TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND THE BUDGET.
ON Tuesday the Press Association issued an apparently inspired statement in regard to the "fate of the Budget in another place." Discussions in the Lobby, we are told, "undoubtedly indicate a growing feeling in the Unionist Party that, whatever risks and inconveniences may be involved, drastic action should be taken in view of the general situation. It can be positively stated, however, that the rejection of the land clauses only does not commend itself to the Unionist headquarters. If a, crisis is to be forced, it will be by the destruction of the whole Budget by means of a reasoned amendment." In other words, if this statement is correct, the House of Lords will not adopt the policy of throwing out the land clauses, which the Spectator has consistently urged upon it, and still believes to be the wisest,—a plan of action which we contend it has a perfect right to pursue under the Constitution. If our policy were adopted, the Government would have two courses before them. They could accept the Budget minus the land clauses, which would give them all the money they require, and. reintroduce the land clauses next year, made all the better from their point of view by further consideration. Or they might dissolve at once on the double cry of an alleged breach of privilege and the merits of the land clauses. If, however, the latter alternative were adopted, the odium of having created a Constitutional crisis and of bringing about a Dissolution would fall upon them, not upon the House of Lords. The country likes, no doubt, to have its own way, but it cares very little about such abstract points as the privileges of the Commons ; and we are sure that if a Dis- solution took place in these circumstances, a great number of moderate men would feel, and emphasise the feeling by their votes, that the Government were not justified in dissolving. Remember, there are thousands of Liberal voters who, though they like the rest of the Budget, detest the land clauses as thoroughly unsound in principle. These men would be delighted to see the land clauses left out, or at any rate held over. They in no way sympathise with the Ministry for making a fetish of the taxation of capital, or rather of one portion of the capital of the country.
But though this is our view, we are bound to admit that at present all the indications seem to be that the majority of the Lords are persuaded that the throwing out of the land clauses would be misunderstood by the country as an at of selfishness, since they are supposed to be specially interested in urban land. This notion that they are the only people involved in the taxation of town values is, of course, absurd. The House of Lords, so far as it is a landlords' House, is a House of agricultural, not urban, landlords, and agricultural land is not taxed in the Budget. No doubt there are twenty or thirty Peers who have great urban holdings, but we venture to any that the vast majority of urban landowners do not sit in the House of Lords. As we have said, however, the Peers seem to be convinced that to throw out only the land clauses would be to render themselves liable to misrepresentation. For practical purposes, therefore, we may assume that the alternatives are to throw the Budget out altogether or to let it pass altogether. For ourselves, granted that there is no third course open, we hold that the Lords will be better advised to let the Budget go through. We do not, however, wish to dogmatis4 on the matter, and we fully realise the immense evil of letting the land clauses, with their wasteful and dangerous principles, become part of our fiscal system.
If the Lords decide that it is their duty to throw out the Budget as a whole, then we most sincerely trust that they will recognise the magnitude of their action, the gravity of the political crisis with which the country will at once be faced, and the tremendous consequences which must result if by any chance the country should endorse the action of the Government and return the Liberal Party to power once more with a majority virtually undiminished. Remember that such a victory for the Liberal Party would not mean a victory for that section of the Cabinet which is repre- sented by Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, Lord Wolverhampton, Lord Crewe, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Haldane, and. Mr. McKenna,—these names do not exhaust the tit, but they will suffice as typical. It would be a victory for the ex- tremists; for Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill, and, though he may "wear his rue with a difference," for Mr. Lewis Harcourt. At present there is a certain amount Of " brake " power still left in the hands of the moderates. If the action of the Lords were not to be endorsed by the country, the power of the Liberal moderates would be gone, and. we should in fact, if not in name, be face to face with a Lloyd George and Winston Churchill Administration. The existence of such a risk, though it be a very grave one, is of course no reason for cowardice on the part of the House of Lords. No one who is afraid of risks ever does, or ever will do, anything in this life, whether in politics, in war, or in business. Those who dwell upon the dangers of failure rather than upon the advantages of success are sure to come to grief. The true way of facing risks is to determine to win, and to make sure of winning The greater the risks, the more it behoves those who run them to concentrate every possible effort upon winning. It is only when the results of defeat would. not be very terrible that men may be to a certain extent excused for not exhausting every effort to obtain success.
Translated into terms of action, this means that if the Unionist leaders in the House of Lords determine upon throwing out the Budget, they must feel not merely that they have a united Unionist Party behind them, but that they have by their action gained the confidence of a section of the moderate Liberals, and also of that great body of balancing electors which sways from side to side in our politics, and in 1906 threw itself with such tremendous impetus on the side of the Liberals. It would be madness for the Lords to undertake a struggle in which the lists were set as in 1906. But it is clear that they will not be able to accomplish the concentration and conservation of political energy we desire if the General Election (the true issues of which ought to be the right of the Lords to participate in fiscal legislation, and the question of taxation for revenue as against taxation for Socialistic objects) is to be used by the Tariff Reformers for the furtherance of their special policy.
