LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE LORDS AND THE BUDGET.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Svn,—There are many to whom your advice in last week's issue to the Lords either to confine their action on the Budget to the land clauses or to let the Budget alone will appear to err on the side of caution. Privileges which have been unquestioned for ages will lapse in coarse of time if unexercised, and rightly, since their disuse argues uselessness, and if the Lords, from a' perhaps excusable distaste at interfering with the land clauses, let the Budget pass unaltered, they will aid the too ready undertaker by themselves driving a nail into their political coffin. I grant that the outcome, should their action bring on a General Election, is unlikely to be of immediate benefit to the Tariff Reform, once the Unionist, Party, though if it were at all possible that the contest would turn on " Socialism," or any of the numerous matters which have raised a feeling of insecurity in the country, a successful issue might have been with some confidence expected. Nothing is more unlikely than for Tariff Reformers to agree to your suggestion of hanging up Tariff Reform for eighteen months or two years—a renunciation which would no doubt give a • great deal of pleasure to Mr. Balfour—indeed, the tendency appears to be quite the reverse. Every good Tory who objects to Tariff Reform because he sees the folly of bringing in a crude measure of Protection at a crisis like the present is being more truculently ostracised than ever, quite regardless of the fact that even possible members of a Ministry which would have a chance of being successful are already far too few.
. All this has nothing to do with the fact that if the Lords think the Budget a bad one, and that they are constitutionally _right in amending it, it is their manifest duty to have the courage of their opinions. Their protest would certainly be of benefit to the nation, and it would surely serve them at the present juncture to let the country see that they are not only thinking of saving their own skins. Moreover, it may turn out that things are not quite as hopeless as they seem. Radical methods are scarcely adapted to induce opponents to "take it lying down." The country is given over to the new. Socialism, on which the people have as yet had no chance of giving their opinion, while the nominal leaders endeavour to save the situation by occasional utterances of Whig formulas which must irritate and disgust the howling rank-and-file.
But even Messrs. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill- , though it seems very bold to suggest it—may neither be omnipotent nor immortal. The father of the latter, a greater _man than the present Ministerialist, perished politically in a flight, and the son with his hytteric....1 vapeuring -may pass. fn_ an hour. AB happened to the last Government with its big majority, the end may be nearer than is imagined, and at such times a little kick or a push is not easily resisted. Then happen what hap may.
There will assuredly come a time when the Lords—with the exception of course of the Radical Lords—will have to fight against Socialism. Some may prefer to put it off a little longer. Depend upon it, there is no better time than the
Previous page
