ogress was great. The hot hopes were to have a
speedy quenching. The laws of England are passed by the joint consent of
the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The House of
Commons is an electoral body, but the House of Lords has a hereditary
membership, descending from father to son. Of the six hundred members of
the House of Lords five hundred are Conservatives. The Conservative
minority in the Commons, faced with startling Liberal reforms, called to
their aid the five hundred stalwarts in the Lords, and the consequence
was that the sweeping measures introduced by the Liberals were promptly
thrown out by the Lords. Thus an intolerable situation presented itself
to the Liberal majority chosen by the nation to direct its Government.

Lloyd George, on being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, at once set
himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his
hand. He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the
means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords. The
ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation
for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country.
Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs
of the country" and then to raise the money on account of them. He
purposed to bring about a wholesale readjustment between rich and poor
and to use the readjustment as a basis for developments in the future.
That was his bold and carefully devised plan of action. It will be asked
at once why the Lords could not frustrate this intention as well as those
embodied in the other Liberal bills they had thrown out. This was the
reason: the Lords were prevented by the constitution from altering money
bills sent up to them by the Commons, though they might do what they
liked with other bills. The people provided the taxes, the Commons are
elected by the people, and the power of the purse possessed by the
Commons gives the people the command in affairs of state. As long ago as
the time of Charles II. this rule about the Commons and Lords with
respect to money supplies was emphatically laid down. Lloyd George's
scheme was to wrap up social changes in his Budget and to dare the Lords
to meddle with them, inasmuch as they were part and parcel of a money
bill.

The country had no idea of this deep-rooted plan. Something sensational
was expected of Lloyd George, but his proposals,