I am a Scotsman addressing Scotsmen, and I feel, therefore, peculiarly qualified to speak on this subject. I absolutely refuse to allow any man, be h… - Arthur Balfour

He did not believe that any such transaction could be quoted from the annals of our political or Parliamentary history. It stood alone—he did not wish to use strong language, but he was going to say—it stood alone in its infamy.

Go about at this moment if you will and consult the statesmen and diplomatists of the lesser Powers, and I am perfectly confident that you will find among them an absolute unanimity of opinion that a struggle sooner or later between this country and Germany is inevitable. I do not agree with them, but that is their opinion. They have watched with the closest interest...and they have come to the conclusion, I believe utterly wrongly, that we are not alive to the sense of our responsibilities, and that nothing can stir us to a recognition of our position, and that, therefore, we are predestined to succumb in some great contest, the occasion for which nobody can foresee, to a country which does face facts, which is alive to its responsibility, and which talks little and does much. (Cheers.) And so far has this depreciatory view of the virility of the manhood of Great Britain gone that I have known Germans, not connected with the Government, but men of position and character, men engaged in great affairs, who if you talk to them about the adoption of Tariff Reform by this country, actually say,—“Do you suppose we should ever allow Great Britain to adopt Tariff Reform?” (Cheers.) I do not press private and irresponsible conversations more than they ought to be pressed, but the idea of any man of education and character outside this country should have the audacity to say that Great Britain is not to settle its own taxation according to its own ideas, makes my blood boil. (Cheers.)

Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula ; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better ? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits ; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity?