Liberalism and the Social Problem Part 11

Those who lately taunted us with being arrested by a dead wall of Cobdenite principles are now bewailing that we have opened up broad avenues of financial advance. They came to bewail the deficit of this year: they remained to censure the surplus of next. We may, no doubt, in the future hear arguments of how protection will revive industry and increase employment, as we have heard them in the past; but there is one argument which I should think it unlikely would be effectively used against us in the future, and that is that a free-trade system cannot produce revenue, because one of the criticisms which is emphatically directed against this Budget is on account of that very expansiveness of revenue which it was lately declared a free-trade system never could produce.

But that is not the only vindication of free-trade finance which is at hand. How have foreign countries stood the late depression in trade?

The shortfall of the revenue from the estimates in this country was last year less than two millions, in Germany it was eight millions, and in the United States over nineteen millions. Let the House see what fair-weather friends these protectionist duties are. In times of depression they shrink. In times of war they may fail utterly. When they are wanted, they dwindle, when they are wanted most urgently, they fade and die away altogether.

And what is true of the taxation of manufactured articles as a foundation for any fiscal policy is true still more of the taxation of food, and of no country is it so true as of this island. For if you were ever engaged in a war which rendered the highways of the ocean insecure the rise in prices would be such that all food taxes would have to be swept away at once by any Government which desired to use the whole vigour of its people in prosecuting the war. This year, with its trade depression and its excellent maintenance of the revenue, has seen the vindication of free trade as a revenue-producing instrument; next year will see its triumph.

I have no apprehensions about the Budget which is now before the Committee. As Mr. Gladstone said, in introducing the Reform Bill of 1884, what is wanted to carry this measure is concentration and concentration only, and what will lose this measure is division and division only. And I venture to think that it will not only be a demonstration of the soundness of the economic fiscal policy we have long followed, but it will also be a demonstration of the fiscal and financial strength of Great Britain which will not be without its use and value upon the diplomatic and perhaps even upon the naval situation in Europe.

The right honourable Member for East Worcestershire[17] said this Budget was the work of several sessions, if not indeed of several Parliaments. The statement is exaggerated. The proposals outlined do not in any degree transcend the limits of the practical. A social policy may be very large, but at the same time it may be very simple.

All these projects of economic development, of labour exchanges, of insurance for invalidity, and unemployment, which depend on money grants, may require very careful and elaborate administrative adjustment; but so far as Parliament is concerned they do not impose difficulties or make demands upon the time of the House in any way comparable to those which are excited by the pa.s.sage of an Education or a Licensing Bill, and I see no reason whatever why we should not antic.i.p.ate that in the course of this session and next session we should be able to establish a wide and general system of national insurance, which, more than any other device within the reach of this generation of the workers of our country, will help to hold off from them some of the most fatal and most cruel perils which smash their households and ruin the lives of families and of workmen.

On many grounds we may commend this Budget to the House. It makes provision for the present. It makes greater provision for the future.

Indirect taxation reaches the minimum. Food taxation reaches the minimum since the South African war. Certainly the working cla.s.ses have no reason to complain. Nothing in the Budget touches the physical efficiency and energy of labour. Nothing in it touches the economy of the cottage home. Middle-cla.s.s people with between 300 and 2,000 a year are not affected in any considerable degree, except by the estate duties, and in that not to a large extent, while in some cases they are distinctly benefited in the general way of taxation.

The very rich are not singled out for peculiar, special, or invidious forms of imposition.

The chief burden of the increase of taxation is placed upon the main body of the wealthy cla.s.ses in this country, a cla.s.s which in number and in wealth is much greater than in any other equal community, if not, indeed, in any other modern State in the whole world; and that is a cla.s.s which, in opportunities of pleasure, in all the amenities of life, and in freedom from penalties, obligations, and dangers, is more fortunate than any other equally numerous cla.s.s of citizens in any age or in any country. That cla.s.s has more to gain than any other cla.s.s of his Majesty's subjects from dwelling amid a healthy and contented people, and in a safely guarded land.

