It is well that you should keep these issues clearly before you during the weeks in which we seem to be marching towards a grave constitutional crisis.  But I should like to tell you that a general election, consequent upon the rejection of the Budget by the Lords, would not, ought not to be, and could not be fought upon the Budget alone.  “Budgets come,” as the late Lord Salisbury said in 1894—­“Budgets come and Budgets go.”  Every Government frames its own expenditure for each year; every Government has to make its own provision to meet that expenditure.  There is a Budget every year, and memorable as the Budget of my right hon. friend may be, far-reaching as is the policy depending upon it, the Finance Bill, after all, is in its character only an annual affair.  But the rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords would not be an annual affair.  It would be a violent rupture of constitutional custom and usage extending over three hundred years and recognised during all that time by the leaders of every Party in the State.  It would involve a sharp and sensible breach with the traditions of the past; and what does the House of Lords depend upon if not upon the traditions of the past?  It would amount to an attempt at revolution not by the poor, but by the rich; not by the masses, but by the privileged few; not in the name of progress, but in that of reaction; not for the purpose of broadening the framework of the State, but of greatly narrowing it.  Such an attempt, whatever you may think of it, would be historic in its character, and the result of the battle fought upon it, whoever wins, must inevitably be not of an annual, but of a permanent and final character.  The result of such an election must mean an alteration of the veto of the House of Lords; if they win they will have asserted their right, not merely to reject legislation of the House of Commons, but to control the finances of the country, and if they lose, we will deal with their veto once and for all.

We do not seek the struggle, we have our work to do; but if it is to come, it could never come better than now.  Never again perhaps, certainly not for many years, will such an opportunity be presented to the British democracy.  Never will the ground be more favourable; never will the issues be more clearly or more vividly defined.  Those issues will be whether the new taxation, which is admitted on all sides to be necessary, shall be imposed upon luxuries, superfluities, and monopolies, or upon the prime necessaries of life; whether you shall put your tax upon the unearned increment on land or upon the daily bread of labour; whether the policy of constructive social reform on which we are embarked, and which expands and deepens as we advance, shall be carried through and given a fair chance, or whether it shall be brought to a dead stop and all the energies and attention of the State devoted to Jingo armaments and senseless foreign adventure.  And, lastly, the issue will be whether