On the Unionist side the campaign was opened yesterday week
by Lord Lansdowne at Plymouth. Lord Lansdowne scouted the solicitude of the Ministerialists for the Constitu- tion. They were the same gentlemen who, if given enough scope, would probably disestablish the Church, dissolve the Union, and condemn us to a single-Chamber Government. He pointed out how unfair taxes on the rich would react on the poor, and quoted Sir Edward Grey as having realised and admitted that Labour and Capital were essential to each other. The Government wished to rush the country into the new taxes, which once imposed were not so easy to get rid of; but the Lords wished to give the country an opportunity of pronouncing on them, not two years hence, but at once. As for the question of one or two Chambers, a sham Second Chamber was infinitely more dangerous than no Second Chamber at all. He quoted the testimony of an American writer, often invoked by Radical writers, to the democratic character of the House of Lords, and that of Mr. Gladstone to their inability to thwart useful legislation.
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