It is our business as Tory politicians to uphold the Constitution. If under the Constitution as it now exists, and as we wish to see it preserved, th… - Lord Randolph Churchill

My chief reason for supporting the Church of England I find in the fact that, when compared with other creeds and other sects, it is essentially the Church of religious liberty. Whether in one direction or in another, it is continually possessed by the ambition, not of excluding, but of including, all shades of religious thought, all sorts and conditions of men, and in standing out like a lighthouse over a stormy ocean it marks the entrance to a port where those who are wearied at times with the woes of the world, and troubled often by the trials of existence, may search for and may find that "peace that passeth all understanding". I cannot and will not allow myself to believe that the English people, who are not only naturally religious, but also eminently practical, will ever consent, for the purpose of gratifying sectarian animosities, or for the wretched purpose of pandering to infidel proclivities, to deprive themselves of so abundant a fountain of aid and consolation, or acquiesce in the demolition of a constitution which elevates the life of the nation and consecrates the acts of the State.

Political power passed very considerably from the landed interest to the manufacturing capitalist interest, and our whole fiscal system was shaped by this latter power to its own advantage, foreign policy being also made to coincide. We are now come, or are coming fast, to a time when labour laws will be made by the labour interest for the advantage of labour. The regulation of all the conditions of labour by the State, controlled and guided by the labour vote, appears to be the ideal aimed at, and I think it extremely probable that a foreign policy which sought to extend by tariff reforms over our colonies and even over other friendly States the area of profitable barter of produce, will strongly commend itself to the mind of the labour interest. Personally I can discern no cause for alarm in this prospect, and I believe that on this point you and I are in perfect agreement. Labour, in this modern movement, has against it the prejudices of property, the resources of capital, and all the numerous forces—social, professional, and journalistic—which those prejudices and resources can influence.

In reply to your letter I have to remark that members who sit below the gangway have always acted in the House of Commons with a very considerable degree of independence of the recognised and constituted chiefs of either party, nor can I (who owe nothing to anyone and depend on nobody) in any way or at any time depart from that well-established and highly respectable tradition.