The Wanganui Chronicle. MONDAY, MAY 25, 1931. LORDS VERSUS COMMONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 121, 25 May 1931, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle. MONDAY, MAY 25, 1931. LORDS VERSUS COMMONS

yUE British Labour Government is taking a page out ol Mr Lloyd George’s book in adding land taxes to the Budget for I the current year. The result may not. however, be the same as I it was in the year 1909. ; It must be remembered that the programme of the Asquith i Government in 1909 had been wrecked by the repeated rejection of their Bills by the House of Lords. The exasperation of ■ the public, or at least of those sections of the public which were disturbed by the rejection of the various Bills by the House of Lords, was indeed keen. Further, as a background to this period of Lordly activity was the period of inactivity during the regime of the Conservative Government under Mr Arthur Balfour. That regime, after winning the Khaki election upon the wave of Boer War patriotic enthusiasm, gradually dwindled down in prestige into rank disfavour. The mismanagement of the war, the worse mismanagement after the war, and the complete all-round ineptitude, coupled with Mr Joseph Chamberlain’s abortive Tariff Reform campaign, had made'a record for which nothing could be said in its favour. Yet the House of Lords had slept silently throughout the period of mismanagement only to awaken in time to thwart the work of a Cabinet which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons. Tactically, therefore, the House of Lords was illdisposed to fight off any encroachment upon its privileges. When it rejected Mr Lloyd George’s Budget in the year 1909, therefore, the Peers made a decidedly false move. The array of talent against the Lords was also <>( a very high order. Mr Asquith was well-named “the sledgehammer” in debate by Mr Campbell Bannerman. His preponderating logic, his terse language, his excellent grip of the constitutional issue, made him a powerful exponent of the rights of the House of Commons. Lord Rosebery broke a lance, but was at once unseated from his horse, and retired to “plough his lonely furrow,” as he himself expressed it. Mr Lloyd George, wittiest of speakers, sparkling at repartee, rapier-play in attack suited him. Sarcasm and irony were at his command and he eould use them with deadly effect. His bolts of ridicule eould not be turned aside. His Timehouse and Paragon speeches brought abuse upon his head, but no answer. This worried not this enigmatic little Welshman. He gloried in it for he could ever use this abuse to endear him to the masses. Mr Alexander Ure, K.C., the .Lord Advocate for Scotland, possessed a remarkable personality. His Heli, sonorous voice, with a. delightful Dorie accent, added beauty to the weight of his argument, and because of this combination of personality, voice and language, an interruption seemed like a sacriligous interruption in a church. This is no exaggeration. Large audiences stilled before his presence. His advocacy of the land taxes was excellent. Mr Winston Churchill, dashing and brave, was the possessor of a romantic name, to which he himself had added lustre. Audacious and keen, he choose his words well and with a. well practised and well schooled set of speeches lie arrested the attention of the multitude. In the second rank were men like C. I’’. G. Mastermaii. Mr “Jack” Simon, Mr Albert Samuel, MT Rufus Isaacs—now Lord Reading—and many other men who have since won fame. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, although able, is nol of the calibre that Mr Asquith was in 1909. There is to-day no counterpart of Mr Lloyd George (not even his modern self), nor are the oilier men in the front rank of the Labour Party up to the standard of the leaders of the Liberals in 1909. Indeed, it must be remembered that the leaders of the Labour Party to-day are old men! They have passed the fighting days. Will this party be able to rally democracy against the Lords when the Lords haven’t done anything very terrible? There is one thing that such a fight demands, and that is opposition by the Lords, and the Upper House doesn’t appear to have sustained sufficient'opposition to the popular chamber to make a fight of it. The fight may therefore be too tame an affair Io catch the public interest, and other issues may possibly dominate the election: for Ihe land taxes will assuredly be regarded as the hone thrown between the two dogs io start the row.