and unemployment, which
are absolutely necessary if Great Britain is to hold her own in the
front rank of the nations. The issue which you have to decide is
whether these funds shall be raised by the taxation of a protective
tariff upon articles of common use and upon the necessaries of life,
including bread and meat, or whether it shall be raised, as we
propose, by the taxation of luxuries, of superfluities, and
monopolies.

I have only one word more to say, and it is rendered necessary by the
observations which fell from Lord Lansdowne last night, when,
according to the Scottish papers, he informed a gathering at which he
was the principal speaker that the House of Lords was not obliged to
swallow the Budget whole or without mincing.[18] I ask you to mark
that word. It is a characteristic expression. The House of Lords means
to assert its right to mince. Now let us for our part be quite frank
and plain. We want this Budget Bill to be fairly and fully discussed;
we do not grudge the weeks that have been spent already; we are
prepared to make every sacrifice--I speak for my honourable friends
who are sitting on this platform--of personal convenience in order to
secure a thorough, patient, searching examination of proposals the
importance of which we do not seek to conceal. The Government has
shown itself ready and willing to meet reasonable argument, not merely
by reasonable answer, but when a case is shown, by concessions, and
generally in a spirit of goodwill. We have dealt with this subject
throughout with a desire to mitigate hardships in special cases, and
to gain as large a measure of agreement as possible for the proposals
we are placing before the country. We want the Budget not merely to be
the work of the Cabinet and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; we
want it to be the shaped and moulded plan deliberately considered by
the House of Commons. That will be a long and painful process to those
who are forced from day to day to take part in it. We shall not shrink
from it. But when that process is over, when the Finance Bill leaves
the House of Commons, I think you will agree with me that it ought to
leave the House of Commons in its final form. No amendments, no
excision, no modifying or mutilating will be agreed to by us. We will
stand no mincing, and unless Lord Lansdowne and his landlordly friends
choose to eat their own mince, Parliament will be dissolved, and we
shall come to you in a moment of high cons