Much has been said recently of the rights and the power of the workers of this nation. We all, I hope, belong to that class--workers--but the artisan class of the nation has been urged--and to you, the working men of Manchester, I now specially address myself--you have been urged, I say, to refuse to do your duties in war until your rights in peace are granted. Gentlemen, I say to you, that is not the policy either of Britishers or of men. I will go further: I say to you that it is not by declining or shirking duty that you will extend your rights. He who diminishes the power and vital resources of Great Britain diminishes the power and the vital resources of every Britisher. How can you most easily and most securely better yourselves as Britishers--as working men? By making England better, by making it better worth your while to be a citizen of, and a worker in that nation! If you seized by violence or by Act of Parliament all the accumulated capital of the centuries, you might have a madman's holiday for a time; but in the end you would emerge bankrupt and starving. You yourselves are the capital of the nation--the life-wealth of the nation--its manhood. Weapons, however perfect, will not make an army. Men are necessary--men of spirit, men of energy, loving their country, not merely loving their class or themselves. And on you, in turn, that discipline and those duties will confer unreckonable benefits. A tyranny imposes an exterior restraint; but you, in your free democratic constitution, should consider it as your privilege to impose upon yourselves from within that discipline and those sacred duties. I say to you, therefore, assert your rights as Britishers by demanding the greatest, the highest of all civic and of all national rights--the right to be taught to defend your country--the right, that is, to defend your own honour as Britons and your liberties as citizens of this Empire. Thus, and thus only, shall you be worthy of that Empire's great past and of the dignity which that past confers upon every man of you, whatever your position in life may be. [1] Apart from Free Trade and unrestrained competition, there are three other doctrines, or political principles, associated with the Manchester School: (1) To maintain peace at any cost; (2) strictly to avoid all interference with the internal affairs of foreign Powers; (3) to subordinate as far as possible all other interests to the interests of industry. The complete organization of industry was to have, as its immediate consequence, the abolition of war. These principles crystallized later into the familiar watchword of Liberalism: "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform."