Mr. Austen Chamberlain and Mr. Chaplin repeated the familiar arguments
in favour of Tariff Reform as the only cure of unemployment, and Mr. Harold Cox exposed the Socialist fallacies in a speech full of dry light. Mr. Philip Snowden, like the other Socialist speakers, abstained from formulating any specific remedy for the evil. "It was not for him and his friends to put forward a plan of campaign,—that was the duty of the men on the Treasury Bench, who were paid for it." Mr. Burns replied for the Government in a courageous and effective speech. He refused to take a pessimistic view of the situation. Pauperism all over the country had declined, though it showed a regrettable increase in London. That, however, was largely due to undiscriminating charity. In proof of this statement, he instanced his own experience on the Embankment, when, by joining the queue with his collar turned up, he, with his £'2,000 a year, simply by holding out his hand got his quart of soup and pound of bread. He quoted figures to show that by the tests of disease, wages,
rent, house accommodation, and above all pauperism, London was in every respect superior to the city—Berlin—which was frequently quoted against it.
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