(Cheers.) Mr Chamberlain denies that he ran away from the debate in the House of Commons. I don’t accuse him of running away. I saw a phrase in the war report this morning which expresses the situation exactly. He did not run away, he executed a strategic movement to the rear. (Much laughter.) Mr Chamberlain is very angry because Lord Hugh Cecil – (cheers) – accused him of cowardice. I don’t accuse him of cowardice; I think he acted as a wise and prudent man – (laughter) – in shirking the debate, because the plain truth is that his supporters are so incompetent that his arguments are such rubbish, that his figures are such figures – (laughter) – that he dare not submit them to the free and unprejudiced debate of the House of Commons. (Cheers.) No, he will keep them for the meetings of the Tariff Reform League in the country, those meetings which are attended by carefully selected working men in dress clothes and unemployed who pay 15s. a piece for their tickets. (Laughter.)

We are here this afternoon to celebrate the centenary of Mr Cobden, and I am proud of the high and honourable duty which has been entrusted to me in moving this resolution. It is the fashion nowadays to speak with a great deal of contempt of the Manchester School, and no abuse seems to be bad enough for Mr Cobden. But I venture to think there will be some of you here who will believe it is very nearly time that the peaceful, philanthropic, socialising doctrines of Mr Bright and Mr Cobden were a little more considered by the statesmen who rule our land. (Cheers.) We do not pretend that everything Mr Cobden said was right, or that the political system of thought which he established was a complete and final revelation of worldly wisdom. But in the long stairway of human progress and achievement which the toil and sacrifice of generations are building it was Cobden’s work to lay a mighty stone. (Cheers.) Other stones had been laid upon that stone, stones of social standards and social reform, stones of Imperial responsibility, and you have only got to walk about the streets of London to see that there is plenty more work waiting to be done by a master mason. (Cheers.) But we believe that the work which Cobden did was done for ever; that the stone he laid shall never be transplanted, that the heights he gained shall never be abandoned. (Cheers.) We may differ among ourselves, we probably do, as to how far, how fast, or in what direction we shall move forward, but on one point we are all agreed – we are not going back one inch, (Loud and prolonged cheers.) We are not going back because the principles we defend are principles which endure from one generation to another. Men change, manners change, customs change, Governments and Prime Ministers change, even Colonial Secretaries change – (laughter) – sometimes they change their offices, sometimes they change their opinions. (Laughter.) But principles do not change. Whatever was scientifically true in the economic proportions which were established 60 years ago in the controversy of a far greater generation than our own is just as true in 1904 as it was in 1846, and it will still be true as long as men remain trading animals on the surface of the habitable globe.

‘FOR FREE TRADE’

16 June 1904

Cheetham Hill Manchester

By now Churchill had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the battle against Protectionism and on the side of Free Trade.

We are gathered here and I stand here with Liberal support as the Free Trade candidate for North-west Manchester because a distinguished politician has changed his mind. Many people change their minds in politics. Some people change their minds to avoid changing their party. – (Laughter.) Some people change their party to avoid changing their mind. – (Renewed laughter.) There have been all sorts of changes in English politics, but I think that Mr Chamberlain’s change is much the most remarkable of any that history records. – (Hear, hear.) When you think that the man who broke up or was breaking up the Liberal Government of 1885 by being more Radical than Mr Gladstone, and was driving the Duke of Devonshire out of the Liberal party and Liberal Government in 1885, is the man who is now breaking up the Conservative Government in 1904 by being more Tory and more reactionary than any Conservative in that government, I think you will agree with me that it is a world’s record – (laughter and cheers), – that it is less like an ordinary political manoeuvre than like one of those acrobatic feats which are so popular in circuses and hippodromes. There is one particular feat of which I am forcibly reminded tonight – the novel and exciting spectacle of ‘looping the loop’. – (Laughter.) It is a very dangerous and a very difficult performance. I don’t know whether you have ever seen it. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. When it succeeds great applause is accorded to the performer. When it fails he is usually carried away on a shutter.