The Duke-baiting began.
Just as he had fought for a Free Wales so did he now struggle for a Free
Land. All his amazing picturesqueness of expression came into play. He
contended that Monopoly had made land so valuable in Britain that it
almost sold by the grain, like radium. In commenting on the heavy taxes
levied by the land autocrats upon commercial enterprise in London he
made his famous phrase:
"This is not business. It is blackmail!"
To democracy the Budget meant economic emancipation: the banishment of
hunger from the hearth: the solace of an old age free from want. It made
Lloyd George "The Little Brother of the Poor." To the Aristocracy it was
the gauge of battle for the bitterest class war ever waged in England:
violation of ancient privilege.
The fight for this programme made Lloyd George the best known and most
detested man in England. To hate him was one of the accomplishments of
titled folk to whom his very name was a hissing and a by-word. Massed
behind him were the common people whose champion he was: arrayed against
him were the powers of wealth and rank.
In this campaign Lloyd George used the three great weapons that he has
always brought to bear. First and foremost was the force of his
personality, for he swept England with a tidal wave of impassioned
eloquence. Second, he unloosed as never before the reservoirs of ink,
for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his
message.
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