THE INSURANCE BILL IN THE COMMONS.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE has now piloted two first-class measures through the House of Commons--the Budget of 1909 and the Insurance Bill. The former was a sufficiently astonishing performance; but the latter has eclipsed it. Two years ago he encountered fierce opposition both in the House and outside, but at the General Election which followed a considerable majority of the electors approved his financial onslaught on the landed, the royalty-owning, and the licensed interests. Then he waged his campaign, with sure demagogic instinct, on the cry of the poor against the rich, the many against the few, and the masses against the classes. There was no talk of the Budget being non-controversial. Both parties fought with the gloves off. But this time Mr. Lloyd George has had a very different job to tackle. Evidently to his unbounded astonishment, the Unionist party seemed disposed to fall on his neck when he introduced the Insurance Bill. The first hasty glance only disclosed the immense daring and wide sweep of the scheme, while everyone specially applauded the inception of a great national crusade against consumption. In a word, most Unionists allowed their sympathy to outrun their discretion. They overpraised the Bill before they could possibly have mastered its contents, and the cordial invitations to co-operation thrown out by the Chancellor came to very little in the end.

Again, Mr. Lloyd George has had to persuade all the employed classes under the income tax limit to submit to the principle of compulsory insurance, and to pay contributions as well as to receive benefits. Their employers, of course, have also to pay their full share, and the State helps to swell the joint contribution; but those are not the features of the scheme on which the large sections of democracy have fastened. What they are chiefly concerned about is that threepence or fourpence a week will be deducted from their wages, whether they like it or not. And they have been so assiduously taught to look up to Mr. Lloyd George as the bountiful giver of absolutely free benefits, cunningly abstracted with Welsh adroitness from the pockets of the well-to-do, that there is a good deal of sullen resentment that they should be made-not asked-to pay. They did not expect it of him, and they do not like it.

But it would be the rankest folly for Unionists to try to make capital out of this resentment by encouraging the idea that they

favour a non-contributory scheme. They favour nothing of the kind. Any national scheme of insurance against sickness must be both compulsory and contributory. Of that there can be no reasonable doubt. It has been proved to demonstration that of the nine or ten million uninsured persons, who are now to be drawn into the national insurance scheme, together with the six millions, who already make some provision, often defective, against sickness, a large proportion could not come in without generous assistance or would not come in without compulsion. A compulsory contributory scheme is, in fact, the only practical solution. A non-contributory scheme would cost the State untold millions and effectually pauperise the community. Yet in a characteristically reckless passage in his speech on the third reading, Mr. Lloyd George actually said that it would have been quite "easy easy" for him to have raised the money for the noncontributory scheme from the pockets of the Imperial taxpayers, hinting that he knew where to lay hands on another twenty millions without difficulty, and pluming himself on his moral courage for rejecting this "easy road which would not have been so open to misrepresentation." That is simply the language of the benevolent charlatan.

The difficulties to be overcome by the Chancellor have been gigantic. He has met them with extraordinary courage and with remarkable address. Only the Recording Angel-if he busies himself with such matters-could say how many deputations Mr. Lloyd George has received, how many speeches he has delivered, how many letters and interviews he has dictated, how many authorities he has consulted, over how many conferences he has presided. The work has been stupendous. To withhold admiration of such earnestness and assiduity would be unworthy. And yet probably the suspicion has crossed many minds that not a few of these difficulties have been due to the Chancellor's own blundering. If the Bill has had to be turned inside out in important particulars, that indicates how unworkable and unacceptable it was at the outset. The main factors were pretty well known. He had been talking to experts for years. He ought, to put it bluntly, to have made a better framework at the start, and probably would have done had he not been so aggressively So when we are summoned by his worshippers to prostrate ourselves in wonder at the genius which has won a way through all these difficulties, we obey with reservations. For, though he has got his Bill, at what price has he got it? At the price, said Mr. Balfour in his last words before laying down the leadership, of the liberties of the House of Commons.

sure.

In the first place, it was a Parliamentary outrage to bring on

this Bill in the same session as the Parliament Bill. Yet the Chancellor for some weeks actually expected to pass it without resort to an autumn session. When it was seen that even the extra weeks thus obtained would be far too short for the purpose required, the Government had either to make arrangements for carrying the Bill over to next year or to closure discussion. Of course, they chose the latter, because the Irish Nationalists would have revolted if any further encroachments had been made on the time of next session. Moreover, another cogent reason why the Government have insisted upon rushing through this scheme at any cost in this particular year is that they expect the Insurance Bill to be unpopular until it gets into thorough working order, while they hope that its benefits will begin to be appreciated just when another General Election is coming within view These have been the determining motives of Ministers, and they accord but little with their own too flattering descriptions of themselves as men actuated by the purest philanthropy, and unable to endure for a single moment longer than necessary the cries of wounded and suffering humanity. The choice of this particular session for carrying the Insurance Bill was certain to lead to scamped legislation, though probably not even the most sceptical member of the Cabinet ever supposed that the Chancellor's plan would excite the opposition, alarm, and anxiety which, so far from being allayed, have grown stronger as the Bill has become better understood.

