IV. The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life In the Present and the Future

A great deal has been said: negotiations should be held, and the like. But aren't the negotiations that have now begun, when so many people, of whom you have been told, have to a certain extent embraced the ideas, negotiations that have already begun? That is also the opinion of our committee, that further progress should be made along these lines. But now I would like to say a word, a word that the great Gladstone once said. He once said that the North American Constitution was the most exemplary constitution he knew. Another, perhaps more witty English statesman, said that in his opinion the constitution did not need to be as good as Gladstone said, because the North Americans knew how to do the right thing for themselves with a bad constitution. It depends on what the people actually make of a constitution.