even to discuss in the House of Lords the great Licensing Bill of last year, by their association with the brewers and with the liquor traffic generally, they have done all they could—­I do them the justice to admit it—­to maintain the Customs and Excise from alcoholic liquors at the highest level.  If the habits of the people, under the influences of a wider culture, of variety, of comfort, of brighter lives, and of new conceptions, have steadily undergone a beneficent elevation and amelioration, it has been in spite of every obstacle that wealth and rank and vested interest could interpose.

The money has to be found.  There is no Party in the State who can censure us because of that.  Our proposals for enlarging the public revenue are just and fair to all classes.  They will not, in spite of all these outcries you hear nowadays, sensibly alter the comfort or status, or even the elegance of any class in our great and varied community.  No man, rich or poor, will eat a worse dinner for our taxes.

Of course, from a narrow, electioneering point of view, there are a great many people—­I believe they are wrong—­who think we should have done much better if we had put another penny on the income tax instead of increasing the tax upon tobacco.  Well, I have come here this afternoon to tell you that we think it right that the working classes should be asked to pay a share towards the conduct of a democratic State.  And we think that taxes on luxuries, however widely consumed, are a proper channel for such payment to be made.  We believe that the working classes are able to pay by that channel, and we believe, further, that they are ready to pay.  We do not think that in this old, wise country they would have respected any Government which at a time like this had feared to go to them for their share.

I have a good confidence that this Budget is going to go through.  If there are hardships and anomalies in particular cases or particular quarters, we are ready to consider them.  They will emerge in the discussions of the House of Commons, and we have every desire to consider them and to mitigate them.  But we believe in the situation in which we find ourselves in this country, and in the general situation of the world at the present time—­that the taxes on incomes over L3,000 a year, upon estates at death, on motor-cars before they cause death, upon tobacco, upon spirits, upon liquor licences, which really belong to the State, and ought never to have been filched away; and, above all, taxes upon the unearned increment in land are necessary, legitimate, and fair; and that without any evil consequences to the refinement or the richness of our national life, still less any injury to the sources of its economic productivity, they will yield revenue sufficient in this year and in the years to come to meet the growing needs of Imperial defence and of social reform.

This Budget will go through.  It will vindicate the power of the House of Commons.  It will show, what some people were inclined to forget, that in our Constitution a Government, supported by a House of Commons and the elected representatives of the people, has in fact a full control of national affairs, and has the means of giving effect to its intentions, to its policy, and to its pledges in every sphere of public affairs.