Liberalism and the Social Problem Part 13

The Budget is the great political issue of the day. It involves all other questions; it has brought all other issues to a decisive test.

_The Daily Mail_ has stated that the Budget is hung up. So it is. It is hung up in triumph over the High Peak; it is hung up as a banner of victory over Dumfries, over Cleveland, and over Mid-Derby. The miniature general election just concluded has shown that the policy embodied in the Budget, and which inspires the Budget, has vivified and invigorated the Liberal Party, has brought union where there was falling away, has revived enthusiasm where apathy was creeping in.

You cannot but have been impressed with the increasing sense of reality which political affairs have acquired during the last few months. What is it they are doing at Westminster? Across and beyond the complicated details of finance, the thousand amendments and more which cover the order paper, the absurd obstruction, the dry discussions in Committee, the interminable repet.i.tion of divisions, the angry scenes which flash up from time to time, the white-faced members sitting the whole night through and walking home worn out in the full light of morning--across and beyond all this, can you not discern a people's cause in conflict? Can you not see a great effort to make a big step forward towards that brighter and more equal world for which, be sure, those who come after us will hold our names in honour? That is the issue which is being decided from week to week in Westminster now, and it is in support of that cause that we are asking from you earnest and unswerving allegiance.

I do not think that there is any great country in the world where there are so many strong forces of virtue and vitality as there are in our own country. But there is scarcely any country in the world where there is so little organisation. Look at our neighbour and friendly rival Germany. I see that great State organised for peace and organised for war to a degree to which we cannot pretend. We are not organised as a nation, so far as I can see, for anything except party politics, and even for purposes of party politics we are not organised so well as they are in the United States. A more scientific, a more elaborate, a more comprehensive social organisation is indispensable to our country if we are to surmount the trials and stresses which the future years will bring. It is this organisation that the policy of the Budget will create. It is this organisation that the loss of the Budget will destroy.

But, we are told, "it presses too heavily upon the land-owning cla.s.ses." I have heard it said that in the French Revolution, if the French n.o.bility, instead of going to the scaffold with such dignity and fort.i.tude, had struggled and cried and begged for mercy, even the hard hearts of the Paris crowd would have been melted, and the Reign of Terror would have come to an end. There is happily no chance of our aristocracy having to meet such a fate in this loyal-hearted, law-abiding, sober-minded country. They are, however, asked to discharge a certain obligation. They are asked to contribute their share to the expenses of the State. That is all they are asked to do.

Yet what an outcry, what tribulation, what tears, what wrath, what weeping and wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth, and all because they are asked to pay their share.

One would suppose, to listen to them, that the whole of the taxation was being raised from, or was about to be raised from the owners of agricultural estates. What are the facts? Nearly half the taxation of the present Budget is raised by the taxation of the luxuries of the working cla.s.ses. Are they indignant? Are they crying out? Not in the least. They are perfectly ready to pay their share, and to pay it in a manly way, and two hundred thousand of them took the trouble to go to Hyde Park the other day in order to say so.

What are the facts about agricultural land? It is absolutely exempt from the operations of the new land taxation so long as agricultural land is worth no more for other purposes than it is for agricultural purposes: that is to say, so long as agricultural land is agricultural land and not urban or suburban land, it pays none of the new land taxation. It is only when its value for building purposes makes its continued agricultural use wasteful and uneconomic, it is only when it becomes building land and not agricultural land, and when because of that change it rises enormously in price and value--it is only then that it contributes under the new land taxation its share to the public of the increment value which the public has given to it.

Then take the death duties. One would suppose from what one hears in London and from the outcry that is raised, that the whole of the death duties were collected from the peers and from the county families.

