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

enough to be within the range of the comparatively poor people. ( Laughter. ) Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman came to the counsels of a Sovereign who was deserted at an awkward moment in the interests of a party manoeuvre. He will find nothing in the condition of the public business, legislative, administration, Parliamentary, or financial, to make him indebted to his predecessor. ( Cheers. ) Indeed the change of Government that has just taken place is less like an ordinary transfer of power from one great party to another than the winding up of an insolvent concern which had been conducted by questionable and even shady methods to a ruinous conclusion. ( Cheers. ) The firm Balfour, Balfour, and Co. has stopped payment. The managing director, a Birmingham man of large views and unusual versatility, absconded two years ago, leaving heavy outstanding liabilities, and he is believed to have since devoted himself mainly to missionary work. ( Loud laughter. ) Ever since, the business has been going downhill; it is now in liquidation. ( Cheers. ) Its paper is no longer accepted in the City and it has been ‘hammered’ on Change. ( Cheers and laughter. ) No more sinecures for guinea pigs, no more garters for dukes, no more peerages for the faithful press – ( laughter ); – the crash has come at last. Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman presented himself in the capacity of the official receiver, to secure the rights of the creditors and safeguard the interests of the shareholders, according to the regular law of the land.
    ‘THE GIFT OF ENGLAND’
    31 July 1906
    House of Commons
    Five years after Britain’s decisive, but costly, victory over the Boers in South Africa it fell to Churchill to draw up the constitution giving them self-government. The measure of his success was to be shown by the fact that, in two World Wars, the Boers overwhelmingly sided with Britain. In this speech, Churchill makes a vain plea to the Conservatives to support the government and make the Transvaal constitution not the gift of a party, but ‘the gift of England’.
    I have now finished laying before the House the constitutional settlement, and I should like to say that our proposals are interdependent. They must be considered as a whole; they must be accepted or rejected as a whole. I say this in no spirit of disrespect to the Committee, because evidently it is a matter which the Executive Government should decide on its own responsibility, and if the policy which we declare were changed new instruments would have to be found to carry out another plan. We are prepared to make this settlement in the name of the Liberal Party. That is sufficient authority for us; but there is a higher authority which we should earnestly desire to obtain.
    I make no appeal, but I address myself particularly to the right hon. Gentlemen who sit opposite, who are long versed in public affairs, and not able to escape all their lives from a heavy South African responsibility. They are the accepted guides of a Party which, though in a minority in this House, nevertheless embodies nearly half the nation. I will ask them seriously whether they will not pause before they commit themselves to violent or rash denunciations of this great arrangement. I will ask them, further, whether they will not consider if they cannot join with us to invest the grant of a free Constitution to the Transvaal with something of a national sanction. With all our majority we can only make it the gift of a party; they can make it the gift of England. And if that were so, I am quite sure that all those inestimable blessings which we confidently hope will flow from this decision will be gained more surely and much more speedily; and the first real step taken to withdraw South African affairs from the arena of British party politics, in which they have inflicted injury on both political parties and in which they have suffered grievous injury themselves. I ask that that may be considered; but in any case we are