The House which listened to Lord Balfour's introductory speech was
a large and very important one, and there were evident signs during the debate that both parties realised how serious was the occasion. Writing on Friday, we cannot, unfortunately, summarise the speeches, but we may note that Lord Crewe reiterated all the arguments against the Referen- dum which we have so often combated in these columns, and which were stated by Mr. Runciman on the previous day in the House of Commons. We are sure that we are doing no injustice to Lord Crewe when we say that he produced no new argument against the proposal. The same must be said of the speech of the Lord Chancellor. He began by using what we must take leave to call the exceedingly feeble argument that it would be impossible to hold a Poll of the People with- out vast expense. On this we will only say that if the two parties were foolish enough to spend thousands of pounds on picture posters and on flooding the country with literature, no doubt a great deal of money would be expended. In our opinion, however, they would very soon tire of such expen- diture, which, of course, would be purely voluntary. What makes the great expense of Parliamentary elections is the keen personal ambition of the candidates, who, for one reason or another, are deeply anxious to win seats for themselves. That being so, they will make very great pecuniary sacrifices to attain their ends. When there is no possibility of Mr. Jones's or Mr. Smith's personal ambitions being achieved in this way, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that they will open their purse strings very widely.
