Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/429

Let us, then, for a short time consider some of these sentiments, as expressed in certain speeches delivered at Birmingham and Ipswich in the month of January of this present year. These speeches, indeed, are of a somewhat different character; and we must so guide our criticism as to avoid being included among those political opponents of Mr Chamberlain who, as he informed his constituents in his first harangue, have been attacking him "with persistent abuse and misrepresentation." Of such weapons we have no need; and our object is not so much to find fault with Mr Chamberlain for the employment of certain, phrases and arguments, as to inquire and point out what is the real meaning of these phrases, and to what point it is that these arguments necessarily lead. The greater part, therefore, of the Birmingham speech may be passed over without comment. It consists, in the first place, of self-glorification on the part which the speaker had played in boldly accusing his Conservative opponents at home of having hired "roughs" to break up their own meeting by attacking Liberals whose presence thereat could have only increased its importance. That such an accusation should have been brought, sustained by the evidence of persons who disappeared as soon as that evidence was contradicted on oath, may seen rather a doubtful subject for the self-congratulation of a Cabinet Minister; but tastes vary, and Mr Chamberlain, so far as we are concerned, is welcome to the satisfaction which he seems to have derived from the incident. The greater part of the rest of his Birmingham speech is taken up with the usual laudation of all that "the Liberal party" has been saying and doing of late, – with rejoicing over the passing of the Franchise Bill – description of the probable effects of the Redistribution Bill, and the new combinations which it will call into existence – and a quasi justification of that foreign and colonial policy of the present Government, upon which the general concurrence of public opinion has already pronounced a very different judgment. It is not until the end of the speech that we find Mr Chamberlain asking, "What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future?" and answering his own question with words so remarkable, that one can hardly believe them to have been uttered by the colleague of a Prime Minister who boasts himself the faithful disciple of Sir Robert Peel, of a Lord Chancellor who has a high reputation as a constitutional lawyer, and a War Minister who represents one of the largest landed properties in the kingdom. It is the colleague and counsellor of these men who tells his audience that "just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world, and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their own table." If these words stood alone, they might well serve as a text for a discourse upon the unscrupulous character of the charges which, if they have any meaning at all, they level at some class or classes of Englishmen without the shadow of justification. Who or what are the men who have "already annexed everything that is worth having"? When William of Normandy invaded England, it is undeniable that annexation to a very considerable extent followed