Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester? It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter, and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which only _very_ practical men would be fools enough to fight for. At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition; which does not give back to the English people their own country or their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use to men and women. No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect and virtue. How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did it _promise_ that the poor workers of America and France have not already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? _And when do you think you are likely to get it?_ Is it any nearer now than it was seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to you? One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party. In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about "ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour Party. But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed _him_ because he had halted. They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of gratitude now they have halted?