The resumed debate on the Budget on Wednesday was noticeable
for a bitter attack on Mr. Asquith's proposals from Mr. Snowden, the Labour Member for Blackburn. No Chancellor of the Exchequer, he declared, bad had so magnificent an opportunity and none had so utterly failed to use it. Mr. Asquith's ideas of what constituted social reform differed completely from those of the Labour Party, viz., that the House should devise some means by which the increasing wealth of the country should not go into the possession of a small section of the community. The mass of the people—including two million families earning less than £1 a week—gained nothing whatever by any of Mr. Asquith's proposals to redress these unjust conditions. Mr. Asquith, he went on, gave an indefinite promise of old-age pensions to be provided at the expense of the recipients, and therefore not worth having. The £1,500,000 which Mr. Asquith proposed to devote to this end next year would provide the miserable sum of ls. 3d. a week at seventy-five. "It was a traitorous appeal to ask them to be satisfied with that when they were led to expect 5s. a week for everybody at sixty-five."
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