table of that law come
from? Whose fingers inscribed it?"[24]

Lord Rosebery has pointed to the extremely radical nature of Mr. Lloyd
George's arguments. The representatives of the Government had urged, he
said, that the land should be taxed without mercy:--

"(1) because its existence is not due to the owner;

"(2) because it is limited in quantity;

"(3) because it owes nothing of its value to anything the owner
does or spends;

"(4) because it is absolutely necessary for existence and
production."[25]

Lord Rosebery says, justly, that all these propositions except the last
apply to many other forms of property than land, as, for instance, to
government bonds, and that it certainly would be Socialism to attempt to
confiscate these by taxation.

Lord Rosebery's task would have become even easier later, when Mr. Lloyd
George enlarged his attack on the landlords definitely into an attack
against the idle upper classes, who with their dependents he reckoned at
two million persons. He accused this class of constituting an
intolerable burden on the community, said that its existence was the
symptom of the disease of society, and that only bold remedies could
help. The whole class of inactive capitalists he viewed as a load both
on the non-capitalist, wage-earning, salaried and professional classes,
and on the active capitalists. Mr. Lloyd George argues with his
capitalist supporters that capitalism will be all the stronger when
freed from its parasites. But Lord Rosebery could answer that the active
could no more be distinguished from the passive capitalists than
landowners from bondholders.

An article in the world's leading Socialist newspaper, _Vorwaerts_, of
Berlin, shows that many Socialists even regarded these speeches as
revolutionary:--

"The Radical wing of the British Liberals," it said, "is leading
the attack with ideal recklessness and lust of battle. It is
conducting the agitation in language which in Germany is
customarily used only by a 'red revolutionist.' If the German
Junker (landlord conservative) were to read these speeches, he
would swear that they were delivered by the Social Democrats of the
reddest dye, so ferociously do they contrast between the rich and
the poor. They appeal to the passion of the people; they exploit
social distinctions in the manner best calculated to fire popular
anger against the Lo