GREAT MEETING AT THE ALBERT HALL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12392, 13 December 1909, Page 5

GREAT MEETING AT THE ALBERT HALL.

10, COO MEN PRESENT.

FINE SPEECH BY MR. ASQUITH

HE TAKES THE GLOVES OFF

Received December 12, 5.5 p.m

LONDON, December 12

The majority of the Cabinet and many Liberal Peers and Commoners supported Mr Asquith when he gave an address at the Albert Hall., which wascrowded with a demonstrative gathering of 10,0000, all men.

Mr Asquith, in commencing his speech, said that at the last election the Liberals reckoned without their host, but they were not going to make the mistake again. ' The Liberal Paity," he said, "have now laid upon them the single task of vindicating and establishing upon an unshakeahle foundation the principle of representative government. All the cavises for which we have been fighting hang <*n this, including Education, Welsh Disestablishment, Licensing, and Women's Suffrage. The last-named will be opened by a question, in the House of Commons on the next Reform Bill Despite the deplorable suicidal excess of a small section of advocates, the Govern-, ment h-.is no disposition to burk

THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION

" Ireland is still the. one great failure of British .statesmanship. Speaking on behalf of my colleagues, the only solution,is a system of . ,

SELF-GOVERNMENT IN PURELY

IRISH' AFFAIRS. which explicitly safeguards the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament. The present Government has been disabled in advance from proposing this solution, but the Liberals' hands in the new Parliament will.be perfectly free. Old age is only one of the hazards •to which the industrial population, is exposed. Sickness, invalidity, and unemployment are spectres always hovering on the horizon. We believe the time has come for the State to

LEND A HELPING HAND. This is one of the secrets of the 1009 Budget. It is rightly described as the Budget which looked beyond the 31st of next March." Only once in living memory had the Lords attempted io touch a single tax imposed or repealed by the Commons. They had now shattered the whole fabric of the year's taxation. He quoted Mr Joseph Chamberlain's letter read at Mr Balfour's Birmingham meeting to prove that the Lords' manoeuvre was to reject the Budget because it provided an effective substitute—a destructive substitute —to tariff reform. "I tell you plainly, I tell my countrymen outside, neither I nor any other Liberal Minister is going to submit again to the rebuffs and hiimiliations passed for years. I favour the bicameral system and can see much practical advantage in a body impartially exercising powers of revision and amendment subject to proper safeguards, but the

ABSOLUTE VETO MUST GO. | The Government demand the authority to translate the action of Unwritten usage into a Parliamentary Act, and to place upon our Statute Book recognition explicit and complete of the settled constitutional doctrine that it is beyond the province of the Lords to! meddlo with national finance. The will of the people, as deliberately expressed by tho elected representatives, must, within the.life of a single Parliament, be made effective. That, and the reduction of the duration of Parliaments to fivo years, is the Liberal policy. I should not fear four years." Mr Asquith concluded: " How do we stand ? I hope and trust united. All sectional divisions are well fused and combined in a common CAMPAIGN AGAINST A COMMON , " ENEMY. Wo have behind Us the examples of the! greatest apostles of democracy of our time' —Gladstone and Bright. We have) to support memories of the past, the need of the present, and the hopes of the future.'' " 'QUIT OURSELVES LIKE MEN." Mr Lloyd-George, in a brief speech, said: " The subtlest and the most potent of human weaknesses, QUACKERY AND SNOBBERY are arrayed against us, but wo shall beat both." Mr Winston Churchill, in his address, said: " We have to smash the veto up. ]f we work together nothing can withstand us."