eep these issues clearly before you
during the weeks in which we seem to be marching towards a grave
constitutional crisis. But I should like to tell you that a general
election, consequent upon the rejection of the Budget by the Lords,
would not, ought not to be, and could not be fought upon the Budget
alone. "Budgets come," as the late Lord Salisbury said in
1894--"Budgets come and Budgets go." Every Government frames its own
expenditure for each year; every Government has to make its own
provision to meet that expenditure. There is a Budget every year, and
memorable as the Budget of my right hon. friend may be, far-reaching
as is the policy depending upon it, the Finance Bill, after all, is in
its character only an annual affair. But the rejection of the Budget
by the House of Lords would not be an annual affair. It would be a
violent rupture of constitutional custom and usage extending over
three hundred years and recognised during all that time by the leaders
of every Party in the State. It would involve a sharp and sensible
breach with the traditions of the past; and what does the House of
Lords depend upon if not upon the traditions of the past? It would
amount to an attempt at revolution not by the poor, but by the rich;
not by the masses, but by the privileged few; not in the name of
progress, but in that of reaction; not for the purpose of broadening
the framework of the State, but of greatly narrowing it. Such an
attempt, whatever you may think of it, would be historic in its
character, and the result of the battle fought upon it, whoever wins,
must inevitably be not of an annual, but of a permanent and final
character. The result of such an election must mean an alteration of
the veto of the House of Lords; if they win they will have asserted
their right, not merely to reject legislation of the House of Commons,
but to control the finances of the country, and if they lose, we will
deal with their veto once and for all.

We do not seek the struggle, we have our work to do; but if it is to
come, it could never come better than now. Never again perhaps,
certainly not for many years, will such an opportunity be presented to
the British democracy. Never will the ground be more favourable; never
will the issues be more clearly or more vividly defined. Those issues
will be whether the new taxation, which is admitted on all sides to be
necessary, shall be imposed upon luxuries, superfluities, and
monopolies, or upo