The choice, continued the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lay between
free institutions and Free-trade, and, on the other band, privilege and Protection, taxes on bread, meat, and timber, and he was perfectly ready to take the opinion of his part of the world on that straight issue. Mr. Lloyd George had no difficulty in subjecting Mr. Wyndham's recent speech at Liverpool to a great deal of damaging and legitimate criticism, notably in the case of the timber and tinplate industries. He effectively ridiculed Mr. Wyndham's objection to the number of "clerks sitting on high stools" in England, as well as his pessimistic interpretation of our foreign loans and investments, and exposed the impossibility of keeping a tax on corn stationary. He also did well to remind his hearers that, though free imports were a blessing to the poor, you could not have a drink bill of a hundred and fifty millions a year without poverty. But for the most part the speech was marred by an unstatesmanlike violence and extravagance.
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