I do not agree with the Leader of the Opposition, that they will meet the charges which are placed upon them for the needs of this year by evasion and fraud, and by cutting down the charities which their good feelings have prompted them to dispense. The man who proposes to meet taxation by cutting down his charities, is not the sort of man who is likely to find any very extensive source of economy in the charities which he has. .h.i.therto given. As for evasion, I hope the right hon.

gentleman and his supporters underrate the public spirit which animates a proportion at any rate of the cla.s.s which would be most notably affected by the present taxation. And there is for their consolation one great a.s.surance which is worth much more to them than a few millions, more or less, of taxation. It is this--that we are this year taking all that we are likely to need for the policy which is now placed before the country, and which will absorb the energies of this Parliament. And, so far as this Parliament is concerned, it is extremely unlikely, in the absence of a national calamity, that any further demand will be made upon them, or that the shifting and vague shadows of another impending Budget will darken the prospects of improving trade.

When all that may be said on these grounds has been said, we do not attempt to deny that the Budget raises some of the fundamental issues which divide the historic Parties in British politics. We do not want to embitter those issues, but neither do we wish to conceal them. We know that hon. gentlemen opposite believe that the revenue of the country could be better raised by a protective tariff. We are confident that a free-trade system alone would stand the strain of modern needs and yield the expansive power which is necessary at the present time in the revenue. And our proof shall be the swift accomplishment of the fact. The right hon. gentleman opposite and his friends seek to arrest the tendency to decrease the proportion of indirect to direct taxation which has marked, in unbroken continuity, the course of the last sixty years. We, on the other hand, regard that tendency as of deep-seated social significance, and we are resolved that it shall not be arrested. So far as we are concerned, we are resolved that it shall continue until in the end the entire charge shall be defrayed from the profits of acc.u.mulated wealth and by the taxation of those popular indulgences which cannot be said in any way to affect the physical efficiency of labour. The policy of the Conservative Party is to multiply and extend the volume and variety of taxes upon food and necessaries. They will repose themselves, not only, as we are still forced to do, on tea and sugar, but upon bread and meat--not merely upon luxuries and comforts, but also on articles of prime necessity. Our policy is not to increase, but whenever possible to decrease, and ultimately to abolish altogether, taxes on articles of food and the necessaries of life.

If there is divergence between us in regard to the methods by which we are to raise our revenue, there is also divergence in regard to the objects on which we are to spend them. We are, on both sides, inclined to agree that we are approaching, if we have not actually entered on, one of the climacterics of our national life. We see new forces at work in the world, and they are not all friendly forces. We see new conditions abroad and around us, and they are not all favourable conditions; and I think there is a great deal to be said for those who on both sides of politics are urging that we should strive for a more earnest, more strenuous, more consciously national life. But there we part, because the Conservative Party are inclined too much to repose their faith for the future security and pre-eminence of this country upon naval and military preparations, and would sometimes have us believe that you can make this country secure and respected by the mere multiplication of ironclad ships. We shall not exclude that provision, and now indeed ask the Committee to enable us to take the steps to secure us that expansion of revenue which will place our financial resources beyond the capacity of any Power that we need to take into consideration. But we take a broader view. We are not going to measure the strength of great countries only by their material resources. We think that the supremacy and predominance of our country depend upon the maintenance of the vigour and health of its population, just as its true glory must always be found in the happiness of its cottage homes. We believe that if Great Britain is to remain great and famous in the world, we cannot allow the present social and industrial disorders, with their profound physical and moral reactions, to continue unchecked. We propose to you a financial scheme, but we also advance a policy of social organisation. It will demand sacrifices from all cla.s.ses; it will give security to all cla.s.ses. By its means we shall be able definitely to control some of the most wasteful processes in our social life, and without it our country will remain exposed to vital dangers, against which fleets and armies are of no avail.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Mr. Wyndham.

[17] Mr. Austen Chamberlain.

THE BUDGET AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

THE FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER, _May 23, 1909_

(From _The Manchester Guardian_, by permission.)

Considering that you have all been ruined by the Budget, I think it very kind of you to receive me so well. When I remember all the injuries you have suffered--how South Africa has been lost; how the gold mines have been thrown away; how all the splendid army which Mr.

Brodrick got together has been reduced to a sham; and how, of course, we have got no navy of any kind whatever, not even a fishing smack, for the thirty-five millions a year we give the Admiralty; and when I remember that in spite of all these evils the taxes are so oppressive and so cruel that any self-respecting Conservative will tell you he cannot afford either to live or die, I think it remarkable that you should be willing to give me such a hearty welcome back to Manchester.

Yes, sir, when I think of the colonies we have lost, of the Empire we have alienated, of the food we have left untaxed, and the foreigners we have left unmolested, and the ladies we have left outside, I confess I am astonished to find you so glad to see me here again.

