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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chamberlain, Joseph

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13686951922 Encyclopædia Britannica — Chamberlain, Joseph

CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836-1914), British statesman, died at Highbury, Birmingham, July 2 1914. From 1910 onwards, as for the three or four years previously, after he had been struck down by illness in 1906, Mr. Chamberlain remained in the political background, personally crippled, but intellectually an abiding source of strength to his old political followers, who continued to cherish his inspiration and to work for his ideals in the development of a united British Empire. Since they were now in opposition, the cause of tariff reform and imperial preference was no longer one of practical politics, and after the outbreak of the World War the conditions which had produced this active movement in 1903 were substantially altered. Nevertheless, it fell to Mr. Chamberlain's son, Austen Chamberlain, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1919, after his father's death, to include imperial preference in the budget of that year, and thus to carry this part of his programme to victory.

In 1916 Mr. Chamberlain's widow married Canon W. H. Carnegie, rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and chaplain to the House of Commons.