in India for a greater sense of confidence and solidarity
between the people and the Government. We shall salute the sunrise of
South Africa united under the British Crown. And in Europe I trust
that Sir Edward Grey will have crowned his work at the Foreign Office
by establishing a better and kindlier feeling between the British and
the German peoples. That will be the record of policy beyond the seas
on which we shall appeal for judgment and for justice.

If it be said that, contrary to general expectation, our policy has
prospered better abroad than at home, you have not far to look for
the reason. Abroad we have enjoyed full responsibility, a free hand,
and fair-play; at home we have had a divided authority, a fettered
hand, and the reverse of fair-play. We have been hampered and we have
been harassed. We have done much; we could have done much more.

Our policy at home is less complete and less matured than it is
abroad. But it so happens that many of the most important steps which
we should now take, are of such a character that the House of Lords
will either not be able or will not be anxious to obstruct them, and
could not do so except by courting altogether novel dangers. The
social field lies open. There is no great country where the
organisation of industrial conditions more urgently demands attention.
Wherever the reformer casts his eyes he is confronted with a mass of
largely preventable and even curable suffering. The fortunate people
in Britain are more happy than any other equally numerous class have
been in the whole history of the world. I believe the left-out
millions are more miserable. Our vanguard enjoys all the delights of
all the ages. Our rearguard straggles out into conditions which are
crueller than barbarism. The unemployed artisan, the casual labourer,
and the casual labourer's wife and children, the sweated worker, the
infirm worker, the worker's widow, the under-fed child, the untrained,
undisciplined, and exploited boy labourer--it is upon these subjects
that our minds should dwell in the early days of 1909.

The Liberal Party has always known the joy which comes from serving
great causes. It must also cherish the joy which comes from making
good arrangements. We shall be all the stronger in the day of battle
if we can show that we have neglected no practicable measure by which
these evils can be diminished, and can prove by fact and not by words
that, while we strive for civil and reli