The Liberals came into office again in 1892. The most important result of their brief triumph was perhaps the illustration which it afforded of the power of the new party machinery in the country. The National Liberal Federation met at Newcastle, immediately before the election, and succeeded in imposing its will upon the Liberal party with questionable effect. It seemed to be animated by the logical temper of the early Radicals rather than by the practical, managing temper which is so essential to political action. It advocated, among more orthodox things, the Disestablishment of the Churches of Scotland and Wales, and a local veto on the sale of alcoholic liquors. Both these proposals carried Liberal principles to logical and unreasonable extremes. Disestablishment in Wales was a right application of the principle of religious equality. To invest with public privileges the members of a sect which contained a minority of the population, and had been for more than a century alien in spirit as well as in the nationality of its official heads, was one of those artificial appreciations which are abhorrent to all Liberals. The Scottish case was entirely different. The Established Church Of Scotland differed only in unimportant details of constitution and government from the other Churches. No social privileges were claimed or enjoyed by its members, and there was no national demand for the abolition of its formal privileges. An aristocratic Church with a form of service alien to the natural disposition of the people was {308} an institution which the Welsh could reasonably denounce. A Church which was as plain and sober in its habit as the humblest chapel in the land was accepted by the Scotch because it never claimed to be more than it was worth.