t all about party claptrap, but which does care a great deal
about a good argument, from whatever quarter it may proceed.
Moreover, I am confident that the great body of its members are quite
alive to the fact that they cannot afford to cast their votes merely
according to their individual opinions and personal prejudices--that
they are trustees for the nation, and that while it is their duty to
prevent the nation being hustled into revolution, as but for them it
would have been hustled into Home Rule in 1893, they have no right to
resist changes upon which the nation has clearly and after full
deliberation set its mind. And when the Prime Minister says that it is
intolerable arrogance on the part of the House of Lords to pretend to
know better what the nation wishes than the House of Commons, I can
only reply that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In 1893 the
House of Commons said that the nation wished Home Rule. The House of
Lords had the intolerable arrogance to take a different view. Well,
within less than two years the question was submitted to the nation;
and who proved to be right?

I regret to have had to dwell at such length upon this particular
topic. But it seems to me that we have no choice in the matter. If
the Government succeed in their attempt to divert the attention of the
nation from matters of the greatest interest at home and abroad in
order to involve us all in a constitutional struggle on a false issue,
we must be prepared to meet them. But I do not wish to waste the rare
opportunity afforded to me to-night of addressing this great and
representative Scottish audience by talking exclusively about this
regrettable manoeuvre. There is something I am anxious to say to you
about the future of the Unionist party. I do not claim to lay down a
policy for that or for any party. I am not, by temperament or
antecedents, a good party man. But I want to be allowed, as a private
citizen, to point out what are the great services which I think the
Unionist party can render to the nation at the present very critical
juncture in its history. The Unionist party has a splendid record in
the past. For twenty years it has saved the United Kingdom from
disruption. It has preserved South Africa for the Empire; and, greatly
as I feel and know, that the results of the efforts and sacrifices of
the nation have been marred and impaired by the disastrous policy of
the last two years, South Africa is still one countr