It need hardly be said that Lord Lansdowne did not
meet this frank and simple challenge. He and his colleagues, he said, had done nothing inconsistent with his declaration in Parliament of February 19th and Mr. Balfour's Sheffield speech. The acceptance of office in the reconstituted Liberal Unionist Association was no breach of such principles. No doubt some of their followers were prepared to go further, but it was a new doctrine that leaders had no business to take any interest in the proceedings of their party, if these proceedings went beyond the published programme. Lord Rosebery, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and Lord Goschen pointed out that such an answer only made confusion worse confounded. They had not to deal with a question of theories of Ministerial conduct, but with the practical fact that some of the chief members of the Government had collaborated in celebrating the supposed triumph of Mr. Chamberlain. Lord Selbore took more logical ground in his plea that the meaning of the Liberal Unionist organisation was opposition to Home-rule, and that no other purpose mattered. The answer, again, is an appeal to facts. How much is Home-rule a vital question, or its defeat the chief motive of the new President of the Liberal Unionist Association P
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