enjoyed unchallengeable power, from 1906 to 1910, they did nothing to
carry out Gladstone's parting injunction. Had they done so at any time
when Home Rule was a living issue in the country an attack on the Lords
would in all probability have proved disastrous to themselves. For there
was not a particle of evidence that the electors of Great Britain had
changed their minds on this subject, and there were great numbers of
voters in the country--those voters, unattached to party, who constitute
"the swing of the pendulum," and decide the issue at General
Elections--who felt free to vote Liberal in 1906 because they believed
Home Rule was practically dead, and if revived would be again given its
_quietus_, as in 1893, by the House of Lords. But the defeat of the
Budget in November 1909 immediately opened a line of attack wholly
unconnected with Ireland, and over the most favourable ground that could
have been selected for the assault.

Nothing could have been more skilful than the tactics employed by the
Liberal leaders. Concentrating on the constitutional question raised by
the alleged encroachment of the Lords on the exclusive privilege of the
Commons to grant supply, they tried to excite a hurricane of popular
fury by calling on the electorate to decide between "Peers and People."
The rejected Finance Bill was dubbed "The People's Budget." A "Budget
League" was formed to expatiate through the constituencies on the
democratic character of its provisions, and on the personal and class
selfishness of the Peers in throwing it out. As little as possible was
said about Ireland, and probably not one voter in ten thousand who went
to the poll in January 1910 ever gave a thought to the subject, or
dreamed that he was taking part in reversing the popular verdict of 1886
and 1895. Afterwards, when it was complained that an election so
conducted had provided no "mandate" for Home Rule, it was found that in
the course of a long speech delivered by Mr. Asquith at the Albert Hall