The programme of social legislation outlined in the speech. went far beyond anything to which a Conservative Government had ever yet committed itself, and even, as Opposition speakers were not slow to point out, contained proposals which the Government itself had opposed when made by Labour members in the previous year. On this account it became the subject of much scoffing and sarcastic comment in the debate; Mr. MacDonald asserted that most of its items had been, if not stolen, at any rate borrowed, and Mr. Lloyd George, who followed, characterised it as a rehash of the Liberal election manifesto, or the Labour programme without the seasoning. Mr. MacDonald at once made it clear that this belated repentance was not going to save the Government from its fate. He made a vigorous onslaught on the Government's conduct of affairs, closing with the announcement that in due course Mr. Clynes would move an amendment to the Address in these. terms: "It is, however, our duty respectfully to submit to your Majesty that your Majesty's present advisers have not the confidence of this House." Mr. Baldwin, who followed Mr. Lloyd George, admitted that he had no expectation of retaining office, and said that he had in fact aimed at drafting a King's Speech on which all parties could more or less agree. Whatever happened, the King's Government must be carried on, and he promised that, should his party find itself in Opposition, it would indeed criticise, but not in any factious or fractious spirit, and would unite with the others to help in such causes as unemployment or the relief of agriculture.

In the House of Lords Marquis Curzon as spokesman for the Government adopted a somewhat more defiant tone. He characterised as 'most unwise" the speech in which Mr. Asquith had announced his intention of letting the Government meet its fate. He also warmly controverted a statement of Mr. Asquith, made some little time previously, that the record of the Government in foreign affairs had been one of unbroken impotence and humiliation, and that England had been reduced to a cipher in the councils of the world. This latter charge was in fact withdrawn by implication by Mr. MacDonald in the course of his speech attacking the Government in the House of Commons; but the reason he advanced was the reverse of flattering to Lord Curzon. The result of the election, he said, and the prospect of a change of Government had once more made Continental statesmen look upon England as a factor to be considered. In the House of Lords, however, there was no one to gainsay Lord Curzon's estimate of his own performances, since Lord Grey, the Liberal leader, had as usual dealt very gently with the Government, and sympathised with its difficulties rather than criticised its shortcomings.

Mr. Clynes moved the Labour amendment on January 17. Both the Labour and Unionist parties were willing that the axe should be allowed to fall with the utmost despatch on the

devoted head of the Government, but the Liberals insisted that there should be a full-dress debate spread over three days. Thus Labour was kept yet a little longer waiting on the threshold of office. Nor was the delay without its justification. There was after all something repugnant to the spirit of the British Constitution in the larger party handing over the reins of office to the smaller, and though there were imperative reasons why the step should be taken, it was fitting that any appearance of precipitation should be avoided.

The feature of the debate was the speech of Mr. Asquith, who immediately followed Mr. Clynes. Circumstances had placed the Liberal leader in the position of "king-maker," and until he had declared himself there was an element of uncertainty as to the issue of the debate. The party which acknowledged him as leader was far from unanimous in its attitude towards the motion; while the majority felt themselves more nearly akin to the Labour party than to the Unionists, there were a considerable number whose sympathies ran in the opposite direction, and who only waited for a word from Mr. Asquith to vote against the amendment. But they waited in vain; the Liberal leader, now as on December 17, identified himself—whether from policy or conviction-with the forward section of the party, and made himself exclusively their spokes

man.

