To secure order, freedom, and safety, for the minority as well as for the majority of the Irish people, and to do so as far as possible, by the admin… - Arthur Balfour

Romantic love goes far beyond race requirements. From this point of view it is as useless as aesthetic emotion itself. And, like aesthetic emotion of the profounder sort, it is rarely satisfied with the definite, the limited, and the immediate. It ever reaches out towards an unrealised infinity. It cannot rest content with the prose of mere fact. It sees visions and dreams dreams which to an unsympathetic world seem no better than amiable follies. Is it from sources like these—the illusions of love and the enthusiasms of ignorance—that we propose to supplement the world-outlook provided for us by sober sense and scientific observation ? Yet why not ? Here we have values which by supposition we are reluctant to lose. Neither scientific observation nor sober sense can preserve them. It is surely permissible to ask what will.

The advantage of the Referendum is this—that the issue is quite clear and quite precise. It is not one of the mixed issues inevitably put before the constituencies at a General Election. It is perfectly easy to say, when the Referendum is over, on what the Referendum was, whereas after a General Election every man says that it was upon the subject in which he is interested, if the election has gone in his favour. The Referendum has an enormous advantage. It does not involve a General Election; it does not involve all the personal bitterness inevitably involved in a contest between the two competitors for a seat; it does not carry with it a change of Government; and it does get a clear verdict from the people.

I hold that fiscal reform is, and must remain, the first constructive work of the Unionist party; That the objects of such reform are to secure more equal terms of competition for British trade and closer commercial union with the Colonies. ... the establishment of a moderate general tariff on manufactured goods, not imposed for the purpose of raising prices or giving artificial protection against legitimate competition, and the imposition of a small duty on foreign corn are not in principle objectionable, and should be adopted if shown to be necessary for the attainment of the ends in view or for the purposes of revenue.