Again I say, look at the facts. The Inland Revenue report for last year shows that 313,000,000 of property pa.s.sing on death became subject to death duties, and of that sum 228,000,000 was personalty and not real estate, leaving only 85,000,000 real estate, and of that 85,000,000 only 22,000,000 was agricultural land. These death duties are represented as being levied entirely upon a small cla.s.s of landed gentry and n.o.bility, but, as a matter of fact, there is collected from that cla.s.s in respect of agricultural land only seven per cent. of the whole amount of money which the Exchequer derives from death duties.[19]

I decline, however, to judge the question of the House of Lords simply and solely by any action they may resolve to take upon the Budget. We must look back upon the past. We remember the ill-usage and the humiliation which the great majority that was returned by the nation to support Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1906 has sustained in the last three years at the hands of the House of Lords. That a.s.sembly must be judged by their conduct as a whole. Lord Lansdowne has explained, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the nation, that he claimed no right on behalf of the House of Lords to "mince" the Budget. All, he tells us, he has asked for, so far as he is concerned, is the right to "wince"

when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim. It is for the Conservative Party to judge whether it is a very heroic claim for one of their leaders to make. If they are satisfied with the wincing Marquis, we have no reason to protest. We should greatly regret to cause Lord Lansdowne and his friends any pain. We have no wish whatever to grudge them any relief which they may obtain by wincing or even by squirming. We accord them the fullest liberty in that respect.

After all, the House of Lords has made others wince in its time. Even in the present Parliament they have performed some notable exploits.

When the House of Lords rejected the Bill to prevent one man casting his vote two or three times over in the same election, every one in this country who desired to see a full and true representation of the people in Parliament might well have winced. When the House of Lords rejected or mutilated beyond repair the Land Valuation Bills for England and for Scotland, every land reformer in the country might have winced. When the House of Lords destroyed Mr. Birrell's Education Bill of 1906, every man who cared for religious equality and educational peace might have winced. When they contemptuously flung out, without even discussing it or examining it, the Licensing Bill, upon which so many hopes were centred and upon which so many months of labour had been spent, they sent a message of despair to every temperance reformer, to every social and philanthropic worker, to every church, to every chapel, to every little Sunday school throughout the land. If it should now prove to be their turn, if the measure they have meted out to others should be meted out to them again, however much we might regret their sorrows, we could not but observe the workings of poetic justice.

But I hope the House of Lords and those who back them will not be under any illusions about the Budget and the position of the Government. The Government is in earnest about the Budget. The Budget carries with it their fortunes and the fortunes of the Liberal Party.

Careful argument, reasonable amendment, amicable concession, not affecting the principles at stake--all these we offer while the Bill is in the House of Commons. But when all that is said and done, as the Bill leaves the House of Commons so it must stand. It would be a great pity if Lord Curzon, the Indian pro-Consul, or the London _Spectator_--it would be a great pity if those potentates were to make the great mistake of supposing that the Government would acquiesce in the excision of the land clauses of the Budget by the House of Lords.

Such a course is unthinkable. Any Liberal Government which adopted it would be swiftly ruined. The land proposals of the Government have not been made without long deliberation and full responsibility. We shall not fail to carry them effectively through the House of Commons; still less shall we accept any amendment at the hands of the House of Lords.

Is it not an extraordinary thing that upon the Budget we should even be discussing at all the action of the House of Lords? The House of Lords is an inst.i.tution absolutely foreign to the spirit of the age and to the whole movement of society. It is not perhaps surprising in a country so fond of tradition, so proud of continuity, as ourselves that a feudal a.s.sembly of t.i.tled persons, with so long a history and so many famous names, should have survived to exert an influence upon public affairs at the present time. We see how often in England the old forms are reverently preserved after the forces by which they are sustained and the uses to which they were put and the dangers against which they were designed have pa.s.sed away. A state of gradual decline was what the average Englishman had come to a.s.sociate with the House of Lords. Little by little, we might have expected, it would have ceased to take a controversial part in practical politics. Year by year it would have faded more completely into the past to which it belongs until, like Jack-in-the-Green or Punch-and-Judy, only a picturesque and fitfully lingering memory would have remained.

