As was only natural, Sir William Harcourt felt impelled to
"give it back" to Lord Rosebery, and chose the very next night,—the opportunity being the annual dinner of the Welsh Parliamentary party held last Saturday. Though no reporters were present, an account of the speech was procured by the Press Association. The chief charge against Lord Rosebery was, of course, the desire he expressed to go back to before 1886. "Mr. Gladstone's ashes were hardly cold before they were advised to wipe out the whole of the inheritance which he had left the Liberal party." That meant wiping out Welsh Disestablishment, temperance reform, land reform, and the abolition of the veto of the Lords. He believed, however, that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman would faithfully adhere to the principles to which the Liberal party had declared its attach- ment during the past fifteen years. " What they wanted in a leader was a man who said to his troops ' Go forward,' and who was not prepared to invite them to retire to the rear. At all events the time had come when the Liberal party must make up its mind whether its march was to be forward or backward. If it allowed itself to be defeated by such counsels as he had referred to, it would deserve to be destroyed." That is surely sound sense. We cannot believe that the Liberal party will be strengthened by Lord Rosebery's extraordinary tactics, which, while they unsettle everything, suggest no new policy.
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