Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/128

 of the Tory party. Their industries must be stimulated and protected by lightening the taxation, and by a large redistribution of the incidence of taxation. Their efforts to emancipate their brethren from the vices of an undeveloped civilization—such as intemperance, crime, and a weak standard of morality—must be provoked, encouraged, and facilitated. No class interests should be allowed to stand in the way of this mighty movement, and with this movement the Tory party not only sympathize, but identify themselves.

Social reform, producing direct and immediate benefit to the Commons—that must be our cry, as opposed to the Radicals, who foolishly scream for organic change, and waste their energies and their time in attacking institutions whose destruction would not only endanger popular freedom, but would leave the social condition of the people precisely where it was before. Apply this test to every legislative proposal, to every political movement, to every combination of circumstances and phenomena, and you will know what course to take and what line of action to adopt. I was much struck the other day in the House of Commons by a sentence which fell from the prime minister, when, leaning over the table and addressing directly the Tory party, he said to them, "Trust the people."

I have long tried to make that my motto; but I know, and will not conceal, that there are still a few in our party who have that lesson yet to