And during the last ten years of Conservative government this was actually the case. But now we see the House of Lords flushed with the wealth of the modern age, armed with a party caucus, fortified, revived, resuscitated, a.s.serting its claims in the harshest and in the crudest manner, claiming to veto or destroy even without discussion any legislation, however important, sent to them by any majority, however large, from any House of Commons, however newly elected. We see these unconscionable claims exercised with a frank and undisguised regard to party interest, to cla.s.s interest, and to personal interest.

We see the House of Lords using the power which they should not hold at all, which if they hold at all, they should hold in trust for all, to play a shrewd, fierce, aggressive party game of electioneering and casting their votes according to the interest of the particular political party to which, body and soul, they belong.

It is now suggested--publicly in some quarters, privately in many quarters--that the House of Lords will not only use without scruple their veto in legislation but they propose to extend their prerogatives; they are going to lay their hands upon finance, and if they choose they will reject or amend the Budget. I have always thought it a great pity that Mr. Gladstone made a compromise with the House of Lords over the Franchise Bill of 1884. I regret, and I think many of my hon. friends in the House of Commons will regret, looking back upon the past, that the present Government did not advise a dissolution of Parliament upon the rejection of the Education Bill in 1906. A dissolution in those circ.u.mstances would not merely have involved the measure under discussion, but if the Government of that day had received the support of the electors at the poll their victory must have carried with it that settlement and reform of the relations between the two Houses of Parliament which is necessary to secure the effective authority of the House of Commons. That is the question which, behind and beyond all others, even the Budget, even Free Trade, even the land--that is the question which, as the Prime Minister has said, is the dominant issue of our time.

Opportunity is fickle, opportunity seldom returns; but I think you will agree with me that if the House of Lords, not content with its recent exploits with the legislative veto, were to seize on the new power which its backers claim for it over finance--if, not content with the extreme a.s.sertions of its own privileges, it were to invade the most ancient privileges of the House of Commons--if, as an act of cla.s.s warfare, for it would be nothing less, the House of Lords were to destroy the Budget, and thus not only create a Const.i.tutional deadlock of novel and unmeasured gravity, but also plunge the whole finance of the country into unparalleled confusion, then, in my judgment, opportunity, clear, brilliant, and decisive, would return, and we should have the best chance we have ever had of dealing with them once for all.

These circ.u.mstances may never occur. I don't believe they will occur.

If we only all stand firm together I believe the Budget will be carried. I believe the Budget will vindicate the strength of the Government supported by the House of Commons. I believe it will vindicate the financial strength of this great country. I don't believe, if we pursue our course without wavering or weakening, there is any force in this country which can stand against us. The Conservative Whip in the House of Lords, a friend of mine, Lord Churchill, said the other day that the House of Lords when they received the Budget would do their duty. I hope they will. But in any case be sure of this--that the Government and the House of Commons will do their duty. Then if there is anything more to be done, see that you are ready to do your duty too.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Since the date of this speech the new concessions, doubling the allowance exempted from income tax for the expenses of agricultural estates, have been made public.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BUDGET

LEICESTER, _September 5, 1909_

(From _The Times_, by permission.)

I have done my best to study the political history of the last forty or fifty years, and I cannot find any Government which, at the end of its fourth year, enjoyed the same measure of support, prestige, and good fortune that we do. The only Administration which could compare in the importance and the volume of its legislation with the present Government is Mr. Gladstone's great Government of 1868. That was a Government of measures and of men; but no measure of that Government could equal in importance the Old-Age Pensions Act which we have placed on the Statute-book. The settlement of the Irish Church question by Disestablishment was not a more baffling and intricate business, than the settlement of the Irish University question which Mr. Birrell has achieved. The labour legislation of the Government of 1868, although very important, shows nothing which equals in importance the Trades Disputes Act, which we have carried through, and Mr. Cardwell's reforms in army organisation were not more successful, and were certainly much less generally accepted, than those which have been effected by Mr. Haldane. In the fourth year of its administration the Government of 1868 was genuinely unpopular. It had quarrelled with the Nonconformists without gaining the support of the Church; it had offended the liquor interest without satisfying the Temperance forces in the country; it had disturbed and offended many vested interests without arousing popular enthusiasm.

