...what is the advice I have to offer you? the first head is this, that you have to clean your slate. (Cheers.) It is six years now since you were in office. It is 16 years since you were in anything like power, and it does seem to me that under these circumstances the primary duty of the Liberal party is to wipe its slate clean and consider very carefully what it is going to write on it in future (Cheers.) Now, there will be some who will not agree with that advice, for I will tell you a secret. There are a great many Tory Liberals in the Liberal party. There is a Toryism in Liberalism as great and as deep, though as unconscious, as any in the Carlton Club. There are men who sit still with the fly-blown phylacteries bound round their obsolete policy, who do not remember that, while they have been mumbling their incantations to themselves, the world has been marching and revolving, and if they have any hope of leading or guiding it they must march and move with it too. (Cheers.) I, therefore, hope that when you have to write on your clean slate you will write on it a policy adapted to 1901 or 1902 and not a policy adapted to 1892 or 1893. (Laughter.)...The last piece of advice I shall venture to offer the Liberal party is this, that they shall not dissociate themselves, even indirectly or unconsciously, or by any careless words, from the new sentiment of Empire which occupies the nation. To many the word "Empire" is suspect as indicating aggression and greed and violence and the characteristics of other empires that the world has known; but the sentiment that is represented now by Empire in these islands has nothing of that in it. (Cheers.) It is a passion of affection and family feeling, of pride and of hopefulness; and the statesman, however great he may be, who dissociates himself from that feeling must not be surprised if the nation dissociates itself from him. (Cheers.)...my watchword if I were in office at this moment would be summed up in one single word—the word "efficiency." (Cheers.) If we have not learned from this war that we have greatly lagged behind in efficiency we have learned nothing, and our treasure and our lives are thrown away unless we learn the lesson which the war has given us. (Hear, hear.)...there is another branch of national efficiency in which I think an energetic Government might take a great part, in the way of stimulation and inquiry—I mean our commerce and our industry. (Hear, hear.)...I believe that in that branch of our national efficiency there is much to be done by an energetic Government. But last, and, perhaps, greatest of all, there comes a question that underlies the efficiency of our nation—not of our services, not of any particular branch of our nation, but of the nation as a whole—I mean education (loud cheers), in which we are lagging sadly, and with which we shall have peacefully to fight other nations with weapons like the bow and arrow if we do not progress. We have nothing like a national system, but a great chaos of almost haphazard arrangement. Then there is another question closely allied to it, though not in appearance perhaps, the question of the housing of the people. Well, you will, I think, get nothing from the present Government, and you will get nothing from any Government that does not throw its heart and soul into the work. And, last of all, but by no means least, there comes that question of temperance (cheers), which means so much to us all in the extravagance, in the degradation, in the physical degeneracy of our race. That is a question which a firm and energetic Government could, I will not say settle, but make a great advance towards settling, if it grasped the nettle firmly and refused to listen to the fanatics on either side, and made up its mind that, come well or ill, even if it sacrificed for a moment its majority or its power, it would not leave office without having made an effort in the direction I have indicated. (Cheers.)
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Speech at Chesterfield (16 December 1901), reported in The Times (17 December 1901), p. 10.Archibald Primrose Rosebery
» Archibald Primrose Rosebery - all quotes »
...it is a revolution without any mandate from the people. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, it is in the first place a revolution in fiscal methods...this Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is that it is a new Liberalism and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these. (Cheers.) Who was the greatest, not merely the greatest Liberal, but the greatest financier that this country has ever known? (A voice, "Gladstone.") I mean Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) With Sir Robert Peel—he, I think, occupied a position even higher than Sir Robert Peel—for boldness of imagination and scope of financing Mr. Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our time. (Cheers.) Now, we have in the Cabinet at this moment several colleagues, several ex-colleagues of mine, who served in the Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone...and I ask them, without a moment's fear or hesitation as to the answer that would follow if they gave it from their conscience, with what feelings would they approach Mr. Gladstone, were he Prime Minister and still living, with such a Budget as this? Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive; but, centenarian as he would be, I venture to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with the measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs and not in the room. (Laughter and cheers.) In his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as a humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms. They were twin-sisters. How does the Budget stand the test of Liberalism so understood and of Liberty as we have always comprehended it? This Budget seems to establish an inquisition, unknown previously in Great Britain, and a tyranny, I venture to say, unknown to mankind...I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say, but on that path I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. (Loud cheers.) Any form of protection is an evil, but Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of prosperity, of the monarchy, of Empire. (Loud cheers.)
Archibald Primrose Rosebery
You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)...The evils of immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception. The same causes that brought 10,000 and 20,000, and tens of thousands, may bring hundreds of thousands, or even millions. (Hear, hear.) If that would be an evil, surely he is a statesman who would deal with it in the beginning. (Hear, hear.)...When it began we were told it was so small that it would not matter to us. Now it has been growing with great rapidity, it has already affected a whole district, it is spreading into other parts of the country...Will you take it in time (hear, hear), or will you wait, hoping for something to turn up which will preserve you from what you all see to be the natural consequences of such an invasion?...it is a fact that when these aliens come here they are answerable for a larger amount of crime and disease and hopeless poverty than are proportionate to their numbers. (Cheers.) They come here—I do not blame them, I am speaking of the results—they come here and change the whole character of a district. (Cheers.) The speech, the nationality of whole streets has been altered; and British workmen have been driven by the fierce competition of famished men from trades which they previously followed. (Cheers.)...But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise?...they are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing—less labour for the British working man. (Cheers.)
Joseph Chamberlain
A question had been raised in a very powerful speech the other night (cheers), and he was not treating it in any political or critical sense to-night; but it was a topic of so great importance as regarded the existence and the future of the Empire, as regarded the basis on which it was to rest and its ultimate development, that he was sure it was one of the subjects that the chamber of commerce must discuss at a very large meeting. The subject raised in that speech the other night was not a matter of party politics as yet, and in one sense he did not think that it ever would be a matter of politics as affecting politics as at present existing, because it cut across that line diagonally and not by the ordinary separation of English party lines. Another reason why he would not discuss it politically that night was that he would not hastily reject, without mature consideration, any plan offered on high authority and based on large experience for really cementing and uniting the British Empire. (Cheers.)...It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case...how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers.)...He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs...Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade...he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts...he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation.
Archibald Primrose Rosebery
...our fellow subjects may rest assured that their liberties, their rights, and their interests are as dear to us as our own; and if ever they are seriously menaced the whole power of the country will be exerted for their defence (cheers), and the English democracy will stand shoulder to shoulder throughout the world to maintain the honour and integrity of the Empire. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, I turn to the last point upon which I promise to address you. What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritence of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?
Joseph Chamberlain
"AHHHHHH!!!! are there any paranoids in the audience tonight? (the crowd cheers) Is there anyone who worries about things? (the crowd cheers again)...Pathetic... This is for all the weak people in the audience!...Is there anyone here who's weak!? (the crowd cheers again)... This is for you it's called Run Like Hell (Song starts) Lets all have a clap! Come on I can't hear you, get your hands together, have a good time, enjoy yourselves!! That's better!"
Roger Waters
Rosebery, Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of
Rosen, Michael
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