We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons. ...The Liberal party, high and low, ha… - Henry Campbell-Bannerman

It is not too much to say that the fact that the responsible Government of the Queen has proposed to Parliament the establishment of a statutory Parliament in Ireland, with full control of Irish affairs, is the gravest and most startling event in the political life of any man among us.

What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture.. It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps...in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. I do not say for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty's Government...at all events, it is the thing which is being done at this moment in the name and by the authority of this most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when the information would be afforded, of which we are so sadly in want. My request was refused. Mr. Balfour treated us with a short disquisition on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.

I know that I possess the sympathy and the goodwill of the working-classes of the Burghs. I say I know it. Not that I hope for it—I say I have it. And there has been nothing that has occurred during the last six months which has belied that conviction. Wherever I have gone I have been received with the greatest kindness and hearty goodwill, and in every part of the constituency the general public have crowned me with honours which I have done nothing to deserve. All that I want from you is to afford me the opportunity of deserving this honour. Entrust your Parliamentary interests to me. I promise to devote myself to your service and to show by my conduct that I reciprocate the great sympathy, kindness, and confidence which you have placed in me.