§ Mr. WILLIAM PEELI should like, Mr. Speaker, to ask your leave and the leave of the House to make a brief personal explanation about an incident which happened on Friday when I said to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, according to the OFFICIAL REPORT:—
You attacked the publicans and called them 'brigands'"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th February, 1911, col. 2265.]and the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied:—When did I attack the publican? Tell me one occasion.Of course, I do not go about the House with pockets full of quotations from the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, but I should just like to cite now two short quotations upon which I rely in support of this statement. One was as follows:—The old publican, Zacchaeus, restored his exactions fourfold, but the new publican would call himself Zacchaeus, Limited, he would have some expert accountant to look into his past earnings by pillage, and he would raise debentures on himself, and if the Roman Senate threatened to put an end to his depredations, he would call a meeting of Jew financiers and denounce it for confiscation and robbery.I may say I have given the references to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the quotations. The second was this—this 42 was delivered at Limehouse at the overflow meeting:—The Chancellor emphasised the fact that even if the Budget passed, publicans would not pay a penny in respect of the licences before September 30th, yet they were charging an extra price for beer (cry of 'robbery'). There is no other word for it.And in the "Times" report of the same speech the Chancellor is reported to have described this action as theft by false pretences. I find on looking up the word "brigand" in the dictionary, that it is the equivalent of the word "robber" or "freebooter," but of course—I say this frankly—the precise word "brigand" I did not find. Therefore if the Chancellor is inclined to rely upon any distinction between "robbery" and "pillage" and "theft by false pretences," I frankly say he is entirely welcome to the value of that distinction. I will only add that I am very reluctant to bring a matter of a personal character before this House, and I only do so because of the most insistent challenge of the right hon. Gentleman.
§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)When the hon. Gentleman interrupted me on Friday and said, "You attacked the publicans, and called them brigands," I think he ought to have gone on, because the very last observation I made was this:—
The hon. Gentleman was good enough to interrupt me by saying that I called the publicans of this country 'brigands.' I have asked him to name a single occasion on which I have done it. He has neither justified his statement, nor has he had the decency to withdraw it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th February, 1911. col. 2266.]The hon. Gentleman now says, after two or three days' rummaging amongst my old speeches, he has not discovered that I called the publicans "brigands." I do not wish to ride off on the distinction between brigands and robbers. I now come to deal with what the hon. Gentleman has discovered. I will deal first of all with the one which approximates most nearly to the charge which he brought against me, and that is the quotation from my Queen's Hall speech. I have only just had it. I wrote the moment I heard the hon. Gentleman was going to make this personal explanation to ask him for the references and he has been good enough to send them, but I have only just had them. He has quoted just one sentence out of my Queen's Hall speech. If he reads the whole he will find that I was not dealing with publicans at all, but with the financiers who had put brewery shares on the market, and I was dealing with the charge brought by Lord Halsbury against the 43 Liberal party that they were guilty of robbery because we depreciated those shares. My answer was to ask who had been guilty of robbery in connection with these shares, and I went on to deal with the whole problem, and I made it perfectly clear that I was dealing with the financiers. Zacchaeus was not a publican in the ordinary sense of the term, and, as a matter of fact, so far from charging the ordinary publican, the man behind the counter, with robbery in that connection, he is the victim of the whole of these transactions, and not the person who has been guilty of the pillage. I used the word "publican" in the sense in which Zacchaeus was a publican. I will read the whole passage if necessary.
§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI am afraid that would not conduce to the progress of business:—
He referred to the meeting of the infuriated debenture holders at Cannon Street Hotel, where Lord Halsbury accused them of robbery. Lord Halsbury was more of an authority on jobbery than on robbery, but he had great compassion for the widows and orphans who had invested their money in brewery shares. Widows and orphans were an unfortunate class. Whenever there was a piece of rotten property to be got rid of, they found the widows and orphans came in. How very badly advised they must be. Who advised them to invest in these shares, and who profited by it? But these persons had no compassion on any but debentured widows. What about the thousands of widows who had been made so in order to create dividends or debentures? They had no debentures in pity; they held no ordinary shares in human compassion. He was sorry for the debenture widows, but who robbed them? Brewery shares had gone down by scores of millions before the Bill was introduced, because the investors had paid four times as much as the thing was worth.That is the passage immediately in front of one quoted by the hon. Gentleman about the publican Zacchaeus. Then I go on:—Fifty millions of brewery money had gone before the Bill was heard of. Where had it gone? It was hard cash. Will Mr. Stanley Boulter and Lord Rothschild tell us where?It is perfectly clear that I was dealing purely with the financing of the brewery shares, and I stand by every word I said. There is a great difference between saying that and saying that I called the publicans "brigands." They were the people who were the victims of that brigandage. Now I come to the Limehouse speech. The hon. Gentleman has quoted from a very summarised report of what I said at an overflow meeting. He quoted from "The Times" and the "Daily Telegraph." I have looked up both, they are the only two papers he referred me to.
§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI have not seen that, but I have both "The Times" and the "Daily Telegraph."
§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEIn order to show how inaccurate it is, I am supposed to condemn the brewers because they put up the price of spirits. So far from that being the case, I actually said in this House that the only way the publicans could recoup themselves for the 3s. 9d. which was put on spirits was by putting up the price. I went beyond that—and I remember the Leader of the Opposition making great play because I made that suggestion—and I said that they should put it up in order to recoup themselves the 3s. 9d., and, in addition, to recoup themselves the cost of the additional licence. Therefore that is a grossly inaccurate charge. I will tell the hon. Member what I did say.
§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI have not had time to look up the reports; I am not sure there is a full report of it. I will look at all the papers and send it along. I referred to the fact that in the East End of London they put an extra ½d. or 1d. per glass on beer, and were telling the customers they were doing it to recoup the increased cost of the licences, and I said if they did that they had no business to do it, because even if the Budget were carried they would not pay a pennypiece more for their licence then, and they were charging the increased price before the Budget came into operation and before there was any increase at all, and that was getting money under false pretences. That I stand by. But to say that because the publicans in the Limehouse district were doing that it would justify a charge of brigandage against all the publicans of the country, that is a thing I never dreamt of, and I did not say. I still say, that after having brought a specific charge of my using specific language it would have been a far manlier course for the hon. Member to withdraw his accusation.