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in ousting him in the course of next year. Like Mr. McKenna, Mr. Asquith spent himself in vainly trying to mollify the Brunners, who mustered nearly 100 votes against the Government on an amendment to the Estimates (the numbers being 280 to 98), in which Ministers were supported by the Opposition, though Mr. Balfour emphatically condemned the miserable makeshift as regards the contingent "Dreadnoughts," which Mr. Carlyon Bellairs (the Liberal member for King's Lynn) described as a "surrender to the Little Englanders." Mr. Bellairs pathetically added, "his position to-day, as compared with what it was three or four years ago, was one of utter disillusionment. He scarcely knew whether it was a subject more fit for tears or for laughter, when he looked back to those days when he thought his leaders were statesmen."

Or the further debate on the Defence Committee (July 29) we need say nothing, except that it afforded the two Front Benches, whose occupants are habitually lost in admiration of themselves and of one another, a joyful opportunity of forming a mutual admiration

Mutual
Admiration
Society

society for the afternoon, and of bandying fulsome compliments across the floor of the House. There was much glorification of the Defence Committee, which Mr. Asquith regarded "not only as a valuable but as an indispensable part of our administrative organisation." Mr. Balfour handsomely reciprocated with this certificate of character: "I can say on my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends, that everything I have been able to learn, either from such statements as that which has just been made (by Mr. Asquith) or from other sources, as to the use to which the Government are putting the machinery of the Defence Committee, leads me to think that every hope which the original authors may have entertained as to its future utility to the country and the Empire are, in the hands of the right hon. gentlemen, being fulfilled in the highest possible measure.' "Invasion was once again pronounced to be impossible on the infallible authority of the Defence Committee, though perhaps not quite so impossible as four years ago, when that equally infallible body regarded it as a problem unworthy of serious consideration, seeing that Mr. Asquith now recognises the possible landing of a hostile army of 70,000 men on these shores, the figure being

presumably selected as one with which our present resources are supposed to be able to cope. But if 70,000 Germans can be landed in this country, why not 150,000 or 200,000? There is no lack of troops or transport in Germany or of landing-places in Great Britain.

The South
African
Millennium

OUR readers will hardly expect us to contribute our rivulet to the vast and limitless ocean of gush in which Parliament and the Press have submerged the Draft Bill for the Unification of South Africa, brought to England some weeks ago by various delegates from the unifying Colonies, and since embodied in an Act of the Imperial Parliament. Podsnap and Pecksniff were conspicuous throughout the debates. Government and Opposition vied with one another in hailing the millennium which must inevitably follow the adoption of a Constitution placing the British and the natives permanently under the heel of the Boers. As is pointed out in our Correspondence section by a writer who prefers to look facts in the face, the probable effect of this "miracle," as it was described in the House of Commons, will be to extend the baleful system of Hofmeyrism throughout the Sub-Continent. All talk of a Coalition Government between General Botha and Dr. Jameson, which would have reconciled many sceptics to unification, collapsed the moment the Bill was passed. South Africa will henceforth be governed on a purely racial basis-Natal being now engulfed in Boerdom-with the British as permanent under-dog. Englishmen have no locus standi to criticise their fellow countrymen in South Africa for swallowing the new Constitution. The General Election of 1906 in the Mother Country, the installation of the pro-Boer Party in power, determined to justify their treason during the war by surrendering its fruits, and the outrageous treatment of the British in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony by the Campbell- Bannerman Cabinet, convinced our unfortunate fellow countrymen that they had no option except to make terms with the Boers, though we venture to doubt whether they have made the best possible bargain, considering the anxiety of the Boers to effect a settlement during the pro-Boer régime in this country. Every tragedy has its comic aspect, and there is a certain grim humour in our sentimental, pro-native Radical Parliament passing a great measure of local self-government with

a rigid colour bar virtually excluding the natives, who constitute at least four-fifths of the population of South Africa, from all practical share in its government, either now or hereafter. We can imagine what would have been said by the Opposition had a Unionist Government proposed to hand over the population of South Africa to an "insignificant white oligarchy." The Radical Party would have seethed with indignation. But their delight at seeing Englishmen under the Boer harrow has completely reconciled them to the abandonment of their native clientèle. We devoutly hope that South Africa may now enter upon a prosperous career, and that all the prognostications of all the pessimists may be falsified, though Englishmen can scarcely congratulate themselves on their contribution to the problem. Great satisfaction has been caused throughout the Empire by the announcement that the Prince of Wales will inaugurate the new South African Government in the course of next year.

