Excerpt from Towards a Social Policy: Or, Suggestions for Constructive Reform It is an old saying that in an age of progress the necessities of one generation become the luxuries of the next; it is at least as true that in an age of reaction the ailments of one generation tend to become the diseases of the next. For twenty years, with a slight interval, the country has been governed by a reaction. The crisis of 1886 created the opportunity of the opponents of democracy. From that reaction followed the reconcentration of the governing classes, the languishing of the spirit of reform, and a profound aversion from treating root evils or finding remedies for the causes rather than the symptoms of decay. Mr. Chamberlain, seeing around him the stagnant countryside, the crowded and squalid city with the degenerate life it breeds, the rate at which anti-social forces which the nation longer controls are heaping up problems and dangers, invites the nation to resume Protection. It is the chief vice of that remedy that it will intensify the evils and depress still further the power of the nation to conquer the forces that baffle and paralyse it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.