industrial conditions more urgently demands attention.  Wherever the reformer casts his eyes he is confronted with a mass of largely preventable and even curable suffering.  The fortunate people in Britain are more happy than any other equally numerous class have been in the whole history of the world.  I believe the left-out millions are more miserable.  Our vanguard enjoys all the delights of all the ages.  Our rearguard straggles out into conditions which are crueller than barbarism.  The unemployed artisan, the casual labourer, and the casual labourer’s wife and children, the sweated worker, the infirm worker, the worker’s widow, the under-fed child, the untrained, undisciplined, and exploited boy labourer—­it is upon these subjects that our minds should dwell in the early days of 1909.

The Liberal Party has always known the joy which comes from serving great causes.  It must also cherish the joy which comes from making good arrangements.  We shall be all the stronger in the day of battle if we can show that we have neglected no practicable measure by which these evils can be diminished, and can prove by fact and not by words that, while we strive for civil and religious equality, we also labour to build up—­so far as social machinery can avail—­tolerable basic conditions for our fellow-countrymen.  There lies the march, and those who valiantly pursue it need never fear to lose their hold upon the heart of Britain.

FOOTNOTES: 

[13] In the interval between this and the preceding speech the House of Lords had rejected the Licensing Bill.

THE APPROACHING CONFLICT

NOTTINGHAM, January 30, 1909

(From The Manchester Guardian, by permission of the Editor.)

We are met together at a time when great exertions and a high constancy are required from all who cherish and sustain the Liberal cause.  Difficulties surround us and dangers threaten from this side and from that.  You know the position which has been created by the action of the House of Lords.  Two great political Parties divide all England between them in their conflicts.  Now it is discovered that one of these Parties possesses an unfair weapon—­that one of these Parties, after it is beaten at an election, after it is deprived of the support and confidence of the country, after it is destitute of a majority in the representative Assembly, when it sits in the shades of Opposition without responsibility, or representative authority, under the frown, so to speak, of the Constitution, nevertheless possesses a weapon, an instrument, a tool, a utensil—­call it what you will—­with which it can harass, vex, impede, affront, humiliate, and finally destroy the most serious labours of the other.  When it is realised that the Party which possesses this prodigious and unfair advantage is in the main the Party of the rich against the poor, of the classes and their dependants against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the happy, and the strong against the left-out and the shut-out millions of the weak and poor, you will see how serious the constitutional situation has become.