We trust that our readers will believe us when we say that in employing these expressions we are making no attempt to trick Tariff Reformers into any permanent abandon- ment of their policy. We fully realise not only that they will steadily refuse to agree to any such abandonment, but that it would be grossly unfair for us to expect them to do so. As we have always admitted, they hold their views, though those views are in our opinion mistaken, as sincerely as Free-traders hold theirs. But if we do not expect the Tariff Reformers permanently to abandon their policy, we feel bound to point out that unless they will give up their claim to a mandate to carry out their views in the new Parliament they run the risk of a great political catastrophe. They will be doing the very reverse of what we have said is essential,— to concentrate the whole of the conservative forces in the country on the one object of winning a victory at the polls and throwing out the present Government and their policy. To mix up the Fiscal question with a great Constitutional, anti-Socialist appeal would be a fatal error. We are among those who hold that Socialism is so great an evil that if the hateful alternative of Socialism or Protection were ever put before us, and it became necessary to choose, we should feel compelled to choose acquiescence in Protection as the lesser of the two evils. Protection is, after all, an evil which can be redressed. Socialism is an evil from which, once accepted, there is no escape. But though Unionist Free-traders would generally agree with us in this view, we must never forget that the mass of moderate Free-traders do not hold it. If the dilemma we have just set forth were placed before them, they would. cast their votes against Protection, however hateful to them the alternative of Socialism. The same thing is, we believe, true of the great bulk of those " balancing " electors whose co-operation is as essential as that of a section of the Liberal Party if the uncompromising, the overwhelming victory which safety demands must be won at a revolutionary Dissolution is to be secured.
Many moderate Tariff Reformers, reading what we have just written, will, we believe, be heartily in agreement with us. They will willingly accept what for want of a better word we may call the Spectator policy as to the Dissolution. On the other hand, there are a good many sincere Tariff Reformers who will be aghast at our audacity, and. will ask us whether we really expect the Tariff Reformers to give up this great opportunity of furthering views which they believe to be absolutely essential to the future welfare of the nation. Let us say once again that we are not so mad as to expect from them any such sacrifice. We are merely pointing out that if the House of Lords forces a Dissolu- tion just now, we dare not run even a moderate risk of defeat. There must be no gamble, no sporting chance. We must win at all costa. But this means the union, as oppcsed to the dispersion, of the anti-Socialist forces in the nation. What it seems to us the far-seeing Tariff Reformers ought to say, and will say, is something of this kind :—" It is very unfortunate that the Dissolution should have come in this way ; but as it has come under these conditions, we agree that we must play to win. Therefore what our leaders should do is to announce that if they, controlling, as no doubt they do, the bulk of the conservative and anti-Government forces in the country, win the Election on the Constitutional issue, they will not make use of such a victory to carry Tariff Reform in the next Parliament. Instead, their first duty after the expulsion of the present Government should. be to secure the carrying on of the 'King's Government on. moderate, conservative, Constitutional, and anti-Socialist lines. But though they would be precluded from passing Tariff Reform in the next Parliament, they would, of course, be at liberty to utilise, this neutral period to place before the British people in the best and most convincing way their policy as regards Tariff Reform. For example, they would hold themselves at liberty to consult officially with the Colonies as to a definite form of Pre- ference, or, again, to draw up in conference with repre- sentatives of our home industries a definite scheme of scientific indirect taxation. When that was accomplished, say in eighteen months or two years, they would naturally and properly dissolve again and place their fiscal programme before the country." To sum up : if the battle is to be accepted on the condition which we have pointed out is essential— that a victory must be secured at all costs—the Tariff Reformers must agree that Tariff Reform, though it will, of course, be canvassed. and. discussed at the polls, shall not be the dominant issue of the Election. The one dominant issue will be the Constitutional issue. Accord- ingly the Tariff Reformers should pledge themselves to • consult the country once more before Tariff Reform is adopted. If they are willing to make such a temporary act of abnegation, we feel convinced that they would gain indirectly as well as directly. Their action would convince the nation that they are both sincere and patriotic, and they would obtain and retain the confidence of the best conservative elements in the country, whether Liberal or Unionist. It would be felt that they were placing the country above party, and they would reap in full measure the reward. of such conduct. If, on the other hand, the Tariff Reformers are not prepared to make this tremendous sacrifice—for tremendous sacrifice we admit it would. be—then most assuredly the House of Lords had better let the Budget go through and the Dissolution be postponed till it takes place in the natural course of events,—say in another year or two years' time. In that event no one will, of course, be able to blame the Tariff Reformers for making Tariff Reform v. Free-trade the issue. What they must not do, and will not do if they are properly alive to • the gravity of the situation, is to take action which will force a Dissolution, and yet compel the crisis to be faced. .with divided ranks, and with the very cry which brought disaster in 1906.
In 1906 Mr. Chamberlain, and. almost all the expert politicians on the Tariff Reform side, declared, and most sincerely believed, that Tariff Reform would sweep the country. We would urge the House of Lords to remember this fact when it is again told that it will be easy to turn out the Government on the Fiscal issue, and that it is not necessary to take any trouble to bring over to the Constitutional and anti-Socialist side those moderate Liberals and non-party men who, though they voted for the present Ministry in 1906, are now so strongly opposed to the policy of Mr. Asquith's Administration,
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