not want to, but every one inside the House of Commons has made the same comment during the last few weeks. There is happily no longer any serious difference of opinion in the Unionist Party as to who should act as Mr. Balfour's deputy. The Tariff Reform Debate (February 23) was opened in an admirable speech by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who is acknowledged on all hands to have made great strides and enjoyed the satisfaction of reducing the Cobdenite majority to the beggarly figure of thirty-one, able speeches being made by several new members, e.g. Mr. MacKinder, Mr. Steel Maitland (already an accomplished parliamentarian), Captain Tryon, Mr. George Lloyd, Mr. Page Croft, and others; but, excellent as was the speaking on our side, Mr. Bonar Law being exceptionally successful in bringing the Chancellor of the Exchequer to his bearings, while Mr. Balfour delighted his Party by a bold and uncompromising speech-the defence of free imports was even more damaging to that lost cause than the attack. Our readers may possibly regard us as prejudiced against Free Imports—at any rate the Spectator is not, and we reproduce from our esteemed contemporary a typical passage from the speech in which Mr. Lloyd George wound up the debate for the Government, of which the Spectator says: "We are bound to say that when we see the cause of Free Trade defended in the House of Commons by a passage such as that which follows, we cannot resist a feeling of physical nausea." Here follows the extract in question:

I call it black bread. (Hon. Members: "Rye-bread.") Is that not black? ("No.") Is it not food? Really, Hon. Gentlemen opposite among their other defects are colour-blind. The Germans themselves call it black bread, and that is how you order it. ("No.") What is its colour, then? I should not have thought there was the slightest doubt about it. I have heard Hon. Gentlemen say it is excellent stuff-for the workmen. (Laughter and cries of "No.") Well I should like to know how much the Hon. Member for Clapham consumes? I should think he diets himself very strictly. (Laughter). The Hon. Gentleman charged me with having said it was food we would not give to tramps. This was what I said about tramps: I said Rt. Hon. Gentlemen say "This black bread is excellent stuff, very nourishing, very palatable, exceedingly appetising"; but I said in Devonshire: "Have you any tramps?" and they said "Yes." Then I said, "The next time tramps come round give them some of that German black bread. Every time a tramp calls give him a chunk of it, and you will get rid of him as if he were given rat poison." (Laughter.) That is all I said. (Laughter.) Let the Hon. Gentleman try it on a tramp-I mean a bona fide tramp-not those who go round public-houses

for Tariff Reform, though I am not sure that it would not turn even them off. (Laughter.)

A New

OUR readers must bear in mind that this is not the outburst of some pothouse politician, but a carefully considered oration by the leading Liberal orator-who has been Demosthenes placed by Mr. Stead in the same category as Mr. Gladstone-the British Chancellor of the Exchequer a position once held by Pitt, Peel, Gladstone, and other not inconsiderable persons. Moreover, this offensive attack on the food of "a friendly people," who are quite as civilised as we are, was received with uproarious delight by the entire Radical Party from Mr. Asquith and other superior persons on the Treasury Bench down to Mr. Byles, who, when not engaged in insulting the German nation, divide their time between weakening British sea-power and denouncing "scare-mongers for creating bad blood between two great Christian and kindred communities. There have been few more disgraceful parliamentary episodes than this outbreak. Last month we had occasion. to quote a leading article from the Westminster Gazette, published after the elections were over, rebuking "ardent Free Traders" for having represented the German working classes as living in "a state of squalor and low civilisation," while the Berlin correspondent of the Westminster Gazette declared that "a natural patriotic pride has also evoked protest against the representation of Germans as a nation fed exclusively on inferior and even loathsome food." Mr. Lloyd George's latest afforded our contemporary what should have been a welcome opportunity of renewing its admonition to "ardent Free Traders," but no one familiar with Westminster Gazette methods was surprised at its enthusiasm over the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech. "After such a brilliant pyrotechnic display, with the House roused to passion and excitement, Mr. Bonar Law failed of his effect. His quiet unemotional style is excellent, but it did not fit the humour of the Commons. Moreover, Mr. Law does not improve as a speaker. He felt the hopelessness of his task against the raking onslaught of the Chancellor," &c. &c. After this Mr. Bonar Law will probably abandon speaking. But there was one orator who inspired even more ecstasy in the office of the Westminster Gazette than Mr. Lloyd George, namely, Mr. Alfred Mond, who

we read opened the day's debate, "with nearly an hour of swift and cutting sarcasm," which "riddled the Protectionists' case in a rapid torrent of speech like the fire of a Gatling gun. No Free Trade speech more crowded with fact and argument has been delivered in the House." This eulogy provoked considerable merriment in Parliamentary circles as the raucous member for Swansea happens to be the Managing Director of the Westminster Gazette. In the previous issue of the Westminster Gazette, February 24, our contemporary had been moved to similar enthusiasm by "ten minutes of swift and piercing swordsmanship from Mr. Alfred Mond." We doubt whether there is any other statesman in either House of Parliament who can be at once both sword and Gatling gun, and whatever views we may hold of the Westminster Gazette's studiously unfair comments on every Unionist who opens his mouth at Westminster, we can at any rate admire its chivalrous enthusiasm for its own chief. Won't the Cocoa Press follow suit and enlighten us as to the oratorical gifts of the cultivated members of the Cadbury family? A public debate between the terrible Mond and any Cadbury would be a splendid draw. They might discuss "Some Protective Aspects of the British Tariff," or any aspect of Slavery.

