BRITISH FREEDOM

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 13

BRITISH FREEDOM

THE CONSTITUTION

GROWTH OF CENTURIES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, October 13.'

In his speech before an audience of 2500 people in Birmingham, Mr. Baldwin spoke of the maintenance of the Constitution and the Socialist threat to its safety.

"The Constitution/ .he said, "was no ready-made article. ■It has grown through the .centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given our people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence.

"Thai; is the Constitution that 5s threatened today, not quite openly yet, by. the Socialist Party in their conference, tendeneiously, by sketching a course of action which, if it takes placej means the destruction of the Constitution. You. may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. . "It is proletarian Hitlerism, and nothing elae, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realise it in time. This is an Inkerman, a rank and file engagement. "The problems today are so continuous. What time have we to come down to the country and bo continually talking of these subjects? We cannot, do it. But does it not point out to you the absolute necessity of maintaining, re-creating if necessary, your organisation and equipping yourselves to deal with the arguments that will be used. "In fighting for the'defence and the maintenance' of the Constitution you will be fighting for one of the fundamental principles of Conservatism since it was Conservatism. It is a principle deep down in the hearts of millions''of Englishmen who flo not belong to pur party, but who will join j hands and fight this thing to the death, and will put it out and put it flat, / "These schemes are not of English origin. They belong to countries which do not know what freedom means, and which have been unable to maintain Parliamentary Government. "They are alien in their conception, alien in their tradition, and /alien in action, and for myself I- would only repeat the words of a great Englishman who lived in the seventeenth century, and of whom I am a great admirer. ' "In speaking of himself and his friends he said this: — "'For the earth of England I would rather die than, sec a spike of English grass trampled down by a foreign troop. If he thinketh there are a 'great many of his mind, for all plants are apt to taste of the soil in which they'grow, and we that grow here have that root, that produceth in us. a stalk of English juice which is not to be changed by grafting a foreign infusion.'"