osition; and although we have sustained checks and vexations from
circumstances beyond our control which have prevented us settling, as
we otherwise would have done, the problems of licensing and of
education, no lover of progress who compares the Statute-book as it
stands to-day with its state in 1905, need feel that he has laboured
in vain.

No one can say that we have been powerless in the past. The trade
unionist as he surveys the progress of his organisation, the miner as
the cage brings him to the surface of the ground, the aged pensioner
when he visits the post office with his cheque-book, the Irish
Catholic whose son sees the ranges of a University career thrown
open, the child who is protected in his home and in the street, the
peasant who desires to acquire a share of the soil he tills, the
youthful offender in the prison, the citizen as he takes his seat on
the county bench, the servant who is injured in domestic service, all
give the lie to that--all can bear witness to the workings of a
tireless social and humanitarian activity, which, directed by
knowledge and backed by power, tends steadily to make our country a
better place for the many, without at the same time making it a bad
place for the few.

But, if we have been powerful in the past, shall we then be powerless
in the future? Let the year that has now opened make its answer to
that. We shall see before many months are passed whether his Majesty's
Government, and the House of Commons, by which it is supported, do not
still possess effective means to carry out their policy, not only upon
those important political issues in which we have been for the time
being thwarted, but also in that still wider and, in my opinion, more
important field of social organisation into which, under the
leadership of the Prime Minister, we shall now proceed to advance.

I do not, of course, ignore the fact that the House of Lords has the
power, though not the constitutional right, to bring the government of
the country to a standstill by rejecting the provision which the
Commons make for the financial service of the year. That is a matter
which does not rest with us, it rests with them. If they want a speedy
dissolution, they know where to find one. If they really believe, as
they so loudly proclaim, that the country will hail them as its
saviours, they can put it to the proof. If they are ambitious to play
for stakes as high as any Second Chamber has ever risked, we s