It is commonly said that our people are becoming hysterical, and that Britain is losing her old deep-seated sagacity for judging men and events. That is not my view. I have been taught that the dock always grows near the nettle. I am inclined to think that in a free community every evil carries with it its own corrective, and so I believe that sensationalism of all kinds is playing itself out, and, overdoing, is itself undone. And the more our scaremongers cry havoc, and panic, and airships, and sea-serpents, and all the other things they see floating around, the greater is the composure and the greater is the contempt with which the ma.s.s of the nation receives these revelations, and the more ready they are to devote their mind to the large and serious problems of national and social organisation which press for solution and for action at the present time, and upon which his Majesty's Government have notable proposals to make.

I come to you this afternoon to speak about the political situation and the Budget, or rather I come to speak to you about the Budget, because the Budget is the political situation; and I ask you, as if it were at an election, whether you will support the policy of the Budget or not. Let us look into it.

What is the position in which we find ourselves? After reducing the taxes on coal, on tea, on sugar, and on the smaller cla.s.s of incomes by nearly 7,000,000 a year, and after paying back 40,000,000 of debt in three years, we find that new circ.u.mstances and new needs make it necessary that we should obtain fresh revenue for the service of the State.

What are the reasons for this demand? There are three reasons--and only three. Old-age pensions, the navy, and the decrease in the revenue derived from alcoholic liquor. From those three causes we require sixteen millions more money this year than we did last year.

Now who has a right--this is my first question--to reproach us for that? Certainly the Conservative Party have no right.

Take first the case of old-age pensions. I do not think their record is a very good one on that. They promised old-age pensions to win the general election of 1895. They were in power for ten years and they made no effort to redeem their pledge. Again, Mr. Chamberlain, in 1903, promised old-age pensions as a part of his Tariff Reform proposal, but the Conservative Party refused to agree to the inclusion of old-age pensions in that programme and forced that great man in the height of his power and his career to throw out old-age pensions from the Tariff Reform programme and to write a letter to the newspapers to say that he had done so.

We, the Liberal Party, did not promise old-age pensions at the election of 1906. The subject was scarcely mentioned by any of the candidates who are now your Members. Certainly it did not occupy at all a prominent position. We did not promise old-age pensions; we gave old-age pensions. When the Old-Age Pensions Bill was before the House of Commons, what was the att.i.tude of the Conservative Party? Did they do anything to try to reduce or control the expenditure of that great departure? On the contrary. As my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told the House of Commons, amendments to the Old-Age Pensions Bill were moved or received the official support of the Whips of the Conservative Party which would have raised the cost of that scheme to fourteen millions a year. And the Liberal Government, which was making this great effort, which was doing the work, which was keeping the Tory promise, was reproached and was derided for not accepting the proposals which these irresponsible philanthropists, these social reformers on the cheap, these limited-liability politicians, were so ready to move. And Lord Halsbury, the late Lord Chancellor, one of the leaders of the Conservative Party, a man with a powerful influence in their councils, said in a public speech that the old-age pensions as proposed by the Government were so paltry as to be almost a mockery.

I do not think any fair-minded or impartial man, or any average British jury, surveying the record of the Conservative Party upon old-age pensions, could come to any other conclusion than that they had used this question for popularity alone; that they never meant to give old-age pensions; that they only meant to get votes by promising to give them; that they would have stopped them being given if they could; that while the Bill was on its way they tried to embarra.s.s the Government, and to push things to unpractical extremes; and now, even when the pensions have been given, they would not pay for them if they could help it. Let me say that I think the conclusion, which I believe any jury would come to, would perhaps be rather harsh upon the Conservative Party. I believe they meant better than their record; I am willing to admit that. But their record is before us, and it is a bad one, and upon the facts I have no hesitation in saying that it is not open to them to protest--they have not even an inch of foothold to protest--against any expenditure which we may now have to incur in order to defray the consequences of the policy of old-age pensions. So much for the first cause of the increased expenditure.

I pa.s.s to the navy. The Naval Estimates have risen by three millions this year. I regret it; but I am prepared to justify it. There will be a further increase next year. I regret it; but within proper limits necessary to secure national safety I shall be prepared to justify it; but I hope you will not expect me to advocate a braggart and sensational policy of expenditure upon armaments. I have always been against that, as my father was before me.

