BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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on all great and vital questions a voice to the
electors and the people of this country. (Cheers.) . .
. Of course, if the House of Lords ever had in the
course of its history permanently maintained any vital
question against the declared will of the people of
this country, there would be great ground —I freely
admit it--for complaint, because, according to our
principles in this century, it is the inhabitants of
this country, and they only, who can decide in the last
resort any political controversy that is raised; but if
it is, as I maintain all history shows it to be, the
function and the practice of the House of Lords to
reserve these vital questions in respect to which it
thinks that the House of Commons and the country are
not really in accord, then you have no reason to
complain of delay. Delay is the necessary consequence
of such a machinery, delay is vital to the action of a
second Chamber, without which few civilized nations
have ventured to conduct representative institutions;
and not only is there no reason to complain of delay,
but there is no reason to complain of the general
tendency of the votes of the House of Lords.81
With the Conservatives' return to power in 1895 and throughout
the final years of Queen Victoria's reign, the Conservative party
shifted
its focus away from Ireland toward mounting international
tensions.
Nevertheless, the most striking feature of these years, at
least in terms of Salisbury's and the League's portrayal of events, is
the overwhelming preoccupation with issues central to the 1880's.
In addressing the annual Grand Habitation in 1898, Salisbury
suggested that efforts to create a divided Britain and a ravaged empire
had been thwarted.
The battle has been fought and won. The fatalistic
doctrine that Radical proposals once made must
eventually succeed has been contradicted by the test of
a capital experience. We have tried issues with those
who would break the Empire in pieces, and not only have
81
The Times, 20 April 1894, p. 11; The Primrose League
Gazette, 1 May 1894, p. 7, also published the passage, although its
punctuation and text differs slightly from The Times.