better what the nation wishes than the House of Commons, I can only reply that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In 1893 the House of Commons said that the nation wished Home Rule. The House of Lords had the intolerable arrogance to take a different view. Well, within less than two years the question was submitted to the nation; and who proved to be right?

I regret to have had to dwell at such length upon this particular topic. But it seems to me that we have no choice in the matter. If the Government succeed in their attempt to divert the attention of the nation from matters of the greatest interest at home and abroad in order to involve us all in a constitutional struggle on a false issue, we must be prepared to meet them. But I do not wish to waste the rare opportunity afforded to me to-night of addressing this great and representative Scottish audience by talking exclusively about this regrettable manoeuvre. There is something I am anxious to say to you about the future of the Unionist party. I do not claim to lay down a policy for that or for any party. I am not, by temperament or antecedents, a good party man. But I want to be allowed, as a private citizen, to point out what are the great services which I think the Unionist party can render to the nation at the present very critical juncture in its history. The Unionist party has a splendid record in the past. For twenty years it has saved the United Kingdom from disruption. It has preserved South Africa for the Empire; and, greatly as I feel and know, that the results of the efforts and sacrifices of the nation have been marred and impaired by the disastrous policy of the last two years, South Africa is still one country under the British flag. And all the time, in spite of foreign war and domestic sedition, the Unionist party has pursued a steady policy of practical social reform, and the administrative and legislative record of the last twenty years will compare favourably with that of any period of our history.

But no party can afford to rely upon its past achievements. How is the Unionist party going to confront the great problems of the present day? The greatest of these problems, as I shall never cease to preach to my countrymen, is the maintenance of the great heritage which we owe to the courage, the enterprise, and the self-sacrifice of our forefathers, who built up one of the greatest Empires in history by, on the whole, the most honourable means. The epoch of expansion is pretty nearly past, but there remains before us a great work of development and consolidation. And that is a work which should appeal especially to Scotsmen. The Scottish people have borne a great part, great out of proportion to their numbers, in building up our common British heritage. They are taking a foremost part in it to-day. All over the world, as settlers in Canada, in Australia, or in South Africa, as administrators in India and elsewhere, they are among the sturdiest pillars on which the great Imperial fabric rests. I am not talking in the air. I am speaking from my personal experience, and only saying in public here to-night what I have said in private a hundred times, that as an agent of my country in distant lands I have had endless occasion to appreciate the support given to the British cause by the ability, the courage, the shrewd sense and the broad Imperial instinct of many Scotsmen. And therefore I look with confidence to a Scottish audience to support my appeal for continuous national effort in making the most of the British Empire. I say this is not a matter with regard to which we can afford to rest on our laurels. We must either go forward or we shall go back. And especially ought we to go forward in developing co-operation, on a basis of equality and partnership, with the great self-governing communities of our race in the distant portions of the world, else they will drift away from us. Do not let us think for a moment that we can afford such another fiasco as the late Colonial Conference. Do not let us imagine for a moment that we can go to sleep over the questions then raised, and not one of them settled, for four years, only to find ourselves unprepared when the next Conference meets. A cordial social welcome, many toasts, many dinners, are all very well in their way, but they are not enough. What is wanted is a real understanding of what our fellow countrymen across the seas are driving at, and a real attempt to meet them in their efforts to keep us a united family. All that our present rulers seem able to do is to misunderstand, and therefore unconsciously to misrepresent—I do not question their good intentions, but I think they are struck with mental blindness in this matter—to misrepresent the attitude of the colonists and greatly to exaggerate the difficulties of meeting them half-way. The speeches of Ministers on a question like that of Colonial Preference leave upon me the most deplorable impression. One would have thought that, if they could not get over the objections which they feel to meeting the advances of our kinsmen, they would at least show some sort of regret at their failure. But not a bit of it. Their one idea all along has been to magnify the difficulties in the way in order to make party capital out of the business. They saw their way to a good cry about "taxing the food of the people," the big and the little loaf, and so forth, and they went racing after it, regardless of everything but its electioneering value. From first to last there has been the same desire to make the worst of things, sometimes by very disingenuous means. First of all it was said that there was "no Colonial offer." But when the representatives of the Colonies came here, and all in the plainest terms offered us preference for preference, this device evidently had to be abandoned. So then it was asserted that, in order to give preference to the Colonies, we must tax raw materials. But this move again was promptly checkmated by the clear and repeated declaration of the Colonial representatives that they did not expect us to tax raw materials. And so nothing was left to Ministers, determined as they were to wriggle out of any agreement with the Colonies at all costs, except to fall back on the old, weary parrot-cry—"Will you tax corn?" "Will you tax butter?" and so on through the whole list of articles of common consumption, the taxation of any one of which was thought to be valuable as an electioneering bogey.

For my own part, I am not the least bit frightened by any of these questions. If I am asked whether I would tax this or tax that, it may be proof of great depravity on my part, but I say without hesitation, that, for a sufficient object, I should not have the least objection to putting two shillings a quarter on wheat or twopence a pound on butter. But I must add that the whole argument nauseates me. What sort of opinion must these gentlemen have of their fellow countrymen, if they think that the question of a farthing on the quartern loaf or half a farthing on the pat of butter is going to outweigh in their minds every national consideration? And these are the men who accused Mr. Chamberlain of wishing to unite the Empire by sordid bonds! It is indeed extraordinary and to my mind almost heartrending to see how this question of Tariff Reform continues to be discussed on the lowest grounds, and how its higher and wider aspects seem to be so constantly neglected. Yet we have no excuse for ignoring them. The Colonial advocates of Preference, and especially Mr. Deakin, with whose point of view I thoroughly agree, have repeatedly explained the great political, national, and I might almost say moral aspects of that policy. There is a great deal more in it than a readjustment of duties—twopence off this and a penny on that. I do not say that such details are not important. When the time comes I am prepared to show—and I am an old hand at these things—that the objections which loom so large in many eyes can really be very