Indeed, if you look back, you will find that the fourth year in the history of a Government is always a very critical and has often been a very unfortunate year. It is quite true that Mr. Disraeli's Government, which a.s.sumed office in 1874, did enjoy in its fourth year a fleeting flush of success, which, however, proved illusory. With that single exception, every other modern Government that has lasted so long, has occupied an unsatisfactory position in its fourth year.

The Government of 1880 in the year 1884 was brought very low, and was deeply involved in disastrous enterprises beyond the sea which ultimately resulted in sorrow and misfortune. The Conservative Government which took office in 1886 was by the year 1890, owing to its strange proceedings against Mr. Parnell, brought to the depths of humiliation. The Government of 1895 was in the year 1899 thoroughly unpopular, and if they had not plunged into the tumult of war in South Africa, they would very shortly have been dismissed from power. As for the Government of 1900, in the fourth year of Mr. Balfour's late Administration, I am sure I could not easily do justice to the melancholy position which they occupied.

Where do we stand to-day at the end of our fourth year of office? I put it plainly to you to consider, whether one is not justified in saying that we occupy a position of unexampled strength at the present time. The Government is strong in its administrative record, which reveals no single serious or striking mistake in all the complicated conduct of affairs. There have been no regrettable incidents by land or sea and none of those personal conflicts between the high officials that used to occur so frequently under a late dispensation. We have had no waste of public treasure and no bloodshed. We are strong in the consciousness of a persistent effort to sweep away anomalies and inequalities, to redress injustice, to open more widely to the ma.s.ses of the people the good chances in life, and to safeguard them against its evil chances. We also claim that we are strong in the support and enthusiasm of a majority of our fellow-countrymen. We are strong in the triumph of our policy in South Africa; most of all we are strong in the hopes and plans which we have formed for the future.

It is about this future that I will speak to you this afternoon. And let me tell you that when I think about it, I do not feel at all inclined to plead exhaustion in consequence of the exertions we have made, or to dwell upon the successes which we have had in the past, or to survey with complacency the record of the Government or to ask you to praise us for the work which we have done. No; when I think of the work which lies before us, upon which we have already entered, of the long avenues of social reconstruction and reorganisation which open out in so many directions and ever more broadly before us, of the hideous squalor and misery which darken and poison the life of Britain, of the need of earnest action, of the prospects of effective and immediate action--when I dwell upon this, it is not of feelings of la.s.situde or exhaustion that I am conscious, but only of a vehement impulse to press onwards.

The social conditions of the British people in the early years of the twentieth century cannot be contemplated without deep anxiety. The anxiety is keen because it arises out of uncertainty. It is the gnawing anxiety of suspense. What is the destiny of our country to be?

Nothing is settled either for or against us. We have no reason to despair; still less have we any reason to be self-satisfied. All is still in our hands for good or for ill. We have the power to-day to choose our fortune, and I believe there is no nation in the world, perhaps there never has been in history, any nation which at one and the same moment was confronted with such opposite possibilities, was threatened on the one hand by more melancholy disaster, and cheered on the other by more bright, yet not unreasonable hopes. The two roads are open. We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on in the old happy-go-lucky way, the richer cla.s.ses ever growing in wealth and in number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I think there is nothing before us but savage strife between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, with an increasing disorganisation, with an increasing destruction of human strength and human virtue--nothing, in fact, but that dual degeneration which comes from the simultaneous waste of extreme wealth and of extreme want.

