Do you expect me to send the Sergeant-at-Arms to fetch the Minister of Transport?—The Speaker.
The Member for Wood Green, who urged that the Treasury should prepare an estimate of the national income, with the view of limiting the national expenditure to a definite proportion of that amount, displayed, it seems to me, amazing temerity. The course of taxation in recent years encourages the belief that the only thing that restrains the Chancellor of the Exchequer from taking our little all is that he does not know how much it is.
Capt. Wedgewood Benn's complaint that the Minister of Transport habitually absented himself from the House met with little encouragement from the Speaker, who sarcastically inquired if he should send the Serjeant-at-Arms to fetch the delinquent. Capt. Benn then dropped the subject, and Sir Colin Keppel looked relieved.
The Government insisted on taking the Report stage and Third Reading of the Rent (Restrictions) Bill at one sitting, and kept the House up till half-past three in order to do it. Dr. Addison had need of what the Iron Duke called "two o'clock in the morning courage" to ward off attacks. Once, when Sir Arthur Fell was depicting the desperate plight of the landladies of Yarmouth, forbidden under a penalty of a hundred pounds to charge more than twenty-five per cent. in excess of their pre-war prices, it looked as if the Minister must give way; but with some difficulty he convinced his critics that the clause in question had nothing to do with seaside landladies.
Tuesday, June 22nd.—In the Lords the Bishops, reinforced by the ecclesiastically-minded lay Peers, made a last attempt to throw out the Matrimonial Causes Bill. Lord Braye moved its rejection, and was supported by Lord Halifax in a speech whose pathos was even stronger than its argument, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who admitted that reform of the marriage laws was required, but considered that the Bill went a great deal further than was necessary. The Lord Chancellor thereupon re-stated the case for the measure, for which be believed the Government were prepared to give facilities in the other House, and Lord Buckmaster repeated his exegesis of the vexed passage in St. Matthew's Gospel, on which the whole theological controversy turns. The Third Reading was carried by 154 votes to 107.
MENS ÆQUA REBUS IN ARDUIS.
Mr. Denis Henry on the Irish situation.
The Commons in the course of the Irish Debate discussed the failure of the Government to prevent the regrettable incidents in Derry and Dublin. Colonel Ashley demanded martial law; Major O'Neill was for organising the loyal population; Sir Keith Fraser approved both courses and advanced the amazing proposition that the trouble in Ireland was entirely due to the religious question, and that even the Sinn Feiners were loyal to the Empire.