Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/113

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.
99

nevertheless as certain to be ultimately realized as has been the case with tho "points" of the "People's Charter."

It is unnecessary to enlarge further on Mr. Chamberlain's local achievements. He has a manifest genius for administrative detail, and, as President of the Board of Trade, it is universally acknowledged that he is in his right place. His speeches in Parliament on the County Boards Bill and the Prisons Bill would alone have stamped him as a master of every thing that pertains to a "spirited domestic policy," of which the country stands so much in need, and of which the evil spirit of Jingo has permitted it to hear so little.

Mr. Chamberlain, however, has greater claims on the Liberal party than any that I have yet adduced, and these are of a special and most important character. When our spirits have failed us, and the majority have seemed disposed to be "led,"—whither, our "leaders" would not or could not tell us,—he has always come cheerily up in the pages of "The Fortnightly" with a new "programme" to put in our hands. He has rallied us to the cry of free land, free church, free schools, and free labor; and, when that was not enough, he has set himself to "re-organize" and put us in marching order with our faces to the foe. Like all true men and brave spirits, he is greatest and most helpful in adversity. For why? Is he not the father of the much-derided, much-denounced "caucus," which is yet destined to be such an important factor in the political life of England?

Mr. Chamberlain, however, claims no special credit in connection with the so-called caucus. He simply regards it as in some form inevitable, and therefore he