MR LLOYD GEORGE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 331, 25 January 1911, Page 2

MR LLOYD GEORGE.

AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS. The following speech by Mr Lloyd Gorge will give some nation of the manner in which visions subjects were duait with during the recent general election at Home, to which possibly may he ascribed the Liberal sueces=os at the polls: Mr Lloyd George, addressing a crowded meeting at Mile End, said that the present crisis had been precipitated by the rejection of last year's Budget. The, Government. needed money for the defence of the country and for schemes of social reform. They proposed to tax great incomes and fortunes and the luxuries of all classes. The Lords demanded that great wealth should be spared, that luxuries should be free, and that burdens should be. imposed on tiie bread and meat of the people. Their answer was, "No," and the Lords then said, "Out with the Budget!" They came now to ask the people to say "Out" to the House of Lords. He continued: "The Budget passed six months ago. It has been a complete financial success. Ail the Protectionist Budgets have been a failure, they have not produced the cash. Our Budget has been in operation six months some of the resolutions eighteen months. Out of the money of the Budget we voted twenty iniiHons last year and this year to raise the old people above poverty. Out of the money raised by that very abused Budget we have spent ten millions more upon building ships and equipment of the Navy. We are going to bring in an additional 200,000 poor old people who are now branded with the stain of pauperism. We are going to make them S-tate pensioners—like dukes. That means two millions, and all that is in the taxes of the Budget. We have got the cash to start an insurance scheme that will insure two millions of workmen against the evils of unemployment. We are starting next year--and all the money is arranged—a scheme to insure fifteen millions of workpeople, men and women, against the necessities, the distress, that come to households when the bread-winner's health breaks down. "All the taxes are coming in, including whisky. All the Estimates have been justified. And these great schemes for keeping hunger and want from invading the hearts of the people— were in the Budget. And they (the Lords) threw it out as if it was an unclean thing. Ah! we will reckon with them. (Loud cheers.) VViiv did they do it. We dared to touch the ark of the Covenant—the land—taxed the landlords' rent.

"Nor did we injure trade. Before the Budget trade was depressed, we were down in the trough of the wave; since then the good old ship has been rising, rising, ami rising, and we are not yet on the crest? Our foreign trade is leaping un by million?.. I don't say that it is all due to the Budget, but by means of this fiscal instrument we have extracted twenty-five millions a year without injuring business. "But all" this has been rejected by the Lords, and we say 'No more.' And this time we want an irrevocable decision on the subject. "But stop a minute! It is not the Budget that is worrying—we are doing all this at the dictation of Mr John Redmond. "Since when have the British aristocracy started despising American dollars? (Cries of the Duke of Marlborough.) Many a noble house tottering to its fall has bad its foundations underpinned, its walls buttressed by a pile of American dollars. "And what about the Irish landlords? Their cruel rack-rents, before the great days when Gladstone brought in his Bill which paid those rackrents? Ab! American dollars. Do you know how many American dollars passed from America to Ireland to pay Irish landlords in twenty years? Eighty million dollars. "Mr Redmond went over and said, 'You are wasting your money. You help us to get liberty for Ireland, and then the dominion of these landlords will be at an end,' and they subscribed a very consderable sum, to carry on the campaign. But let me say this: Was it all America? A large proportion came from Canada. Since when has Canada become a foreign country?

"As far as the last Parliament was concerned the quarrel with the House of Lords was a British one as much as the old fight between the Commons and the King. You know how that ended. "It is a British quarrel, hut Irishmen have an interest in it. As long an the House of Lords is there they will have no confidence that they or Englishmen or Scotsmen or Welshmen will get fair play, to democratic demands. We stand absolutely by the posuio;; we had taken in the matter of self-government for Ireland ■■- the position "taken by the Prime Minijter in the Albeit Hall last year. "Schemes oi reform we can cemdder at our leisure. The Lords have taken over thirty years to do it, but tney are hurrying up just now; they arc calling out excitedly, 'Don't shoot, and we will come half-way down.' V/e will say, 'Clear out, please.' "No free country would look at our system. Let us go to Australia, guided by a Tariff Reform tripper, and before we land wo say, 'Have you a Second < h:up';fi' here;" and they say "Yes.' Then v, e say, ■ Then wo will stay the night. Would you mind ceiling u-j how it is composed?' They say, 'Just the class of people you see anywhere round here. It ia elected by' all the people, male and female, who are of age.' But our Tariff Reform friend would say, 'surely you give more votes to the owners of property than to the more man who worU jW Pic living?' And they would say ;'No.' 'Why,'' v i~ want to be governed by souls and not by suds.' "Mind you, we are a mission to convert the heathen to the principles of an lieu'clitary Chamber, I would

say: ; l will give you our oldest end most ancient stock, and consequently our best.' Because our aristocracy is like cheese: the older it is the higher it becomes. I will teli you how v.e got our first and best quality. A few shiploads of French iiibuyec-rs cam; over from Lie eoa?t of Normanhy. They killed ail the owners of property, and levied for their own ih'o death duties of a hundred per cent, upon them. Unfortunately, their descendants ever since have been cutting each other's throats, and there are very few of them left, and they ara very costly. I need hardly assure you that such a common and vulgar doctrine as the survival of the fittest does not apply to them.

"We would say to the Australians, 'Have you anything like that?' They would say, 'We had a few years ago bushrangers, but they only stole cattle.' -We would =ay, 'Cattle won't do. It must be land, and on a large scale.' 'Well,' says the Australian, it does not matter. We hanged the last of them before they had an opportunity of founding a family. Have you anything else?' " 'Well, our second quality arose in this way. We had a great Reformation and a certain number of people took advantage of it to appropriate land and buildings consecrated to feed the needy. "You and I are now paying rates in order to make up the revenue appropriated by those noble people who rejected the Budget. The Home Secretary and I the other day paid a visit to Dartmoor. On that bleak, mistsodden upland I saw an old man of sixty-five in the convict garb. He had been sentenced to thirteen years' penal servitude because under the influence of drink he had broken into a church poor-box and stolen two shillings. The next time lam called a thief and a robber by one of the descendants of those noblemen, because I propose a tax upon the wealthy, I will say, 'You are living well upon the proceeds of the church poor-box your ancestors robbed.' "Then I say to the Australians, 'Have you anything to match that?' "They would say, 'Rather than be governed by men like that we would have a Senate of kangaroos.' 'I would give them up as a bad job, and go on to Canada. I would say, •What sort of a Second Chamber have you?' 'Nominated by the Prime Minister.' 'Liberal or Tory?' 'Liberal.' 'First Chamber also Liberal?' 'Yes.' 'Then I tell you this country is not fit to for a civilised person to live in. You must have a hereditary Chamber at once. The members must have something to do with the land, but have cultivated it themselves. They must not do any work ; they must hunt, ride, shoot—recreations of that scrt.'

" 'We have,' they say, 'got people to meet that view. They have never done any work; they are the most ancient stock in our country ; they do nothing except hunt --and shoot and ride; they are very stately, dignified and idle. They have every qualification of the aristocracy, but we shut them up in reservations to keep them out of mischief."