• * * * The intervention of the Prime Minister
in the same debate' was particularly interesting to those who feared that a man upon whom so much depends was losing his grip upon the House. Mr. MacDonald was in much better heart than hitherto ; and the assumption that the present Parliament would last four years, which was the main point of his speech, was clearly not whistling to keep up his courage but an expression of conviction resulting from his experience of his colleagues, lie is feeling his seat as the rider of a Parliamentary dinosaur —a beast which, it will be remembered, combined extra- ordinary vitality with the limitation of intelligence to foci along its backbone, and which is a good working illustration of the present House of Commons. The cause of his good spirits on this occasion was not far to seek, for the Cabinet had just surmounted the awkward fence of the Land Values duties by the simple process of flattening it out. Lord Snowden was known to be clinging tenaciously to the valuation, though willing to postpone the tax. His position was really untenable, because the prospect of expenditure upon a valuation which would either not be used or only used when it was obsolete could serve no purpose whatever. The Cabinet was therefore compelled to suspend the whole scheme upon grounds of economy alone, and Lord Snowden was brought to see that anything else would be pure pedantry. With great good sense he did not allow pique to push him into resignation, and remains to give the Government the benefit of his services at the forthcoming international conferences on debts and currency.
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