Mr. Asquith began by dissipating any notions that might have been entertained that he had in some way weakened in his attitude in face of the strong pressure which had been exercised on him during the preceding few weeks. "I propose,' "I propose," he said in his second sentence, "to vote, and to advise all my friends to vote for the amendment." Having with these words sealed the fate of the Government, he proceeded, in one of the most successful oratorical efforts of his career, to define the standpoint of Liberalism at that juncture, dissociating it from Unionism, and making it the ally-on terms-of Labour. After writing the epitaph of the Conservative Government as one that would be remembered for confusion, vacillation, and impotence at home and abroad, he pointed out that the so-called two-party system had never been really watertight in England, citing the Peelite and Liberal-Unionist groups as instances, so that government by a minority was not so abnormal as some people imagined. But transference of power to the Labour Party would mean the installation for the first time in England of a Socialist Government; and for this perhaps the mentality of the people was not yet fully prepared. "Few people," went on Mr. Asquith, in sentences punctuated with the applause and laughter of the House, "who have not had the melancholy privilege of reading my postbag during the month, will realise what this prospect means to a large and by no means negligible mass of our fellowsubjects. I have never, in my large experience of postal correspondence, come across more virulent manifestations of an

epidemic of political hysteria. Notwithstanding my own compromising past-I am supposed to have been the associate of rebels and worse than rebels in days gone by—I have during these weeks been cajoled, wheedled, almost caressed, taunted, threatened, browbeaten and all but blackmailed to step in as the saviour of society." By "saving society," Mr. Asquith said, these people meant putting up some kind of combination between. Liberals and Conservatives to keep Labour out. He was going to be no party to such a manoeuvre, if only for the reason that it would secure for Labour tens and hundreds of thousands of votes in the country. He reminded the House of the answer given by Adam Smith to a gentleman who had remarked that the surrender at Saratoga in the American War of Independence meant the ruin of Great Britain: "Sir, there is a great deal of ruin in the nation," and he poured ridicule on the idea that the advent of a Labour Government would mean any great national calamity, pointing out that such a Government would be strictly limited by the conditions which the election had created, and that it was idle to talk of the dangers of a Socialist régime in a House of Commons constituted as that one was. Under existing conditions the Labour Party was called upon to carry on the King's Government, and it was the duty of every patriotic man and woman to facilitate their task, so far as this could be done without sacrifice of principle or honour. In the important spheres of social legislation where progressive thought had grasped the same ideals and was ready to proceed to their attainment to a great length on common lines, he saw no reason why there should not be co-operation between the Liberal and Labour parties, and in fact large numbers from all parties, and to this the time and energies of the present Parliament might fruitfully be given.

Mr. Asquith's speech contained nothing for which his hearers had not been fully prepared, yet it made a painful impression on those members who still hankered after some form of coalition between Unionists and Liberals, and he was upbraided by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, more in sorrow than in anger, with neglecting a golden opportunity to place his party on the right path. Mr. Baldwin, however, in making his defence of the Government, boldly asserted that Disraeli had been the pioneer of social reform at a time when Liberals were shackled with the doctrine of laissez-faire, and prophesied that the future would lie between Conservatism and Labour, to the exclusion of Liberalism. Mr. MacDonald accepted Mr. Baldwin's estimate of Disraeli, and taunted Conservatives with using the word "Socialism" as a bogy, without trying to understand what it really meant. It was in fact the stock argument of Conservative speakers in the debate that Liberal members had been elected to oppose Socialism no less than Protection. This was admitted by the Liberals, to many of whom the placing of a Socialist Government in power seemed a strange beginning to such a

mission; and the prolongation of the debate was due chiefly to the desire of such members to clear themselves in their own eyes and the eyes of the world-or at any rate their constituents for taking such a step, seeing that Mr. Asquith had already said all that needed to be said on the subject. The number of Liberal defections proved in the end to be very small. Some ten Liberals voted with the Government, and half a dozen more abstained. The amendment was finally carried at 11 P.M. on January 21 by 328 votes to 256—a majority of 72.

A number of members wished to continue the debate, with the object of bringing in an amendment to the Address condemning Socialism. The Speaker, however, ruled that as the closure had been passed there should be no further debate, and the Address as amended was carried by 328 to 251.

