Read Online Never Give In! by Winston Churchill - Free Book Online Page B

taxation, which is admitted on all sides to be necessary, shall be imposed upon luxuries, superfluities, and monopolies, or upon the prime necessaries of life, whether you shall put your tax upon the unearned increment in land or upon the daily bread of labour, whether the policy of constructive social reform on which we are embarked and which expands and deepens as we advance, shall be carried through and given a fair chance, or whether it shall be brought to a dead stop, and all the energies and attention of the State devoted to Jingo armaments and senseless foreign adventure. And lastly, the issue will be whether the British people in the year of grace 1909 are going to be ruled through a representative Assembly elected by six or seven millions of voters and about which everyone in the country has a chance of being consulted, or whether they are going to allow themselves to be dictated to and domineered over by a miserable minority of titled persons – ( laughter ), – who represent nobody, who are responsible to nobody, and who only scurry up to London to vote in their party interests, in their class interests, and in their own interests. These will be the issues of the struggle, and I am glad that the responsibility for such a struggle, if it should come, will rest with the House of Lords themselves. – ( Hear, hear. ) But if it is to come we do not need to complain. We will not draw back from it. – ( Hear, hear. ) We will engage in it with all our hearts, it being always clearly understood that the fight will be a fight to the finish – ( loud cheers ), – and that the fullest forfeits which are in accordance with the national interests shall be exacted from the defeated foe. – ( Loud cheers. )
    ‘THE MOST ANCIENT AND THE MOST GLORIOUS MONARCHY’
    4 December 1909
    Empire House, Southport, Lancashire
    Churchill – the subject of fierce criticism from the Tories, who regarded him not only as a renegade, but a traitor to his class – was at pains to make clear his strong support for the institution of an hereditary monarchy, while all the while heaping scorn and ridicule upon the Upper Chamber of Parliament, which was based on the same principle.
    There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of an hereditary Monarchy, The experience of every country, and of all the ages, the practical reasonings of common sense, arguments of the highest theory, arguments of the most commonplace experience, all unite to show the profound wisdom which places the supreme leadership of the State beyond the reach of private ambition and above the shocks and changes of party strife. ( Hear, hear. ) And, further, let it not be forgotten that we live under a limited and Constitutional Monarchy. The Sovereign reigns, but does not govern. That is a maxim we were all taught out of our schoolbooks. The powers of government are exercised upon the advice of Ministers responsible to Parliament, and those Ministers are capable of being displaced, and are frequently displaced, by a House of Commons freely elected by millions of voters. The British Monarchy has no interests divergent from those of the British people. ( Cheers. ) It enshrines only those ideas and causes upon which the whole British people are united. It is based upon the abiding and prevailing interests of the nation, and thus through all the swift changes of the last hundred years, through all the wide developments of a democratic State, the English Monarchy has become the most secure, as it is the most ancient and the most glorious, Monarchy in the whole of Christendom. ( Cheers. )
    ‘THE UPKEEP OF THE ARISTOCRACY’
    17 December 1909
    Victoria Opera House, Burnley, Lancashire
    The previous day Lord Curzon, speaking in Churchill’s former constituency of Oldham, had stoutly defended the hereditary principle of the role of the unelected House of Lords. This was Churchill’s mocking rejoinder.
    When I began my campaign in Lancashire I challenged any Conservative speaker