n of the
people in Parliament might well have winced. When the House of Lords
rejected or mutilated beyond repair the Land Valuation Bills for
England and for Scotland, every land reformer in the country might
have winced. When the House of Lords destroyed Mr. Birrell's Education
Bill of 1906, every man who cared for religious equality and
educational peace might have winced. When they contemptuously flung
out, without even discussing it or examining it, the Licensing Bill,
upon which so many hopes were centred and upon which so many months of
labour had been spent, they sent a message of despair to every
temperance reformer, to every social and philanthropic worker, to
every church, to every chapel, to every little Sunday school
throughout the land. If it should now prove to be their turn, if the
measure they have meted out to others should be meted out to them
again, however much we might regret their sorrows, we could not but
observe the workings of poetic justice.

But I hope the House of Lords and those who back them will not be
under any illusions about the Budget and the position of the
Government. The Government is in earnest about the Budget. The Budget
carries with it their fortunes and the fortunes of the Liberal Party.
Careful argument, reasonable amendment, amicable concession, not
affecting the principles at stake--all these we offer while the Bill
is in the House of Commons. But when all that is said and done, as the
Bill leaves the House of Commons so it must stand. It would be a great
pity if Lord Curzon, the Indian pro-Consul, or the London
_Spectator_--it would be a great pity if those potentates were to make
the great mistake of supposing that the Government would acquiesce in
the excision of the land clauses of the Budget by the House of Lords.
Such a course is unthinkable. Any Liberal Government which adopted it
would be swiftly ruined. The land proposals of the Government have not
been made without long deliberation and full responsibility. We shall
not fail to carry them effectively through the House of Commons; still
less shall we accept any amendment at the hands of the House of Lords.

Is it not an extraordinary thing that upon the Budget we should even
be discussing at all the action of the House of Lords? The House of
Lords is an institution absolutely foreign to the spirit of the age
and to the whole movement of society. It is not perhaps surprising in
a country so fond of tradition, so p