materials for the comparison between Rabagas and Mr. Chamberlain. For there can be no denying that Mr. Chamberlain began his public life as an eloquent, an unsparing, and apparently a convinced champion of democracy against the aristocracy, the privileged orders, and the Conservative party, and that he is now a leading member of a Conservative government, and goes further than most of his colleagues would be likely to go in his hostility to Radical measures and to Radical

men.

Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain, who during the earlier part of his public life belonged to the party most strenuously opposed to all unnecessary wars, and especially wars which had annexation for their object, has been the chief Ministerial promoter of the war now going on in South Africa, a war which has for its object the subjugation of two independent Republics in order to bring them under the Imperial flag of England. No one, therefore, could have been much surprised when the unfriendly critic fancied that he could discover at least a certain superficial resemblance between the career of Rabagas and the career of Mr. Chamberlain.

I have been a somewhat close observer of much of Mr. Chamberlain's public life, and for some time we were thrown a good deal into Parliamentary and political association. He came into the House of Commons not very long before I had the honor of obtaining a seat there, and his fame had preceded him so far that his entrance into Parliament was looked upon by everybody as a coming event, in the days when he had not yet been elected to represent the constituency of Birmingham. Birmingham was at that time one of the most thoroughly Radical cities in England. John Bright once said that as the sea, wherever you dip a cup into it, will be found to be salt, so the constituency of Birmingham, wherever you test it, will be found to be Radical. Birmingham could claim the merit of being one of the best organized municipalities in England. Its popular educational institutions were excellent; its free libraries might have won the admiration of a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts; its police arrangements were efficient; its sanitation might well have been the envy of London, and the general intelliger.ce of its citizens was of the high

rose

est order. Now, it was in this enlightened, progressive, and capable community that Mr. Chamberlain won his first fame. He is not a Birmingham man by birth. He was, I believe, born and brought up on the south side of London, and was educated at University College School, London. But at an early age he settled in Birmingham, and became a member of his father's manufacturing firm there. Very soon he to great distinction as a public speaker and as a member of the local corporation, and three times was elected chief magistrate of Birmingham. We began soon to hear a great deal of him in London. It must have been clear to any body who knew anything of Birmingham that a man could not have risen to such distinction in that city without great intelligence and a marked capacity for public life. All this time he was known as a Radical of the Radicals. The Liberal party in London began to look upon him as a coming man, and as a coming man who was certain to take his place, and that probably a leading place, in the advanced Radical division of the Liberals. His political speeches showed him to be a democrat of the leveling order a democrat, that is to say, of views much more extreme than had ever been professed by John Bright or Richard Cobden. He was an unsparing assailant of the aristocracy and the privileged classes, and, indeed, went so far in his Radicalism that the Conservatives in general regarded him as a downright Republican.

I can well remember the sensation which his first speech in the House of Commons created among the ranks of the Tories after his election to Parliament as one of the representatives of Birmingham. The good Tories made no effort to conceal their astonishment at the difference between the real Chamberlain as they saw and heard him and the Chamberlain of their earlier imaginings. I talked with many of them at the time, and was made acquainted with their emotions. Judging from his political speeches, they had set him down as a wild Republican, and they expected to see a rough and shaggy man, dressed with an uncouth disregard for the ways of society, a sort of Birmingham Orson who would probably scowl fiercely at his opponents in the House and would deliver his opinions in tones of thunder.

The man who rose to address the House was a pale, slender, delicate-looking, and closely shaven personage, very neatly dressed, with short and carefully brushed hair, and wearing a dainty eyeglass constantly fixed in his eye. "He looks like a ladies' doctor," one stout Tory murmured. "Seems like the model of a head clerk at a West End drapery," observed another. Certainly there was nothing of the Orson about this well-dressed, wellgroomed representative of the Birmingham democracy.

Mr. Chamberlain's speech made a distinct impression on the House. It was admirably delivered, in quietly modulated tones, the clear, penetrating voice never rising to the level of declamation, but never failing to reach the ear of every listener. The political opinions which it expressed were such as every one might have expected to come from so resolute a democrat, but the quiet, selfpossessed delivery greatly astonished those who had expected to see and hear a mob orator. Mr. Chamberlain's position in the House was assured after that first speech. Even among the Tories everybody felt satisfied that the new man was a man of great ability, gifted with a remarkable capacity for maintaining his views with ingenious and plausible argument, a man who could hold his own in debate with the best, and for whom the clamors of a host of political opponents could have no terrors.

I may say at once that Mr. Chamberlain has, ever since that time, proved himself to be one of the ablest debaters in the House of Commons. He is not and never could be an orator in the higher sense, for he wants altogether that gift of imagination which is necessary to the composition of an orator, and he has not the culture and the command of ready illustration which sometimes lift men who are not born orators above the mere debater's highest level. But he has unfailing readiness, a wide knowledge of public affairs, a keen eye for all, the weak points of an opponent's case, and a flow of clear and easy language which never fails to give expression, at once full and precise, to all that is in his mind. He was soon recognized, even by his extreme political opponents, as one of the ablest men in the House of Commons, and it seemed plain to every one that, when the chance

came for the formation of a Liberal Ministry, the country then being in the hands of a Tory Government, Mr. Chamberlain would be sure to find a place on the Treasury Bench.

