Can Lloyd George Do It?—The Pledge Examined was a pamphlet written jointly by Keynes and Hubert Henderson in support of Lloyd George's pledge in the 1929 general election to reduce unemployment by a programme of public spending. Chapter 7, signed by the two authors, appeared as ‘The Cost of the Liberal Scheme’ in the Nation and Athenaeum, 11 May 1929, the day following the pamphlet's publication. Keynes included Chapters 3, 9, 10 and 11 in Essays in Persuasion, changing most of the italics of the pamphlet (reproduced here) to ordinary type.

It has not proved possible to apportion the pamphlet between its joint authors. It was written in the heat of the election campaign, probably without time for a draft copy. As the editor-in-chief of the Nation and the chairman of its advisory board, Henderson and Keynes were in close sympathy, and both men had taken a major part through the years leading up to the election in framing the Liberal plans. The pamphlet seems to have been, according to Hubert Henderson's widow, Lady Henderson, ‘…a true work of collaboration about which there was never any question as to who gave the most’.