We have pointed out elsewhere the very strong support that
has been given during the week to our contention. that if the Lords, as we now feel sure they will, throw out the land clauses, but pass the rest of the Budget, the Government will not dissolve. Still further evidence comes on Friday morning in the shape of the report of Mr. Asquith's speech at the Eighty Club dinner on Thursday night. The speech was in Mr. Asquith's most genial and also most moderate vein, and there was not a trace of any attempt to tread in Mr. Winston Churchill's steps, and to flout and browbeat the Lords, or even, so to speak, to "warn them off the grass." On the contrary, Mr. Asquith's sketch of the many wonderful things which the Liberal Party are going to do next Session, including the disestablishment of a portion of the Church and the revision of the Poor Law, is indirectly a stronger repudiation of Mr. Winston Churchill's threats of Dissolution than even that given in answer to Mr. Lane-Fox's question, which we have quoted in our leading article. Prime Ministers who expect to be at death-grips with the House of Lords in the course of a month or so do not paint in optimistic colours their programmes for next year. An interesting and instructive part of Mr. Asquith's speech was that in which he described the growing dangers to Liberalism from Socialism on the one side, and moderation on the other. "In the case of one class of temperament there are certain to be exaggerated alarms at over-rapid progress and unforeseen changes. In the case of another class of temperament there is certain to be an almost irresistible temptation to the precipitate pursuit of impractical ideals."
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