It would be bad enough if a Party so destitute, according to its own statement, of political merit were to return with the intention of doing nothing but repeating and renewing our experiences under Mr. Balfour’s late Administration, of dragging through empty sessions, of sneering at every philanthropic enthusiasm, of flinging a sop from time to time to the brewers or the parsons or the landed classes.  But those would not be the consequences which would follow from the Tory triumph.  Consequences far more grave, immeasurably more disastrous, would follow.  We are not offered an alternative policy of progress, we are not confronted even with a policy of standstill, we are confronted with an organised policy of constructive reaction.  We are to march back into those shades from which we had hoped British civilisation and British science had finally emerged.

If the Conservative Party win the election they have made it perfectly clear that it is their intention to impose a complete protective tariff, and to raise the money for ambitious armaments and colonial projects by taxing the poor.  They have declared, with a frankness which is, at any rate, remarkable, that they will immediately proceed to put a tax on bread, a tax on meat, a tax on timber, and an innumerable schedule of taxes on all manufactured articles imported into the United Kingdom; that is to say, that they will take by all these taxes a large sum of money from the pockets of the wage-earners, by making them pay more for the food they eat, the houses they live in, and the comforts and conveniences which they require in their homes, and that a great part of this large sum of money will be divided between the landlords and the manufacturers in the shape of increased profits; and even that part of it which does reach the Exchequer is to be given back to these same classes in the shape of reductions in income-tax and in direct taxation.  If you face the policy with which we are now threatened by the Conservative Party fairly and searchingly, you will see that it is nothing less than a deliberate attempt on the part of important sections of the propertied classes to transfer their existing burdens to the shoulders of the masses of the people, and to gain greater profits for the investment of their capital by charging higher prices.

It is very natural that a Party nourishing such designs should be apprehensive of criticism and of opposition; but I must say I have never heard of a Party which was in such a jumpy, nervous state as our opponents are at this present time.  If one is led in the course of a speech, as I sometimes am, to speak a little firmly and bluntly about the Conservative tariff reformers, they become almost speechless with indignation.  They are always in a state of incipient political apoplexy, while as for the so-called Liberal Unionists, whenever they are criticised, they never leave off whining and say that it is unchivalrous to attack them while Mr. Chamberlain is disabled.  Sorry