In local affairs some British cities are models of municipal enterprise. Even London, that amorphous mass of human misery and opulence, is changing its aspect. Since the granting of municipal home rule it has built a vast system of street railways, cleaned out acres of slums, opened breathing spaces, built tenements, and in many other ways displayed evidences of an awakening civic consciousness.
Three other pieces of legislation must be described more in detail, because they are more revolutionary, far-reaching, and democratic than anything attempted by the British nation since the days of the Reform Bill.
First is the famous "Budget" of Lloyd George. When this virile Welshman became Chancellor of the Exchequer he cast his budget in the mold of his social theories. He said: "Personally, I look on the Budget as a part only of a comprehensive scheme of fiscal and social reform: the setting up of a great insurance scheme for the unemployed and for the sick and infirm, and the creation, through the development bill, of the machinery for the regeneration of rural life."[31]
The land system of England is feudal. Tenure still legally exists. There still clings the flavor of social and political distinction to fee simple. This the landowners have fortified against all the changes that industrialism has wrought. There has been no general land appraisement since the Pilgrims landed at the new Plymouth. The "land monopoly" successfully resisted every attack until the famous budget of 1908. Chiozza Money quotes John Bateman's analysis of the "New Domesday Book," fixing the ownership of land in England and Wales as follows:[32]
In 1883, in the United Kingdom, there was a total area of 77,000,000 acres; of this 40,426,000 acres were owned by 2,500 persons. "While the total income of the nation is £1,840,000,000, the landowners take £106,000,000 as land rent."[33] England is a great industrial and commercial nation living on leased land.
The development of the industrial towns has enormously multiplied the value of some of these vast estates.[34]
The new budget proposed, first, to tax the land values; not a fictitious sum, or the value of the land with improvements, but the site value—the increment value with which the land is endowed because of its favorable location. Second, to this was added a 10 per cent. reversion duty. Third, a tax was levied on undeveloped land held for speculative purposes. And, fourth, a 5 per cent. tax on mineral rights was assessed on the owners of the land that contained the mines.
These proposals raised a storm. They aimed at the traditional stronghold of English aristocracy. The budget passed the House of Commons by a large majority; the Lords rejected it. The government promptly prorogued Parliament and went before the people. And what was at first only an attack upon hereditary rights in land became an attack also upon hereditary rights in politics. The House of Lords became an issue as well as the budget. After a fiery and furious campaign, in which Socialists and Laborites joined Radicals and Liberals, the budget won by a safe majority.[35] The Lords passed the measure. But this resistance cost them dear. One of the first prerogatives established by the House of Commons was the right to control the purse-strings of the kingdom. Custom has given the sanction of constitutionality to this prerogative. And the Lords, in first denying and then delaying the budget, laid themselves open to the charge of "hereditary arrogance" and "unconstitutionalism."
After the passage of the budget there followed six months of conference between the two front benches, to find a basis of reform for the House of Lords upon which all could unite. When it became evident that this was impossible, the government again prorogued Parliament and went to the people for a mandate on the question of "reforming the Lords." The Liberals and their allies were, for a third time, returned to power, and in February, 1911, the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, introduced his "Parliament Bill," taking from the House of Lords the power to amend a money bill so as to change its character. If any other bill passed by the Commons is rejected by the Lords, the Commons can pass it over their veto; and if this is done in three consecutive sessions of the same Parliament—provided two years elapse between the introduction of the bill and its third rejection by the Lords—it becomes a law. The law is intended as a preliminary measure. The preamble states that it is the intention of the government to provide for a second chamber "constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis." The bill was so amended by the Lords as to change its character and returned to the Commons. The Prime Minister then informed the leaders of the opposition that the King, "upon the advice of his ministers," had consented to create enough peers to insure the passage of the bill in its original form. Rather than have their house encumbered by 400 new peers, the Lords gave a reluctant consent to the measure that virtually destroyed the bicameral system in England.
This profound constitutional change, that practically makes England a representative democracy pure and simple, was unaccompanied by any of those popular and spectacular demonstrations one naturally expects to see on such occasions. The debate in both houses rarely touched the pinnacle of excitement, its fervor was partisan rather than patriotic.[36]