Wby the Liberals Lost the Election

823

exceedingly unattractive; and the result is that many young men, who if they had been allowed to enter the House of Commons at once would have led useful and attractive political lives, are retiring from political life altogether. Now, these are the two conditions of the House of Lords, the only two to which I shall refer. They are two which, in my opinion, do not trench even remotely on party politics, but which I thought it due to this assembly to take the opportunity of putting before you. I for one shall never flag in my hopes of reforming the House of Lords, in making it a part of the Constitution, more active and more useful, and in that effort I hope I shall receive the prospective assistance of those who may hereafter be elevated to that House."

The result of the election was what might have been expected from the lack of cohesion which at the time characterised the Liberal party. One man urged one reform, one another. Liberals never throughout the election presented a united front. They had lost all that the leadership of Mr. Gladstone meant, and they did not give the support to Lord Rosebery which he ought to have received, and which, if given, might have made all the difference to the result of the election. As it was, the Liberals were hopelessly defeated-crushingly defeated. They had half a dozen programmes before the country, and the

VOL. II.

21

electors may well have been confused at the issues thus put before them. Sir William Harcourt at Derby and Mr. John Morley at Newcastle were both defeated. The Liberal party for the time had almost ceased to be; and so a Tory Government came in with a majority great enough to enable them practically to have a free hand as to what they might choose to do. If the Liberal party had taken Lord Rosebery's advice, and made the reform of the House of Lords the chief plank in an agreed platform of reform, they might have won the election; and if, further, they had given a loyal and zealous support to the chief of the party, they would doubtless have seen by this time a good many reforms carried out which their own differences and want of concentration have apparently deferred for many

years.

CHAPTER XXIX

A DISCOURSE ON DISESTABLISHMENT-THREE POINTS OF VIEW-CHURCH DISESTABLISHMENT-TWO DISTINCT MATTERS-THE QUESTION OF

แ SACRILEGE."

IN

N January, 1895, a great meeting of the National Liberal Federation was held at Cardiff. Lord Rosebery there made the main feature of his speech an expression of his views on the question of the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church, which his Government hoped to carry out.

"We now come to the general question raised by both Scotland and Wales with respect to Disestablishment. It seems to me that there are three points of view from which Establishments may be regarded. There is, first, the clear, hard, logical school, which regards all preference given by the public or the State, or the public in its character of the State, to any form of faith as injudicious, derogatory, and degrading both to the State and to the Church. It holds that there should be absolute religious equality, and that each Church should be supported by its own adherents.