of the House of Lords proposing, like Lord Lansdowne, to decide whether he would tear up the British Constitution after consultation with the leaders of the drink trade?  The uncertainty is not due to our action, but to their threats.  Our action has been regular, constitutional, and necessary.  Their threats are violent, unprecedented, and outrageous.  Let them cease their threats.  Let one of their leaders—­let Mr. Balfour, for instance, say this year what he said last year, in the month of October, at Dumfries.  Let him say, “It is the House of Commons and not the House of Lords which settles uncontrolled our financial system.”  Let him repeat these words, and all uncertainty about the Budget will be over.

I am amazed and I am amused when I read in the newspapers the silly 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