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singly would justify its rejection in the absence of a mandate from the people, being public property, it was matter for surprise when day after day in the newspapers, statements appeared on the authority of Radicals more or less prominent, that the Budget would pass the House of Lords, because as they cannot have expected this result from love, they presumably expected it as the result of fear. To credit them with desiring to throw a slur upon the House which it has been the ambition of so many of their party to enter, would perhaps hardly be fair. A more reasonable conjecture seems to be that the fear they foretold was justified in their minds by the obvious and inevitable dangers of rejection, revealed to their prophetic sense. What were these dangers from which the chivalry of the United Kingdom as represented by the House of Lords was invited to recoil? Mere party denunciations cannot have been reckoned among them, because of these, events previously referred to had produced a plentiful crop. Nor is it likely that the danger of invasion by a crowd of new arrivals, such as would make the atmosphere of the gilded chamber intolerable, although undoubtedly a dismal contingency to contemplate, can have had much weight, because it is admitted that pending an appeal to the constituencies, such invaders as objects of terror may be classed with "men in buckram."

The prognosticators of panic must be credited with some more definite justification. They were probably taken in by a rumour which gained credence from its adoption in unexpected quarters that the great coup had been brought off, that the tinsel covered image unveiled with so much pomp and circumlocution, had been mistaken for a golden calf and was attracting worship, that the offer of the Government to make the poor richer by making the rich poorer was not perceived to be identical with an undertaking to collect water in a sieve. Some such passing phase of blindness prolonged by the barbarous methods, adopted under authority to hamper the education of the public mind, may have existed, but those who speculate upon its continuance cannot have made sufficient allowance for a difficulty which is bound to crop up at every turn.

The poorer classes of this country, although their apprehension of truth is not always acute, have a tenacious memory for

matters affecting their domestic economy. At the last General Election Radical agents issued certain promissory notes which have not been redeemed, and when they or their myrmidoms go their rounds with a fresh batch on offer, they will be met amongst others with the question-Where is the big loaf? And as no satisfactory answer is possible, they with their new wares will not unlikely find themselves unexpectedly on the doorstep. On the other hand, the cruel uncertainty of a livelihood inflicted upon the industrious poor by our insane practice of starving ourselves in order to fatten foreigners, has undoubtedly operated to bring a large volume of opinion into a dangerous state of flux, and multitudes reduced to despair will not improbably give ear to the protestations of Socialists that the Budget provides a cure for their deplorable condition. To protect the ignorant against this baseless delusion, to show that the Budget is the crudest of quack prescriptions against a disease which, though curable, must be attacked at the source, is the task upon which the energies of the Unionist Party are concentrated. The probabilities of success or failure need not for the moment be discussed; the point is whether by putting them to the proof the House of Lords would run greater risk of imperilling the constitution than must arise if, without direct authority from the electorate, it gave consent to a revolutionary measure which the conscience and reason of the majority are known to condemn.

If the Finance Bill passes in anything like its present form, the Socialist revolution will have been fairly launched. If it passes without a previous appeal to the people its adoption by the House of Lords cannot but be ascribed to dread of that hypothetical retribution so nakedly proclaimed on behalf of his colleagues by the President of the Board of Trade in a recent speech, which must be unique among the utterances of British statesmanship. The Government, re-endowed with a prestige which its previous action had well-nigh exhausted, will proceed with a course of legislation calculated to fortify the position it has gained. Served at will by the lobby-trotting marionettes who form so large a percentage of its following, it will pass what measures it pleases over the heads of an Opposition whose arguments will be answered by the closure and the guillotine, and whose physical endurance must be well nigh spent. The House

of Lords will have no case for rejecting measures which are mere corollaries of what they have passed before, the Army and the Navy will be starved to meet the requirements of a swarming Civil Service, State pauperism socialistically financed will have a glorious innings, and unless swept away meanwhile by the national disaster they are courting, these Ministers in 1912, with another epoch-making programme of communism, will appeal to a corrupted electorate to renew their corporate existence and simplify the road to ruin by reducing the House of Lords to impotence.

