H. H. Asquith

What is the use of talking of Empire if here, at its very centre, there is always to be found a mass of people stunted in education, prey to intemperance, huddled and congested beyond the possibility of realising in any true sense either …

[I]f a Labour Government is ever to be tried in this country, as it will be, sooner or later, it could hardly be tried under safer conditions.

The military domination of Prussia, with all that it involved to the fortunes of the secular struggle between force upon the one side and right upon the other, that domination has been once and for all and for ever overthrown.

Excerpts from a Leader's speech delivered in Manchester in 1918

Finance: The War Debt

Is Germany prepared not only to evacuate Belgium, not only to make full reparation for the colossal mischief and damage which have accompanied her devastating occupation of the country, and her practical enslavement, so far as she can …

Peace we all desire. Peace can only come—peace, I mean, that is worth the name and that satisfies the definition of the word—peace will only come on terms that atonement is made for past wrongs, that the weak and downtrodden are restored, …

[T]hree of the most important resolutions, namely, those relating to the Most-Favoured-Nation treatment, protection against dumping or unfair competition, and the adoption of measures to render the Allies independent of enemy countries as …

We shall never sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn

we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

In view of this grave and unprecedented outrage, the House may be assured that his Majesty's Government will take without delay appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law and to protect officers and servants of the King and …

that I am afraid we must brace ourselves to confront one of those terrible events in the order of Providence which baffle foresight, which appall the imagination and make us realise the inadequacy of words to do justice to what we feel.

No, I will not. We shall wait and see.

[O]ne thing is certain, that the Budget of next year will stand at the very centre of our work, by which, I was going to say, we shall stand or fall, by which certainly we shall be judged in the estimation both of the present and of …

[T]he bond which united them, if their critics were to be believed, might be a tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority.

I have realised from the first that if it could not be proved that social reform (not Socialism) can be financed on a Free Trade line, a return to Protection is a moral certainty.

[F]or us here, 43,000,000 of people in these two small islands, dependent as we are upon extraneous sources of supply for the food of the people and the materials of the industry, the one free, open, untrammelled market in the whole …

I...am not what is called a Socialist. I believe in the right of every man face to face with the State to make the best of himself, and, subject to the limitation that he does not become a nuisance or a danger to the community, to make …

[A] return to more thrifty and economical administration [is] the first and paramount duty of the Government.

[W]e claim to start from and to maintain in all our political action this fundamental principle—that the interests of the community as a whole ought to be paramount over the interests of any class, any interest, or any section which that …

The severance of Ulster from the rest of Ireland is a geographical, and, therefore, a political impossibility. ... The Union is safe so long as Ulster is loyal.

[A] party requires party spirit, and party spirit is the product of a very complex sentiment, which is slow to grow and hard to sustain, and which thrives best where it can be nourished by historic memories.