Another passage of this kind deserves quotation:— "Don't you drop
it. I am not going to drop it. I have nothing to fear. I have disclosed everything. They have examined everything. They have scrutinized everything. Why should I drop it now when the only thing that remains is a principle which is full of hope and healing for the democracy ? The danger of a panic always is this. It concentrates upon a false peril and takes the mind away from a real one. The real peril, believe me, in politics is not that the individual politician of high rank wilt attempt to make a pocket for himself. That is not the peril. Read the history of England for fifty years ; that peril is an imaginary one. The real peril is that powerful interests will dominate the Legislature, dominate the Executive in order to carry through proposals which will prey upon the community. . . . There is a great story in the greatest of books of a man who spent his life fighting the Philistines, and one day he was assailed by a wild beast, whom ho slew. Returning to the scenes of the conflict in a few days he found the carcase full of honey. My right hon. friend and I have been assailed by a hideous monster that sought our lives. Not by our own right arm, but with the help of friends we have slaughtered it, and, unless I am mistaken, out of its prostrate form will come something that will sweeten the lives of millions who hitherto have tasted nothing but the bitterness and dust of the world."
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