LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8861, 22 October 1907, Page 5

LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM.

MR ASQUITH SPEAKS OUT. Received October 21, 10,50 p.m. LONDON, October 21. The Hon. 11. H. Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at Ladybank, emphasised the great loss, counter-balancing all apparent gains, from the reconstruction of society on socialistic lines. Liberty would be slowly but surely starved to death. Mr Asquith claimed that the Liberal Party alone were capable of combatting extreme Socialism, because it was free and unfettered by entangling alliances with interested monopolies and class privileges which, with the net work of interdependence covering the frame of society, made progress witli social reforms seem sometimes well nigh desperate. He justified the Liberal finance. The Government, he said, had substantially reduced the cost of the Army and Navy, and he hoped to make progress in that direction. Mr Asquith described the recent cnal duties as an unjustifiable burden upon a great industry. Regarding the Stock Exchange, he remarked that the inflated supply of gilt-edged securities during the past ten years had been accompanied by a transfer of capital to more remunerative field of the abnormally active industries of the United Kingdom. The right hon. gentleman concluded by rebutting the charge of coquetting with the So-ialists, and declared that property and liberty was made more secure by every step taken to remove the sense, of injustice, and to diffuse and equalise the pressure of the common burden and keep every particular interest in subordination to the interests of the whole.