FOOTNOTES:
[19] Since the date of this speech the new concessions, doubling the allowance exempted from income tax for the expenses of agricultural estates, have been made public.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BUDGET[ToC]
Leicester, September 5, 1909
(From The Times, by permission.)
I have done my best to study the political history of the last forty or fifty years, and I cannot find any Government which, at the end of its fourth year, enjoyed the same measure of support, prestige, and good fortune that we do. The only Administration which could compare in the importance and the volume of its legislation with the present Government is Mr. Gladstone's great Government of 1868. That was a Government of measures and of men; but no measure of that Government could equal in importance the Old-Age Pensions Act which we have placed on the Statute-book. The settlement of the Irish Church question by Disestablishment was not a more baffling and intricate business, than the settlement of the Irish University question which Mr. Birrell has achieved. The labour legislation of the Government of 1868, although very important, shows nothing which equals in importance the Trades Disputes Act, which we have carried through, and Mr. Cardwell's reforms in army organisation were not more successful, and were certainly much less generally accepted, than those which have been effected by Mr. Haldane. In the fourth year of its administration the Government of 1868 was genuinely unpopular. It had quarrelled with the Nonconformists without gaining the support of the Church; it had offended the liquor interest without satisfying the Temperance forces in the country; it had disturbed and offended many vested interests without arousing popular enthusiasm.