the power nor the ability
to retard the constructive forces in the party as a whole. On the other
hand, when matters point to any definitely confiscatory proposal, to the
public ownership and collective control of land, for example, or
state mining and manufactures, or the nationalisation of the so-called
public-house or extended municipal enterprise, or even to an increase of
the taxation of property, then the Conservative Party presents a nearly
adamantine bar. It does not stand for, it IS, the existing arrangement
in these affairs.

Even more definitely a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate
interest is to raise wages, shorten hours of labor, increase employment,
and make better terms for the working-man tenant and working-man
purchaser. Its leaders are no doubt constructive minded, but the mass
of the following is naturally suspicious of education and discipline,
hostile to the higher education, and--except for an obvious antagonism
to employers and property owners--almost destitute of ideas. What
else can it be? It stands for the expropriated multitude, whose whole
situation and difficulty arise from its individual lack of initiative
and organising power. It favours the nationalisation of land and capital
with no sense of the difficulties involved in the process; but, on the
other hand, the equally reasonable socialisation of individuals which
is implied by military service is steadily and quite naturally and quite
illogically opposed by it. It is only in recent years that Labour has
emerged as a separate party from the huge hospitable caravanserai of
Liberalism, and there is still a very marked tendency to step back again
into that multitudinous assemblage.

For multitudinousness has always been the Liberal characteristic.
Liberalism never has been nor ever can be anything but a diversified
crowd. Liberalism has to voice everything that is left out by these
other parties. It is the party against the predominating interests. It
is at once the party of the failing and of the untried; it is the party
of decadence and hope. From its nature it must be a vague and planless
association in comparison with its antagonist, neither so constructive
on the one hand, nor on the other so competent to hinder the inevitable
constructions of the civilised state. Essentially it is the party
of criticism, the "Anti" party. It is a system of hostilities and
objections that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul.