236] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [dec.
At a conference of Liberal Unionist delegates from the Midlands at Leicester, on November 20, there was unanimous agreement as to the need for an early and serious consideration of the glaring inequalities and injustice of the present over- representation of Ireland " ; a large majority for action in the next parliamentary session " with a view of providing pensions for old and deserving workpeople " ; and a nearly unanimous vote in favour of the further extension of the benefits of the Employers' Liability Act, especially to agricultural labourers. Interest and possibly instruction may be found in a comparison of the above two sets of resolutions.
At the annual meeting of the General Committee of the National Liberal Federation, held in Manchester on December 13, a resolution was unanimously passed in favour of " registered adult manhood suffrage." The extension of the franchise to women was also voted as desirable, but in their case Lady Carlisle expressed readiness to accept, and Mr. Ellis Griffith seemed to recognise as useful, a limitation of the suffrage to those qualified under the present law for the municipal fran- chise. The meeting also " heartily supported the bill to amend the London Government Act of 1899, in respect of the eligi- bility of women as councillors and aldermen."
A large number of representative temperance leaders, though not Sir Wilfrid Lawson, issued in December a manifesto calling attention to and accepting a speech made by Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman at Manchester on November 15 " as a declaration of the intention of the leaders of the Liberal party to place in the forefront of their proposals for immediate legislation on their return to power a measure of temperance reform embody- ing the principal recommendations of Lord Peel's report, in- cluding giving direct popular control to Scotland and Wales. . . . Believing that such an enactment would undoubtedly work immense good immediately, and pave the way for effecting a future and more complete reform," the signatories of the manifesto " welcomed the announcement, and commended to temperance electors the policy it embodied as worthy of their support at the next general election."
Accidentally, or otherwise, the necessity of supporting the leaders of the Liberal party in the sufficiently arduous enter- prise indicated in the resolution just quoted does not seem to* have presented itself to the managers of the National Liberal Federation, meeting at Manchester in December.
The troubles in the Church of England to which reference has been made as having presented a grave aspect to the minds of not a few thoughtful Churchmen in the autumn, did not become outwardly more serious as the months wore on. Rather, indeed, did it appear that for the time at any rate, and with regard to the Lambeth decision against the ceremonial use of incense, the influences making for conformity had gener- ally prevailed. Indeed the actual number of clergy who, after
