Subject to such a constitutional outrage as I have indicated, his Majesty’s Government will claim their right and use their power to present the Liberal case as a whole to the judgment of the whole body of electors.  That case is already largely developed.  How utterly have all those predictions been falsified that a Liberal Government would be incapable of the successful conduct of Imperial affairs!  Whether you look at our position in Europe, or at the difficult conduct of Indian administration, or the relations which have been preserved, and in some cases restored, with our self-governing Colonies, the policy of the Government has been attended with so much success that it has not only commanded the approval of impartial persons, but has silenced political criticism itself.

It was in South Africa that we were most of all opposed and most of all distrusted, and by a singular inversion it is in South Africa that the most brilliant and memorable results have been achieved.  Indeed, I think that the gift of the Transvaal and Orange River Constitutions and the great settlement resulting therefrom will be by itself as a single event sufficient to vindicate in the eyes of future generations the administration of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and to dignify his memory in Parliaments and periods which we shall not see.  But our work abroad is not yet completed, has not yet come to its full fruition.  If we should continue, as I expect we shall, to direct public affairs for the full five years which are the normal and the healthy period of British Administrations, we may look for a further advance and improvement in all the great external spheres of Imperial policy.  We may look in India for a greater sense of confidence and solidarity between the people and the Government.  We shall salute the sunrise of South Africa united under the British Crown.  And in Europe I trust that Sir Edward Grey will have crowned his work at the Foreign Office by establishing a better and kindlier feeling between the British and the German peoples.  That will be the record of policy beyond the seas on which we shall appeal for judgment and for justice.

If it be said that, contrary to general expectation, our policy has prospered better abroad than at home, you have not far to look for the reason.  Abroad we have enjoyed full responsibility, a free hand, and fair-play; at home we have had a divided authority, a fettered hand, and the reverse of fair-play.  We have been hampered and we have been harassed.  We have done much; we could have done much more.

Our policy at home is less complete and less matured than it is abroad.  But it so happens that many of the most important steps which we should now take, are of such a character that the House of Lords will either not be able or will not be anxious to obstruct them, and could not do so except by courting altogether novel dangers.  The social field lies open.  There is no great country where the organisation of