topped the alarming increase of the national debt and
made provision for debt reduction at a rate equalled at but two brief
periods since the middle of the nineteenth century. They repealed
approximately half of the war taxes which were still operative when
they assumed office. In the matter of national expenditures they
accomplished a momentary reduction, although the normal increase (p. 159)
of civil outlays, the adoption of old age pensions, and, above all,
the demand of the propertied interests for the maintenance of a
two-power naval standard brought about eventually an increase rather
than a diminution of the sums carried by the annual budget. In
accordance with a scheme worked out by Mr. Haldane they remodelled the
army. They maintained free trade. They made no headway toward Home
Rule, but they enacted, in 1909, an Irish Universities bill and an
Irish Land Purchase bill which were regarded as highly favorable to
Irish interests. Above all, they labored to meet the demand of the
nation for social legislation. The prevalence of unemployment, the
misery occasioned by widespread poverty, the recurrence of strikes and
other industrial disorders, the growing volume of emigration, and
other related aspects of England's present social unsettlement, have
served to fix unshakably in the public mind the idea that the state
must plan, undertake, and bear the cost of huge projects of social and
industrial amelioration and of democratization and reform. In the
realization of those portions of their programme which relate to these
matters the Liberals have been only partially successful. They enacted
important labor legislation, including an eight-hour working day in
mines, a Labor Exchanges act, and a Trades Disputes act, and they
established, by act of 1908, an elaborate system of old age pensions.
By reason of the opposition of the House of Lords, however, they
failed to enact the bill of 1906 for the abolition of plural
voting, the hotly contested measure of 1906 providing for the
undenominationalizing of the schools, the Aliens Bill of 1906, the
Land Values Bill of 1907, the Licensing Bill of 1908, the London
Elections Bill of 1909, and, finally, the Finance Bill of 1909, whose
rejection by the Lords precipitated a dissolution of Parliament and
the ordering of the elections of January, 1910.

[Footnote 226: Mr. Campbell-Bannerman resigned
April 5, 1908. His successor was Mr. Asquith