LORD ROSEBERY AND IMPERIAL LIBERALISM. au THE ED! FOR OF
TliE "SPECTATOR.) Sir.—As a member of the Eighty Club, of which Lord Rosebery happens by an unfortunate accident to be the president, permit me to thank you for your admirable article ii the Spectator of November 4th on the question of Im- perial Liberalism. When Lord Rosebery was elected a few months since as Mr. Gladstone's successor in the presidency of the fighting organisation of the Liberal party, those who were trip eel to his election found themselves compelled by the ruling of the chairman at the annual meeting, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, to support a motion for adjournment, only effective as protest, which the chairman had already declared to be powerless to prevent the election. In spite of this fact, the motion was supported by more than one-fourth of th sae present. Moreover, this r o-e, taken at a meeting in London, would havt been much larger proportionately if the meeting had been held in one of our Northern towns, where extreme Imperialism is not so rampant as in the oapi'al. We opposed Lord Rosebery's election because we held that he was in no true sense an inheritor of Mr, Gladstone's policy, and that it was not right that our club F hould be a party to placing on his shoulders a mantle which fltt d them so ill and almost grotesquely. On the question of Home-rule Lord Rosebery had taken up a position which we believed to be contrary to that of our former leader, but our principal contention was that which is so ably expressed in your article. We held "that there are two essentially opposing and antagonistic tendencies at work in the country," and that Lord Rosebers'a attitude with regard to Armenia and his speech at the Fashoda crisis had shown that in matters of foreign policy he was the inheritor of Lord Beaconsfield's policy, and not of Mr. Gladstone's. The cleav- age of opinion on the Transvaal crisis has largely followed the same lines as in the case of Fasboda and Armenia. We believe that your view as follows is the true one, and that those members of the Opposition who follow Lord Rosebery's lead on this occasion "will in the end become merely a detached group forced by circumstances to support the Unionists and to oppose the Opposition." It is because we are convinced that this attempt to build up a policy on "a foundation of paradox" must end in disaster both to the Opposition and to the nation, and that the principles of Can- ning and Gladstone can never be made effective by one whose every speech on foreign policy reveals the taint of Beacons- field, that we shall continue to oppose any and every attempt of Lord Rosebery's to masquerade in the mantle of Gladstone, whether as president of the Eighty Club, or as leader of the Liberal party.—! am, Sir. &e ,
HENRY S LUNN, .D.
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