MR CHAMBERLAIN AND THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.
We shall scarcely be accused of sympathy with Mr Chamberlain or his opinions, when we express regret that during the past two years so many attacks should have been made upon him in his public capacity, and that even his private affairs should have been made the subject of adverse comment. Our regret, however, with respect to these two methods of attack, springs from different sources. We regard it as wholly unjustifiable to rake up private matters, and to hint or insinuate suspicions, possibly without any reasonable foundation, as to affairs with which the public have nothing to do. The political life of a man is public property; his private life should be safe from intrusion, and good policy as well as good feeling should protect it from those who are honestly at war with the politician, but have no enmity to the man.
Our objection to the frequency of the attacks upon the political acts and speeches of Mr Chamberlain, rests upon a widely different foundation, and is to be found in the simple fact that they invest him with a fictitious importance, and hold him up before the eyes of the people as a person of far greater consequence than he really is. For, when all has been said and done, Mr Chamberlain is not a great man. Until his entry into the House of Commons in 1876, he was but little known beyond Birmingham circles; and between that time and the dissolution of 1880, his legislative actions were nil, and his speeches neither many in number nor remarkable in any sense of the word, if we omit the celebrated insult to Lord Hartington, who was stigmatised by his present colleague as "the late leader of the Opposition," because he ventured to lead in a direction which that colleague of three years' parliamentary experience disapproved. Nay, more: although we are ready to give Mr Chamberlain credit for official zeal and industry since his unprecedented leap at one bound into the seat of a Cabinet Minister, we cannot forget that, so far as legislative achievements are concerned, his performances have been meagre indeed; and that, whilst it remains to be seen whether his efforts at the amendment of our Bankruptcy Laws will add to his reputation or injuriously affect it, his failures in the attempt to deal with the Shipping and Railway questions have been heavy and disastrous, and his manner of making those attempts has met with severe criticism even from some Radical members of Parliament who would gladly have welcomed his success.
We repeat, therefore, that Mr Chamberlain is not a great man, and in spite of an extraordinary amount of assurance, and a considerable fluency of speech, has evinced none of the qualities of greatness during his brief parliamentary career. Nevertheless, the public utterances of Mr Chamberlain demand consideration at the present moment, because he who utters them is a member of Mr Gladstone's Cabinet; and as "in the country of the blind the one-eyed is king," so in counsels where weakness, vacillation, and timidity abound, self-assurance and self-will have so undue a share of influence, that it is well to ascertain and gauge the sentiments entertained and avowed by the possessor of these valuable qualities.