As to the methods by which it has been rushed through, what disinterested Parliamentarian defends the time-table proposed by the Prime Minister at the beginning of the session, especially as warning was given that in future a similar time-table would be the normal accompaniment of every big Government Bill? One will doubtless be attached to the Home Rule Bill, and it will not be long before hard-pressed Governments take to manipulating the arrangement of business so that the guillotine shall prevent a searching discussion, or even any discussion at all, on inconvenient and dangerous clauses. The power to resist temptation possessed by modern Ministers, dependent on a coalition for their day-to-day existence, is small. Their pledges are writ in water. Consciously or unconsciously, they accommodate themselves and their principles to the changing needs of the passing hour.

What actually happened in the case of the Insurance Bill? In a few cases the allocations of time were found to be fairly sufficient. On one or two days the discussion actually dried up before the fatal hour struck. But those were the rare exceptions. On almost every other occasion the guillotine fell with important clauses undiscussed, and usually the House had to be

content with a general discussion on the main content of a clause, while the particular amendments were never moved at all. The position was made all the more intolerable by the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was continually chopping and changing his mind, as a result of the outdoor negotiations and of the discussions in the House, and he kept putting down new clauses, which themselves ate up the limited time available. Two days and a half were given to Report, but it turned out that a week would have been all too short, and the result was that one evening the knife descended upon nearly five hundred amendments. It is, of course, stoutly asserted that every really important point in the Bill was fully considered, and that further discussion would have been fruitless. That is not so. In the studiously moderate speech in which he moved his last amendment, Mr. Forster enumerated a long list of subjects where more consideration was wanted, more knowledge, and more light.

Moreover, members have been acutely conscious throughout that many of the crucial points were being decided behind their back by the Chancellor in his perpetual confabulations and bargainings with the various interests affected. He has been busy all the time squaring people-squaring the doctors, squaring the friendly societies, squaring the collecting societies, squaring the domestic servants, squaring the women workers, squaring the trade unions, squaring the Irish. The negotiations with the lastnamed did not, indeed, last long. Mr. Redmond one day calmly informed the House of Commons with the utmost sang-froid that he had not the slightest anxiety as to the continued absence of the Irish amendments from the notice paper because the Government were fully aware of the Nationalists' demands, and "of course" they would be granted. "Of course," they were. The Chancellor capitulated at sight and yielded every point. But the squaring processes in other directions proved tedious and exacting. With his customary incurable optimism, the Chancellor caused inspired notices to appear in the Press after every critical interview, announcing that the deal had been highly successful and that those who came grumbling to Downing Street had gone away happy and contented. But in many cases their misgivings rapidly returned, and then there were more conferences and more compromises, followed by more protests from some third party whose interests had been adversely affected by the latest bargain. And each bargain meant a new amendment or a new clause. Yet who, even now, will say that the country is satisfied? Agreed that some of the worst defects of the original Bill have been remedied, agreed that many and real improvements have been made, agreed that it is certain to benefit large classes of the

population-considering the millions that are to be spent it would be a miracle if that were not so-yet weak spots are still obvious which might have been strengthened with more consideration, and with the display of a zeal on behalf of the poorest classes at least equal to that displayed for the powerful trade unions and friendly societies.

Nor had the Government the grace to allow the House of Lords a reasonable opportunity of benevolent amendment. The Bill was simply flung at the heads of the peers, with a bundle of other measures, in the closing days of the session, when there was no time for the Second Chamber to perform its duties of revision. Its passage was of the swiftest. After Lord Haldane had unburdened himself of a ponderous exposition, which would have formed the fitting prelude to a week's debate, Lord Lansdowne skilfully diagnosed the shortcomings of the measure and then laid bare the real facts of the painful situation in which the Peers found themselves under the Parliament Act. He insisted that he would be no party to "a sham revision"; while if they addressed themselves to a real one he foresaw nothing but a bitter, protracted, and probably fruitless quarrel with the Government over a Bill whose principle he approved and whose general scheme he desired to pass into law. The Insurance Bill is not a Money Bill, but, as Lord Lansdowne truly said, it spells money in every clause, and the Commons would have been able to plead privilege against many, or most, of the alterations the Peers desired to introduce. So the upshot was that the Lords disclaimed responsibility and let the Bill go through. Of the wisdom and expediency of this course there can be little question, though the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Bangor were evidently rather uneasy in their consciences about it. But there is very little room for conscience in modern politics either for Government or for Opposition.

Such are the means whereby Mr. Lloyd George has secured his Bill in time to present it as "a Christmas gift" to the homes of the people. As to his methods of advocacy outside the House, little need be said here. He is a first-class demagogue, unique among his fellows. His audiences, whether in packed or open meeting, whether in town hall or tabernacle, eagerly gulp down his rhetoric, however slushy the sentiment and however raw the pathos. But he has imagination, too, and was it not Sidonia who said that it is not reason which governs men but passion, and that he is irresistible who can appeal to imagination? Mr. Lloyd George's power is precisely that of a popular emotional preacher. His denunciations of dukes are the very counterpart of George Whitefield's denunciations of the "downy Doctors of the