Now we have had over here lately colonial editors from all the Colonies of the British Empire, and what is the opinion which they expressed as to the worst thing they saw in the old country? The representatives of every Colony have expressed the opinion that the worst they saw here, was the extreme of poverty side by side with the extreme of luxury. Do not you think it is very impressive to find an opinion like that, expressed in all friends.h.i.+p and sincerity, by men of our own race who have come from lands which are so widely scattered over the surface of the earth, and are the product of such varied conditions? Is it not impressive to find that they are all agreed, coming as they do from Australia, or Canada, or South Africa, or New Zealand, that the greatest danger to the British Empire and to the British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it is not the Yellow peril nor the Black peril nor any danger in the wide circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay--the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilised poverty, the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase of vulgar, joyless luxury--here are the enemies of Britain. Beware lest they shatter the foundations of her power.

Then look at the other side, look at the forces for good, the moral forces, the spiritual forces, the civic, the scientific, the patriotic forces which make for order and harmony and health and life. Are they not tremendous too? Do we not see them everywhere, in every town, in every cla.s.s, in every creed, strong forces worthy of Old England, coming to her rescue, fighting for her soul? That is the situation in our country as I see it this afternoon--two great armies evenly matched, locked in fierce conflict with each other all along the line, swaying backwards and forwards in strife--and for my part I am confident that the right will win, that the generous influences will triumph over the selfish influences, that the organising forces will devour the forces of degeneration, and that the British people will emerge triumphant from their struggles to clear the road and lead the march amongst the foremost nations of the world.

Well, now, I want to ask you a question. I daresay there are some of you who do not like this or that particular point in the Budget, who do not like some particular argument or phrase which some of us may have used in advocating or defending it. But it is not of these details that I speak; the question I want each of you to ask himself is this: On which side of this great battle which I have described to you, does the Budget count? Can any of you, looking at it broadly and as a whole, looking on the policy which surrounds it, and which depends upon it, looking at the arguments by which it is defended, as well as the arguments by which it is opposed--can any one doubt that the Budget in its essential character and meaning, in its spirit and in its practical effect, would be a tremendous reinforcement, almost like a new army coming up at the end of the day, upon the side of all those forces and influences which are fighting for the life and health and progress of our race?

In the speeches which I have made about the country since the Budget was introduced I have explained and defended in detail the special financial proposals upon which we rely to provide the revenue for the year. You are, no doubt, generally acquainted with them. There is the increase in the income-tax of twopence, the further discrimination between earned and unearned income, and the super-tax of sixpence on incomes of over 5,000 a year. There are the increases in estate duties and in the legacy duties, and there are the new duties on stamps; there is the tax on motor-cars and petrol, the proceeds of which are to go to the improvement of the roads and the abatement of the dust nuisance; there are the taxes on working cla.s.s indulgences--namely, the increase in the tax on tobacco and on whisky, which enable the working man to pay his share, as indeed he has shown himself very ready to do; there are the taxes on liquor licences, which are designed to secure for the State a certain special proportion of the monopoly value created wholly by the State and with which it should never have parted; and, lastly, there are the three taxes upon the unearned increment in land, upon undeveloped land, upon the unearned increment in the reversion of leases, and then there is the tax upon mining royalties.

Now these are the actual proposals of the Budget, and I do not think that, if I had the time, I should find any great difficulty in showing you that there are many good arguments, a great volume of sound reason, which can be adduced in support of every one of these proposals. Certainly there is no difficulty in showing that since the Budget has been introduced there has been no shock to credit, there has been no dislocation of business, there has been no setback in the beginning of that trade revival about the approach of which I spoke to you, when I was in Leicester at the beginning of the year and which there are now good reasons for believing is actually in progress. The taxes which have been proposed have not laid any burden upon the necessaries of life like bread or meat, nor have they laid any increased burden upon comforts like tea and sugar. There is nothing in these taxes which makes it harder for a labouring man to keep up his strength or for the small man of the middle cla.s.s to maintain his style of living. There is nothing in these taxes which makes it more difficult for any hard-working person, whether he works with his hands or his head, to keep a home together in decent comfort. No impediment has been placed by these taxes upon enterprise; no hampering restrictions interrupt the flow of commerce. On the contrary, if the tax upon spirits should result in a diminution in the consumption of strong drink, depend upon it, the State will gain, and all cla.s.ses will gain. The health of millions of people, the happiness of hundreds of thousands of homes, will be sensibly improved, and money that would have been spent upon whisky will flow into other channels, much less likely to produce evil and much more likely to produce employment. And if the tax on undeveloped land, on land, that is to say, which is kept out of the market, which is held up idly in order that its owner may reap unearned profit by the exertions and through the needs of the surrounding community, if that tax should have the effect of breaking this monopoly and of making land cheaper, a tremendous check on every form of productive activity will have been removed. All sorts of enterprises will become economically possible which are now impossible owing to the artificially high price of land, and new forces will be liberated to stimulate the wealth of the nation.

