No one contends that such an analysis can be perfect; but, on the
other hand, can a community desirous of realising what Goethe calls
"practical Christianity," ignore it? And if in this process it enters
the sphere of morals, as Ruskin long ago urged it to do, as well as
the path of economic justice, is the step a wrong one? Has it not
already been taken not only in this Budget, but in its predecessor, in
which the Prime Minister made the memorable distinction between earned
and unearned income? Those who answer these questions in the Liberal
sense will find in these speeches a body of vigorous and persuasive
reasoning on their side.

It is therefore the main purpose of these speeches to show that
Liberalism has a message of the utmost consequence to our times. They
link it afresh with the movement of life, which when it overtakes
parties condemns and destroys them. They give it an immediate mission
and an outlook on the wider moral domain, which belongs to no single
generation. This double character is vital to a Party which must not
desert the larger ways in which the spirit of man walks, while it
quits at its peril the work of practical, everyday service to existing
society.

A word as to the literary quality of these addresses, widely varied as
they are in subject. The summit of a man's powers--his full capacity
of reason, comparison, expression--are not usually reached at so
early a point in his career as that which Mr. Churchill has attained.
But in directness and clearness of thought, in the power to build up a
political theory, and present it as an impressive and convincing
argument, in the force of rhetoric and the power of sympathy, readers
of these addresses will find few examples of modern English
speech-making to compare with them. They revive the almost forgotten