its accomplishment, but their efforts would have been vain if they had not been supplemented with assistance from the Liberal publication department in the form of statements which Mr. Churchill defined in two words comprising eleven syllables, when one word of one syllable would have been sufficient for the purpose. Although this combination, in unison with what was at that time a pigheaded attachment of the masses to so-called Free Trade, resulted in a huge majority for the Liberals, it must not be forgotten that this majority was altogether out of proportion to the number of votes cast for the respective parties. In the by-elections, on the other hand, which have since occurred, notwithstanding that some of them have been selected by the Government for the purpose of trying conclusions, there has been a turnover of votes to the side of their opponents which, if carried through the entire voting community, would just about reverse the present numerical position of parties in the House of Commons.

That the Government have never believed in the stability of their majority is a fair inference from the assiduity with which they have truckled in turn to every section of their supporters, and it is inconceivable that any Government could have submitted to the humiliations which this one has undergone in every successive year, if its members had believed themselves to possess the confidence of the country. In 1906 their principal measure was an Education Bill, which was to bring joy to the heart of the militant Nonconformist and crush the not altogether unreasonable pride of the Anglican Churchman in the sacrifices he had made for the cause of national education. In spite of lectures, in spite of threats, the House of Lords so amended the Bill that the Government in a fit of temper tore it up, and by limiting themselves to that operation for the first time showed their distrust of the country.

In 1907 an attempt was made to discredit the House of Lords in the country by passing a damnatory resolution.

Never was heard such a terrible curse,

But what gave rise to no little surprise,
Nobody seemed a penny the worse.

As the resolution was not followed by action of any kind, the discredit intended for the Lords recoiled on a Government

convicted of wasting time when they knew there was none to spare if a tithe of their obligations were to be met. In 1908 came the Licensing Bill; it was to have left its moorings under the white flag of temperance, but, somehow or other, and we know from the incident of the "little bottle" what strange contradictions arise out of a zeal for temperance, the sombre colours of vengeance were hoisted instead. But this time there was to be no mistake: whatever the colours might be, the Government had nailed them to the mast. The Bill and the Government were one and indivisible-they must stand or fall together. Alas for the frailty of human purpose, the colours were not nailed, but only pasted to the mast; the first gust of wind carried them overboard, but, nevertheless, the stout-hearted Government stood firm as a rock.

It was, however, becoming clear to them that this sort of thing could not go on, that something must be done to restore the prestige which, dwindling from the first, had by this last act of inconsistency been brought down to zero, and at their wits' end for an anodyne powerful enough to bury the past in oblivion, they resolved upon the expedient of a communistic Budget. The Prime Minister announced that finance was a potent and flexible instrument, the King's Speech that it would be the pièce de resistance of the Session. Towards the end of April the financial proposals of the Government were put forward in a speech of portentous length which strayed even further from the domain of finance than the provisions wrapped up in it, and was for the most part a prolix justification of the speaker's purpose to raise huge sums of money, irrespective of the country's financial requirements, by giving practical application to those socialistic doctrines to which the Prime Minister has now and again referred in language of withering sarcasm. Small wonder that among the Socialists in and out of the House there was jubilation, small wonder that they patted Mr. George on the back as an apt pupil and made the generous admission that if one of their very selves had occupied his post, no better programme could have been hoped for at the first attempt.

Let us pass lightly over the discussion of the Budget Resolutions, remarkable chiefly for pertinent questions and incoherent replies with their inevitable refrain," Wait till you see the Bill." Seven

days sufficed to create the world, none but Treasury officials will ever know how much or how little time was spent in the twentieth century attempt to recreate chaos. All we are priviledged to know is that it took a month to complete after its advent was proclaimed, and having regard to the object in view there is no indication that the time was wasted. When the meaning of the earlier clauses came under inspection the Opposition threw such inconvenient light upon dark places that, nonplussed in every direction, the Government had to resort first to the gag and then to the guillotine under the auspices of presiding officials subjected to the highest trial which robust partisans can experience. Even these expedients could not save the situation, the volleys of reason poured in by the Opposition during intervals of free speech, the occasional growls which penetrated the silence of the well-drilled ranks on the right of the Chair goaded the Government into changes of front so frequent and so rapid that the text contradicted the incorporated amendments and the amendments contradicted one another, the only recognisable attribute of the shapeless mass being its leaven of communism applied to the possessions of political opponents. How clauses, the phraseology of which is as complicated as it is loose, and as contradictory as the principles upon which they are founded, can operate in practice is a mystery which many people hope will never be cleared up. It seems likely that the Prime Minister himself may have perceived this difficulty because when the land clauses emerged from Committee he announced that the procedure upon the Licence Clauses would be short, sharp, and decisive. This most people took to mean that no complication in the way of amendments would be permitted, but either they were wrong or circumstances altered the case, for he afterwards explained that when he used those terms, he only meant a little shorter, sharper, and more decisive than something which was none of the three.

