statesmen and Empire builders of modern
times--Richelieu, Cromwell, Colbert, Lord Chatham, George Washington,
Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Stein, and Bismarck--have
pursued, or she will share the fate of the great commercial world
empires of the past, from Phoenicia to the Netherlands. She must
either follow the policy of Mr. Chamberlain, build up the Empire and
make it strong and prosperous, or that of revolutionary demagogues,
who will wreck the Empire and drag Great Britain through plunder and
ruin to destruction and anarchy.

The experience of other industrial nations allows us to conclude that
a wisely framed protective tariff will save the British industries and
improve employment and wages. But better wages alone will not improve
the position of the workers. A large part of the British working class
must alter their personal habits, and especially their drinking
habits. At present every rise in wages leads immediately to a great
increase in the Drink Bill, and therefore benefits rather the brewer
than the worker. "The strongest answer to the theory that poverty
causes drink is the statistical fact that as wages rise general
drunkenness follows, insanity increases, and criminal disorders due to
drink keep pace with all three. Wherever one seeks for information
dispassionately, one sees that drink does cause poverty to a greater
extent, overwhelmingly so, than that poverty causes drink. Poverty is
due to intemperance in varying degrees from twenty-five to fifty-one
per cent, of cases and areas investigated."[1281] "The Committee on
Physical Deterioration in 1904 declared that if the drink question
were removed three-fourths of the difficulty with regard to poverty
and deterioration would disappear with it."[1282] The drinking section
of the working class spends _18l. 15s. 4d._ per family on drink,[1283]
a sum much larger than that spent on rent. "There are two great causes
of physical deterioration--these are dirt and drink. The former is
responsible for nearly every form of disease. The latter is the direct
cause of the vast number of defects."[1284] "The most urgently needed
public health reform of the present day is not so much one of
environment as one of personal life."[1285]

Many British workmen are incredibly wasteful. When one visits
public-houses and working-men's clubs, when one goes to racecourses,
football or other matches, and music-halls, the British workers seem
to be the richest in the