BRITISH POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10233, 9 May 1911, Page 3

BRITISH POLITICS.

SPEECH BY MB ASQUITH

United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.

(Received May 8( 8.5 a.m.)

LONDON, May 7

Mr Asquith, speaking at Manchester, declared that the Government was firmly carrying out the work entrusted it at the General Election. Had the Liberal party been master of its own h«use, primary education would ere now have rested on a genuinely national basis, and the evils of the licensing system would have been removed or mitigated. It was hoped that Mr LloydGeorge's great insurance scheme would be canvased, revised and perfected jointly by the loyal efforts of all men of all creeds and parties.

! Referring to the Veto, the Prime Minister declared that the Unionists had abandoned their attitude of passive resistance to all change. The Tories had, in fact, thrown the House of Lords to the wolves, and, seized with revolutionary fervour, had favoured proposals ' for reducing the House of Lords to the level of a debating society. No Liberal statesman ruled out of all possible use the referendum, as a eonceivable instrument for solving an otherwise insolvable situation. But were they going to make representation merely gladiatorial, the people saying to the Commons, "You are pawns on the chessboard. Whatever you decide, you return to us for ratification or disapproval." "If that is so," continued Mr Asquith, "you are no longer going to get the same men to represent you. You are destroying representative government. It is tolerably certain that it would be possible to get the Parliament Bill through the Lords to-morrow without the least difficulty of any sort if it was agreed that it should not apply to Home Rule." (