was slaving my life out, you threw it (my policy) over as of no importance; and it is to this indifference to a great policy, which you had yourselves accepted, that you owe the present situation.’ On 9 September 1903 he wrote to the prime minister, Mr. Balfour, recognizing that as an ‘immediate and practical policy’ the question of preference to the Colonies could not be pressed with any success at the time, and saying that, as colonial secretary, he stood in a position different from any of his colleagues and would justly be blamed if he accepted its exclusion from the programme of the government. He therefore tendered his resignation so that he could, from outside, devote his attention to explaining and popularizing those principles of imperial union which his experience had convinced him were essential. It was not, however, till 16 September that the prime minister reluctantly acquiesced in this decision.
Chamberlain, while in the unionist government, was mainly preoccupied with colonial questions. He had not, however, altogether forgotten his zeal for social reform, and the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897 was mainly due to his efforts. The weakest side of his statesmanship was, perhaps, shown in his excursions into the field of foreign policy. His attack upon Russia in 1898, with its remark that ‘who sups with the devil must have a long spoon’, cannot have made easier the path of Lord Salisbury’s diplomacy. Nor was his grandiose scheme for an alliance between Great Britain, Germany, and the United States (1898-1901) likely, in the circumstances, to meet with success. Its object, the prevention of a great European war, was assuredly worth the price of granting a free hand to Germany in Asia Minor, and, if the negotiations had been left in the hands of Count Hatzfeldt, a conclusion might have been reached; but, with the Kaiser’s jealousy and dislike of England, with the narrow persistence of Herr von Holstein, the permanent head of the German foreign office, in regarding the proposal as an opportunity to exact the hardest terms from the needs of Great Britain, and with Prince Bülow’s subserviency to his royal master, the attempt was apparently from the first foredoomed to failure. It is a proof, however, of Chamberlain’s flexibility of mind, since in March 1896 he had seemed to Count Hatzfeldt ‘especially hostile to Germany and German interests’.
Whatever were the immediate circumstances of Chamberlain’s resignation, in any case views were developing in his mind that foreshadowed a revolutionary change of policy. It must be remembered that, although it was easy enough to put side by side, as has been done, conflicting statements of his economic views at different periods, he had never, in theory or in practice, belonged to the Manchester school of free traders, to whom free trade was but one item in a general creed of laissez-aller and anti-socialism. From his first entrance into politics he had advocated a modified form of state socialism. He had, indeed, accepted free trade as part of the orthodox faith of a good liberal; but during those years he had failed to realize the importance of the imperial factor in the decision of the question. It was the consideration of this factor that accounted for his change of policy. On the fiscal side he had for some years been in favour of some kind of imperial Zollverein, and in 1896 he had protested against the proposal that, while the Colonies should be absolutely free to impose what protective duties they pleased, our whole system should be changed, in return for a small discrimination in favour of British trade. The foreign trade of Great Britain was so large and that of the Colonies comparatively so insignificant that a small preference would give a merely nominal advantage; he did not think the British working classes would consent to make so revolutionary a change for what would seem to them an infinitesimal gain. Even as late as the opening of the Imperial Conference of 1902 he declared: ‘Our first object is free trade within the Empire.’
But during the sitting of this conference the conviction was borne home to him that an imperial Zollverein was, for the time being, an impossibility; whilst the need for closer union became more and more urgent. Unless such union could be achieved between the component parts of the Empire, he thought that separation must sooner or later be the end. The enthusiasm aroused throughout the Empire by the South African War had seemed to give him his opportunity, and at the Imperial Conference he had suggested ‘a real council of the Empire to which all questions of imperial interest might be referred. Such a council would be at first merely advisory; but its object would not be completely secured until it had attained executive functions and perhaps some legislative powers’. It was the chilling reception accorded to this suggestion, and the failure of the attempt to organize closer union on the lines of
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