Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/327

 party discontent followed these deliverances. Mr. Haldane refused to support the motion, and with Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Lawson Walton (afterwards attorney- general), Mr. Robson (afterwards solicitor-general), and nearly fifty liberals, walked out of the house before the division. There seemed a likelihood of an open breach on the part of the dissentient section of the party. On 2 July, speaking at Southampton, Campbell-Bannerman described the position of the party as 'critical.' But on 9 July, at the Reform Club, 163 liberal members of the House of Commons, of all sections, including Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey, expressed unanimously continued confidence in Campbell-Bannerman's leadership. Later in the year (25 Oct. 1901) Campbell-Bannerman hopefully appealed to true liberals throughout the country for unity. Passing to another controverted topic, on which there was not universal consent in the liberal ranks, he declared that he was 'as strongly as ever in favour of giving self-government to Ireland.' 'There is no actual alliance,' he added, with the Irish party, but he hoped for a cordial co-operation. The declaration checked for a time the movement towards unity. A liberal imperial council had been in existence to maintain within the party the views of Lord Rosebery on imperial and Irish questions. On 27 Feb. 1902 it was decided to reconstitute the council with its old aims as the Liberal League. Campbell-Bannerman saw no reason for such a step (speech, National Liberal Club, 5 March). He denied that there were personal differences among the leaders. The war was a transient interlude, and the only final solution of either the South African or the Irish question lay in the liberal principle of assent. In Lord Spencer, who spoke at Eastbourne on the same day, Campbell-Bannerman found a whole-hearted adherent.

The terms of peace in South Africa were announced on 2 June. On. 11 July Lord Salisbury, prune minister, resigned, and on 14 July Campbell-Bannerman in the House of Commons, on behalf of the house as a whole, congratulated Mr. Balfour on filling the vacant place. Through the session he steadily opposed the government's chief measure, the education bill, which he called the bill of the church party. It was finally passed in an autumn session (December 1902), in spite of nonconformist opposition and some dissatisfaction among liberal-unionist supporters of the government. Next year the liberal party's position was immensely improved by a schism which rent the government and its supporters. The healing of internal differences among the liberals was greatly facilitated by the perplexity and division which Mr. Chamberlain's announcement at Birmingham of his new fiscal programme (May 1903) created in the unionist ranks. Without delay Campbell-Bannerman made strategic use of his new opportunity. On the adjournment for the Whitsuntide recess (28 May) he denounced the government for their 'cuttle-fish' policy in raising a new issue, which he characterised on 9 June as a proposal to tax anew the food of the people. He laid stress on Mr. Chamberlain's statement that it was the question on which the next general election was to be fought. In the autumn the resignations of Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Ritchie, the duke of Devonshire, and other prominent members of the government illustrated practically the disintegrating tendency of the fiscal policy. At Glasgow, on 6 October, Mr. Chamberlain explained his proposals at length, and Campbell-Bannerman, at Bolton (15 Oct.), retorted by denouncing as a wicked slander on the mother country and the colonies alike the assertion that the empire could only be saved from dissolution by a revolution in fiscal policy. On the new free trade issue Lord Rosebery declared that all liberals were united (7 Nov.). There-upon Campbell-Bannerman renewed his former advances ; but Rosebery's reply was very cautious, and no further attempt was made to close the breach between the two.

The reconstructed government's difficulties grew rapidly. At the end of 1903 resolutions were adopted by the Transvaal legislative council for the importation of Chinese indentured labour, and they were sanctioned by the home government. Liberals at once contended that slavery was revived, and the plea found support in the constituencies. Yet henceforth, both in parliament and outside, the paramount political issue was fiscal reform. On that theme Campbell-Bannerman and his colleagues concentrated most of their energy. On 1 Aug. 1904 he moved a vote of censure upon the government, because three members of the government had accepted office in the Tariff Reform League, which advocated preferential duties and therefore the taxation of food. Next year his position was strengthened when the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations at Newcastle formally adopted fiscal