Note (Back) — Chapter VII

167. The Liberals Versus the Lords: the Elections of January, 1910.—Four years of conflict with the overpowering Opposition in the upper chamber brought the Liberals to a place from which they neither could nor would go on until certain fundamentals were settled. The first was the assurance of revenues adequate to meet the growing demands upon the treasury. The second was the alteration of the status of the Lords to make certain the predominance of the popular branch of Parliament in finance and legislation. During the two years (1909-1911) while these great issues were pending the nation was stirred to the depths and party conflict was unprecedented in intensity. On the side of finance, Unionists and Liberals were in substantial agreement upon the policies—especially old age pensions and naval aggrandizement—which rendered larger outlays inevitable; they differed, rather, upon the means by which the necessary funds should be obtained. The solution offered in the Lloyd-George budget of 1909 was the imposition of new taxes on land and the increase of liquor license duties and of the taxes on incomes and inheritances. The new burdens were contrived to fall almost wholly upon the propertied, especially the landholding, classes. To this plan the Unionists offered the alternative of Tariff Reform, urging that the needed revenues should be derived from duties laid principally upon imported foodstuffs, although the free trade members of the party could not with consistency lend this proposal their support. The rejection of the Finance Bill by the Lords, November 30, 1909, sweeping aside as it did three centuries of unbroken precedent, brought to a crisis the question of the mending or ending of the Lords, and although the electoral contest of January, 1910, was fought immediately upon the issue of the Government's finance proposals, the question of the Lords could by no means be kept in the background. The results of this election were disappointing to all parties save the Nationalists. The final returns gave the Liberals 274 seats, the Unionists 273, the Nationalists 82, and the Laborites 41. The Asquith government found itself still in power, but absolutely dependent upon the co-operation of the Labor and Nationalist groups. Upon the great issues involved there was no very clear pronouncement, but it was a foregone conclusion that the tax proposals would be enacted, that some reconstitution of the House of Lords would be undertaken, and that free trade would not yet be in any measure abandoned.[227]