illy
and fantastic rumours which obtain credence, or at any rate currency,
from day to day. One day we are told that it is the intention of the
Government to seek a dissolution of Parliament before the Budget
reaches the House of Lords--in other words, to kill the child to save
its life. The next day we are told the Government have decided to have
a referendum--that is to say, they will ask everybody in the country
to send them a postcard to say whether they would like the Budget to
become law or not. Another day we are told that the Government are
contemplating a bargain with the House of Lords to alter the Budget to
please them, or that we should make a bargain with them that if they
pass the Budget we should seek a dissolution in January. Why should we
make a bargain with the House of Lords? Every one of those rumours is
more silly, more idiotic, than the other. I wish our Conservative
friends would face the facts of the situation. "Things are what they
are, and their consequences will be what they will be." The House of
Lords has no scrap of right to interfere in finance. If they do, they
violate the Constitution, they shatter the finances, and they create
an administrative breakdown the outcome of which no man can foresee.
If such a situation should occur a Liberal Government can look only to
the people. We count on you, and we shall come to you. If you sustain
us we shall take effectual steps to prevent such a deadlock ever
occurring again. That is the whole policy of his Majesty's
Government--blunt, sober, obvious, and unflinching.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MENACE

NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB, _October 9, 1909_

(From _The Times_, by permission.)

I have never been able to rank myself among those who believe that the
Budget will be rejected by the House of Lords. It is not that I take
an exaggerated view of the respect which that body would bear to the
constitutional tradition upon which alone they depend. It is not that
I underrate at all the feelings of personal resentment and of
class-prejudice with which they regard, naturally, many of the
provisions of the Budget. But I have a difficulty in believing that
the responsible statesmen by whom they are led, and by whom we think
they are controlled, would not hesitate as patriotic men before they
plunged the finances of the country into what would be a largely
irremediable confusion. And still more I find it difficult to believe
that Party leaders, anxious no dou