Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/118

 110] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [may

. . . It is my hope now that it may not be many months — at all events before the present Parliament comes to an end — before something considerable may be done in the direction of which I have spoken.' '

Whilst Mr. Chamberlain was endeavouring to smooth the path for his colleagues, Mr. John Morley was strewing it with obstacles of every kind gathered from various quarters of the empire. He had journeyed far away from his own constituents north of the Tweed, and had accepted the office of president of a Liberal association in the Forest of Dean (for which district Sir Charles Dilke was the sitting member), and at Lydney he delivered (May 25) his presidential address, which from its scope and style was intended for a much wider audience. He observed that there had been complaints lately of political apathy, but he thought it was not apathy but rumination. He had been challenged to explain or even make a scathing analysis of Lord Eosebery's speech, but he would not do so, for various reasons. Lord Eosebery had compared himself and other retired leaders to disembodied spirits. He did not believe in ghosts ; it was nothing more than a dark horse in a loose box. People talked as if sectional Liberalism only came in with Home Rule ; but in 1885 the differences between the Liberals under Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington were as strong as those between Liberals and Tories now. Already in 1885 the great English boroughs had deserted the Liberals. Lord Salis- bury the other day treated all questions of parliamentary representation as done with ; but that could not be while their ridiculous registration system and franchise system remained ; and then there was redistribution. Lord Salisbury had spoken of the Liberal triumphs being due to extension of the franchise. They were equally due to finance, and he thought the country was again beginning to think that finance was safer in Liberal than in Tory hands. Mr. Chamberlain had ridiculed Welsh Disestablishment, and asked whether any one would be a penny better off. He did not much like that argument, but who would be a penny better off for the Soudan ? Mr. Morley hoped for much from the Peace Conference. Holland was a small country, but it had done much for Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and he hoped something great might come now. He was sure that Lord Salisbury would do all he could, but he was afraid there was a change in the ideals of the country. Sir C. Dilke, who followed Mr. Morley, found him- self somewhat unpleasantly placed. He had never thrown in his lot with the " little Englanders," and had learnt during his stay at the Foreign Office to take a wide view of British responsibilities. He said while they rejoiced in the settlement of African questions with France, and at the use of peaceful language, they retained their contempt for a policy which had sacrificed Greece and the true interests of the United King- dom in the Eastern Mediterranean, and for Lord Salisbury's