"I think, perhaps, it would be useful if I repeat again to you the words which I used in the first speech when I became leader of our party ...“No government of which I am a member will ever be a government of reaction...” That was my view then and it is my view today, and if I thought the Unionist Party was or would ever become a party of that kind I would not be a member of it."

“I think everyone who has been in business knows that instability or restlessness of any kind has one of the worst effects upon industry of all kinds. It is for that reason that I expressed the view that what is most needed now, and what it will be our business to try to produce, is a feeling of tranquillity and stability. In other words, I think we must have as little legislation as possible —that we must leave things alone more or less where we can.”

“There are many measures of legislative and administrative importance which in themselves would be desirable and which in other circumstances I should have recommended to the immediate attention of the electorate. But I do not feel that they can, at this moment, claim precedence over the nation's first need, which is, in every walk of life, to get on with its work with the minimum of interference at home and of disturbance abroad.”

“We who represent the Unionist Party in England and Scotland have supported, and we mean to support to the end, the loyal minority . We support them not because we are intolerant, but because their claims are just.”

“As I crossed a few hours ago from Scotland I said to myself,—"The majority there are Radicals. They are going to vote next week for the Home Rule Bill. What would they say to a proposal which was to subject them to the same kind of Government or the same kind of men to which, for the sake of party interests, they are willing to sacrifice you?" They would never accept it. I know Scotland well, and I believe that, rather than submit to such a fate, the Scottish people would face a second Bannockburn or a second Flodden.”

“The crying need of the nation at this moment—a need which in my judgment far exceeds any other—is that we should have tranquillity and stability both at home and abroad so that free scope should be given to the initiative and enterprise of our citizens, for it is in that way far more than by any action of the Government that we can hope to recover from the economic and social results of the war.”

“Whatever steps you may feel compelled to take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run they are unconstitutional, you have the whole Unionist Party, under my leadership, behind you.”