ng time
past, that they are an uncommonly poor lot all round.

It would be bad enough if a Party so destitute, according to its own
statement, of political merit were to return with the intention of
doing nothing but repeating and renewing our experiences under Mr.
Balfour's late Administration, of dragging through empty sessions, of
sneering at every philanthropic enthusiasm, of flinging a sop from
time to time to the brewers or the parsons or the landed classes. But
those would not be the consequences which would follow from the Tory
triumph. Consequences far more grave, immeasurably more disastrous,
would follow. We are not offered an alternative policy of progress, we
are not confronted even with a policy of standstill, we are confronted
with an organised policy of constructive reaction. We are to march
back into those shades from which we had hoped British civilisation
and British science had finally emerged.

If the Conservative Party win the election they have made it perfectly
clear that it is their intention to impose a complete protective
tariff, and to raise the money for ambitious armaments and colonial
projects by taxing the poor. They have declared, with a frankness
which is, at any rate, remarkable, that they will immediately proceed
to put a tax on bread, a tax on meat, a tax on timber, and an
innumerable schedule of taxes on all manufactured articles imported
into the United Kingdom; that is to say, that they will take by all
these taxes a large sum of money from the pockets of the wage-earners,
by making them pay more for the food they eat, the houses they live
in, and the comforts and conveniences which they require in their
homes, and that a great part of this large sum of money will be
divided between the landlords and the manufacturers in the shape of
increased profits; and even that part of it which does reach the
Exchequer is to be given back to these same classes in the shape of
reductions in income-tax and in direct taxation. If you face the
policy with which we are now threatened by the Conservative Party
fairly and searchingly, you will see that it is nothing less than a
deliberate attempt on the part of important sections of the propertied
classes to transfer their existing burdens to the shoulders of the
masses of the people, and to gain greater profits for the investment
of their capital by charging higher prices.

It is very natural that a Party nourishing such designs should be
appre