[ROSEBERY

Rosebery was widely known as a brilliant orator, an outstanding sportsman and marksman, a writer and historian, connoisseur and collector. All of these activities attracted him more than politics, which grew boring and unattractive. Furthermore, he drifted to the right of the Liberal party and became a bitter critic of its policies. Winston Churchill, observing that he never adapted to democratic electoral competition, quipped: He would not stoop; he did not conquer.The vote of no confidence in the Rosebery ministry of 21st June 1895, also known as the Cordite vote, was the occasion on which the Liberal Government of the Earl of Rosebery was defeated in a vote of censure by the House of Commons. The motion was to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State for War as a censure over deficient supply of cordite to the Army, and when it was passed the Secretary of State Henry Campbell Bannerman offered his resignation. As Campbell Bannerman was the most popular Minister in a Government which was suffering internal division and whose members had grown tired of office, the Government chose to interpret the issue as one involving confidence in the Government and therefore resigned. The incoming Conservative government soon sought a dissolution of Parliament and won the ensuing general election. The vote is the last time in the History of the British Parliament that a government has been defeated on a confidence motion when it had a workable majority. This photo was taken at this time.