England without an Empire! Can you conceive it? England in that case would not be the England we love. (Cheers.) If the ties of sympathy...between ou… - Joseph Chamberlain

In the first place I urge upon you a full recognition of the magnitude of the evils with which we have to deal; in the second place I insist on the right of those who suffer to redress (cheers); and in the third place I assert the duty of society as a whole to secure the comfort and welfare of all its individual members. As a consequence of this, I desire to submit to you that it belongs to the authority and to the duty of the State—that is to say, of the whole population acting through their chosen representatives—to utilise for this purpose all local experience and all local organisation, to protect the weak, to provide for the poor, to redress the inequalities of our social system, to alleviate the harsh conditions of the struggle for existence, and to raise the average enjoyments of the majority of the population. (Loud cheers.)

What Washington did for the United States of America, when he made what is in itself a self-contained and self-sufficient empire of some 80 millions of souls, what Bismarck did for Germany when he united between 50 and 60 millions of people, that it is our business and duty to do for the British Empire.

I can conceive it is a possible theory that we might be even richer if we became simply a distributive Empire, a home for millionaires and for their dependents, with no productive industry whatever, no one who would come under our present description of working men, that is to say, a man who labours at some definitive trade or industry for himself. I can conceive that it might be possible that there should be even more cheques passing through the Clearing-house than there are now; that the returns of income-tax would be larger. A single millionaire might increase the returns from income-tax more than they would be diminished by the destruction of a whole industry of Birmingham. But, for reasons of difference in national character and position (hear, hear), you may be richer, but not greater. (Hear, hear). You may sink to a position which I do not like to contemplate, and yet all these official statistics might show you a constant tale of progress and increasing wealth.