ects a far larger proportion of the people, and
in their distresses the urban democracy are not sustained by the same
solid backing of country-folk and peasant cultivators that we see in
other lands. It has, therefore, become a paramount necessity for us to
make scientific provision against the fluctuations and set-backs
which are inevitable in world commerce and in national industry.

We have lately seen how the backwash of an American monetary
disturbance or a crisis in the Near East or in the Far East, or some
other cause influencing world trade, and as independent of our control
as are the phases of the moon, may easily have the effect of letting
loose upon thousands of humble families and households all the horrors
of a state of siege or a warlike blockade. Then there are strikes and
trade disputes of all kinds which affect vast numbers of people
altogether unconcerned in the quarrel. Now, I am not going to-night to
proclaim the principle of the "right to work." There is not much use
in proclaiming a right apart from its enforcement; and when it is
enforced there is no need to proclaim it. But what I am here to
assert, and to assert most emphatically, is the responsibility of
Government towards honest and law-abiding citizens; and I am surprised
that that responsibility should ever be challenged or denied.

When there is a famine in India, when owing to some unusual course of
nature the sky refuses its rains and the earth its fruits, relief
works are provided in the provinces affected, trains of provisions are
poured in from all parts of that great Empire, aid and assistance are
given to the population involved, not merely to enable them to survive
the period of famine, but to resume their occupations at its close. An
industrial disturbance in the manufacturing districts and the great
cities of this country presents itself to the ordinary artisan in
exactly the same way as the failure of crops in a large province in
India presents itself to the Hindu cultivator. The means by which he
lives are suddenly removed, and ruin in a form more or less swift and
terrible stares him instantly in the face. That is a contingency which
seems to fall within the most primary and fundamental obligations of
any organisation of Government. I do not know whether in all countries
or in all ages that responsibility could be maintained, but I do say
that here and now in this wealthy country and in this scientific age
it does in my opini