the people. These think, perhaps, that after their long campaign of labour it is time to pile arms, to pitch tents, to divide the spoil, and enter Capua. At any rate, hopes of a prosperity reasonably diffused will dictate our future. For the hopes of the people are the future of England.
Will these hopes be gratified? Will our industrial revolution which, beginning in the eighteenth century, is still in process, yield such fruit? This is the first issue ahead, and it is of primary, of radical, importance. For, in these days and in those to come, there are, and will be, many who, if they cannot obtain from their nation that substance which it purports to give them, are ready to question, or quash, its title-deeds.
In simpler terms, is our existing industrial organisation so defective that, as suggested by many, we shall be obliged to change it fundamentally? Or is it so sound, and so well suited to the facts of life, and so well calculated on the whole to satisfy the nation that, with due amendments, we shall adhere to it in the future? That is a plain issue, and it needs, now more than ever before, a plain reply.
I endeavoured to arrive at that answer, not by reliance on any personal predilection, or on any party view, or on any old economics, or on any conscious self-interest, but by attending to the ultimate direction which the central common sense of the English people, in spite of natural oscillations of judgment, will take.
