The critical, conscience-searching attitude to foreign and imperial affairs, the willingness to see the right triumph over national sentiment...was sheer idealism, the belief that war was wrong and that in the new world of great inventions and world-wide trade civilised nations should not require to settle difference by war...Retrenchment...meant the saving of the resources of the individual from the grasp of the state taxation system. It was held as a general truth that wealth left in the hands of private persons would be more fruitfully used than if used by the state...() had most vigorously attacked sinecures and abuses; it was they who had established free trade which seemed the best guarantee of economic development and it was they who more than any others discouraged expense on armaments, the most wasteful and unproductive of all expenditure...Reform...had a particular and narrower use as meaning reform of the franchise...More broadly it meant improvement in the method and art of government and the removal of any restriction or disqualification that fell on any particular class or sect.〔R. B. McCallum, ''The Liberal Party from Earl Grey to Asquith'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), pp. 68-70.〕