No one has ever accused Lord Lansdowne of bravado. He is not a pot-house politician like the Chancellor of the Exchequer

or the President of the Board of Trade, who Lords and become inebriated with verbosity at the mere the Budget sight of a crowd and talk the wildest nonsense.) Exceptional importance therefore attaches to the carefully considered, deliberate, and reiterated declarations of the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, who, for all practical purposes, is the Leader of that House, as to the attitude of the Peers towards the Budget. We quoted in our last number the operative passage of Lord Lansdowne's speech at the annual dinner of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations (July 16), which came as a complete surprise and a severe shock to the Radical Party, who, like all political parties, invariably assume that their opponents will play their game. Ministerialists had persuaded themselves that the House of Lords would never dare challenge the House of Commons on finance, but would meekly accept whatever Mr. Lloyd-George chose to put into his Budget. The Westminster Gazette declined even to discuss the political situation on any other basis except the surrender of the Peers. It was inconceivable to our contemporary

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that a hereditary House should in these enlightened days assert themselves as they had never previously done, the Westminster Gazette conveniently forgetting that never before, in what is called "a time of profound peace, have the Lords been presented with anything remotely resembling the present Budget, described by the Liberal ex-Premier (Lord Rosebery)-who at one time was worshipped by the Westminster Gazette-as "a revolution.' We may say, for our own part, that, much as we dislike Lloyd-George finance, we should have viewed the Budget with less detestation had it made adequate provision for the maintenance of British Sea-power, but, as our readers are aware, our naval needs are shamelessly neglected. The present Cabinet do not care a row of pins what happens to the country, and the two demagogues who now dominate its counsels are simply seeking to transfer the sovereignty of the seas to Germany in such a manner as to disable us from even putting up a fight. Lord Lansdowne shattered the Radical dream of a walk-over on the Budget by declaring, in the speech referred to, that when "that notorious measure" came before the Upper House, it would not accept the view "that because it is mixed up with the financial affairs of the nation, we are obliged to swallow it whole and without hesitation. That, to my mind, would be not only a mistake, but an unconstitutional proposition."

LORD LANSDOWNE added that authority was not wanting to support this view, but in such cases

The "Swooping Robber Bird"

I prefer to rely not only upon text-books, but upon common sense, and it seems to me that, looking at it from a common-sense point of view, it is unthinkable that either under the theory or the practice of the Constitution, in a country with two legislative chambers, it could be left to the absolute discretion of one of those chambers to impose upon the nation any burdens, however monstrous and intolerable, any taxation, however inequitable its incidence, any new financial system, however subversive of society; and I believe that to be specially true when one bears in mind, as we must, that this Government cannot claim to have received on the occasion of the last General Election any kind or sort of mandate from the country to deal with this vast financial revolution.

Therefore the House of Lords would have to consider "with an open mind no doubt, the Bill as it emerges from examination by the House of Commons, and we shall endeavour to do our duty by

VOL. LIV

3

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it, undeterred by threats and vapourings such as those." This douche of cold water had a most salutary effect on the Cabinet and the Commons, and although the blustering bounder of the Board of Trade took upon himself to announce that any interference by the Lords with the Budget would precipitate a dissolution, he was promptly repudiated by the horrified Premier, who, like the rest of his colleagues, has no stomach for fighting. If the truth were known, Messrs. George and Churchill are equally afraid of a General Election, which would deprive them of their emoluments,* but they seek to ingratiate themselves with the "wild men by breathing fire and slaughter against the Peers, and by privately denouncing their less pot-valiant colleagues, secure in the consciousness that the latter will look to it that whatever may be said nothing rash will be done. The twin demagogues have, it is true, to some extent succeeded in hocussing the halfpenny Press, but that is the extent of their success. During the past month many people have had their say on the Budget, and though the Chancellor of the Exchequer immortalised himself at Limehouse, and Mr. Churchill on many other platforms, infinitely more importance attaches to the wise and weighty speech of Lord Lansdowne at Bowood on August 9, than to all the vapourings of all the blatherskites. (After disposing of the tissue of terminological inexactitudes with which Mr. Lloyd George had tickled the ears of the groundlings at Limehouse, where he had secured the cheapest of cheers by holding up capitalists in general and Dukes in particular to hatred, ridicule, and contempt, Lord Lansdowne caustically observed that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer accused these London landlords "of rapacity, of blackmailing, of extortion, you would expect that Mr. Lloyd George would announce a Bill for the protection of London tenants against extortionate landlords. But he does nothing of the kind. He comes forward and says, take your plunder, go away with it, only I must have my share out of it." His conduct reminded the speaker of a flock of sea-gulls preying upon fish.There is a particular kind of gull, particularly voracious and unscrupulous, which does not fish for himself, but hovers about and swoops down upon the other bird, and makes him let

* It is noted as somewhat significant by the man in the street that Mr. Lloyd-George's super-tax begins at £5000-i.e., the exact point where his own salary leaves off.

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