A period of supreme effort lies before you.  The election with which this Parliament will close, and towards which we are moving, is one which is different in notable features from any other which we have known.  Looking back over the politics of the last thirty years, we hardly ever see a Conservative Opposition approaching an election without a programme, on paper at any rate, of social and democratic reform.  There was Lord Beaconsfield with his policy of “health and the laws of health.”  There was the Tory democracy of Lord Randolph Churchill in 1885 and 1886, with large, far-reaching plans of Liberal and democratic reform, of a generous policy to Ireland, of retrenchment and reduction of expenditure upon naval and military armaments—­all promises to the people, and for the sake of which he resigned rather than play them false.  Then you have the elections of 1892 and 1895.  In each the Conservative Party, whether in office or opposition, was, under the powerful influence of Mr. Chamberlain, committed to most extensive social programmes, of what we should call Liberal and Radical reforms, like the Workmen’s Compensation Act and Old-Age Pensions, part of which were carried out by them and part by others.

But what social legislation, what plans of reform do the Conservative Party offer now to the working people of England if they will return them to power?  I have studied very carefully the speeches of their leaders—­if you can call them leaders—­and I have failed to discover a single plan of social reform or reconstruction.  Upon the grim and sombre problems of the Poor Law they have no policy whatever.  Upon unemployment no policy whatever; for the evils of intemperance no policy whatever, except to make sure of the public-house vote; upon the question of the land, monopolised as it is in the hands of so few, denied to so many, no policy whatever; for the distresses of Ireland, for the relations between the Irish and British peoples, no policy whatever unless it be coercion.  In other directions where they have a policy, it is worse than no policy.  For Scotland the Lords’ veto, for Wales a Church repugnant to the conscience of the overwhelming majority of the Welsh people, crammed down their throats at their own expense.

Yet we are told they are confident of victory, they are persuaded that the country has already forgotten the follies and even the crimes of the late Administration, and that the general contempt and disgust in which they were dismissed from power has already passed away.  They are already busy making their Cabinet, who is to be put in and, what is not less important, who is to be put out.  Lists of selection and lists of proscription are being framed.  The two factions into which they are divided, the Balfourites and the tariff reformers, are each acutely conscious of one another’s infirmities, and, through their respective organs, they have succeeded in proving to their apparent satisfaction what most of us have known, and some of us have said for a long time past, that they are an uncommonly poor lot all round.