With this step the transference of government from the Unionist to the Labour Party was practically accomplished. A revolution in English politics as profound as that associated with the Reform Act of 1832 had been carried through with a smoothness and rapidity that two months earlier would have been thought impossible. A Party which made Socialism its watchword was already entrusted with the reins of government. This was but the legitimate consummation of a movement which had been gathering strength for some years before the war, but which in the eyes of many had been brought to a stand by the formation of the Coalition. It could easily have been prevented by the renewal of the Coalition or the creation of a new one. The decision lay with Mr. Asquith, and the veteran statesman, in choosing a Labour Government as the lesser evil, proved once more the truth of Disraeli's remark, that " England does not like Coalitions."

Unlike the older parties, Labour in order to obtain office had not had to wait till it commanded a majority in the country. Greatness had literally been thrust upon it, not so much for its own virtues as for the sins of its opponents. That the bulk of Liberals should have preferred enthroning Labour at this juncture, not only to placing the Unionists in power but to sharing power themselves with the Unionists, was a phenomenon as remarkable in its nature as it was far-reaching in its consequences. The reason for it was not to be found in any advances or overtures made by Labour for Liberal support and friendship. On the contrary, almost till the last moment Labour had persistently refused to see any difference in essentials between Liberalism and Unionism, and had treated with disdain Liberal offers of co-operation. If in these circumstances Liberals persisted in turning the other cheek to the smiter, it was because they felt that in this way alone they could still represent themselves in the eyes of the world as a party of progress. The Conservative Party, it is true, through the mouth of Mr. Baldwin, had adopted a programme of social

reform at home and justice and conciliation abroad. But Liberals preferred to judge them by their record in the past rather than by their promises for the future, and decided in favour of a Government which, whatever might be its defects, would be unquestionably progressive.

On the day after the debate, January 22, Mr. Baldwin resigned, and Mr. MacDonald was commissioned by the King to form a Ministry. His plans for doing so were already practically complete, and were put into execution without delay. Mr. MacDonald himself became, in addition to Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, the leadership of the House of Commons being entrusted to Mr. Clynes, while Mr. Snowden went to the Exchequer. Two of the new Ministers, the Secretary of State for the Navy, and the Secretary of State for India, were men with distinguished records of public service abroad, Lord Chelmsford having been a Viceroy of India, and Sir Sidney Olivier, Governor of Jamaica. Sir Sidney was soon after elevated to the House of Lords, where the Government was already represented by Lord Haldane, as Lord Chancellor, and Lord Parmoor as Lord Privy Seal. Other prominent Trade Union leaders besides Mr. Clynes who entered the Cabinet were Mr. Thomas (Colonies), Mr. Henderson (Home Office), Mr. Shaw (Labour), and Mr. Jowett (Public Works): and for the first time a woman was given a place in a British Government in the person of Miss Margaret Bondfield, who had last year been elected President of the Trade Union Congress, and who now became Under-Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. The Trade Union officials who joined the Ministry gave up their Trade Union posts (though Mr. Henderson retained his position as Secretary of the Labour Party, as this was held to be not incompatible with his Ministerial duties). A similar step was taken by those members-among whom was Mr. MacDonald himself who were on the Council of the Labour and Socialist International. The question was raised at a party meeting whether any alteration should be made in the salaries of Ministers, and was answered in the negative. Mr. MacDonald, however, took only one salary for his two offices, and the Lord Chancellor consented to accept the same salary as his colleagues -50007. instead of the customary 10,000l.

The new Government was fairly representative of all sections of the composite party which called itself "Labour." Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Snowden, and Mr. Sidney Webb were known as Socialists of the academic or intellectual type; Mr. Clynes, Mr. Shaw and others belonged to the class of trade union officials; Mr. Ponsonby and Mr. Trevelyan were prominent among the new recruits from the older parties; while the more advanced Socialists known as the Clyde group were represented by Mr. Wheatley. Mr. MacDonald, however, found himself unable to complete his Cabinet from the active workers of his own party, and he accepted the services of at