If the State has no right to interfere to protect the poor struggling against circumstances over which they have no control in the industrial world, … - Keir Hardie

The individualistic conception of the State as some external authority exercising a malign influence upon the life of the community is a travesty of fact. The State is that form of organised society which has evolved through the process of the ages, and represents the aptitude for freedom and self-government to which any people has attained. The policeman and the soldier, for example, who are at the call of the landlord or the employer when tenant or workman becomes turbulent, exist by the will and under the express authority of those same tenants and workmen, who constitute a preponderating majority in the State, and without whose consent neither soldier nor policeman could continue to exist.

The events of the past few weeks in the Aberdare and Rhondda valleys must have shown you anew that a Liberal government is first and foremost a capitalist government. If the bloodshed and riotous conduct of which the police have been guilty had taken place under a Conservative government every Liberal platform would have rung with denunciations of the wicked Tories; but, because it is the Liberals who are responsible there is a conspiracy of silence in the press and every Liberal speaker is dumb.

The Master of Elibank is quite right when he says that Socialism and Liberalism are antagonistic forces. Socialism represents the principles taught by Christ, the reign of love and fraternity; Liberalism represents fierce, unscrupulous strife and competition, the aggrandisement of the strong, the robbery of the weak. Between these there can be no truce. The struggle is between God and Mammon, and Liberalism has ever been a devotee of Mammon.