BRITISH POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 988, 7 March 1910, Page 5

BRITISH POLITICS.

THE GOVERNMENT'S DELAY. ! United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph | Copyright. LONON, March 4. Lord Lansdowne, Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, has given notice of motion to enquire regarding the Government delay in the production of the Budget. A FATUOUS POLICY. Eeceived'March 6, 12.15 a.m. LONDON, March 5. Mr C. E. Mallet, member of the House of Commons for Plymouth, has been appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office. In the Commons, Mr Evelyn Cecil drew attention to the authorities refusing his income tax. Mr Cheque accused the Government of adopting a fatuous policy in order to spite the Lords. Mr Asquith, replying, stated that the Lords were entirely responsible or the confusion. He refused to de part from the principle that had been adopted for forty years past, and to divide the Budget into parts for the purpose of mitigating the damaging results of.the Lords' action. Mr Lloyd George said the demand for a separate Income Tax Bill was a species of hypocrisy.

MOKE RECRIMINATION. THE SPEAKER OBJECTS. Received March 6, 5 p.m. LONDON, March 5. Lord Hugh Cecil, answering Mr Asquith's remaiks that the great majority of the people regarded it as incredible for the Lords to reject the Budget, recalled Mr Lloyd George's remarks that the Budget was a rat rap. When Mr A. Stanley Wilson reminded the Commons that Lord Ribblesdale, whom the Government supported, had described Mr Lloyd George as "half pantaloon and half highwayman," the Speaker objected to such "offensiveness," but he was unable to compel the withdrawal of the words because quotations from "the other House" had frequently been used during the election. Mr Wilson explained that he mentioned it because Mr Lloyd George had produced the present situation. Mr Lloyd George declared that the Government would not accept the responsibility of using on demand notes in connection with the Income Tax, which it was not prepared to enforce. It was prepared to receive any Income Tax paid voluntarily. If the Government sent to the Lords n Bill for a single tax the Government would surrender the right gained, when Mr W. E. Gladstone in 1861 circumvented the Lords by putting all the taxes in one Bill, which the Lords must accept or reject as a whole. Lord Courtney, speaking at the New Reform Club, said he thought the majority were returned 'syith a mandate to curb, restrain and limit the Lords' power, the mandate carried no absolute direction to carry through any Bill embodied in Sir Heniy Campbell-Bannermang' resolution. Mr Redmond, discussing the Lords, as an Irishman, said that the election was paid for by the American Irish. The coming election must be paid for by the Irish at Home and in Great Britain.

SPEECH BY MR BALFOUR. ONE RESOLUTION BREEDS ANOTHER. GONE NEVER TO RETURN. Received March 6, 5 p.m. LONDON, March 5. Banquetted wit;h Sir Frederick Banbury in the City, Mr A. J. Balfour, Leader of the Opposition, remarked that a Parliamentary fortnight had demolished the glowing picture painted by the enthusiastic brush of the Radical journalists. The Government's own followers now charged the Ministers with every sort of tergiversation and bi'each of the clearest pledges. "We have seen," said Mr Balfour, "weekly changes in the plans of surrender. Tf the original pledge consisted of insisting at the very beginning of the session upon the Sovereign giving constitutional guarantees it is so scandalous that any evidnce might be justified to enable the Government to get out of it. The constituencies had justified the Lords' action. The Ministers were unable to piss the Budget. He wanted not a better, but a stronger second chamber; not another House of Common', or one too strong, which might arrogate to'itself, as some second chambers did, the claim of being the immediately representative chamber, but it should be powerful enough to resist temporary of opinion, and representing, perhaps, more accurately than the Commons the permanent wishes of the nation. The Radicals desired not social reform, but revolution. Social reforms were complicated and necessarily gradual. The Government's policy involved a revolutionary or anti - revolutionary struggle. Would the country sit down under a single chamber system, j The Socialists, Radicals and Na- ': tionalists were not going to be in ' 5 power for ever. One revolution i would breed another. Abolition of

the Veto, raid Mr Redmond, would mean Home Rule, and Home Rule meant Irish import duties and Customs barriers."' Mr Balfour proceeded to say that our delay with fiscal reform was forcing Canada to make commercial treaties with foreign countries in ignorance that this country will adopt the preference system, which is possible between Canada and ourselves. He would like to see Tariff Reform, but whether such a reform would be the future policy or otherwise the old system was gone never to return, and largely owing to the present Government's pressure on expenditure.