In my judgment, a Liberal is a man who ought to stand as a restraining force against an extravagant policy. He is a man who ought to keep cool in the presence of Jingo clamour. He is a man who believes that confidence between nations begets confidence, and that the spirit of peace and goodwill makes the safety it seeks. And, above all, I think a Liberal is a man who should keep a sour look for scaremongers of every kind and of every size, however distinguished, however ridiculous--and sometimes the most distinguished are the most ridiculous--a cold, chilling, sour look for all of them, whether their panic comes from the sea or from the air or from the earth or from the waters under the earth.

His Majesty's Government are resolved that the defensive measures of this country shall be prescribed by the policy of Ministers responsible to Parliament, and by the calculations, subject to that policy, of the experts on whom those Ministers rely, and not by the folly and the clamour of Party politicians or sensational journalists.

In that determination we as a Government are united, and we shall remain united. Yet it is clear that the increase in the Naval Estimates of this year must be followed by another increase in those of next year. That is deplorable. It will impose upon our finances a strain which some other nations would not find it very easy to bear, but which, if the necessity be proved, this country will not be unwilling, and will certainly not be unable to support.

Well, but what have the Conservative Party got to say about it? Have they any right to complain of the taxes which are necessary for the maintenance of our naval power? Do we not see that they are ever exerting themselves to urge still greater expenditure upon the nation?

He is a poor sort of fellow, a penny-plain-twopence-coloured kind of patriot who goes about shouting for ships, and then grudges the money necessary to build them. And when Mr. Balfour tells us that "gigantic sacrifices" are required, and that those gigantic sacrifices "must begin now," and then at the same time objects to the taxes by which the Government proposes to raise the money, he puts himself in a very queer position.

I have dealt with two of the causes which have led to our demand for further revenue--old-age pensions and the navy. Upon neither of them have the Conservative Party any ground for attacking us. What is the third? Ah, gentlemen, I agree that there is one cause of the prospective deficit for which we are budgeting for which the Conservative Party is in no way responsible. I mean the decline in the consumption of alcoholic liquors. Nothing that they have said and nothing that they have done has, in intention or in fact, contributed to the drying up of that source of revenue. On the contrary, by their legislation, by the views they have taken of the rights of the licensed trade, by their resistance to every measure of temperance reform, by their refusal even to discuss in the House of Lords the great Licensing Bill of last year, by their a.s.sociation 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 cla.s.ses. They will not, in spite of all these outcries you hear nowadays, sensibly alter the comfort or status, or even the elegance of any cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 3,000 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 Const.i.tution 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.

That is one thing which the pa.s.sage of this Budget will show. Let not that be overlooked. But that is not the only thing; the Budget will do more than that. It will reveal the financial strength of Britain. At a time when every European country is borrowing merely for the needs of ordinary annual expenditure, when all these disturbing naval programmes, which are injuring the peace of the world and the security and progress of civilisation, are being supported by borrowed money; and when the credit of Germany has fallen below that of Italy, this country, which has necessarily to make the biggest expenditure for naval defence of any country, will be found, under a Free Trade system and by our proposals, able not only to pay its way, but to pay off the debts of the past--to pay off the debts of our predecessors--even in the worst of times at the rate of something like 7,000,000 a year.

I have spoken to you of the causes which in the past have led up to this Budget. I have spoken to you of its present justification. What of the future? If I had to sum up the immediate future of democratic politics in a single word I should say "Insurance." That is the future--Insurance against dangers from abroad. Insurance against dangers scarcely less grave and much more near and constant which threaten us here at home in our own island. I had the honour and opportunity a few days ago of explaining to the House of Commons our proposals for unemployment insurance. That is a considerable matter.

It stands by itself. It is a much simpler question than invalidity insurance; but it is a great matter by itself. Indeed, I thought while I was explaining it to the House of Commons that I had not made such an important speech since I had the honour of explaining the details of the Transvaal Const.i.tution.

Well, what is the proposal? The proposal is that you should make a beginning. We have stood still too long. We should begin forthwith, taking some of the greatest trades of the country in which unemployment is most serious, in which fluctuations are most severe, in which there are no short-time arrangements to mitigate the severity to the individual; and that a system of compulsory contributory insurance, with a large subvention from the State, should be introduced into those great industries.

