Mr Balfour's Poodle(17)

But why, if Lloyd George’s desire was to produce a peer-rousing Finance Bill, should Lansdowne’s statements on the Old Age Pensions Bill have stimulated him to action? Surely the union  ist leader’s reiteration of the principle of the Commons’ exclusive control of finance should have made him sceptical of the possibility of this outcome. The argument only makes sense if his primary object was to circumvent the veto rather than to destroy it.

Nor does the speech which the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered to the Law Society on January 30, on the occasion of the presentation of a portrait of himself, bear out his biographer’s theory. In July of the previous year he had threateningly announced: ‘Next year I shall have to rob somebody’s hen-roost, and I must consider where I can get most eggs, and where I can get them easiest, and where I shall be least punished.’ But at the Law Society he went out of his way to undo the effects of this statement. He referred to this ‘bad jest’ on the subject of hen-roosts, and, in the words of the Annual Register, ‘emphatically disclaimed any vindictive spirit in his financial plans. The single purpose of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (he said) should be the protection and confirmation of the national interests; and in that spirit he approached his task.’c Vague conciliatory statements, delivered in this way, do not perhaps mean very much, but there is no conceivable reason why a Minister intent on stirring up the maximum of opposition should trouble to make them at all. This was not an isolated case. Lloyd George continued to be suaviter in modo until well into the summer.

The view that Asquith was from the first a party to the Chancellor’s supposed tactic of shaping a Budget for the peers to reject is still less convincing. Such a device would have been alien to his character, and in direct contradiction to his clearly expressed belief, repeated at many stages in the controversy, that the House of Lords would never dare to throw out a Finance Bill. In the debate on the Address at the beginning of the 1909 session he was confronted with a direct challenge to the Government’s inactivity on the House of Lords issue in the form of an amendment, moved by Campbell-Banner-man’s successor1 in the Stirling Burghs, which called for legislation in the current session to implement the 1907 resolution. This was pressed to a division2 and gave serious embarrassment to the Government. But Asquith in his reply, while he stressed (as had been done in the King’s Speech) the heavy calls upon the time of the session which the Finance Bill would make, gave no shadow of a hint that it might also precipitate constitutional action.

This approach was characteristic of the Prime Minister’s public utterances at the time. At Glasgow, where only a fortnight before the introduction of the Budget he spoke of ‘unprecedented financial strains’, he was at pains to prepare the country for a controversial Budget and concentrate attention on financial issues. But there is every indication that he, and the Government, regarded the Budget as an alternative to the struggle with the House of Lords rather than as a method of prosecuting this struggle.

Lloyd George therefore proceeded with the framing of his proposals in the knowledge that the stage had been cleared for their reception. It has been suggested that he had grave difficulty in securing Cabinet approval for his more controversial imposts. To quote Mr. Thomson again:

‘He (Lloyd George) said that by far the most difficult fight he had was in the Cabinet, not in the country. Harcourt was the most inveterate in obstructing his proposals, while posing all the time as an ardent Radical. Crewe, while not liking them, said very little. Grey said nothing. But at heart they were all against him. Sir Robert Chalmers, then the head of the Treasury, walked up to the door of the Cabinet room with L.G. one day when he was going to a meeting to discuss his Budget proposals, and when L.G. had gone in Chalmers turned to the man at his side and said, “That little man goes into the fight absolutely alone.” When L.G. came out, Chalmers said to him apprehensively, “Well? …” “Oh, I carried them all right,” was L.G.’s cheerful reply.’d

This story, even if vero, is certainly not ben trovato. Even under Lloyd George’s regime, it can hardly have been the practice for the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury to wait outside the door of the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street, presumably chatting to the messengers, throughout the length of Cabinet meetings.

‘Asquith alone was helpful when it came to a vote,’ Mr. Thomson continues, ‘although he never supported the proposals actively. Once, when nearly everyone around the table had raised objections to a certain proposal, Asquith summed up with the words, “Well, I think there is substantial agreement on this point.” ’It appears from the example cited that the Prime Minister was more helpful in avoiding a vote than ‘when it came to’ one, and indeed, if Mr. Thomson’s account of Cabinet divisions is true, Lloyd George’s own proposals would hardly have seen the light of day had continual votes been the method of procedure.