As a basis of party action it would be like sand. It would be levelled by the mocking tides of popular criticism. The programme of the "Two Conservatives" begins with a grand item, the conservation of the liberties of the people. But why "conserve?" Why not extend and advance them? Why should the present stage in the historical growth of our liberties be selected as the point at which conservation becomes a duty? Would not the party which undertakes the task to-day be better pleased if there were fewer of them to conserve? The Tories have always been adepts at conservation, but the things they have been most willing to conserve were not our liberties but the restrictions put upon our liberties. Since the liberties now proposed to be conserved are assumed to be threatened by the Liberals, they must be liberties of a special sort, such as liberty to spread infection, liberty to dispense with vaccination, liberty to send uninspected ships to sea, to keep children away from school, or to send them out at any age to work in the fields, the factory, or the streets. "Personal rights" have good radical sponsors in the hon. members for Stockport and Leicester. Perhaps Parliament as a whole is the best sponsor. The Neo-conservative programme should tell us what is meant by the liberties of the people. The absence of definition may perhaps cover an imposture. The next object of Neo-conservative devotion is the maintenance of the rights of property. Those rights are of no private interpretation, and belong to sociology rather than to politics. Every man is interested in them who has anything to lose, or who has a chance of acquiring anything. Hence they cannot be claimed as an appanage of Toryism. They are placed under the common championship of all parties. But the exclusive claim set up must have some meaning. The rights of property intended may perhaps be the rights of property as understood by the landlords, in which sense they may include a right to the property of other people; or as understood by the association of which Lord Elcho is president, in which sense they stand in opposition to the rights of the public. We know what is meant by the rights of landed proprietors, of railway corporations, of publicans, of property owners, of shipowners, of pawnbrokers and of corporate bodies, such as the guilds of the city of London. They represent the pretensions of these classes to have their interests preferred to those of the community. It is a case of prescription against equity, of the license assumed by special callings against the checks and guarantees which Parliament has found it necessary to impose for the general welfare. This is a field in which Neo-conservatism can reap no harvest. It will be vain to tell the working man who is the owner of the house in which he lives, that his rights are in the same boat with the right of London companies to squander or misapply the wealth which has descended to them from the Middle Ages.