Lord Rosebery then glided into a general indictment of the
Government. He did not find that any of the foreign agreements into which they had entered, and of which their followers were proud, had been followed by any reduction of expenditure. On the contrary, that had risen—apart from the war—from 05,000,000 to 2140,000,000 a year, much of which a Liberal Government when it came into power would find itself unable to cut down. He considered that the Education Act had raised against it a mass of opinion in the Nonconformist population; and though intended to benefit the Church, had revived the question of the Establishment, which had slept since 1869. The Licensing Bill was a distinct dereliction of duty, for if we gave up the control of the liquor trade, which in that Bill was partially given up, the trade would ultimately control the State. As for military reform, the military system of the Government was chaos, and their reforms only the "notes of a speech which Mr. Arnold-Forster was going to deliver." Lord Rosebery held, in fact, that while we needed progress in every direction to enable us to contend in the race with other nations, this Government was one which was "not only not progressing, but distinctly retrograde." Ministers had but one claim to respect, that they were in office.
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