It is not these objects which we deprecate. On the contrary, they have our ardent sympathy. What we do deprecate is the spirit in which they are so often preached and pursued. No progress is going to be made--quite the contrary--by stirring up class hatred or trying to rob Peter in order to pay Paul. It is not true that you cannot benefit one class without taking from another class--still less true that by taking from one you necessarily benefit another. The national income, the sum total of all our productive activities, is capable of being enormously increased or diminished by wise or foolish policy. For it does not only depend on the amount of capital and labour. A number of far subtler factors enter into the account--science, organisation, energy, credit, confidence, the spirit in which men set about their business. The one thing which would be certain to diminish that income, and to recoil on all of us, would be that war of classes which many people seem anxious to stir up. Nothing could be more fatal to prosperity, and to the fairest hopes of social progress, than if the great body of the upper and middle classes of the community had cause to regard that progress as indissolubly associated with an attack upon themselves. And that is why, if reforms such as I have indicated are costly--as they will be costly--you must find some better way of providing for them than by merely giving another turn to the income-tax screw, or just adding so much per cent. to the estate duty. From my point of view, social reform is a national affair. All classes benefit by it, not only those directly affected. And therefore all should contribute according to their means. I do not in any way object to the rich being made to contribute, even for purposes in which they are not directly interested. What I do object to is that the great body of the people should not contribute to them. It is thoroughly vicious in principle to divide the nation, as many of the Radical and Labour men want to divide it, into two sections--a majority which only calls the tune, and a minority which only pays the piper.