countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and
national decay--the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce
of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and
training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical
degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilised poverty,
the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the
liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence
and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working
man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and
comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase
of vulgar, joyless luxury--here are the enemies of Britain. Beware
lest they shatter the foundations of her power.

Then look at the other side, look at the forces for good, the moral
forces, the spiritual forces, the civic, the scientific, the patriotic
forces which make for order and harmony and health and life. Are they
not tremendous too? Do we not see them everywhere, in every town, in
every class, in every creed, strong forces worthy of Old England,
coming to her rescue, fighting for her soul? That is the situation in
our country as I see it this afternoon--two great armies evenly
matched, locked in fierce conflict with each other all along the line,
swaying backwards and forwards in strife--and for my part I am
confident that the right will win, that the generous influences will
triumph over the selfish influences, that the organising forces will
devour the forces of degeneration, and that the British people will
emerge triumphant from their struggles to clear the road and lead the
march amongst the foremost nations of the world.

Well, now, I want to ask you a question. I daresay there are some of
you who do not like this or that particular point in the Budget, who
do not like some particular argument or phrase which some of us may
have used in advocating or defending it. But it is not of these
details that I speak; the question I want each of you to ask himself
is this: On which side of this great battle which I have described to
you, does the Budget count? Can any of you, looking at it broadly and
as a whole, looking on the policy which surrounds it, and which
depends upon it, looking at the arguments by which it is defended, as
well as the arguments by which it is opposed--can any one doubt that
the Budget in its essential character and meaning