Lord Lansdowne's speech at Glasgow on Friday week fully warranted
Mr. Asquith's subsequent handsome testimonial when he referred to the speaker as "the ablest, the most cautions, and the most dexterous advocate of the new proposals" in the House of Lords. But the speech was marked by force, sincerity, and true statesmanship, as well as dexterity. As for the six hundred obstructive Peers, he noticed that the last four Liberal Premiers had created one hundred and thirty-six Liberal Peers, but only seventy-five "toed the line" in the great division on the Budget in 1909. He then dealt faithfully with the misstatements of Mr. Churchill's prema- ture manifesto, showing that, out of two hundred and thirty measures introduced by the Government from 1906 to 1910, only six were rejected, and then only for the purpose of referring them to the judgment of the people of the country. The Lords hung up the Budget for five weeks, while the Government hung it up for five months. The question they had to ask themselves was whether they were going to be governed, not by the Peers, but by a scratch majority in the Commons.
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