ecting man should claim, to give
their vote on grand and cardinal issues according to their faith and
their conscience. And in order that those who would refuse to be bound
by these dishonouring conditions may be smelt out and excluded from
the House of Commons, a secret society of nameless but probably
interested busybodies is hard at work in all the dirtiest sewers of
political intrigue.

But, after all, these methods are an inseparable part of the process
of carrying a protectionist tariff. The whole question resolves itself
into a matter of "business is business," and the predatory interests
which have banded themselves together to finance and organise the
tariff campaign cannot be expected to put up with the conscientious
scruples and reasonable hesitations of Members of Parliament. It will
be a cash transaction throughout, with large profits and quick
delivery. Every little would-be monopolist in the country is going to
have his own association to run his own particular trade. Every
constituency will be forced to join in the scramble, and to secure
special favours at the expense of the commonwealth for its special
branches of industry. All the elections of the future will turn on
tariffs. Why, you can see the thing beginning already. That egregious
Tariff Commission have been dividing all the loot among themselves
before the battle has been won--dividing the lion's skin while the
beast lives--and I was reading only the other day that the
Conservatives of Norwood have decided that they could not support
their Member any longer, because, forsooth, he would not pledge
himself to vote for a special tax on foreign imported chairs and
window panes. It is the same in every country.

Such is the great conspiracy with which the British democracy is now
confronted--an attempt to place the main burden of taxation upon the
shoulders of wage-earners and not on income-drawers, a disastrous blow
at the prosperity, the freedom, the flexibility, and the expansive
power of British industry, and a deadly injury to the purity of
English public life. The Conservative Party tell us that if they win
the victory they will screw a protective tariff on our necks. What do
we say? What of the House of Lords? We say that if we win, we will
smash to pieces the veto of the House of Lords. If we should obtain a
majority at the next election--and I have good hopes that if we act
with wisdom and with union, and, above all, with courage, we shall