Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/79

 1899.] Meeting of the National Liberal Federation. [71

any want of clearness and comprehensiveness on the part of the delegates, and treated their misgivings as to the present and future of the party with a robustness of faith that should have encouraged, if it did not convince, his audience. After acknow- ledging the cordial reception given to him by the delegates, he boldly asserted that he did not believe in the divisions in the Liberal party that were talked of by a few mischievous Liberals and a good many of their opponents. " Our party," he said, " is not an inert and mechanical party ; it is a party that moves and thinks, and, therefore, must speak its mind. ,, Turning first to the Irish question, he astonished his hearers by the warmth of his defence of Home Eule, asking how they could abandon this Irish policy so long as they called themselves Liberals. " We will remain true to the Irish people as long as the Irish people are true to themselves. Twice we have essayed to embody this policy in a statute, and twice we have been foiled." A little later, however, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman moderated his ardour for a prompt settlement of the Irish claims, and he refused to make Home Bule the first item of his Liberal pro- gramme. " I repudiate the necessity, the expediency, aye, and the possibility, of any such promise. Putting aside the question of wise or unwise, I declare it to be impossible."

Turning then to the foreign policy of the Liberals, he claimed that they were imperialists, but they abjured the vulgar and bastard imperialism of irritation and provocation and aggression ; of clever tricks and manoeuvres against neighbours, and of grabbing everything, even if we had no use for it our- selves. It was satisfactory that the gate was closed upon one, at least, of the great evils of expansionist ambition by the practical completion of the partition of Africa. Step by step the British Government had been led to the assumption of the Soudan, but the Liberal party had from first to last declined to share the responsibility of recommending it to the country.

After criticising the reckless extravagance of our national expenditure, which in thirty years of comparative peace had risen from 71,250,0002. to 116,000,000*., he stopped short of appealing to his hearers to take up once more the old Liberal watchword "Betrenchment." He held instead that the first object of Liberals was to make the whole system of parlia- mentary representation a system whereby the mind of the country was evoked more completely and more equitably, but, above all, they desired to limit the power of the second Chamber to overbear the appointed representatives of the people : —

" The next subject to which I would refer is the question of the housing of the very poor. I am not speaking of the ques- tions which affect what are called artisans' dwellings. What I think rather has touched the heart of the country is the stories we have heard of the effect of overcrowding in our large cities — aye, and in many places which are not large cities — and