ABSTRACT
The whole of the national expenditure was little more than a quarter of what today we spend on defence alone. We had immense foreign investments, and Mr. Chamberlain's campaign for a protective tariff had foundered upon what seemed the impregnable rock of the national faith in free trade. The Labour Party had only 29 members in the House of Commons, and a careful foreign observer was about to predict that it was destined to remain little more than an influential wing of the Liberal Party. The nature and volume of the problems to be discussed by the contemporary House of Commons, moreover, makes the character of its debates quite different from anything generally regarded as normal even before 1914. Political problems in the classic sense of the term, the franchise, the place of the church in the nation's life.
