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The Radical wing of the Liberal Party has degenerated into a political committee of the Free Church Councils; even the Liberal League cannot get on without making some acknowledgement of Nonconformist authority. But the “Imperialist” section is of course less absolutely under the control of Salem Chapel than its rival; is it fundamentally any more progressive?

It is pathetic in the light of subsequent events to read again the admirable article (to which by the way I am indebted for the title of this book) contributed by Mr. Webb to the Nineteenth Century three years ago. Mr. Webb was so simple-minded as to suppose that Lord Rosebery’s talk about “national efficiency” really meant something, and that “Liberal Imperialism” was a genuine attempt to form a party of progress free of Gladstonian tradition. Sancta simplicitas! We can see now clearly enough that the Liberal Imperialists were for the most part mere squeezable opportunists with all the effete prejudices of the Pro-Boers minus their sturdiness of conviction, men who wished to snatch a share in the popularity of the South African War, but had not the slightest intention of abandoning a single Mid-Victorian nostrum, which could still be used to catch a few votes. On the Education Bills, Tariff Reform and Licensing, they have Gladstonised, Miallised, Cobdenised and Wilfred-Lawsonised with the best. And now that the Fiscal Question seems likely to drive back into the ranks of the Liberal “Right” such men as Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire—the very men who were frightened to death of Mr. Chamberlain’s “Socialism” as far back as 1885—all hope of reform from that quarter is at an end. A “Liberal Imperialist” government means Lord Rosebery orating nobly about nothing in particular, Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire acting up to their self-constituted function of “drags upon the wheel,” and Sir Henry Fowler once more sitting heavily on all enlightened municipal enterprise in the interests of piratical monopolists. I see that the Whigs are already crying out for “Free Trade concentration,” which will I imagine prove an excellent excuse for doing nothing for the next half decade.