this was also unpopular as it would have meant higher prices on imported food. According to economic theory, such tariffs would have been very beneficial for landowners, especially tariffs on agricultural produce, but the costs to ordinary consumers would have exceeded the gains to these landowners (see Corn Laws). Constitutional stand-off The Northcliffe Press (who published both The Times and the Daily Mail) urged rejection of the budget to give tariff reform a chance. There were many public meetings, some of them organised by dukes, which portrayed the budget as the thin end of the socialist wedge. Lloyd George gave a speech at Newcastle upon Tyne in October 1909 in which he said that "a fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts; and dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer". The Conservatives wanted to force an election by rejecting the budget. The Lords were entitled by convention to reject but not to amend a money bill but had not rejected a budget for two centuries. Originally, the budget had included only annual renewals of existing taxes—any amendment to taxes was part of a separate Act. That ended in 1860 when the Lords rejected the repeal of paper duties, which would have benefited new cheaper newspapers aimed at men who hoped soon to be given the right to vote, at the expense of existing papers. From then on, all taxes were included in the Finance Bill, and no such bill had been rejected, including the controversial introduction of death duties by Sir William Harcourt in 1894. Despite the King's private urgings for the budget to be passed to avoid a crisis, the House of Lords vetoed the new budget on 30 November 1909 although it clarified that it would pass the bill as soon as the Liberals obtained an electoral mandate for it. The Liberals countered by proposing to reduce the power of the Lords. That was the main issue of the general election in January 1910, setting the stage for a tremendous showdown, which Lloyd George relished. Despite the heated rhetoric, opinion in the country was divided. The Unionists, with 47% of the votes, were outpolled by the Liberals and their allies from the Labour Party. The outcome was a hung parliament, with the Liberals relying on Labour and the Irish Parliamentary Party for their parliamentary majority. As the price for their