lass 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 classes
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 classes 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
L3,000 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 Constitution 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 passage of this