gious equality, we also labour
to build up--so far as social machinery can avail--tolerable basic
conditions for our fellow-countrymen. There lies the march, and those
who valiantly pursue it need never fear to lose their hold upon the
heart of Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] In the interval between this and the preceding speech the House of
Lords had rejected the Licensing Bill.

THE APPROACHING CONFLICT

NOTTINGHAM, _January 30, 1909_

(From _The Manchester Guardian_, by permission of the Editor.)

We are met together at a time when great exertions and a high
constancy are required from all who cherish and sustain the Liberal
cause. Difficulties surround us and dangers threaten from this side
and from that. You know the position which has been created by the
action of the House of Lords. Two great political Parties divide all
England between them in their conflicts. Now it is discovered that one
of these Parties possesses an unfair weapon--that one of these
Parties, after it is beaten at an election, after it is deprived of
the support and confidence of the country, after it is destitute of a
majority in the representative Assembly, when it sits in the shades of
Opposition without responsibility, or representative authority, under
the frown, so to speak, of the Constitution, nevertheless possesses a
weapon, an instrument, a tool, a utensil--call it what you will--with
which it can harass, vex, impede, affront, humiliate, and finally
destroy the most serious labours of the other. When it is realised
that the Party which possesses this prodigious and unfair advantage is
in the main the Party of the rich against the poor, of the classes and
their dependants against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the
happy, and the strong against the left-out and the shut-out millions
of the weak and poor, you will see how serious the constitutional
situation has become.

A period of supreme effort lies before you. The election with which
this Parliament will close, and towards which we are moving, is one
which is different in notable features from any other which we have
known. Looking back over the politics of the last thirty years, we
hardly ever see a Conservative Opposition approaching an election
without a programme, on paper at any rate, of social and democratic
reform. There was Lord Beaconsfield with his policy of "health and the
laws of health." There was the Tory democracy of Lord Randolph
Churchill in 1885