ns.

Now that Mr. Balfour has made that admission, for which we thank him,
and for which we respect him, I will make one in my turn. If tariff
reform or protection, or fiscal reform, or whatever you choose to call
it, is no remedy for unemployment--and it is pretty clear from the
experience of other countries who have adopted it on a large scale
that it is not--neither is free trade by itself a remedy for
unemployment. The evil lies deeper, the causes are more complex than
any within the reach of import duties or of no import duties, and its
treatment requires special measures of a social, not less than of an
economic character which are going to carry us into altogether new and
untrodden fields in British politics.

I agree most whole-heartedly with those who say that in attempting to
relieve distress or to regulate the general levels of employment, we
must be most careful not to facilitate the very disorganisation of
industry which causes distress. But I do not agree with those who say
that every man must look after himself, and that the intervention by
the State in such matters as I have referred to will be fatal to his
self-reliance, his foresight, and his thrift. We are told that our
non-contributory scheme of old-age pensions, for instance, will be
fatal to thrift, and we are warned that the great mass of the working
classes will be discouraged thereby from making any effective
provision for their old age. But what effective provision have they
made against old age in the past? If terror be an incentive to thrift,
surely the penalties of the system which we have abandoned ought to
have stimulated thrift as much as anything could have been stimulated
in this world. The mass of the labouring poor have known that unless
they made provision for their old age betimes they would perish
miserably in the workhouse. Yet they have made no provision; and when
I am told that the institution of old-age pensions will prevent the
working classes from making provision for their old age, I say that
cannot be, for they have never been able to make such provision. And I
believe our scheme, so far from preventing thrift, will encourage it
to an extent never before known.

It is a great mistake to suppose that thrift is caused only by fear;
it springs from hope as well as from fear; where there is no hope, be
sure there will be no thrift. No one supposes that five shillings a
week is a satisfactory provision for old age. No one sup