on every side by the onslaughts of a pitiless enemy.  The rear-guard is encumbered with wounded, obstructed by all the broken vehicles that have fallen back from the main line of the march, with all the stragglers and weaklings that have fallen by the way and can struggle forward no farther.  It is to the rear-guard of the army that attention should be directed.  There is the place for the bravest soldiers and the most trusted generals.  It is there that all the resources of military science and its heaviest artillery should be employed to extricate the rear-guard—­not to bring the main army back from good positions which it occupies, not to throw away the victory which it has won over the brute forces of nature—­but to bring the rear-guard in, to bring them into the level plain, so that they too may dwell in a land of peace and plenty.

That is the aim of the Liberal Party, and if we work together we will do something for its definite accomplishment.

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE

I

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE,[2] DOWNING STREET, May 7, 1907

The economic aspect of Imperial Preference, both from the point of view of trade and of finance, has already been dealt with very fully by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of Trade, and I desire in the few observations with which I shall venture to trespass upon the indulgence of the Conference to refer very little to the economic aspect, and rather to examine one or two points about this question of a political, of a Parliamentary, and almost of a diplomatic character.  I want to consider for a moment what would be the effect of a system of preferences upon the course of Parliamentary business.  The course of Colonial affairs in the House of Commons is not always very smooth or very simple, and I am bound to say that, having for eighteen months been responsible for the statements on behalf of this Department which are made to the House of Commons, I feel that enormous difficulties would be added to the discharge of Colonial business in the House of Commons, if we were to involve ourselves in a system of reciprocal preferences.  Every one will agree, from whatever part of the King’s dominions he comes, or to whatever Party he belongs, that Colonial affairs suffer very much when brought into the arena of British Party politics.  Sometimes it is one Party and sometimes it is another which is constrained to interfere in the course of purely Colonial affairs, and such interferences are nearly always fraught with vexation and inconvenience to the Dominions affected.