The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, September 16, 1909. THE LORDS AND THE BUDGET.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 481, 16 September 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, September 16, 1909. THE LORDS AND THE BUDGET.

Mr Hasold Spender devotes himself in the Contemporary Review to an elaborate examination of the constitutional position of the House of Lords with regard to Mr Lloyd George’s Budget. The peers are being urged in certain quarters to reject or amend the Budget, and Mr Spender quotes a number of high constitutional authorities on the question of their competence. He arrives at the conclusion that the House of Lords must either reject the Finance Bill completely, or leave it completely alone. But rejection would reduce the administration of the country to chaos, and cannot therefore be regarded as practicable by any responsible politician. The late Lord Salisbury in 1894 remarked that the House of Lords bad not for many years past interfered by amendment with the finances of the year. He added: “The reason why this House cannot do so is that it has not the power of changing the Executive Government ; and to reject a Finance Bill and leave the same Executive Government in its place creates a deadlock from which there is no escape.” Yet there can be no mistake about the appeals that are being made to the peers to “interfere,” and the Marquis of Lausdowue recently declared that the House of Lords could not be expected to swallow the Finance Bill “without wincing.” In dealing with the same momentous topic in the Ninteeuth Century and After, Mr J. A. R. Marriott practically admits that all precedents enjoin upon the House of Lords the duty of non-inter-ference. But he goes on to say that “not all the blacklelter sanctions in the world will serve to justify the Lords before the final judgment seat ofthe constituencies. The legists will ask : Have they followed or violated precedent ? The people will ask : Have they done right ? Have they dealt fearlessly and honestly with a series of measures of the first magnitude ? Have they reached a decision with a single eye to the interests of the nation as a whole?” Mr Marriott appeals even to the Socialists to resist the passage ol the Finance Bill on the ground that it will destioy not only the capitalist, whom they regard as an enemy, but also the capital, which is their friend. Capital, he says, is “the life-blood of all classes of the nation, and especially of that class which the Labour Socialists claim to represent-” It would appear that, m the event of a conflict between the two Houses, all the precedents, strangly enough, will be in favour of the Liberal position. The Conservative House of Lords will be driven to break all the constitutional precedents if it rejects the measure. Its spokesmen at present admit this, but claim as justification that the Finance Bill brought down by Mr Lloyd Ceorge is itself unprecedented.