Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/102

 leaders. The most honourable of Parliamentary statesmen, when once engrossed in the game of party warfare, are apt to forget the very elements of statesmanship. They count votes gained or lost in or out of Parliament, and they lose the capacity for understanding the voice of the nation. May that voice be clear and unmistakable. It was well said a little while ago by a great soldier: 'We are not here only, nor even chiefly, for the purposes of the moment. We are the trustees for the future of the Empire. Upon what is done or neglected in Parliament beforehand must depend sooner or later the fate of England and of the British dominions throughout the world. We are bound in this House to look beyond the bawling and the brawling of the day, and to uphold Imperial policy above the clamour of selfish or short-sighted interests. Is not this, indeed, my lords, the greater part of our duty? Unless we occupy ourselves most earnestly and under a sense of personal trusteeship with the means by which the safety and greatness of our country, continued from age to age, may be maintained in time to come, we cannot justify our exist-