No one who has analysed the utterances of the Government's influential spokesmen, no one who judges the future by the past can say that this forecast of probabilities is over-coloured, but fortunately the picture has a reverse side. If the House of Lords stands firm, it is extremely probable that a sufficient number of the electorate, discovering in time that they have been dazzled by a glitter which is not gold, will rally in battalions to the cause of order and reason. It is certain in any case that the majority of the Government will be much reduced, and as they cannot get one at all without replacing their present docile following by members of the Labour Socialist Party, it will contain quickly germinating seeds of disruption. The largely recruited ranks of the Opposition will put it out of their power to resort to the double-shift system, which is only another word for legislation by physical force. Finally, and not without importance to those who have a regard for the verdict of history, the responsibility for the national insecurity-increasing every hour while this Government holds sway-will rest, not upon the Upper Chamber, but upon the electorate, whose indolent and hobby-riding members will have learnt some useful lessons before the ultimate issue of single Chamber Government comes forward for decision.

Two matters germane to the contents of this article remain to be mentioned. Reference has been made to the efforts of the Unionist Party to expose the futility of the Budget proposals as a remedy for the distress arising out of unemployment. Some of the supporters of the Party in the Press appear to think that the scope of those exertions is not wide enough and hint at a comprehensive programme of Social Reform in a manner which leaves a good deal to the imagination. What the industrial

classes of this country appear to want in order to make them comfortable and happy is plenty of work at satisfactory wages, and this can only be obtained by that amendment of our fiscal system, to which an overwhelming majority of the Unionist Party is pledged with the whole of its energy to promote. The canker of so-called Free Trade, persevered in so long after the ideals of its promoters were shattered, and their predictions turned inside out, has eaten too deeply into our social and commercial organism to be expelled at once by the application of any remedy, but the result of the recent alteration in the Patent Laws must convince all who do not wilfully shut their eyes, that the imposition of a tariff will instantly bring into the country a great deal of money and a great deal of employment at the disposal of manufacturers now working abroad who cannot dispense with the English market, not a few of whom no doubt have made. provisional arrangements for the avoidance of such a risk. Until this great remedial agency with its Imperial adjunct is fairly at work, the industrious poor cannot be in a position to rise in the social scale and the Unionist Party could gain nothing by putting forward schemes which, in its absence, afford no solid ground to work upon.

The second matter which claims some notice from the writer of this article is as follows: A theory has found expression that because the Finance Bill has not actually left the House of Commons, Peers are, or should be, debarred from canvassing methods of treatment which, on its arrival in their House, it might receive. The only ground for this view apparently is that at the last moment the Government, conscience-stricken, might proceed to acts of repentance, that Pharaoh's heart might be softened to the extent of letting the landowner and the publican go. The suggestion seems grotesque to the writer, who is

A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

OLD KENSINGTON PALACE

ONE of the many projects of that indefatigable philanthropist, Mr. John Evelyn, of Sayes Court, Deptford, was a scheme for suppressing London smoke. Walking in the Palace at Whitehall, not long after the Restoration, in order to refresh himself with the sight of his Royal Master's illustrious presence (the expression is his own), he was sorely disturbed by the presumptuous vapours which, issuing from certain tunnels or chimneys in the neighbourhood of Northumberland House and Scotland Yard, did "so invade the court,* that all the rooms, galleries, and places about it were fill'd and infested with it; and that to such a degree, as men could hardly discern one another for the clowd, and none could support." Indeed that high and mighty Princess, the King's only sister, "Madame " herself, accustomed as she had been to the purer air of Paris, was grievously offended, both in her breast and lungs, by this "prodigious annoyance," which not only sullied the glory of his Majesty's imperial seat, but endangered the health of his subjects. These "funest" circumstances set busy Mr. Evelyn a-thinking; and presently gave rise to that learned tractate Fumifugium; or, the Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated, which he inscribed to King Charles II., and in which he dealt summarily with the "hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal," by recommending that all brewers, dyers, lime-burners, soap-boilers and the like inordinate consumers of such fuel, should be dismissed to a competent distance from the city, and moreover-as might be anticipated from the future author of Sylva-that every available vacant space should at once be planted with sweet-smelling trees, shrubs and flowers. "Our august Charles "—always a compliant monarch

• I.e., the open space at the back of the Banqueting House (now the United Service Museum).

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