ing trade.

When all that may be said on these grounds has been said, we do not
attempt to deny that the Budget raises some of the fundamental issues
which divide the historic Parties in British politics. We do not want
to embitter those issues, but neither do we wish to conceal them. We
know that hon. gentlemen opposite believe that the revenue of the
country could be better raised by a protective tariff. We are
confident that a free-trade system alone would stand the strain of
modern needs and yield the expansive power which is necessary at the
present time in the revenue. And our proof shall be the swift
accomplishment of the fact. The right hon. gentleman opposite and his
friends seek to arrest the tendency to decrease the proportion of
indirect to direct taxation which has marked, in unbroken continuity,
the course of the last sixty years. We, on the other hand, regard that
tendency as of deep-seated social significance, and we are resolved
that it shall not be arrested. So far as we are concerned, we are
resolved that it shall continue until in the end the entire charge
shall be defrayed from the profits of accumulated wealth and by the
taxation of those popular indulgences which cannot be said in any way
to affect the physical efficiency of labour. The policy of the
Conservative Party is to multiply and extend the volume and variety of
taxes upon food and necessaries. They will repose themselves, not
only, as we are still forced to do, on tea and sugar, but upon bread
and meat--not merely upon luxuries and comforts, but also on articles
of prime necessity. Our policy is not to increase, but whenever
possible to decrease, and ultimately to abolish altogether, taxes on
articles of food and the necessaries of life.

If there is divergence between us in regard to the methods by which we
are to raise our revenue, there is also divergence in regard to the
objects on which we are to spend them. We are, on both sides, inclined
to agree that we are approaching, if we have not actually entered on,
one of the climacterics of our national life. We see new forces at
work in the world, and they are not all friendly forces. We see new
conditions abroad and around us, and they are not all favourable
conditions; and I think there is a great deal to be said for those who
on both sides of politics are urging that we should strive for a more
earnest, more strenuous, more consciously national life. But there we
part, because the Co