lies the essential stability of modern States. There are
millions of persons who would certainly lose by anything like a
general overturn, and they are everywhere the strongest and best
organised millions. And I have no hesitation in saying that any
violent movement would infallibly encounter an overwhelming
resistance, and that any movement which was inspired by mere class
prejudice, or by a desire to gain a selfish advantage, would encounter
from the selfish power of the "haves" an effective resistance which
would bring it to sterility and to destruction.

And here is the conclusion to which I lead you. Something more is
needed if we are to get forward. There lies the function of the
Liberal Party. Liberalism supplies at once the higher impulse and the
practicable path; it appeals to persons by sentiments of generosity
and humanity; it proceeds by courses of moderation. By gradual steps,
by steady effort from day to day, from year to year, Liberalism
enlists hundreds of thousands upon the side of progress and popular
democratic reform whom militant Socialism would drive into violent
Tory reaction. That is why the Tory Party hate us. That is why they,
too, direct their attacks upon the great organisation of the Liberal
Party, because they know it is through the agency of Liberalism that
society will be able in the course of time to slide forward, almost
painlessly--for the world is changing very fast--on to a more even and
a more equal foundation. That is the mission that lies before
Liberalism. The cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the
left-out millions; and because we believe that there is in all the
world no other instrument of equal potency and efficacy available at
the present time for the purposes of social amelioration, we are bound
in duty and in honour to guard it from all attacks, whether they arise
from violence or from reaction.

There is no necessity to-night to plunge into a discussion of the
philosophical divergencies between Socialism and Liberalism. It is not
possible to draw a hard-and-fast line between individualism and
collectivism. You cannot draw it either in theory or in practice. That
is where the Socialist makes a mistake. Let us not imitate that
mistake. No man can be a collectivist alone or an individualist alone.
He must be both an individualist and a collectivist. The nature of man
is a dual nature. The character of the organisation of human society
is dual. Man is at once a uni