Is the House of Lords even a security for property?  Why, the greatest weapon which a democracy possesses against property is the power of taxation, and the power of taxation is wholly under the control of this House.  If this House chooses, for instance, to suspend payment to the Sinking Fund, and to utilise the money for any public purpose or for any social purpose, the House of Lords could not interfere.  If the House of Commons chose to double taxation on the wealthy classes, the House of Lords could not interfere in any respect.  Understand I am not advocating these measures; what I am endeavouring to show to the House is that there is no real safeguard in the House of Lords even in regard to a movement against property.

But surely there are other securities upon which the stability of society depends.  In the ever-increasing complexities of social problems, in the restrictions which are imposed from day to day with increasing force on the action of individuals, above all, in the dissemination of property among many classes of the population, lie the real elements of stability on which our modern society depends.  There are to-day, unlike in former ages, actually millions of people who possess not merely inert property, but who possess rent-earning, profit-bearing property; and the danger with which we are confronted now is not at all whether we shall go too fast.  No, the danger is that about three-fourths of the people of this country should move on in a comfortable manner into an easy life, which, with all its ups and downs, is not uncheered by fortune, while the remainder of the people shall be left to rot and fester in the slums of our cities, or wither in the deserted and abandoned hamlets of our rural districts.

That is the danger with which we are confronted at the present moment, and it invests with a deep and real significance the issue which is drawn between the two Parties to-night.  It is quite true that there are rich Members of the Liberal Party, and there are poor men who are supporters of the Conservative Party; but in the main the lines of difference between the two Parties are social and economic—­in the main the lines of difference are increasingly becoming the lines of cleavage between the rich and the poor.  Let that reflection be with us in the struggle which we are now undertaking, and in which we shall without pause press forward, confident of this, that, if we persevere, we shall wrest from the hands of privilege and wealth the evil, ugly, and sinister weapon of the Peers’ veto, which they have used so ill so long.

FOOTNOTES: 

[6] Lord Robert Cecil.

[7] Mr. Balfour.

[8] Mr. Wyndham.

THE DUNDEE ELECTION

KINNAIRD HALL, DUNDEE, May 14, 1908