POINTS IN THE DEBATE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 14, 17 January 1924, Page 7

POINTS IN THE DEBATE

QUESTION OF PREFERENCE,

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE JtIOCIATION.) LONDON, lath January..

The division ousting the Government is expected on Monday night. Mr. Macdonald and Mr.. Asquith have cemented a tacit agreement whereby the Liberals will support the Labour amendment to the Address-in-Reply. Lobby opinion agrees that Labour is wise to frame the amendment in such a way that the Liberals can freely vote for it.

It is noteworthy that Mr. 'Macdonald and Mr. Lloyd George uttered the sentence of death but without exultation. There were no flaming phrases or highpitched war whoops.

Mr. Baldwin also preferred to leave the hard-nitting for the no-confidence debate.

The most important part of Mr. Macdonald's speech, apart from tho terms of the no-confidence motion, was a passage dealing with the. Imperial Conference. 'Ho said that he regretted that the mover of the address had associated himself with the claim that if the Dominion Premiers met ouv Government in conference, this Parliament was under an obligation to accept the Conference's recommendations. Mr. Macdonald described this as subversive to British rights of self-government. In the King's Speech a very interesting .attempt was made, he said, to imply that the pledges which the Government gave the Dominions at the Conference were given >yithou't l ,a, l .dep.JtrLui;e,,,fr6m „th'o existing,' fiscal- system of this country. "It is a tricky sort oi expression," he added. "I am not going in for logchopping, but' if Ministers are going to .extend a small beginning which was never accepted as a system, but as an .exception to a system, the extension of an extension becomes a new system. Wo are all opposed to a tax on food, and when food has been always taxed for revenue purposes, that is the only justification alleged. Then one nice day something creeps in, and we lay this down that where food is already taxed for revenue that part which comes from the Dominions may be subject to a remission of taxation for Dominion purposes."