The old Liberal party is drawing to its end. These last two elections, particularly the last, are the Mene Mene Tekel Upharsen of the Liberal banquet… - Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

[The British Empire is] the greatest secular agency for good now known to mankind.

There are a great many Tory Liberals in the Liberal party. There is a Toryism in Liberalism as great and as deep, though as unconscious, as any in the Carlton Club. There are men who sit still with the fly-blown phylacteries bound round their obsolete policy, who do not remember that, while they have been mumbling their incantations to themselves, the world has been marching and revolving, and if they have any hope of leading or guiding it they must march and move with it too. (Cheers.)

It is by self-reliance, humanly speaking, by the independence which has been the motive and impelling force of our race, that the Scots have thriven in India and in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and even in England, where at different times they were banned. As things are we in Scotland do not take much or even ask much from the State, but the State invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, "Sound you may be; we bid you be a cripple. Do you see? Be blind. Do you hear? Be deaf. Do you walk? Be not venturesome; here is a crutch for one arm. When you get accustomed to it you will soon want another, the sooner the better." The strongest man, if encouraged, may soon accustom himself to the methods of an invalid; he may train himself to totter or to be fed with a spoon. The ancient sculptors represent Hercules leaning on his club; our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated and resting under his arms. (Laughter.) The lesson of our Scottish teaching was "Level up"; the cry of modern civilization is "Level down; let the Government have a finger in every pie," probing, propping, disturbing. ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) Every day the area for initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined, every day the public infringes, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the State. Perhaps the current cannot now be stemmed; agitation or protest may be alike unavailing; the world rolls on, it may be part of its destiny, a necessary phase in its long evolution, a stage in its blind, toilsome progress to an invisible goal. I neither affirm nor deny. All in the long run is doubtless for the best; but, speaking as a Scotsman to Scotsmen, I plead for our historical character, for the maintenance of those sterling national qualities which have meant so much to Scotland in the past. (Cheers.)