000 a year; so that this estate, which, under a Conservative Government, was unsaleable and produced a deficit of £4OO a vear, had, under a Liberal Government, in spit© of the Budget proposals, been sold, and brought in an income of .£30,000 a year. LORD JERSEY'S LUCK. In spite of the attempts of our Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer to rob th© hen-roosts of our old. nobility, there are ono or two noblemen, who will be able to indulge in new-laid eggs fa breakfast, and other small luxuries a little longer. Ono of them is our old friend the Earl of Jersey, erstwhile Governor 1 of New South Wales. Swansea has been spending over .£2.000,000 in making a now dock. In order to do this they had to pay the nice little sum of £27,050 to Lord Jersey for his foreshore rights above highwater mark. In other words, the people of Swansea have handed this sum over to his lordship for land which was of no use to him. or anybody else; and had not been yielding a penny of income.

But this is not all. Lord Jersey has much other property in Swansea, whicu will, of course, be rendered more valuable through thi-s great dock extension. In making the embankment about a million and a quarter cubic yards of sands were required, and here Lord Jersey had an opportunity of turning another honest pen;iy. He allowed the Dock Trust to take what sand they wanted at the merely nominal royalty of 3d a cubic yard. Even at this modest figure the sand used came to over <£15,600. So altogether, Lord Jersey receives nearly £43,009 as a sort of bonus for permitting the docks to be made. lor it cannot be urged that the sand and the foreshore were of any particular value to him or to anybody else, save for the enterprise of the citizens of Swansea. In addition to the money ho has received in connection with the new Swansea docks, Lord Jersey should reap very substantial benefit from the construction in the shape of improved values for the land he owns in the neighbourhood of the port. In Glamorganshire his lordship owns oyer 7000 acres, which already produce a rental of over £36,000, and a demand for factory sites has already sprung up as a result of th© new dock scheme which will greatly increase the value of Lord Jersey's lauds in the immediate vicinity of Swansea. “THE NEW SURGERY." What some of the papers are calling “the new surgery" has made its appearance in London. The injection of a preparation called stovaine into the spinal canal deprives the patient of the sensation of pain, with the result that ,he can undergo an operation while remaining fully conscious. Stovaine does away with the necessity of using ether or chloroform. Professor Jounesco, a Roumanian surgeon of note, who introduced the new method a few days ago at tho Greenwich Seamen’s Hospital, used stovaine in over 600 cases from 1904 to 1908. In the last eighteen months he has used a combination of stovaine and strychnia—which he describes as tho perfect anaesthetic —in 785 cases, and always, he declares, successfully. He has photographs of patients going through the most terrible operations—smiling! A small boy whoso brain had to be exposed, talked to Professor Jounesco, says the latter, while he was operating. The boy's eyes were bandaged, and feeling'no sensation ho knew so ’little that the surgeon was at work on his brain that lie kept asking when the operation would begin! “Stovaine lias come to stay," 'says the professor. “In many European countries its marvellous properties are fully recognised, and I am glad that during my short stay in London. &o conservative in everything. I have succeeded in convincing many of the lending medical and scientific authorities. Tho possibilities of the new anaesthetic are boundless —obviously." But London doctors are by no means unanimous about the supposed advantage of •stovaine. The injection is supposed to avoid the unpleasant and sometimes dangerous after-effects of ether, but it is stated that one of tho patients operated on at Greenwich under stovaine “experienced a degree of discomfort that few sensitive patients could tolerate." In another of the Greenwich cases numb-

ness could not be obtained. after two injections, and the operation was finally performed under chloroform. “X think," says , a doctor who witnessed these 'operations, “that the publio ought clearly to-understand that spinal anaesthetica is suitable for a limited number of selected cases, that there are .risks, that unpleasant and even serious jafter-effeets do occur, and that ther© ; aro failures."