from Poor Law relief you must consider the two together. You must consider your machinery for Poor Law relief in order to consider fairly your machinery for pensions, and until you know what your machinery for Poor Law relief is likely to be, how can you say what your machinery for carrying out the pension distribution is going to be, or the relation which this vast expenditure of public money is going to bear to the sums now expended by Poor Law guardians?

This really brings me to the last of the three points I wished to touch upon namely, the relation of this measure to our national finances. I confess that I look on this whole question with considerable alarm. The Honorable Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme explained that after all no great burden would be cast on our national finances, because the money was now paid by the charitable and through the Poor Law, and there was not much difference whether the burden was thrown on the Exchequer by this Bill or whether it was left to be paid sporadically and uncertainly, partly by Poor Law machinery and partly by the private machinery of charity. I think that the Honorable Member is profoundly mistaken. It makes the whole difference where the money comes from. The mere fact that there is money to be got somewhere does not make it easy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to get it. The Honorable Member who last spoke congratulated the Government on having brought in the Bill with courage. I see very little courage in the bringing in of this Bill. Courage is required if you bring in a Bill whose provisions and the financial resources connected with it are brought into one conspectus before the public, and they are shown what they are to get and what they have to pay for it. The Government here shows what the public are to get, but they have not yet been shown how they are to pay for it.

But there is a divergence of opinion even among the members of the Government. The Prime Minister assured us more than once that the Government had considered the point, and that they clearly saw their way to provide the necessary funds by means of free trade finance. This method of carrying it

out is a secret which the Prime Minister has kept not only from the Opposition, but from his colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think that is carrying secrecy too far. I think that in the comity of the Cabinet the late Chancellor of the Exchequer should have told the present Chancellor of the Exchequer how, within the limits of free trade finance, £6,500,000 are to be found next year and £7,500,000 the year after. It is not going to be £7,500,000 either. If my interpretation of the present situation is correct, you will get to £11,500,000 almost immediately, and how within the limits of free trade finance are you to get £11,500,000? There is no great information to be got either from the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, according to what he has already told the City, and if he has kept the secret from the high financial authorities of the City, it is not likely that he will tell his critics in the House. I do not ask him, therefore, to tell us, if he does not know. But again I ask, where, within the limits of free trade finance, are £6,500,000 or £7,500,000 or £11,500,000 to be obtained? The finance cannot be put on one side, and when the right Honorable Gentleman has got the money, neither he nor any one else can deny the enormous public burden put upon the finances of the State. It is not a thing to be lightly done, nor is it to be done without some general survey of your financial obligations. I do not understand that the Government have made any such general financial survey.

I am not going to raise the question of the burden of national armaments; but there are other questions eminently deserving of the attention of the House connected with social reform. Is it not manifest that almost every problem of social reform comes back to the Treasury, the Imperial or the local Treasury, in the end? How are you going to give these vast sums for one particular purpose if you have dried up the sources of supply for the use of any other purposes that can be proposed? It may be right, while the objects to be attained by the Bill are so clear and excellent that we need not regret the expenditure. But I should like to know what the other things are. Money lies at the root of almost everything we do; but I do not think

that you will find the suggested taxation of the rich a very satisfactory method of increasing the national resources for the purposes of social reform, even from the point of view of society. I admit that this Bill will greatly relieve the Poor Law, that it will be a subvention to the local authorities in aid of the Poor Law. So far they may have resources set free for other purposes connected with housing, education, and other cognate questions; but I do not believe that any future Government for years to come can have money at liberty for any other purpose of social reform whatever. How can they? The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a sanguine man, and I believe he looks forward, almost cheerfully, to the problems of the next Budget, although they are as yet unsolved in his mind. I wish him well. But even in his most sanguine mood he can hardly look forward to the time of this great and growing charge when he will be able to meet satisfactorily other claims that touch the heart and the conscience. What we want is some broader survey of their obligations before they commit the country to this vast expenditure. The Government have made no such survey, and they have admitted this. In the forefront of one of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speeches, he told us with emphasis that they were going to await the Report of the Poor Law Commission in order to form some kind of estimate of what the reforms would cost, that they were going to frame the finances of the country on lines not only to satisfy all that can be asked for from this Bill, but from the other Bill. But they will not have a shilling to deal with the Report of the Poor Law Commission or for the demands made upon them for social reforms.

It is for that reason I look forward, and not I alone, with much misgiving to the method by which the Government are attempting to carry out the objects of this Bill. With those objects I heartily sympathize. As far as I am concerned, I frankly admit I rejoice in a policy of old-age pensions, but I should like to have seen that most difficult of all social problems dealt with in a manner by which alone a satisfactory result will ensue. I should like to have seen a serious attempt to produce some scheme by which all these investigations might be avoided, and

we might be able to give a pension as of course, or have, what I should much prefer, some contributory scheme. I am told that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board said that he himself at an earlier period had been in favor of a contributory scheme. I do not think that he ought too hastily to have given up such a scheme as impracticable. Such a scheme would at all events have two plain and manifest advantages it would avoid inquisitorial investigation, and it would get over the other difficulties which have been alluded to at less cost to the Exchequer, and that means that more money would be left free for the necessary purposes of national defence or other great purposes of social reform.

I regret the hasty course which the Government have taken, but the responsibility must lie with them. The Government alone have the opportunity of estimating the resources at their disposal for carrying it out. They, and they alone, have the machinery for making some comparative survey of all the needs of the State. On them lies the responsibility. The Bill does not satisfy the demands of those who claim the right to old-age pensions, and on the other hand it so burdens and cripples the national resources that we may find it impossible to meet other obligations not less pressing, not less connected with the safety of the State and the well-being of the poorer members of the State.

A DEFENCE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS1

SIR WILLIAM ANSON

You are practically proposing to make this a single Chamber Constitution. Are we in accord with general principles in accepting a Constitution of this kind? I will venture to say that there is no civilized government which has not secured itself in some way or other from rash or hasty legislation by the popular Assembly, either by a written Constitution, or by a

1 A Speech delivered in the House of Commons, June 23, 1907. Parliamentary Debates, Fourth Series, Vol. 176, col. 998.

referendum, or by a Second Chamber - by one of these three methods which are universally employed for protection against this undoubted risk. The object of a Second Chamber, as stated by an eminent Colonial authority, is to delay great changes until the will of the people has been permanently and conclusively ascertained. We are not singular in retaining this precaution; we are rather singular in having so little precaution against violent and revolutionary changes.

May I refer to other democracies and republics? Turn to the United States, and note the precaution taken against legislation which runs counter to the will of the people. The Federal Government is based on a written constitution and two legislative Chambers, whose powers of law-making are defined and expressly limited by the constitution, and a change in the constitution can only be effected by something in the nature of a referendum. Not only that, but every State has a written constitution, and although the legislative powers of those States are unlimited, except in so far as the federal constitution prescribes, I may say that the tendency of the constitution is to add to the number of subjects which are excluded from the general legislative powers of the State, and in which the constitution requires that there should be a referendum to the people of the country. And not only that, but every State has two Chambers. Mr. Bryce, one of the chief authorities on this subject, says, "The need of two Chambers has become an axiom of political science, based on the belief that the innate tendency of an Assembly to become hasty, tyrannical, or corrupt, can only be checked by the co-existence of another House of equal authority." He further states "that the only States that have ever tried to do with one House are Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont, each of which gave up the system, one after four years, the other after twelve years, and the third after fifty years."

Turn to the constitution of the French Republic. There you have a Senate and a Chamber of Representatives coördinate in respect of legislative power, except that the Senate has no initiative in matters of finance. The power of demanding