The departure which is likely to be made on Monday night will be very important, but it strikes me as very strange that hon. Members on the other side of the House should be so exercised over the dark prospect which they have sketched for the general mass of our people. If hon. Gentlemen opposite would really sincerely look at the situation and consider the attitude of those who are toilers and strugglers in life; if they would rise above their partisanship and see the development which has taken place within recent times on the benches on this side of the House, they would notice a marked national advance, and one which they would reasonably expect to find with the extension of the franchise to men and women. Those men and women have given evidence for many years of the fact that they have had a growing and deep-seated dissatisfaction with the paltry methods of government which have prevailed for so many years in this House. Hon. Members speak as if a great change were about to take place if the Liberal party should vote with the Labour party. The whole of last Session that occurred in the lobbies each night. There is nothing very extraordinary about it. There was a general agreement, even before the election, that those hon. Members who represent the Government had shown themselves fearfully deficient in their efforts to deal with the problems before the people. The trouble really is that we have not, in our political life, a genuine determination to grapple with the evil factors that stand, distinctly and determinedly, in an effort to overturn the interests of the general public and of the toilers of this country. There is no doubt whatever, with the coming into office of the Labour party, who will be supported in the lobbies by the Liberal party, that we shall have developments of a most important character. The very fact that the Government are now placing on their programme the proposals which they voted down last Session is proof of a brazen-faced deceit and hypocrisy which ought to make them clear out without waiting for Monday night.

If hon. Members could rid themselves of their partnership they would see in the historical records of the Labour movement, as represented by the Labour party, what excellent pioneering work has been done. It is proof of the pioneering efforts carried out by the man known as James Kier Hardie, who did substantial business under extraordinary difficulties, such as no Labour representative to-day would be likely to encounter. It is a splendid encouragement and a great inducement to any man with a spark of independence to say that the Labour party is the best intimation of the vitality of our nation. The Labour party is committed definitely to constitutionalism, and it is going to support constitutionalism, in perfectly legitimate fashion, against those efforts which are being put forward against it The fact that hon. Members opposite have at the back of their minds the idea—which is true—that on the flank of the Labour party, coming up steadily and insidiously, is a dangerous element that is endeavouring to get the party on to the very line which hon. Members condemn, and that the Labour party is doing its best to resist this element, as a party, is a tribute to its constitutionalism.

No doubt there are individual members of the party who are causing great danger by playing into the hands of the dangerous elements. As an independent Labour Member, I warn them here, as elsewhere, that that is a dangerous action. So long as they keep as they are on legitimate lines of action, coming as they do from the factory, the workshop and the lines of railway, they should be given the best kind of encouragement possible. Men and women—and the latter especially—have come here with a definite understanding of the needs of the workers themselves because they have been in the closest association with them, and they have not come from among the aristocracy who know nothing about the struggles of the masses. They are here, full of anxiety and enthusiasm, trying to help the cause of the people, and I suggest that that is a magnificent departure for the best. I wish the hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition well in his undertaking. His speech at the Albert. Hall was the finest attempt we had yet had to strike out for the advancement of the country on real lines and in the practice of our Christian principles. Quoting words in the Speech from the Throne, we pray that the blessing of Almighty God will rest upon his labours.