d not plunged into the tumult of war in South
Africa, they would very shortly have been dismissed from power. As for
the Government of 1900, in the fourth year of Mr. Balfour's late
Administration, I am sure I could not easily do justice to the
melancholy position which they occupied.

Where do we stand to-day at the end of our fourth year of office? I
put it plainly to you to consider, whether one is not justified in
saying that we occupy a position of unexampled strength at the present
time. The Government is strong in its administrative record, which
reveals no single serious or striking mistake in all the complicated
conduct of affairs. There have been no regrettable incidents by land
or sea and none of those personal conflicts between the high officials
that used to occur so frequently under a late dispensation. We have
had no waste of public treasure and no bloodshed. We are strong in
the consciousness of a persistent effort to sweep away anomalies and
inequalities, to redress injustice, to open more widely to the masses
of the people the good chances in life, and to safeguard them against
its evil chances. We also claim that we are strong in the support and
enthusiasm of a majority of our fellow-countrymen. We are strong in
the triumph of our policy in South Africa; most of all we are strong
in the hopes and plans which we have formed for the future.

It is about this future that I will speak to you this afternoon. And
let me tell you that when I think about it, I do not feel at all
inclined to plead exhaustion in consequence of the exertions we have
made, or to dwell upon the successes which we have had in the past, or
to survey with complacency the record of the Government or to ask you
to praise us for the work which we have done. No; when I think of the
work which lies before us, upon which we have already entered, of the
long avenues of social reconstruction and reorganisation which open
out in so many directions and ever more broadly before us, of the
hideous squalor and misery which darken and poison the life of
Britain, of the need of earnest action, of the prospects of effective
and immediate action--when I dwell upon this, it is not of feelings of
lassitude or exhaustion that I am conscious, but only of a vehement
impulse to press onwards.

The social conditions of the British people in the early years of the
twentieth century cannot be contemplated without deep anxiety. The
anxiety is keen because i