But it is not on these points that I wish to dwell this afternoon. I want to tell you about the meaning and the spirit of the Budget. Upon the Budget and upon the policy of the Budget depends a far-reaching plan of social organisation designed to give a greater measure of security to all cla.s.ses, but particularly to the labouring cla.s.ses.

In the centre of that plan stands the policy of national insurance.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been for more than a year at work upon this scheme, and it is proposed--I hope next year, if there is a next year--it is proposed, working through the great friendly societies, which have done so much invaluable work on these lines, to make sure that, by the aid of a substantial subvention from the State, even the poorest steady worker or the poorest family shall be enabled to make provision against sickness, against invalidity, and for the widows and orphans who may be left behind.

Side by side with this is the scheme of insurance against unemployment which I hope to have the honour of pa.s.sing through Parliament next year. The details of that scheme are practically complete, and it will enable upwards of two and a quarter millions of workers in the most uncertain trades of this country--trades like s.h.i.+p-building, engineering, and building--to secure unemployment benefits, which in a great majority of cases will be sufficient to tide them over the season of unemployment. This scheme in its compulsory form is limited to certain great trades like those I have specified, but it will be open to other trades, to trade unions, to workers' a.s.sociations of various kinds, or even to individuals to insure with the State Unemployment Insurance Office against unemployment on a voluntary basis, and to secure, through the State subvention, much better terms than it would be possible for them to obtain at the present time.

It would be impossible to work a scheme of unemployment insurance except in conjunction with some effective method of finding work and of testing willingness to work, and that can only be afforded by a national system of labour exchanges. That Bill has already pa.s.sed through Parliament, and in the early months of next year we shall hope to bring it into operation by opening, all over the country, a network of labour exchanges connected with each other and with the centre by telephone. We believe this organisation may secure for labour--and, after all, labour is the only thing the great majority of people have to sell--it will secure for labour, for the first time, that free and fair market which almost all other commodities of infinitely less consequence already enjoy, and will replace the present wasteful, heartbreaking wanderings aimlessly to and fro in search of work by a scientific system; and we believe that the influence of this system in the end must tend to standardising the conditions of wages and employment throughout the country.

Lastly, in connection with unemployment I must direct your attention to the Development Bill, which is now before Parliament, the object of which is to provide a fund for the economic development of our country, for the encouragement of agriculture, for afforestation, for the colonisation of England, and for the making of roads, harbours, and other public works. And I should like to draw your attention to a very important clause in that Bill, which says that the prosecution of these works shall be regulated, as far as possible, by the conditions of the labour market, so that in a very bad year of unemployment they can be expanded, so as to increase the demand for labour at times of exceptional slackness, and thus correct and counterbalance the cruel fluctuations of the labour market. The large sums of money which will be needed for these purposes are being provided by the Budget of Mr.

Lloyd-George, and will be provided in an expanding volume in the years to come through the natural growth of the taxes we are imposing.

I have hitherto been speaking of the industrial organisation of insurance schemes, labour exchanges, and economic development. Now I come to that great group of questions which are concerned with the prevention and relief of distress. We have before us the reports of the majority and minority of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and we see there a great and urgent body of reforms which require the attention of Parliament. The first and most costly step in the relief of distress has already been taken by the Old-Age Pensions Act, supplemented, as it will be if the Budget pa.s.ses, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the _bona fide_ unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their management and care.

