The most we can say is that on the whole for a ...

The most we can say is that on the whole for a generation after 1830, Liberalism suited England best, for a generation before 1900, Conservatism; while the dominant tendency is checked and deflected by a strong reaction towards Conservatism in 1840, and towards Liberalism in 1880, a reaction demanding in the one case greater efficiency in government, in the other greater moderation in policy. But of all those who shared on whichever side the impassioned expectations of 1868, how many would have ventured to prophesy that

within twenty years

the old Whig name would be heard no more? Broken by the disaster of 1885, the

Liberal party was nearing exhaustion.

Traditionally reluctant to face the responsibilities or to yield to the excitements of Empire, it was reduced to peddling reforms for which there was no general or hearty demand: Welsh Disestablishment, Scotch Disestablishment, registration, drink, one man one vote:' or else evading arguement on the eight-hour day, and anxiously reckoning the gain of the workman's vote against the loss of the employer's subscription.

Yet there was a Liberal, a man equally conversant with problems of labour and defence: an Imperialist, a Radical, a Home Ruler: a man to who in 1886 opinion would almost unanimously have pointed as the leader of future Liberalism. The long Conservative ascendancy was something of a mystery to Conservatives themselves.

How long would it have lasted if, besides the fame of Gladstone, the Liberals could have opposed to the weight and fire of Salisbury, Hartington, and Chamberlain, the capacity of Duke? Lord Acton used to say that the course of history in the nineteenth century had been altered twenty-five times by assassination.

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