ith false and empty rhetoric
Like lawyers' speeches. I am not a lawyer,
I thank my stars that I am not a lawyer,
And can without a spate of parleying
Briefly expound, as I am doing now,
The whole caboodle. As for this here Bill,
So far as it means Nationalising verse,
We shall support it. On the other hand,
So far as it means interferences
With the free liberty of working-men
To write their poetry when and how they like,
We will not _have_ the Bill. So now you know.
_Mr. ASQUITH._
It was remarked, I think by ARISTOTLE,
That wisdom is not always to the wise;
To which opinion, if we may include
In that august and jealous category
The President of the Board of Ululation,
I am prepared most freely to subscribe.
When was there ever since the early Forties
A more grotesque and shameless mockery
Of the austere and holy principles
Which Liberalism like an altar-flame
Has guarded through the loose irreverent years
Than this inept, this disingenuous,
This frankly disingenuous attempt;
To smuggle past the barrier of this House
An article so plainly contraband
As this unlicens'd and contagious Bill--
A Bill which, it is not too much to say,
Insults the conscience of the British Empire?
I will not longer, Sir, detain the House;
Indeed I cannot profitably add
To what I said in 1892.
Speaking at Manchester I used these words:--
"If in the inconstant ferment of their minds
The KING'S advisers can indeed discover
No surer ground of principle than this;
If we have here their final contribution
To the most clamant and profound conundrum
Ever proposed for statesmanship to solve,
Then are we watching at the bankruptcy
Of all that wealth of intellect and power
Which has made England great. If that be true
We may put FINIS to our history.
But I for one will never lend my suffrage
To that conclusion."
[_An Ovation._
_MR. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE._ Mr. SPEAKER, Sir,
I do not intervene in this discussion
Except to say how much I deprecate
The intemperate tone of many of the speakers--
Especially the Honourable Member
For Allways Dithering--about this Bill,
This tiny Bill, this teeny-weeny Bill.
What _is_ it, after all? The merest trifle!
The merest trifle--no, not tipsy-cake