But what I want to show you, if I have made my argument clear, is that all these schemes--which I can do little more than mention this afternoon, each one of which is important--are connected one with the other, fit into one another at many points, that they are part of a concerted and interdependent system for giving a better, fairer social organisation to the ma.s.ses of our fellow-countrymen. Unemployment insurance, which will help to tide a workman over a bad period, is intimately and necessarily a.s.sociated with the labour exchanges which will help to find him work and which will test his willingness to work. This, again, will be affected by the workings of the Development Bill, which, as I told you, we trust may act as a counterpoise to the rocking of the industrial boat and give a greater measure of stability to the labour market.

The fact that everybody in the country, man and woman alike, will be ent.i.tled, with scarcely any exception, to an old-age pension from the State at the age of seventy--that fact makes it ever so much cheaper to insure against invalidity or infirmity up to the age of seventy.

And, with the various insurance schemes which are in preparation, we ought to be able to set up a complete ladder, an unbroken bridge or causeway, as it were, along which the whole body of the people may move with a certain a.s.sured measure of security and safety against hazards and misfortunes. Then, if provision can be arranged for widows and orphans who are left behind, that will be a powerful remedy against the sweating evil; for, as you know, these helpless people, who in every country find employment in particular trades, are unable to make any fair bargain for themselves, and their labour, and this consequently leads to the great evils which have very often been brought to the notice of Parliament. That, again, will fit in with the Anti-Sweating Bill we are pa.s.sing through Parliament this year.

Now, I want you to see what a large, coherent plan we are trying to work out, and I want you to believe that the object of the plan and the results of it will be to make us a stronger as well as a happier nation. I was reading the other day some of the speeches made by Bismarck--a man who, perhaps more than any other, built up in his own lifetime the strength of a great nation--speeches which he made during the time when he was introducing into Germany those vast insurance schemes, now deemed by all cla.s.ses and parties in Germany to be of the utmost consequence and value. "I should like to see the State"

(said Prince Bismarck in 1881), "which for the most part consists of Christians, penetrated to some extent by the principles of the religion which it professes, especially as concerns the help one gives to his neighbour, and sympathy with the lot of old and suffering people." Then, again, in the year 1884 he said: "The whole matter centres in the question, 'Is it the duty of the State or is it not to provide for its helpless citizens?' I maintain that it is its duty, that it is the duty, not only of the 'Christian' State, as I ventured once to call it when speaking of 'Practical Christianity,' but of every State."

There are a great many people who will tell you that such a policy, as I have been endeavouring to outline to you this afternoon, will not make our country stronger, because it will sap the self-reliance of the working cla.s.ses. It is very easy for rich people to preach the virtues of self-reliance to the poor. It is also very foolish, because, as a matter of fact, the wealthy, so far from being self-reliant, are dependent on the constant attention of scores, and sometimes even hundreds, of persons who are employed in waiting upon them and ministering to their wants. I think you will agree with me, on the other hand--knowing what you do of the life of this city and of the working cla.s.ses generally--that there are often trials and misfortunes which come upon working-cla.s.s families quite beyond any provision which their utmost unaided industry and courage could secure for them. Left to themselves, left absolutely to themselves, they must be smashed to pieces, if any exceptional disaster or accident, like recurring sickness, like the death or incapacity of the breadwinner, or prolonged or protracted unemployment, fall upon them.

There is no chance of making people self-reliant by confronting them with problems and with trials beyond their capacity to surmount. You do not make a man self-reliant by crus.h.i.+ng him under a steam roller.

Nothing in our plans will relieve people from the need of making every exertion to help themselves, but, on the contrary, we consider that we shall greatly stimulate their efforts by giving them for the first time a practical a.s.surance that those efforts will be crowned with success.