If only part of this accusation against the House of
Commons is true, it shows that a very grave situation is not being treated with the required gravity or sincerity. There is in any ease a tendency to imitate the Government in encouraging the public to believe what they want to believe, and not to lead them into the true way of salvation. On Wednesday the Bill was con- sidered by Committee ofthe whole House. Sir Auckland Geddes then explained that the Board of Trade would have discretion to give.to the local bodies within reasonable limits powers to prosecute. His defence of this grand error in statesmanship was a merely ingenious debating-point—that if cases were to be referred back to the Board of Trade from all over the country, another huge bureaucratic Department would have to be set up, and nobody could desire such a thing. We should think not ! But that is not a reason for giving small local bodies, which must to some extent be composed of tradesmen, authority to ruin other tradesmen, even though under the Bill as amended.grocer may not eat grocer. We wonder whether it has occurred to the Government that when small shopkeepers, however wicked they may be, are forced to put up the shutters through being heavily fined or sent to prison, the distribution of goods will be made more difficult than ever, and scarcity will therefore be intensified. That is only another way of saying that prices—legitimate not " profiteering " prices—will rise still further.
