That is a delightful example of Mr. Lloyd George's logic.
It might do well enough if the Government were now engaged in plundering the grantees of the Church lands. Unfortunately for Mr. Lloyd George, they are not at the moment doing any- thing of the kind. What they are doing is what he calls robbing the altars, robbing the dead, and robbing the poor, in order, as he would say, to give the money back to the poor for whom it was originally given. In fact, according to Mr. Lloyd George, they are nobly paying back sacrilege with sacrilege. Mr. Lloyd George has got into a hopeless muddle. In truth, the particular type of argument indulged in in the passage we have quoted could only be in place when used in regard to a Bill to plunder the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Bedford, and other owners of what were once Church lands in order to re-endow the "altars," "almshouses," and so forth. We are most anxious not to seem unfair to Mr. Lloyd George, who, no doubt, has his merits, but when he makes a speech of this kind one feels inclined to borrow an expression from Mr. Peliseier of the Follies and say that " he ought to be put back in his cage." After Mr. Boner Law bad made an admirable common sense speech, and Mr. McKenna had wound up for the Government, Mr. F. E. Smith's amendment was negatived by a majority of 81 (348-267).
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