Meanwhile Mr. Chamberlain's democratic views seemed to have undergone no modification. He was as unsparing as ever in his denunciation of the aristocracy and the privileged classes, and he was especially severe upon the great landowners, and used to propound schemes for buying them out by the State and converting their land into national property. His closest ally and associate in Parliamentary politics was Sir Charles Dilke, who had entered the House of Commons some years before Mr. Chamberlain's appearance there, and who was then, as he is now, an advanced and determined Radical. Sir Charles Dilke, in fact, was at that time supposed to be something very like a Republican, at least in theory, and he had been exciting great commotion in several parts of the country by his outspoken complaints about the vast sums of money voted every year for the Royal Civil List. It was but natural that Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain should become close associates, and there was a general conviction that the more advanced section of the Liberal party was destined to take the command in Liberal politics.

Outside the range of strictly English politics there was a question arising which threatened to make a new division in the Liberal party. This was the question of Home Rule for Ireland as it presented itself under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. For years the subject of Home Rule had been the occasion, under the leadership of Mr. Butt, of nothing more formidable to the House of Commons than an annual debate and division. Once in every Session Mr. Butt brought forward a motion calling for a measure of Home Rule for Ireland, and, after some eloquent speeches made in favor of the motion by Irish members, a few speeches were delivered on the other side by the opponents of Home Rule, Liberals as well as Tories, and then some leading member of the Government went through the form of explaining why the motion could not be accepted. A division was taken, and Mr. Butt's motion was found to have the

support of the very small Irish Nationalist party, as it then was, and perhaps half a dozen English or Scotch Radicals; and the whole House of Commons, except for these, declared against Home Rule. About the time, however, of Mr. Chamberlain's entrance on the field of politics a great change had taken place in the conditions of the Home Rule question. Charles Stewart Parnell had become in fact, although not yet in name, the leader of the Irish National party, and Parnell's tactics were very different indeed from those of his nominal leader, Mr. Butt. Butt was a man who had great reverence for old constitutional forms and for the traditions and the ways of the House of Commons, and he had faith in the power of mere argument to bring the House some time or other to see the justice of his cause. Parnell was convinced that there was only one way of compelling the House of Commons to pay any serious attention to the Irish demand, and that was by making it clear to the Government and the House that, if they would not turn their full attention to the Irish national claims, they should not be allowed to turn their attention to any other business what ever. Therefore he introduced that policy of obstruction which has since become historical, and which for a time literally convulsed the House of Commons. Now, I am not going again into the oft-told tale of Home Rule and the obstruction policy, and I touch upon the subject here only because of its direct connection with the career of Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain supported Mr. Parnell in most of his assaults upon the Tory Government. It was Parnell's policy to bring forward some motion, during the discussion of the estimates for the army and navy or for the civil service, which should raise some great and important question of controversy connected only in a technical sense with the subject formally before the House, and thus to raise a prolonged debate which had the effect of postponing to an indefinite time the regular movement of business. Thus he succeeded in stopping all the regular work of the House until the particular motion in which he was concerned had been fully discussed and finally settled, one way or the other. It was by action of this kind that he succeeded in prevailing upon the

House of Commons to condemn the barbarous system of flogging in the army and the navy, and finally to obtain its abolition. In this latter course he was warmly supported by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, and by many other Liberal members.

But it was not only in obstructive motions which concerned the common interests of the country that Parnell obtained the support of Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain. These two men boldly and vigorously maintained him in his policy of obstruction when it only professed to concern itself with Irish national questions. They identified themselves so thoroughly with his Irish policy that it became a familiar joke in the House of Commons to describe Dilke and Chamberlain as the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General of the Home Rule party. I was then a member of the House, and had been elected Vice-President of the Irish party, Parnell being, of course, the President. Naturally, I was brought closely into association with Mr. Chamberlain, and I had for many years been a personal friend of Sir Charles Dilke. Again and again I heard Mr. Chamberlain express his entire approval of the obstructive policy adopted by Parnell, and declare that that was the only way by which Parnell could compel the House of Commons to give a hearing to the Irish claims. Mr. Chamberlain, indeed, expressed, on more than one occasion, in speeches delivered during a debate in the House, just the same opinion as to Parnell's course which I had heard him utter in private conversation. In one of these speeches I remember well his generous declaration that he was sorry he had not had an opportunity of expressing that opinion to the House of Commons long before. Now, of course, I always thought, and still think, that all this was much to the credit of Mr. Chamberlain's political intelligence, courage, and manly feeling, and I regarded him as one of the truest English friends the Home Rule cause had ever made. I had the opportunity, on more than one occasion, of hearing Dilke and Chamberlain define their respective positions on the subject of Home Rule. Dilke regarded Home Rule as an essential part of a federal system, which he believed to be absolutely necessary to the safety, strength, and prosperity of the