ee-trade
government and the colonial premiers, in one part of the empire the
ministry took a decided step--in the establishment of a self-governing
constitution for the Transvaal and Orange River colonies--which, for
good or ill, would make the period memorable. Mr Haldane's new army
scheme was no less epoch-making in Great Britain. In foreign affairs,
the conclusion of a treaty with Russia for delimiting the British and
Russian spheres of influence in the Middle East laid the foundations of
entirely new relations between the British and Russian governments. On
the other hand, so far as concerned the ultimate fortunes of the Liberal
party, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's premiership can only be regarded
as a period of marking time. He had become its leader as a conciliator
of the various sections, and it was as a conciliator, ready to
sympathize with the strong views of all sections of his following, that
he kept the party together, while his colleagues went their own ways in
their own departments. His own special "leads" were few, owing to the
personal reasons given above; his declaration at the Queen's Hall,
London, early in 1907, in favour of drastic land reform, served only to
encourage a number of extremists; and the Liberal enthusiasm against the
House of Lords, violently excited in 1906 by the fate of the Education
Bill and Plural Voting Bill, was rather damped than otherwise, when his
method of procedure by resolution of the House of Commons was disclosed
in 1907. The House passed by an enormous majority a resolution
(introduced on June 25) "that in order to give effect to the will of the
people, as expressed by their representatives, it is necessary that the
power of the other House to alter or reject bills passed by this House
should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a
single parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail"; but
the prime minister's explanation that statutory provision should be made
for two or three successive private conferences between the two Houses
as to any bill in dispute at intervals of about six months, and that,
only after that, the bill in question should be finally sent up by the
Commons with the intimation that unless passed in that form it would
become law over their heads, was obviously not what was wanted by
enthusiastic opponents of the second chamber. The problem still
remained, how to get the House of Lords to pass a "law" to restrict
th