MR ASQUITH AT THE ALBERT HALL.

West Coast Times, 13 December 1909, Page 3

MR ASQUITH AT THE ALBERT HALL.

FORCIBLE AND VEHEMENT

SPEECH.

AN AUDIENCE OF 10,000.

LONDON, Dec. 12.

The majority of the members of the Cabinet, many of the Liberal peers and a number of Commoners suported Mr Asquith in his Albert Hall speech. There was a crowded and demonstrative gathering of ten thousand, all men.

The Premier said that at the last election the Liberals had reckoned with out their host, but they were not going to make the mistake again. The Liberal Party have. now laid iipon them the single task of vindicating and establishing upon an unshakeable foundation, the principles of representative Government. All the causes for which they had been fighting hung on this, including education, Weigh disestablishment, licensing, women's suffrage, etc. The latter would be opened in the Commons on the introduction, of the next Reform Bill. He deplored the suicidal excess of a small section of the suffragette advocates. The Government were in no disposition to burke the question.

Ireland, he said, was still the one grea£ faijure of British statesmanship. Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, he mentioned that the only solution was a system of self-government in purely Irish affairs, which would be explicitly safeguarded by the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament. The prgsent Government ha<J f ee » disabled in making any advance of this solution, but the Liberals' hands in the new Parliament would be perfectly free, ' . Old age was only one of the hazards, to which the industrial population was exposed. Sickness, invalidity and unemployment are spectres always hovering on the horizon. "Wo believe," said Mr Asquith, "that the time has come when the State should lend a helping hand in this direction.. One of the secrets of the 1909 Budget was that it might be rightly de>scribed as a Budget which looked bgyond the 31st of next March. Only once in living memory had the Lords attempted to touch a single tax imposed by the Commons— the Lords, who now had shattered the whole of the year's taxation.

He quoted Mr Joseph Chamberlain's letter to Mr Baliour's Birmingham meeting to prove that the Lords manoeuvre was to reject the Budget, because it provided an effective substitute — a' destructive substitute to tariff reform. "I tell you plainly— l toll my countrymen at this meeting anfj el§& where, and my Pa'rfcv'j that neither I nor any other Liberal Ministers are going to submit again to the rebuffs and humiliations suffered for years. I favour a bi-cameral system of Government, and can -see- much practical advantage by a legislative body impartially exercising its powers in revision or amendment, subject to a proper safcgiiaul, Itvti % frl»yi% tytfTf'Pf veto must go," The Government V\l\ demand authority to translate the action of unwritten usage into a Parliamentary Act, and that authority should place upon the Statute Book a recognition, explicit and complete, of aset>tled Constitutional doctrine. That it is beyond tllp proving tif #\$ Lorijs to meddle with' the national finance and the will of the" -people as deliberately expressed by their eelcted representativs, must, within the life of a single Parllajmmf, ty* j'wW f%eti vti t. f* n tf , a , reduction of ~ tlf"e duratipn of single Parliament to five years is a' Liberal policy I should nqt fear fqiir year's," . Mr AfJQWith pQnphu]ec|, "JljiW dq we stand $ X Unpo an^ truat ? uniterf, AU sectiqnal djvisjions ai-e well fused and combined in the common campaign against the common enemy. We have behind us examples of the greatest Apostles of the democracy of <>ur time 5 vii». ? ti!a^st. ( np aui| JlMgh*. Wt« llftVP to suppoi-t us the memories qf the past and needs of the present, and the hopes that lie in the future."

My Lluytl-Geqi'ge, in a brief speech, said the subtlest and. mast patent hu«. man weaknesses — (juapkery and snobbery — are arrayed against us, but we shall beat both.

Mr Churchill tjaii]: ""We shall have to smash the veto up, am| if we work together nothing can withstand us."