Speaking at Denmark Hill on June 20, amid some disturbance through suffragist interruptions, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after declaring that the Government would not tolerate the exclusion of Ulster, said that the Budget carried on the Government's policy of strengthening the national defences against possible enemies abroad and actual enemies at home--poverty, disease, unhealthy homes, the suffering arising from bad social and economic conditions; and a fair contribution had been levied on wealth. Replying to a prophecy just made by Mr. J. J. Hill, an American railway magnate, that "the false humanitarianism of British social legislation" would destroy the sources of wealth in Great Britain, he declared that since the recent social legislation had passed there had been unprecedented prosperity, and that "the Power that governs the world does not punish with bankruptcy" nations that do kindnesses to the old, the feeble, the broken, and the sick. While Trust magnates were looking on with dismay, the great democracies of the West were looking towards Great Britain with a new hope. Beaten at home, "these American buccaneers" were coming over to stop the deluge at its source, but they had failed and would fail again. But the Budget, as embodied in the Finance Bill, was threatened not only by the opposition of the rich but by the rules and precedents of Parliamentary practice. On June 15 a deputation of more than thirty Liberal members (mostly very wealthy), led by Mr. Holt (_Northumberland, Hexham_) had protested to the Prime Minister against the invitation to the House to sanction fresh taxation before it had approved of the objects on which the proceeds were to be spent. Dissatisfied with his reply, they issued a protest (June 17) urging that the new taxation should be deferred until the passing of the Bill establishing the machinery for separate assessment of site values and improvement values, since, should a Unionist Government take office in the interval, the valuation would be dropped, and the temporary grants, repugnant to all Liberal principles of finance, would become permanent features of the financial system. Unless the valuation Bill passed, moreover, the Government would be unable to pay to the local authorities any of the money provided by the new taxation. Either it would be hastily devoted to some new purpose, or it would pass to the Sinking Fund. Neither application would have been contemplated by Parliament when voting the Budget. They did not object to taxing those best able to bear it, but money should not be voted unless its objects were determined and the machinery for raising it was in existence.