MR CHAMBERLAIN AND THE PREMIERSHIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12445, 30 August 1902, Page 8

MR CHAMBERLAIN AND THE PREMIERSHIP.

Mr H. W. Lucy in his letter to the Sydney Morning Hera'.d writes:—Personal animosity towards tho i lost leader, evor ,simmering; in the Radical camp, found expression in tho only ungenerous tittle-tattle that has gained currency in Connection with the disposal of the Premiership. It wus said tlmt the oceasion wherein by accident Mr Chamberlain was confined to a sick chamber was seized to rush through Lord Salisbury's resignation and the succession of Mr Balfour. This is a fancy as idle as it is malicious For more than two yoars I have, with perhaps tiresome •iteration, combated tho popular idea that Air Chamberlain was in tho running for tho Premiership, and that when the crisis came he would come to grips with Mr Balfour or aiiyone else Who stood in his way. There is no harm in now saying—indeed, "it is an act of justice to a public man to make tho fact kinown—that this view of the situation was obtained directly, from Mr Chamberlain's confidence. Something more than two years ago—it was in April, 1899—1 chanced to sit next to the Colonial Seerotary at- the dinner table of a mutual friond. There had just boon published, simultaneously in the United States and oil this side of tho water, an article in which I responded" to an invitation to discuss the prospects of the Premiership after the resignation of Lord Salisbury. Mr Chamberlain had been reading it that morning, and spoke on the subject with a, frankness he shared with Bismarck. I made a noto at the time of his observation, aud in the circumstances feci it is no breach of. confidence to publish it, the more unreservedly since it confirms Mr Chamberlain'B purpose in recalling, as through his sons agency ho did at the Foreign Office meeting on Monday, what he less directly said on the subject at a meeliug ot the Liberal Union Club about tho same time as ho spoko with me. "If," he said, "you want to know the truth about the matter I Will tell , you. Nojer at any time, in any circumstances, do I intend to bo Prime Minister of the Unionist Party. lam ready to serve under Arthur Balfour, or anyone else who may be-preferred to the post, I confess it was different when I was 011 tho other side. FifteeA j'ears ago I was certainly resolved,to. be Prime Minister in the Liberal succession. If that purpose had been fulfilled you would have seen established that condition of Liboral Imperialism of which Rosobery and others futilely talk today." It will be remembered uat, in. tho spring of 1899, Lord Rosebery was much to tho fore in connection with that' dissociation from sympathisers with the Boers which led to the state of things in the Liberal camp that came to be known as war to the knifo and'fork. This revelation of his innermost frame of mind, made two years ago, disposes of all the stories about personal rivalry with- Mr Balfour resulting in the triumph of tho latter finally secured by what Sir William Harcourt would call a dirty trick. . '