Page:The life and times of King Edward VII by Whates, Harry Richard 5.djvu/22

 LIFE AND TIMES OF EDWARD VII. subjects of Party controversy there had been inaction, with the conspicuous exception of the extension of the principle of employers' liability to compensate the victims of accident. Until the third year of his reign, when the Wyndham Land Purchase Act was passed, there

LORD HALSBURY. had been no bold and constructive legis- lation in the interests of social peace in Ireland we shall recur to the visit of the King and Queen in that year and sketch the history of that Act and its successor in a chapter dealing with Irish affairs alone. He had seen the Unionist Party appeal to the country in 1900 for a renewal of office, on the plea that the war was " practically over," and obtain it on the principle that it is unwise to swop horses while crossing a stream. He had watched the Government and the Party struggling to end what the venerable Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, with quaint humour, described as "a sort of war," which went on, with alternate good and ill fortune, despite the official view that the war was over and the goings to and fro of myriad mounted infantry under the African sun. In the negotiations for peace he had if our inference from known facts be right taken a hand, or ^^ at least exercised a moderating influence upon the office holders who would have fought the Boers to the last cartridge. He had watched the Government enter with high hopes and splendid confidence upon the gigantic task of political and social reconstruc- tion in South Africa ; and he had seen their plans miscarry because of the then unrealised extent of the economic ruin which the war had wrought in the sub- continent. Simultaneously with these things he would have ob- served a rising national movement in England, imperilling the sta- bility of any Government which could not or would not satisfy the democratic demand for a larger share of the ever-growing wealth of the community. Then came the great convulsion within the Unionist Party the revival of the old issue of Protection by Mr. Chamberlain, though in a new and twofold form, first as a system for the organic consolidation of the British Empire, and next as a means for alleviating democratic discon- tent with low wages and with the economic helplessness of men againt the brutal