We have noticed how Mr. George's longwinded exposition of the communists' creed and of the degree in which he proposed to apply it was received by the Socialist element, and have glanced at the resistance, gallant and determined beyond anything which Parliamentary history records, offered by the Unionist minority in the House of Commons to his abnormal propositions. A brief epitome of the grounds upon which that resistance has been based

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may not be out of place. (1) The proposals are unconstitutional because they embrace many subjects which have no necessary connection with the provision of supplies during the period with which it is the function of a Budget to cover. (2) They are economically unsound because applying largely to capital as well as income they must needs diminish the amount available for investment in reproductive enterprises, and consequently for wages wherewith to nourish the industrial classes. (3) They are inequitable because they discriminate between forms of property and place the heaviest burden upon those which have most to bear already. (4) They directly invade the liberty of the subject by debarring him from access to a Court of Law, placing him instead at the mercy of a host of officials whose interest must very frequently be in conflict with their impartiality. (5) They are drawn upon lines which by the Government's own admission are meant to be indefinitely extended and exactly follow the course traced out by theorists, some of whom hold private property in land, while others hold all kinds of private property, to be inconsistent with the welfare of the community. The devices by which such objections can be trampled upon in the House of Commons having been exhausted, the Government resolved upon the promotion of an external agitation, and a short truce to discussion becoming necessary in order to bring their changes of front into something resembling coherent form, they availed themselves of the interval to entrust their choicest demagogues with the conduct of a campaign of abuse and calumny of which Dukes were selected as the principal objects for a reason at present unexplained. That there are other members of the community richer than any Duke and that some Dukes are comparatively poor is well known, but as a rule they are guilty of being large landowners and, moreover, next to the Sovereign they occupy the highest rank in the land. Is hereditary rank as well as hereditary property the subject of attack? The question seems legitimate, the answer may perhaps be, not yet. This much, however, is clear. When Cabinet Ministers notoriously dominant, in centres notoriously democratic, refer to Dukes as a harassing element in the community, when the sources of poverty are traced to the fraud of the few and the folly of the many, when peers are described as assassins

and tradesmen unpopular with the Government as swindlers because they raise their prices against the imminence of grinding taxation, there is an open and palpable appeal to the forces. of disorder.

Surely when matters come to such a pass there is need of a pause such a pause the House of Lords can obtain and can only obtain by so treating revolutionary projects unauthorised by the people, and these projects are not limited to the Budget-in such a manner as will compel an appeal to the constituencies. Why should the House of Lords hesitate to adopt this course, or rather what plausible excuse can be invented for refraining from it. The contests which have occurred since the General Election have all favoured the view that the Government either does not possess the confidence of the country, or that that confidence is materially weakened. In the rejection or amendment of various unreasonable or predatory measures the House of Lords has had the country's steady and unmistakable support. Its constitutional competence to deal with the situation is not open to serious question.

Many peers since the production of the Budget have publicly referred to it and if the officials, ex-officials, expectant officials, recent arrivals, and a very few others who appear upon the Government benches be excepted, not one to the present writer's knowledge has failed to condemn its principles, its methods and its objects. Lord Lansdowne on July 16, and again on August 9, made speeches which, though models of discretion, made it abundantly clear what kind of treatment seemed to him proper for a measure framed upon the principles of the Finance Bill as it stood and as it stands. His expression that the House of Lords would not swallow without wincing, if used, was perhaps unfortunate, not because it gave to Mr. Churchill's unfairness an ever welcome chance of distortion and to his indelicacy occasion for an unsavoury epigram, but because to some minds it may have suggested the possibility of swallowing under protest, an unwelcome suggestion to those who think that if the compound be wholesome the swallowing should be spontaneous, and if otherwise that it should be refused with unqualified decision. The feeling of the majority of the House of Lords and of its leader towards the Budget, an omnibus Bill, several provisions of which taken