r room again.

In all this matter, and, indeed, in all my relations with Margaret, I
perceive now I behaved badly and foolishly. My manifest blunder is that
I, who was several years older than she, much subtler and in many ways
wiser, never in any measure sought to guide and control her. After our
marriage I treated her always as an equal, and let her go her way; held
her responsible for all the weak and ineffective and unfortunate things
she said and did to me. She wasn't clever enough to justify that. It
wasn't fair to expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understand.
I ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to
crossing the difficult places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and
more tenderly, if there had not been the consciousness of my financial
dependence on her always stiffening my pride, I think she would have
moved with me from the outset, and left the Liberals with me. But she
did not get any inkling of the ends I sought in my change of sides. It
must have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. She had, I knew--for
surely I knew it then--an immense capacity for loyalty and devotion.
There she was with these treasures untouched, neglected and perplexed.
A woman who loves wants to give. It is the duty and business of the man
she has married for love to help her to help and give. But I was stupid.
My eyes had never been opened. I was stiff with her and difficult to
her, because even on my wedding morning there had been, deep down in
my soul, voiceless though present, something weakly protesting, a faint
perception of wrong-doing, the infinitesimally small, slow-multiplying
germs of shame.

3

I made my breach with the party on the Budget.

In many ways I was disposed to regard the 1909 Budget as a fine piece
of statecraft. Its production was certainly a very unexpected display
of vigour on the Liberal side. But, on the whole, this movement
towards collectivist organisation on the part of the Liberals rather
strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross the floor of the house.
It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive
and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the opposition. I
assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a series
of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that the
land was a great public service that needed to be controlled on broad
and far-sighted lines. I had no objection to it