It seems hardly worth while bewildering our readers in a vain attempt to disentangle the political situation as it has developed day by day, and week by week, during the past Barnacles month. The old saying, "The Radicals slave in the stoke-hole while the Whigs pace the quarter-deck," must be revised, the positions being reversed, for to-day "The Whigs slave in the stoke-hole while the Radicals pace the quarter-deck." We are able to present our readers with the views of "the quarter-deck" in the shape of an able article from Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, one of the leading members of the Labour Party, whom Mr. Asquith so loyally follows. We confess to growing weary of hearing what the Whigs down below think and feel. They exercise about as much influence on the course of the ship as an ordinary barnacle. Their chief function is to put astute Lobby correspondents on the wrong scent, and to mislead the country as to the policy and character of this so-called Government. A Lloyd-George Cabinet, which would at any rate be what it seemed, would be infinitely

preferable to the present disorganised hypocrisy which seems what it is not; though after the frank announcement that Government is to be brought to a standstill in the middle of May by the stoppage of supplies, we trust that Unionist newspapers will cease twaddling about the "statesmanship" of the more moderate members of a Cabinet of avowed wreckers, and that we may get a respite from academic but totally irrelevant lucubrations, as to the kind of Second Chamber this that or the other "statesman" might wish to constitute if he counted for anything. Unionists as Party men may survey the prospect with equanimity, though as Englishmen they cannot bu regard it with repulsion. Every one is talking Dissolution and assuming Dissolution, but it is worth while bearing in mind that an unusually large proportion of his Majesty's Ministers depend, if not for their bread and butter, at any rate for the amenities and luxuries of life, upon their salaries. While many forces make for Dissolution this potent fact points towards "ploughing the sands."

Lord
Rosebery's

THE lamentable condition to which the House of Commons had been reduced by the miserable shilly-shallying of the Prime Minister, culminating in his capitulation to the "Kept Party," afforded the Peers another opporResolutions tunity of showing their statesmanship and public spirit; and no sooner did the Moderates collapse in the Cabinet than Lord Rosebery gave notice that he should raise the question of the Reform of the House of Lords in that House, and move certain resolutions. The debate opened on March 14, when the Liberal ex-Premier moved as follows:

That the House do resolve itself into a Committee to consider the best means of reforming its existing organisation, so as to constitute a strong and efficient Second Chamber; and, in the event of such motion being agreed to, to move the following resolutions:

(1) That a strong and efficient Second Chamber is not merely an integral part of the British Constitution, but is necessary to the well-being of the State and to the balance of Parliament.

(2) That such a Chamber can best be obtained by the reform and reconstitution of the House of Lords.

(3) That a necessary preliminary of such reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a Peerage should no longer of itself give the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

Needless to say, the mover delivered a brilliant and remarkable speech in opening this historic discussion, though it erred, like almost all speeches, in being too long. We would make it a penal offence for any speaker, under any circumstances, to exceed an hour. Fifty minutes is probably the maximum of attention that an audience can profitably accord to one individual. Lord Rosebery pointed out that it was exactly twenty-two years since he had last brought forward the subject of the reform of the House of Lords, but the Reform movement had never died out, although little had been heard of it in recent years, as there had been a considerable body of opinion among the Peers "profoundly conscious of some imperfections" in the House of Lords, which it was desirable to remove without delay. In the first place they were too numerous to be effective; secondly, they represented too much one interest; and, thirdly, the principle of heredity was unpopular. At the same time he hoped that they were equally conscious of the great and splendid history and traditions of their House, which he would be the last to disparage.

Its antiquity is a fact which I think very few even of your lordships realise, and certainly very few of your critics. It is claimed by Professor Freeman, not merely a great historian but a still greater Radical-for the name of Liberal he would have spurned-that this house is a lineal descendant and representative of the Saxon Witenagemote, and so illustrious a descent as this, prolonged through so many ages, is not a fact which any member of your Lordships' House, or any critic of your Lordships' House, can altogether afford to disregard.

Lord Rosebery cited an apt if surprising panegyric on the Peers pronounced by Mr. John Redmond in the Rotunda at Dublin about fifteen years ago, when he said:

Remember for one moment what the House of Lords is. It is the integral part of the Constitution of England. It holds a large place in English history. Most of the present holders of titles in the House of Lords are the descendants of the men who wrung the Charter from John on the plains of Runnymede. They are the descendants of men who in the past history of Britain fought the battles of England against the world, and I say that to abolish that portion of the Constitution, which is older probably in the point of antiquity, in point of history, than the House of Commons itself—to abolish that means a revolution greater than any that has taken place in the whole constitutional history of England.

Mr. Redmond evidently knew what he was about in his present