MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 8, 9 July 1909, Page 6

MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

mi Even within the prize-ring of party politics in the Old Country, there is surely nobody who will grudge Mr. Joseph Chamberlain the congratulations which have been showered upon him on the occasion of his seventy-third birthday. As British statesmen go, " he is still a young man. He is ten years younger than Mr. Gladstone was when he undertook tho formation of his last Ministry, and, with the heart of a boy, cheerfully undertook his last gallant attempt to give Ireland Home Rule. Like Mr. Gladstone himself, Mr. Chamberlain seemed at one time to have learned the secret of perpetual youth ; but after having stood the strain of Parliamentary warfare of an exceptionally strenuous character for thirty years with little apparent inconvenience, the accumulated strain exacted a sudden and severe penalty. Immediately after the celebration on 7th July, 1906, of his completion of the seventieth year of .his life and the thirtieth year of his service of Birmingham in Parliament, his health collapsed, and his place in the House of Commons, of which he is still a member, has known him no more. During the three years for which his retirement has already lasted, he has been a name and an inspiration in British politics, but not a fighting force. Occasional messages of congratulation and encouragement to those who are carrying on his work have been his only contributions to political warfare, and probably nobody, with the possible exception of himself, expects to seem him enter the arena again. Bitter indeed must be the animosity that could grudge to a man so placed whatever solace the sympathy and admiration of his fellow countrymen all over the world can bring. Apart from these personal tributes, the warrior in his retirement may aleo rejoice over the magnificent progress of the campaign which he set on foot. The quest of tariff reform, for which he resigned office afc the very height of his personal power in September, 1905, seemed at ihe time to be absolutely quixotic in its hopeless galiantry. But his eloquence and his energy rapidly brought it to {he very forefront of political questions, despite the contemptuous onslaughts of the enemy and tho chilly indifference of the official leaders of his own party. Mr. Chamberlain brought the question to the front, and, although prediction was freely made that without his personal magnetism to keep it moving it would languish and fade away, it has remained in the front ever since. Tariff Reform is now the accepted policy of the Unionist Party, the first plank in its platform, as Mr. Balfour declared about six months ago, and the successes of the last eighteen months have fully justified the decision. Licensing, education, 'Home Rule, and Dreadnoughts have each in turn had their share in, swaying the by-elections, but Tariff Reform has been the constant force which has never failed to assert itself. It is true that the Tariff Reform which now nolds the field is not quite the same Tariff Reform which was started by Mr. Chamberlain six years ago. It was his visit to South Africa in 1903 that avowedly set him "thinking Imperially" on the fiscal question, and at that time he undoubtedly overdid its Imperial aspect. He talked as though the Protective tariffs of the colonies, which enabled them to give a preference to British goods without much ado, implied a higher degree of patriotism than prevails in the Mother Country, and he actually urged fiscal reform upon the British electors as a sacrifice which they should be willing to make in the interests of their kinsmen beyond the seas. It is possible that if he had not indulged in this sentimental strain, which served admirably to adorn his thrilling perorations, Mr. Chamberlain would not have, been heard so gladly and so enthusiastically, but sober reflection soon satisfied his less sanguine friends that he had really been putting the cart before the horse. If fiscal preference is to be granted by Great Britain, it must, as in the colonies, be incidental to a protective /system. This fact is fully realised by the most advanced of the Tariff Reformers of today, of whose views the Morning Post is the leading organ. "Tariff Reformers had always, based their proposals for a change in our fiscal system on the necessity of providing revenue," said Mr. W. S. Hewins, the secrefary of * the Tariff Commission, the other day. No, it was not always so. Nor could the reformers have always said, as Mr. Joyn-£on-Hicks recently said, that preference is now the "sentimental side" of Tariff Reform, which merely appeals to the colonies. Business and not sentiment is now given the first place, which rightly belongs to it; but, in the absence of Mr. Chamberlain's stirring appeals to sentiment, business alone might never have got a hearing.