But our proposals go farther than that. The State a.s.sistance to unemployment insurance will not be limited to those trades in which it is compulsory. Side by side with the compulsory system we shall offer facilities to voluntary insurance schemes in other trades, managed by trade unions or by societies or groups of workmen. Moreover, we contemplate that the State insurance office should undertake, if desired, the insurance against unemployment of any individual workman in any trade outside of those for which compulsory powers are required, and should afford to these individuals an equivalent support to that which is given in the trades which are subject to the compulsory system.

Of course you will understand that the terms, that can be offered under a voluntary or partial system, are not so good as those which can be obtained in the compulsory system of a great trade. Where all stand together, it is much better for each. But still it is certain that individuals who take advantage of the insurance policy which will be introduced, and I trust carried through Parliament next year, will be able to secure terms which will be much more favourable than any which are open to them by their unaided contributions at the present time, because their contributions will be reinforced by the contributions of the State. Further, if our beginning proves a success the attempt and the system will not stop there. It will be extended, and in proportion as experience and experiment justify its extension, in proportion as the people of this country desire its extension, it must eventually cover, in course of years, the whole of our great industrial community.

Well now, it is said that in adopting the policy of contributory insurance the Government have admitted that they were wrong in establishing old-age pensions upon the non-contributory basis. Now I do not think that is true. There is no inconsistency or contradiction between a non-contributory system of old-age pensions and a contributory system of insurance against unemployment, sickness, invalidity, and widowhood. The circ.u.mstances and conditions are entirely different. The prospect of attaining extreme old age, of living beyond threescore years and ten, which is the allotted span of human life, seems so doubtful and remote to the ordinary man, when in the full strength of manhood, that it has been found in practice almost impossible to secure from any very great number of people the regular sacrifices which are necessary to guard against old age.

But unemployment, accident, sickness, and the death of the bread-winner are catastrophes which may reach any household at any moment. Those vultures are always hovering around us, and I do not believe there is any sensible, honest man who would not wish to guard himself against them, if it were in his power to make the necessary contribution, and if he were sure--this is a very important point--that he would not by any accident or fraud or muddle be done out of the security he had paid for. And if we choose to adopt one system of State-aid for dealing with one cla.s.s of need, and quite a different system for dealing with quite a different cla.s.s of need, it does not lie with any one, least of all does it lie with those who have impartially neglected every problem and every solution, to reproach us with inconsistency.

But I go farther. The Old-Age Pensions Act, so far from being in conflict with a scheme of contributory insurance, is really its most helpful and potent ally. The fact that at seventy the State pension is a.s.sured to all those who need it, makes a tremendous difference to every form of insurance confined to the years before seventy, whether for old age or for invalidity. I asked an eminent actuary the other day to make me some calculations. They are rough, general calculations, and no doubt they might be more exact. But roughly, I believe it to be no exaggeration to say that the rates to cover a man till seventy are in many cases scarcely half what they would be, if they had to cover him till death. Do you see what that means? It is a prodigious fact. It is the sort of fact by the discovery of which people make gigantic fortunes; and I suggest to you that we should make this gigantic fortune for John Bull. It means that the whole field of insurance has become much more fruitful than it ever was before, that there is a new cla.s.s of insurance business possible which never was possible before. It means that the whole field of insurance is far more open to the poorest cla.s.s of people than it was before, and that with a proper system the benefits of the Old-Age Pensions Act would not be confined to the actual pensioners who are drawing their money, but would extend forwards in antic.i.p.ation to all other cla.s.ses and to all other people, and that so far as five shillings a week is concerned--that is not much unless you have not got it--the actuarial position of every man and woman in this country has been enormously improved by the Old-Age Pensions Act.

It is of that improvement that we mean to take advantage next year.

Next year, when Free Trade will have yielded the necessary funds to the revenue, we mean to move forward into this great new field. But let me say one thing which is of the utmost importance. We must remember that the field of insurance is already largely covered by a great ma.s.s of benevolent and friendly societies, just as the field of unemployment insurance is already occupied to some extent by trade unions, and the Government would not approve of any development or extension of the policy of insurance which did not do full justice to existing inst.i.tutions, or which did not safeguard those inst.i.tutions, to whom we owe so inestimable and incommensurable a debt, or caused any sudden disturbance or any curtailment of their general methods of business. On the contrary, we believe that when our proposals are put in their full detail before the country, they will be found to benefit and encourage and not to injure those agencies which have so long been voluntarily and prosperously at work.