Mr. Lloyd George, who was the principal speaker at a
demon- stration organised by the National Reform Union at Liverpool on Monday night, devoted most of a long and vehement speech to the attitude of the House of Lords to Liberal legislation. The House of Lords, he declared, were proved by their destruction of two great measures of Liberal reform—the Land Valuation Bill of Scotland and the Licensing Bill— to be an absolutely irresponsible, partisan Assembly ; in short, "purely a poor tool of the Tory chief agent." Liberalism, which meant steady, considered progress along Constitutional lines, was ruled out by. a veto of the Constitution. Warming to his theme, Mr. Lloyd George asserted that they could not consent to accept the present humiliating condition of legislating by the sufferance of Lord Lans- downe. "Decrees were issued from Lansdowne House which Buckingham Palace would not dream of sending forth." But they were not going to stand it any more. "We are not going to stand any longer the usurpation of Lord Lansdowne and his Royal consort in the Commons." At the same time, war meant generalship, and generalship meant choosing the best method and the best moment to win. It was absolutely necessary to challenge a great issue on the question of finance. They had got to raise the money for old-age pensions, and the Lords meant to stake their existence upon that issue. He was not going to tell them any secrets, but he took his hearers into his confidence to the extent of saying that he meant to raise the necessary taxes in a way which would not interfere with any productive industry in this country, and that he was not going to butter anybody's bread with taxes.
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