Exchequer Bonds and External Debt.

Part of Orders of the Day — Consolidated Fund (Appropriation — No. 2) BILL. – in the House of Commons at on 9 November 1921.

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Photo of Mr Ernest Gray Mr Ernest Gray , Accrington

This is a recurrent disease in the body social, and ought not therefore the Government to be prepared with measures either to prevent its arrival or to minimise its effects? It should be prepared to apply such measures automatically, so as to alleviate the disease at once. I do not think that this problem ought to be trfled with year after year, decade after decade. I am old enough to recollect some of the periods of bitter depression in the years gone by and the feeble efforts made by the Governments of those days to deal with the problem. I cannot bring myself to believe that the remedies now being applied are sufficiently strong to meet so great an evil, but I hope that when this Debate closes and the House breaks up and our doors are shut that the doors of the Government offices will not be closed to a consideration of this problem. They must face the future with a firm determination to do all that is humanly possible to prevent a recurrence of such a terrible disaster. If it cannot be prevented, and in the nature of things there must be these fluctuations in trade, then there should be well organised and well ordered schemes already in existence which could be applied at once in order that the great distress through which we are now passing may not be repeated. If this be a real lesson, not merely to this Government but to all Governments, and to all who are responsible for the care of State and for the well-being of our people from whatever quarter their leaders may be chosen; if the present period of distress shall teach the lesson that means must be found for dealing with the trouble immediately it arises, then the misery through which we are now passing may eventually prove a blessing in disguise.